Cyris told me he was busy tonight. I know from experience he’s been busy the last few nights so I’m thinking if there’s a payoff to take place there’s a chance it’s tonight.
I stare out the window as the minutes pass. The night gets darker. The number of people walking by thins out and then there are none. Lights are turned on as people settle in for the evening. An hour passes. Two hours. I’m starting to need a bathroom. Lights start to turn off. People are going to bed. I have nothing to do but run my theory over and over in my head. The problem is it looks bad. Looks worse every time I glance at my watch and see another block of time has gone by. I was wrong to think the payment would be tonight and the passing minutes prove this to me. Wrong to think the husband is involved.
Wrong about everything.
I reach toward the ignition. I’m going to have to pay Cyris and hope for the best. Resort to Plan B, which I’m still working on. I hear a car start before I start my own. I let go of the keys and lean forward. Could this be it? I wait and watch as the Mercedes reverses down the driveway and onto the street. Frank. Frank the cheating husband. The car straightens and heads away from me.
I start the Holden and begin following. I don’t turn my headlights on. When he turns the corner I keep fifty yards behind him. The full moon and streetlights provide more than enough light to drive by, turning the roads pale blue except for the road markings, which glow white. Stars twinkle in the sky, their light coming from millions of miles away and centuries ago. I wonder if people like Cyris lived on those long-lost worlds. A few people coming toward me flash their lights, but Frank the cheating husband can’t see that, not from fifty yards ahead. Before I take the next corner, I turn on my lights.
The theory I’ve been playing with is once again starting to look good. I wonder how much money exchanged hands to end two women’s lives. In a fair world I should be getting a cut of those funds. Was money the motive? I’ve seen Frank’s house. I’ve seen his car. He was cheating on his wife. He wanted a divorce and didn’t want to give her half of everything. Instead he took everything she ever had.
Of course this is all guesswork. He could just be heading out for a hamburger.
We turn right at a set of lights and my fear that he’s meeting Cyris outside the city is quashed when Frank’s brake lights come on and he signals before pulling into a dead-end side street next to a shopping mall. I continue ahead and park on the road opposite. I kill the engine and pull up the hand brake. I pull the lens caps off the binoculars and watch him eight times bigger than normal life as he pulls into the entrance to the parking lot to his left. He pulls into it and kills his lights, but keeps on driving, making it difficult to follow him through my narrow field of vision. He turns right, goes straight for a bit, then turns left and out of sight. I pull the binoculars away and tuck them back into my pocket. I know this malclass="underline" he can’t have gone far.
The dashboard clock reads eleven fifty. If Frank is making a payoff it makes sense it’s going to happen at midnight. That gives me ten minutes to wait. Ten minutes to consider where things can go wrong. Ten minutes to figure what I can do about it.
I suck in a deep breath and, checking there’s no other traffic, I leave my car and run across the road. Spur-of-the-moment decisions haven’t been working out for me well this week, but I figure one has to go right. It’s like continually doubling down on red at the roulette table, chasing your losses and knowing it can’t keep on coming up black. Statistically it’s impossible that you can roll the wheel for the next fifty years and never get it to go your way.
Only at the end of the day the house always wins.
I vault the low railing that separates the parking lot from the sidewalk and land without the embarrassment of tripping. I break into a jog. Like town this afternoon, there are diggers and cranes and other building equipment lying around. Skeletons of more parking lots and more shops to come look like macabre playground equipment. Mounds of shingle and dirt form small hills. It takes me half a minute to reach the turn where the car disappeared. I crouch down and peer around the corner. I can see Frank’s car but no Frank. The car has its headlights facing me, but they’re not on. I keep watching and a few moments later Frank appears from behind his car. He climbs into his seat, pulls the door shut and, keeping the lights off, begins rolling forward. With nowhere to run I lie flat against the ground and watch the car arc around at least fifteen yards away from me so I’m out of sight. My army fatigues do what they’re designed for, and he doesn’t see me. He passes and accelerates away. The headlights flick on. He leaves the parking lot and pulls out onto the street.
I count to ten, eager to rush out there but not stupid enough. Then I count to ten again just to be sure. I make my way to where the car was parked. I turn in a slow circle. Ahead the neon letters of the supermarket have been switched off to save power. To my left the wall of the mall has been freshly painted, covering up a recent attack by graffiti artists-if you can call somebody who scrawls capital letters across a wall with spray paint an artist. To my right at the end of the parking lot is a neighboring fence. The supermarket runs almost the entire distance from the mall wall to that fence, except for a service alley at the far end. None of this inlet can be seen from the road. I walk up to the large glass doors of the supermarket. Hundreds of shopping carts are parked inside, boxes and bags, the sort of stuff you should see when you look through supermarket windows. Frank got out of his car, moved behind it, and came over here. Somewhere.
It only takes me a minute to find the briefcase. It’s sitting in a garbage bin that’s bolted to the ground a few yards to the left of the supermarket doors. I don’t bother opening it, but carry it back to my car, running the entire way. I get into the driver’s seat and pop the lid open and stare at bundles of cash. Lots of fresh brand-new bills. A lot of money looks great. It makes you feel rich, like you’ve achieved something. Even if you haven’t. So that’s how I’m feeling. I’m feeling rich for achieving little. I’m feeling rich for achieving a lot of fuckups over the last few days. I’m also feeling smarter than Cyris and maybe that’s dangerous. Maybe for once the house isn’t going to win.
But I’m also feeling angry, more at Frank than at Cyris right now. Frank is the reason the two girls died, and therefore the reason that Jo has been kidnapped. He’s also the reason Landry got himself shot up and thrown into a river. It all stems from him squirreling away this pile of cash and saving it up so his wife could be sliced up and killed. I feel like driving after Frank and running him off the road. Feel like punching and kicking and even stabbing him, over and over and over till he’s dead, at the same time asking him how it feels. What a bastard. What a piece of trash. I can feel myself burning up. I wonder if this is the full amount, or if it was one of those half now half and half after kind of jobs. I wonder why Frank didn’t pay Cyris earlier, then realize he probably couldn’t-he needed a day or two for things to die down. Making a payment the same day his wife was murdered wouldn’t look too good.
Action Man is angry. And, like I thought earlier, Action Man is no longer a victim.
I spill the cash onto the floor well in front of the passenger seat, creating a pile of cash in different denominations. I pop the glove box and grab hold of the pen the car rental agency guy gave me. Withdrawing a single hundred-dollar note from the pile of cash, I write on it, having to go over the same lines a few times to make the letters dark enough. Then I place it inside the briefcase. I close the lid and click both latches closed. It’s much lighter now.