“Twenty-four. Forty-nine. Ninety-three.”
“You’re the expert,” he said to me. “Get dialing.”
I hesitated for a moment. Then I went to the safe and started spinning those numbers. Four turns to the right, three to the left, two to the right, one to the left. Until it stopped. Turn the handle. Open the door.
There was money inside. Stack upon stack of it.
“Who’s got a bag?” Fishing Hat said.
Nobody had one, so he went up the stairs. A couple minutes later, he came down with a trash bag and started stuffing the money inside it.
The man’s head was slumped down to his chest now. There was blood and spit and tears and teeth and God knows what else all over his shirt.
Sleepy Eyes went over to him. He pulled out a gun from his jacket.
“When you’re paid to perform a service,” he said to the man, “you should go ahead and perform that service. It’s just common sense, right? You understand what I’m saying?”
The man looked up. The blood was pouring from his mouth now.
Fishing Hat and Tall Mustache both stepped away. They put their hands over their ears.
Sleepy Eyes didn’t shoot. He came back over to me and looked me in the eye again. Then he offered the gun to me, handle first.
“You got off easy on the safe,” he said. “So why don’t you go ahead and finish up here?”
I looked down at the gun. I didn’t take it. I wasn’t going to touch it. No matter what else happened to me that day, I was not going to touch that gun.
Sleepy Eyes kept waiting me out. His two partners finally dropped their hands from their ears.
That’s when he finally turned and shot the assemblyman in the head.
Sleepy Eyes turned back to me with a smile on his face. “That’s all you have to do,” he said. “Is that so hard?”
Then he raised the gun again and shot his partners.
Fishing Hat first. In the neck. Tall Mustache in the chest. Both men went down with surprised looks on their faces. They both lived for most of the next minute before finally dying, their blood spreading out slowly on the basement floor.
“My two friends here…” Sleepy Eyes said, putting his gun away. “They’ve both been having little secret meetings with an FBI agent.”
He came over to me and looked me in the eye.
“If someone like that ever contacts you? Someone who smells like a Fed? Wants to have lunch or just get together for tea or something? I would recommend that you decline the invitation.”
He looked over the whole scene one more time. Then he gestured to the stairs.
“After you.”
I stepped over a spreading pool of blood and went up the stairs. We both went outside. Sleepy Eyes got behind the wheel and threw the garbage bag full of money into the backseat. The keys were dangling from the ignition. If I had made a break for it, I thought, I might have had a chance to get away. It was too late now.
I got in next to him.
“See what I mean?” he said, stretching out his legs. “This is what I’m talking about. Is this a hell of a lot more comfortable, or what?”
He drove me back to the restaurant. Thirty minutes in the car, sitting next to him. He started whistling a tune, like he was on his way back from a good day’s work painting a house. When we were at the terminal, he slipped the car into park and put a hand on the back of my neck.
“I know this might have seemed like a wasted trip to you,” he said. “Riding all the way out here like that. But you’ve been out there in L.A. for what, almost a year now? Living with that crazy bunch of kids? It’s good to keep in touch, you know?”
He reached back for the bag of money and pulled out a single stack.
“It’s good to remember who we both work for.”
I took the money. I did. I took it. Then I opened the door and got out. When I looked back, he had rolled down the window.
“Have a good trip back home,” he said, “and keep that pager right next to your pillow. I’ll be talking to you again soon.”
After he drove off, I sat there on my bike for a long time. I hadn’t even left the parking lot yet. I kept thinking about the blood. The way it ran like a dozen little rivers across the floor.
I will never be free of this, I thought. There is no way out.
And now I have to turn around and drive for three days straight, all the way across the country. To a houseful of thieves. To the only place where I will ever be welcome.
All those miles. And I am so tired.
Unless…
No. I can’t.
Yes. I have to. It may be my last chance. I may never be this close again.
I started the bike and pulled out onto the road. But instead of going west, I went north.
Two hours later, I was in Michigan.
Twenty-three
Michigan
July, August 1999
I didn’t know where Amelia had gone. Where she was hiding until her father let her come back home again. And of course because I am not a normal person, she couldn’t just call me on the telephone. She couldn’t call me and talk to me and tell me she was okay and that we’d be back together soon. Not like any other two young lovers who might find themselves separated.
No. If I couldn’t see her in the flesh, she might as well have been taken to another planet.
No messages. No words. Just gone. And as impossible as this may seem, I knew that there was only one way for me to bring her back.
I had to learn how to open a safe.
I worked on the lock most of the night. I kept turning the dials, trying to feel whatever the hell it was I was supposed to be feeling. Then I rummaged around for my old combination locks, found the old lock I had cut open and sat there studying the damned thing for the next hour.
It was really so simple. You line up all three notches, the shackle opens. There’s no way I shouldn’t be able to do this.
I went back to the lock the Ghost had given me. I was so tired now, after everything that had happened that day. I kept seeing that giant fish half out the window.
Just feel it. Turn the dial and feel it.
I fell asleep. I woke up, with no idea what time it was. The lock was still in my hand. I spun the dial again and this time I thought I was feeling what I was supposed to be feeling. I pulled the shackle and the lock opened.
I could barely see straight. Maybe that was the key. Maybe every other signal in my head had to be so weak and fuzzy before the “lock” signal could break through and be heard. Whatever it was, I kept working at it until I felt like I could zero in that signal. Until I finally had to close my eyes again.
So big freaking deal. That nagging voice in the back of my head, sounding exactly like the voice of the Ghost. You can open a cheap little combination lock now. That voice stayed in my head until the next morning, when I headed back down to Detroit. The air was heavy with the threat of rain. Finally, the clouds opened up and I was soaked through in a matter of seconds. I got to West Side Recovery and rolled my bike to the door. I knocked and waited another full minute in the rain before the Ghost appeared and let me in.
“How did you do with the lock?” he said. “Try not to drip on everything.”
I took the lock from my pocket and held it up for him.
“It doesn’t look open to me.”
He stood and watched me work on it while the rain pounded away outside. Right, left, right. Boom. I pulled the shackle open and handed the whole thing to him.
“Don’t start acting like a smart-ass,” he said, snapping the lock shut. “I’ll throw you back out in the rain.”
He turned toward the back office. I followed him. About halfway, he picked up another combination lock off an old table and threw it directly over his head. I wasn’t expecting it, and as usual the light level was about one-quarter what it should have been. I was lucky to snag the lock out of the air just before it hit me in the face.