“And the Indian heads?” said King.
“Same. At retail, they’d go for four hundred and change. It’s not even worth the risk for my buyer. I can have them melted down. With the price of gold right now, you’re better off doing that. Just take the ounce value.”
“What about the Saint Gaudens?” said King. “They’re nineteen-o-eights, uncirculated. That’s a sweet collection right there.”
Spiegel picked up the set of coins, encased in hard plastic, from the attaché, and inspected it. “You did your homework.”
“Yeah, and they’ve been authenticated. The papers are in that gym bag at your feet.”
“Well...”
King smiled. “Don’t try to put it in my dirt chute, Arthur.”
Spiegel did not like to look King in the eye. It unsettled him. He stunk of alcohol and spices, and his bulky frame loomed in the car.
“I wouldn’t,” said Spiegel. “But the manner in which you obtained the goods, well, this wasn’t an ordinary event. The newspapers and wire services have picked up the story. It’s on the NCIC website.”
“An old man got some stitches in his head. So what?”
“He detailed the missing goods to the press,” said Spiegel. “It’s going to make it hard to move the coins.”
“How much?” said King, tiring of the game. “Roughly.”
Spiegel removed his glasses. “Let’s say...”
“Careful.”
“Twenty thousand for everything.”
“Fuck you.”
“Inclusive of my cut.”
“Fuck you. There’s a nineteen twenty-six D in there, too. That’s worth twelve grand all by itself.”
“I was counting that.”
“Maybe I’ll shop around.”
“That’s up to you, Billy.”
King looked down at his big hands, folded in his lap. He was powerful, crafty, and slick, but he wasn’t smart. All his life, he’d managed to get by with the strong-arm and some degree of charm. But guys like Spiegel, physically inferior but with real brains, would always take him to school in the end. King knew who he was.
“What do you think?” said Spiegel. “I’ve got the cash in the trunk. We can do the deal right there.”
“I bet you brought exactly twenty, too.”
“I don’t overspend, if that’s what you mean. Do we have a deal?”
Twenty thousand split three ways: six thousand three hundred and thirty-three each. Bacalov and the kid didn’t need to know what he’d got for the coin collection. So maybe he’d take ten or twelve for himself. It wasn’t much, but it was something. And he still had the paintings. Once he moved the Loretta Browning he’d be flush. Maybe buy himself a boat. A nice, seaworthy Grady-White, or a sweet Bayliner. Or a Parker, twinned-out with Yamahas.
“Gimme the money,” said King.
By the time they finished, it was night.
King drove over the bridge spanning Neale Sound and cruised around the island until he found the bar Lois had mentioned. It was a small place for locals, smelling of spilled beer, outfitted with a couple of televisions, Keno screens, a pool table, and an electronic jukebox. She was there at the bar, talking to a guy in a sleeveless shirt with arm tats. King crossed the barroom floor as a Jim Lauderdale cover of a Johnny Paycheck song, “I Want You to Know,” came from the juke. The pedal steel landed pretty on King’s ears.
“Did you buy that boat?” said Lois, as King sidled up to her left and slid onto a wood stool. The guy with the tats was seated to the right of Lois and stared straight ahead. He’d worn the sleeveless shirt to show off his sculpted guns, but he had chicken legs. He needed to work on his beer hump, too.
“I’m gonna sleep on it,” said King. He signaled the bartender and asked for a Heineken, which in this place was asking if it was all right to date the man’s daughter. But the bartender served it without comment, along with a fresh vodka tonic for Lois, at King’s instruction.
Lois thanked him and said she had to go to the “little girl’s room,” and when she was gone, King leaned over to the guy in the sleeveless shirt, who had uttered not one word, and said amiably, “I’d appreciate it you’d give us a little privacy.”
“I’m not botherin anyone,” he said weakly.
“Beat it, fella.”
The guy got up off his stool, paid his tab, and left the bar.
Lois returned, smelling like she’d splashed something on. They had a couple of rounds and talked about what was going to happen without saying it. Lois was drunk by then, slurring what she thought were clever double entendres about “size” and “stamina.” King thinking, Why do we need to talk? Though he smiled and nodded, and pretended he gave a shit. It was hard to act interested, but he had his needs.
They went to her spot back on the mainland, a creek-front colonial on Dyer Road that she’d snagged in her divorce settlement. Later, when he was putting his clothes back on, she was crying. She’d been begging him while he was fucking her, saying “please,” over and over again. He complied in every which way he knew. At the end she was flopping all over the bed like a fish on a dock. Then, when he was ready to finish, he put it in her mouth. Her eyes had bugged, trying to take it in, King thrusting as hard as he would if he was plunging it into her hole. He really did wonder, Why did they always cry? He was only giving them what they wanted. What did Ho-ess think they were gonna do, back when she was talking all that funny stuff back at the bar? Exchange Hallmark cards?
“Will I see you again?” said Lois, just before he walked out the door.
King barked a laugh. “Count on it,” he said.
He drove his Monte Carlo up 257, back toward the Washington area, the high beams on and the windows down, country music on the radio, twenty thousand dollars cash in the trunk of the car. His nuts were empty and he felt good. Also, he was somewhat high with anticipation, thinking of what came next. There was another twelve thousand waiting for them tomorrow. That is, if Serge didn’t fuck things up. And maybe he’d get a look at the man who’d come into Charles Lumley’s shop. He halfway hoped this supposed car-buyer and Lumley’s visitor were one and the same. It had been a while since someone had showed him that kind of steel.
Fifteen
The strip mall had been built in Oxon Hill, near the Henson Creek Golf Course and Henson Creek Park. The developers had hoped that the golfers and park users would generate sufficient traffic to support a small low-rise shopping center, with a Kmart as an anchor. But the Kmart went belly-up, and the satellite establishments — a video store, a dollar store, a hair and nail salon, a cut-rate furniture house, and a Chinese/steak — and-cheese house — soon followed. The center was scheduled to be demolished, but in the meantime it stood intact, albeit with an empty parking lot where weeds sprouted out of its cracked asphalt and concrete.
Behind the buildings was a smaller lot designed for truck and tractor trailer deliveries, and at its edge, a narrow but dense forest. This was where the meet would take place.
After the traditional pre-job breakfast at the Tastee Diner in Silver Spring, where Lucas had his cream chipped beef on toast and Marquis flirted with the Ethiopian waitresses, Lucas and Marquis went to a nearby car rental spot. Lucas, who had a standing deal with the manager, chose a nondescript blue Ford Fusion with a V-6 package. Marquis went with a black Maxima that had more horses but also would not stand out in traffic. There in the lot Lucas handed Marquis a business-grade two-way Motorola radio and an earpiece with an in-line voice-activated mic.
“You remember how to use that?” said Lucas.
“I know the drill,” said Marquis, moving the black-framed glasses he wore for distance to the crown of his head so he could get a good look at the unit. “But I don’t like wearing this headset. I’m talking about all these cancer-causing radio waves shooting into my ear.”