“About what?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “Where do I start?” I looked over at the guy to my right and smiled. He smiled back before catching himself, frowning, and looking over at Broughton to make sure he hadn’t seen him smile. I looked at Broughton too. “Who do you have out there?”
“Out where? At the bar?”
I laughed. “No,” I said. I pointed my finger like I was pointing through the wall toward Wilkinson. “Out there-looking for Wade Chesterfield.”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” he said.
“Really?” I said. “Then you’re a better man than me. If somebody stole that kind of money from me I’d want to know where they were. But that’s just me.” I looked toward the guy on my right again. “That’s probably just me,” I said. I turned back to Broughton. “I think whoever you’ve got out there just murdered an old woman who had nothing to do with this.” I waited a second while I watched Broughton’s face turn whiter and whiter. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed the other guy fidget in his seat. “If you sent someone to do that, Tommy, that’s just like murdering that woman yourself. That’s how the police will see it anyway-once they catch you. You need to call him off before this thing gets worse.” Broughton snorted, leaned back in his seat, and interlocked his fingers over his bulging stomach.
“Don’t talk to me like a cop,” he said. “You aren’t a cop anymore, remember? And if anybody in this room is guilty of murder, it’s you.”
He rocked back in his chair and smiled, but his smile slowly widened and he actually started laughing. The guy sitting to my right laughed too. I looked down at my hands and waited for them to finish, but they just kept on. When I looked up I saw that Broughton was looking at the guy on my right, and before he could turn back to me I’d already left my chair, reached across his desk, and grabbed him by his hair. I slammed his face on the desktop. His buddy jumped up from his seat, his chair slamming against the wall, but I’d already pulled my.38 and had it pointed at his chest before he could stand up all the way.
Broughton couldn’t catch his breath, and he wheezed and coughed under my hand, leaving a trail of spittle on the desk. The room was quiet except for the music from the club vibrating through the walls. I kept my gun on the guy to my right. “Lift up your shirt,” I said. He lifted it, and I could see he didn’t have a piece tucked down in his front waistband. “Keep it up and turn around.” He did; there wasn’t a gun in the back either, but I saw something else: a thin black wire ran from his waist and disappeared up his back. Broughton’s head was facing away where I had him pinned to the desk, and he hadn’t seen what I’d seen. I looked down at him. “You are in over your head, aren’t you, Tommy?”
“You’re a dead man,” he said.
“Okay,” I said. I looked up at the guy on my right. He’d dropped his shirt and was staring at me with a look of pure fear on his face. “Let’s get some music going,” I said. “Let’s get some of the tension out of this room.” With the barrel of my gun, I pointed at a radio that sat on top of a file cabinet on the guy’s right. “Turn that on,” I said. He just stood there. “Turn it on,” I said again. He reached over and turned the radio on. The Eagles’ “Life in the Fast Lane” came out of the speakers. “Perfect choice,” I said. “Turn it up.” He reached over and slid the volume dial toward himself. “Louder,” I said. He turned it up as loud as it would go. I stared at him until he sat down, and then I looked at Broughton where I held him to the desk.
“I want to know who you sent after Chesterfield and those little girls,” I said, barely above the music.
“I’m going to kill you,” he said.
“You mentioned that already,” I said. “I got it. Let’s move on: who’d you send after Chesterfield and those little girls?”
“He’s dead,” Broughton said, his cheek flat against the desk. “His kids too.” When I lifted him by his hair, he made the mistake of looking down, and I felt his nose break when I slammed his face against his desk. Blood spread across either side of his desk like a Rorschach test.
“That wasn’t a nice thing to say,” I said. I took my gun off the guy sitting down and pressed the barrel firmly against the top of Broughton’s head. “Let’s try it again: who’s out there?”
“A guy named Pruitt,” Broughton said, his voice trembling under the nose of the gun.
“ ‘Pruitt’ who?”
“Bobby Pruitt,” Broughton said.
“He works here,” the guy in the chair said. “He bounces.”
“Is that true?” I asked Broughton.
“Yeah,” he said.
“Where’s he at now?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Broughton said. I raised him by his hair like I was going to slam his face on his desk again. “St. Louis,” he said, spitting blood onto the desk. “He said he’s going to St. Louis.” I lowered his head down and let him lay his cheek against the desk.
“Is he following Wade Chesterfield?”
“I don’t know,” he said. I took the butt of my gun and cracked Broughton on his spine; his feet splayed in opposite directions behind his desk, and I had to grab the collar of his jacket to keep him from falling. I kneeled down toward the desk and spoke right into Broughton’s ear so he could hear me clearly.
“Your boy’s carrying around a picture of one of Wade’s little girls. If something happens to her, or if he touches either one of those girls, so help me God, Tommy, I will come back here and butcher you.” I stood up and cracked him on the spine again. His body convulsed. “Is he following Wade?” He muttered something, but I couldn’t quite make it out, and I bent lower to hear him.
“Yes,” he said. He was breathing heavy and sweating through his clothes, and I was afraid he might pass out if I didn’t turn him loose. I let go of his neck, and he crumpled to the floor in front of his chair. I looked over the desk at him. Blood covered his face and ran over his forehead and into his hair. He lay there with his eyes closed, facing the ceiling. The guy in the chair just sat there, waiting for whatever happened next.
“Is there something you want to say?” I asked. He shook his head. I thought about punching him in the face just to do it, but I had no idea why he was wired or who he was working for, and I figured I was probably in enough trouble as it was. I reached back and stuffed my.38 down into my pants waist, and then I opened the door and stepped into the dark, loud hallway.
I pulled the door closed and walked back toward the front of the club. When I came out of the hallway I looked toward the bar to see if anyone had noticed me leaving the office, and that’s when I saw what was on the TVs hanging on the walclass="underline" Sosa was trotting slowly around the bases in Pittsburgh, which meant that he’d hit a home run for the second night in a row and that Roc now owed me $2,000. My luck had finally changed, but that’s not what made me stop dead in my tracks; it was an ESPN graphic that showed the remaining games Sosa and McGwire had left to break Maris’s record. Their paths would cross in St. Louis on Monday afternoon, and something told me that Wade and those two little girls might just be there to see it.
CHAPTER 25
A black Chevy Lumina started tailing me almost as soon as I turned out of the parking lot at Tomcat’s and made a left onto Wilkinson. It would hang back two or three cars and switch lanes when I did, trying to keep me in view. I tried not to pay attention to it and drive like it was any other Saturday night, but I knew it could be just about anybody in that car: Broughton and a couple of his thugs, the FBI, my own paranoia. My.38 was hidden beneath my seat, and I couldn’t decide whether to reach for it or use my heel to push it back even farther.
Wilkinson turned into Franklin Avenue when I got back into Gastonia proper, and by the time I’d turned onto New Hope Road the black Lumina was right behind me. When I pulled into my parking spot at Quail Woods the car pulled in parallel to my back bumper, making it impossible for me to leave. In my rearview mirror, I watched the driver open his door slowly like he had all the time in the world. He wore a dark suit and had a military haircut and was a little older and shorter than me. When the passenger climbed out I saw that he was tall and thin, and when he stepped into the light I realized it was Sandy. I watched him first in my rearview and then in my side mirror as he walked up to my window and knocked on the glass. The driver hung back like he was waiting to see how it went. I sighed and turned off the engine and rolled my window down.