“So then, I’ll ask you again, Deputy Johnson, why are you calling? Do you have the money?”
“No, I don’t have the money, but I have something better.”
“What?”
“Forty pounds of gold.”
Jonas didn’t say anything for a long moment. He was mad at the change of plan and was deciding if he would hang up, walk away from the whole deal, leave the children down in some hole to smother, alone and scared. My imagination ran full tilt. Sweat broke out on my brow.
“One million, one hundred and twenty thousand,” he said.
His words sent a chill down my back. How had he computed that figure so quickly? He not only knew the price of gold, but he’d computed all of the figures in his head. Jonas Mabry was far more intelligent than I had thought. With intelligence came a higher risk assessment and threat level.
My voice cracked, “That’s right.”
“Gold will work. I’ll call you back in an hour to tell you where to bring it.”
“No, wait, don’t hang up.”
“What?”
“I’m calling because we don’t have it. I know where to get it, but we need a little more time.”
“Deputy Johnson, you don’t know me, not at all. I don’t play games, never have. I lost my childhood. It was stolen from me by you. But you know all about that, don’t you, Deputy Bruno Johnson? I told you the time frame.”
“I’m going to get the gold, I promise you that, and if you wait you can have an additional one hundred and twenty thousand. Hello? Hello.”
Damn, he hung up.
I waited for him to call back. He’d only hung up to mess with my mind, and he was doing a great job.
“Yep, he’s a punk ass for sure,” Drago said. “I didn’t really believe your bullshit story about the kidnapped kids. Now I do.”
The phone rang, I answered.
“You can have twelve more hours,” Jonas said.
“I need until Saturday night, that’s forty-eight hours total. Twelve more hours in addition to what you just offered. That’s not a lot, not really, not when you consider what’s at stake.” I hated to beg a criminal, any criminal.
Silence on the phone. He was thinking about the new offer. I said, “Gold works better for you, anyway, think about it. You can take gold into any jewelry store, a little at a time, and trade it for folding money. If I gave you cash, there would always be the threat of marked bills or wafer-thin tracking devices.”
More silence.
I continued on, talking faster. “This is a good deal, much better than what you wanted.”
Silence. Then, “How do I know this isn’t some sort of game you’re running on me?”
“I can prove it.”
“How? What store or bank are you going to hit?”
I really didn’t want to tell him the where and the how. “I have with me a guy who just got out on parole after twenty-five years. He did an armored car job twenty-five years ago and hid the proceeds after converting it to gold.”
“Right. And he’s going to just hand over the money to you, just like that?”
“No, not just like that, I had to persuade him.”
“Like you persuaded me?”
“Yes, but I was more successful with this guy.”
“Is he dead?”
“No.”
“Bring him to me. I want to confirm it with him. I don’t want you running some kind of stupid little game on me, Deputy Johnson.”
“Fine-when and where?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Marie came across the parking lot pushing a shopping cart. Items in the cart came up to the top rim. What had she purchased? I got out and checked around to see if anyone took particular notice. The cell in my pocket buzzed. I answered.
“Bruno?” Mack sounded peeved, as though speaking through clenched teeth to suppress his anger.
“Yeah, Mack, how’s it going?” As I spoke, I opened the back of the van and helped Marie pile in her purchases, which, besides what she’d gone in for, included an empty five-gallon bucket, some tie-down straps, white grocery bags filled with different types of snacks, and other not readily identifiable items.
“You took Drago?” asked Mack. “Why’d you take Drago, Bruno?”
Mack wanted me on the phone to keep me talking, to ping the signal and home in on us. “I wanted to talk to Drago. When I saw him on the surveillance video, he seemed like a man in need of rehabilitation, and I thought that with my background I could-”
“Cut the bullshit. Why’d you take him?”
I closed up the back of the van with Marie inside, moved to the front driver’s door and got in, scanning for cops the entire time. “I think you know why.”
Mack lowered his voice. “He doesn’t have the money anymore, and if he tells you he does, he’s running a scam. He’s making a chump out of you. Bring him back. It’s more important than you know. There are other things in play here, Bruno, trust me on this. Think about it, even if you had the money, you can’t trade it for the kids. It won’t work. You know better. I know you know better. You don’t have the resources to back your play. Come on in, Bruno, please.”
I started up and drove slowly to the exit, pulled out onto the street, and headed east back to the desert. Drago might be one of the lowest forms of animal, but he didn’t deserve to be staked out as bait and killed for no other purpose than to bring down a criminal organization. “I can’t do that and you know why,” I said.
“This is going to put us on the opposite sides of the fence.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. I value you as a good friend.”
“As a friend, I’m telling you, you’re wrong going down this path. You’re putting too much at stake. Way too much.”
“What more can there be at stake than the lives of three children? I have to go, John, I know you’re trying to keep me on the phone.”
“No, not this time. This time was a free one.”
“Tell Barbara I’m sorry it has to be this way, that when all this goes down, I’ll try and call to give her a heads up. She’ll be my first call. Tell her that. Good-bye, John.” I handed the phone to Drago. He didn’t need instruction. He broke it in half, stuck his hand out the window, and let the pieces drop to the passing concrete, to be run over and over again by freeway cars and trucks.
From behind, Marie put her hand on my shoulder. I turned to look. She’d turned the white bucket upside down to sit on it. She’d taken a thick, nylon tie-down strap and hooked it from one side of the van wall across to the other, and held on to help stabilize her ride. Smart girl. I didn’t want her sitting in the back with all the garbage, but she’d said Drago couldn’t, not with his open wound, her medical background overpowering her disgust for him.
We rode in silence for another thirty minutes. Fatigue crept in-the thick, heavy kind-the kind with wispy apparitions that appeared and disappeared at random, my body telling me I needed to sleep or it would sleep without permission from control central. I took the Whitewater offramp, stopped at the bottom, made a right, and continued on into empty darkness. Out here, headlights could be seen for miles and miles. I watched the odometer. Asphalt turned to dirt. And still I continued on. I stopped at seven miles, exactly as directed, the terrain at the edge too rough to continue. This place looked a lot like the one I’d chosen in the foothills to speak first with Jonas, then with Drago. If something violent occurred, nobody would find our bodies for days, or maybe not at all with all the coyotes and other scavengers.
The desolation and darkness worked in our favor. We’d see Jonas coming a long way off.
Marie slid open the side door, got out with her Walmart bag, and opened the passenger door. “Swing around, let me fix that leg. Bruno, come around and hold this flashlight.” She’d also thought far enough ahead to purchase a flashlight. Drago and I both followed directions. For the last forty-five minutes of the drive, Drago had gone quiet. In the weak flashlight beam his skin reflected pale, pastier than before. His plain black tattoos were darker now in contrast, and more menacing. His eyelids drooped and his facial muscles didn’t have the strength to hold up any sort of expression.