"You go out to eat, and that's it. You sit here and watch TV If I call you on your cell, you better answer in one second," Lucas said.
"I will," she said. HONEY BEE SAT in her room for a half hour, staring at her suitcase, watching the TV without seeing it. She was scared of the killer, scared of Davenport, scared of the future. She wondered if they were watching her: peeked out in the hall, saw nobody. Went back to her room, sat in the bathtub. Made a decision.
She'd make a practice run, she decided. She took the elevator down three floors, then the stairs the rest of the way, listening for doors closing above her…
On the street, head down, she walked to a sandwich place on West Seventh, a block from the X Center, sat in a booth in the back, and watched the door. Business was slow, no hockey on the schedule: a few people came through, but nobody who felt like a cop. She left by a back door, into a side street, got her guts together, crossed the streets to the X Center, took the Skyway first up and then down, to the tunnel, watched her tracks, got into the main system, moving fast now.
At the bank, she got directions to the safe-deposit area, took the elevator down, rented a safe-deposit box, showing her checks to confirm her status as a customer, and dropped seventeen thousand into it, kept a thousand as walking-around money.
Took the elevator back up, expecting to see Davenport waiting at the doors: nobody.
Walked back through the Skyways, looking for a pay phone… and found one, one of the last public phones in the world, she thought. She got quarters from a popcorn stand and dialed long distance.
Two rings, three. Then, "Hello?"
"Eddie? It's me, Honey Bee."
Silence. Then, "You with the cops?"
"Not now. They had me all day. I'm calling from a pay phone. I need to talk to Joe."
"One minute."
Joe came on and said, "Honey Bee. I was afraid to call you."
"I'm on a pay phone. Joe-everybody's dead. I saw Lyle dead. Somebody tortured him. Tortured him. They say your dad's dead, too. They say there was drugs up there, and they tortured Lyle to get them." She kept her voice down, watching people walking past her, but tears started, and she began to cry into the phone.
"We're coming back," Joe Mack said after a while.
"You know who it is?" Honey Bee asked.
"Maybe," Joe Mack said.
"Is it the doc?"
More silence, then Joe Mack said, "How'd you know about the doc?"
"They've been looking all over for a guy called the doc. One of the cops said that there might have been some kind of powder on Lyle, that came from doctor's gloves."
"Could be the doc. Could be another guy. I'm not sure. But if an Arab guy comes looking for you, or a skinhead guy, you stay the fuck away from them. You get behind your shotgun and you don't let them in the house."
"I'm not in my house; the cops hid me in a hotel."
"Good. Stay there. You got a phone?"
"Not a clean one."
"See if you can get one, call me back at this number."
"What are you going to do?"
"Find the doc and this other guy. Have a talk."
"They think the doc did it. They tortured Lyle something awful, and something they were talking about makes me think a doc did it. They cut him. I think they cut, you know, his balls… off."
"Ah, Honey Bee… Christ, his balls?"
Honey Bee started weeping into the phone, and Joe Mack said, "Listen to me. Listen to me. Do they still think I killed that lady?"
"No. They say somebody else did," she said. "They think it's the doc. I told them it might be. They were going to put me in jail unless I told them something."
"Okay. Be cool. Did you get the cash out of the circuit breaker?"
She nodded at the phone. "Yes. I put it in a safe-deposit box at US Bank. Seventeen thousand dollars. Don't go to the bar. The cops are tearing the place apart."
"Okay. Now listen. Sit tight. Cooperate, but don't tell them I'm coming back, and don't tell them about this phone. Eddie's got a lawyer pal in Wisconsin who's done a lot of work for the Seed. He's gonna sign one-third of the bar over to you, make it look like you owned it for a couple years, and he's going to make a will for Lyle that leaves half of his share to you, and half to me. So we'll be half owners, but you gotta run it, okay?"
She sniffed. "Okay."
"I'll be back late tonight or tomorrow. We're coming, Honey Bee." BARAKAT TOOK the call from Joe Mack, who asked, "Have you seen Cappy?"
"I can get in touch," Barakat said.
"Tell him that the cops are looking for him. They might know about the van, too. He either better dump it, or dump the plates."
"Where are you?"
"On my way to Mexico. I ain't coming back, Al. Everybody's dead, and I don't know what's going on. I'm just heading out."
The dummy, being clever.
16
CAPPY AND BARAKAT nosed Barakat's car down the snow-covered track to the boat landing, talking about the van problem. Cappy said, "I'll take the California plates off my old van and put them on the new one. When I get to Florida, I'll sell the new van on the street, and buy a legit one."
"How will you sell it on the street? Do you know somebody…"
"I'll hook up with some bikers. They can take care of it. Everybody needs a van."
A few trucks had been down to the boat landing since the last snow, and there was a packed turnaround spot at the end. The water on the Wisconsin side was partly open, from the heat put in at the Prairie Island nuclear plant a mile or so upstream.
Nobody out there at dawn. They got out, looked across the rim of ice to the open water, and Cappy walked out until he was ten feet from the edge.
"What do you think?" Barakat called. He was afraid of ice.
"Looks okay to me."
"Is it deep?"
"It looks deep," Cappy said.
"You can try it," Barakat said, "but let me get the car turned around, so we can get out fast."
They got the car turned around, pointed back toward the highway a quarter-mile away, and then Cappy got one of the grenades out of the back.
"You're sure you know about this?" he asked Barakat.
"One hundred percent," Barakat said. "As long as you don't let the handle fly off, you're perfectly safe."
"Safe."
"Perfectly. When you throw it, throw it like one of your baseball players."
They walked to the ice together. Barakat stopped at the edge, and Cappy asked, "Won't the water put it out?"
"I don't think so. It's not like a match."
They both looked at the grenade, which Barakat said looked like a pomegranate, but Cappy didn't know what a pomegranate was, so they agreed on tomato, and Cappy said, "Pull the pin…"
"Throw the handle and everything," Barakat said. "Like a baseball."
"All right. Here goes." Cappy gripped the grenade around the handle and yanked the pin out. Stood there for a moment.
Barakat said, "Throw it. Throw it."
Cappy threw it, but it was heavier than he thought, hit the edge of the ice, skidded, and slipped over the edge into the water. Barakat started running away, and he called, "Run."
Cappy was running when the grenade blew. It wasn't too loud, but loud enough, and kicked up a twenty-foot plume of water. "Jesus," Cappy shouted. "Let's get the fuck outa here."
Laughing, they ran back to the car and drove away. LATER, AT BARAKAT'S HOUSE, they were playing basketball, not because they wanted to, but because they couldn't help it. Too much cocaine: too cold to go out. Plus, a basketball game on TV, the volume on 84, and the Eagles on the iTunes, volume at 11. The ball was a wad of two sheets of typing paper, the basket was purely virtual-a blank spot above a door. The idea was to hit the blank spot with a shot, which was too easy unless they stayed right in each other's faces, and after a couple of points, it turned into war, a raucous fight to get the paper wad in the air, the two of them tumbling over chairs, tables, an ottoman, Cappy blowing a nosebleed, spraying blood around the room, Barakat driving down the lane between the couch and an easy chair…