"That’s all we’re doing," said Ron eagerly. "We’re not bothering anybody. It’s over. We’re just taking pictures."
"Tell me what you know about Martin."
"Nothing a lot of other people don’t know," snapped Sam. "When Mr. C. heard Martin was out, he called everybody in and told us to make sure he didn’t drop out of sight. So some guys watched him. That’s all."
"That isn’t all, is it?" She tried to make it sound ominous.
"It was the money," said Ron.
"Martin don’t need lessons from you," said Sam. He looked up at Jane again. "Obviously."
Jake suddenly appeared at Jane’s elbow. She was startled and shone the flashlight on him, then remembered and turned it back to the pit. Both men had moved fast, but they had only gotten to the piles of dirt at the edge of the pit. They slowly slid back, taking little showers of loose dirt with them, and assumed the position again.
"Don’t make me kill you," she said.
"No argument there," said Ron.
"Where was I?" said Sam, resigned. "Next thing we hear, he’s got a lot of money. This does not look good in a man like Martin after eight years."
Without knowing when it had happened, Jane realized who they were talking about. Eight years. Of course. An ex-policeman who suddenly had a lot of cash and was ready to run. They thought he knew where Harry was, and he was going to hide in the same place. But why did they call him Martin? Had he used a false name to get to Buffalo? She had to be sure. "Eight years? As a cop?"
"Cop? What cop? Martin did eight of a five-to-ten for a concealed weapon. Harry did, like, two of a three-to-five for fraud or something, years ago. Martin being what he was, which was what got him the hard time for a small bust, they—"
"What he was? What was he?" Her head was pounding now, building up a pressure behind her eyes.
"Jesus," said Ron. "She doesn’t know."
"Know what?" said Sam, annoyed.
"Anything. Anything about him."
Sam squinted up into the beam of the flashlight. "He’s right, isn’t he?"
She tried to think of an answer, but all she kept running into was the truth. "Yes," she said.
Sam rolled his eyes and shook his head in frustration. "Martin is a guy you hire when you want somebody to be dead. He was kind of on the edge of being famous at one time, which was probably why the cops felt it was worth searching him one night. They found a gun—"
"They probably planted it on him," said Ron.
Sam said icily, "You want to tell this?"
"No," said Ron. "I was just saying he wasn’t dumb enough to let them find a ..." He shrugged and let it trail off.
"Anyway," said Sam. "He got ten years, because they couldn’t prove he had done anybody with it, but they knew damned well that was what paid the rent. So he did eight of the ten, which is a world record for recent times unless you kill somebody while you’re in the joint—"
"Which he did," said Ron. "That’s what I heard. They just couldn’t prove it was him." He looked up at Jane. "So many suspects, you know? In a maximum security prison it seems like half the population is there for dusting somebody."
"Shut up, will you?" hissed Sam.
"Why, you in a hurry to finish the story so she can drop the hammer on you?"
"I’m trying to save your ass. I sense that there’s a misunderstanding here. If she didn’t know he was a killer, maybe we got something to talk about. Now I lost where I was."
"Jail," said Jane. Her voice was hollow.
"Jail. Right. Martin was Harry’s cellmate in Marion. A guy like Harry, he just can’t defend himself. His only hope is if there’s somebody around like Martin, who likes him but not too much, if you know what I mean. That’s the way it was. So Mr. C. figures it’s just possible that when Martin gets out, he’s going to look up his old cellmate, Harry. Who else has he got after eight years?"
"And then somebody found out he had money?" asked Jane.
"The money," said Ron eagerly. "He gets out after eight years of unemployment, and he’s got a lot of money. He is walking up to every bank in Chicago, and the tellers are coming up with, like, wads of it. Sometimes the manager has to come and match his signature and stuff."
Sam said, "So where’s this money coming from? Who is going to give this guy who has only one skill all this money? And who’s the mark that’s worth that much? The guy that nobody else has been able to find for five years."
"So you followed him from St. Louis?"
"Hell, no," said Sam. "We followed him all the way from Chicago. We were all set to hang around St. Louis. We figured if he was there, that was where Harry must be. We got a room, changed cars so Martin wouldn’t notice there’s this car with Illinois plates. With four guys to switch off, we figured we could probably keep going long enough to see where Harry was, and keep Martin from killing him."
"Then he gets on a bus," said Ron, outraged at the memory of it. "What the hell is a guy with a suitcase full of money doing getting on a bus? We didn’t have any choice but to drop everything, pile into one car, and follow the bus."
"All the way to Buffalo," said Sam. "We lost him after he hooked up with you." He gave a sour little nod. "As you know."
"And he got to Harry," said Ron.
For the first time Jake spoke. "Where is he now?"
"That is the question, isn’t it?" sneered Sam.
Jane said, "Did he kill Jerry Cappadocia?"
"No," said Ron. "I told you he was in jail. He just got out."
She stared at them for a moment. "What is his full name?"
"James Michael Martin."
Jake was touching Jane’s elbow. After a moment she glanced at him. He whispered, "What do you want to do with them?"
She could see that the two men in the pit knew exactly what she and Jake were whispering about. They exchanged anxious looks, as though each one was trying to get the other to agree on what desperate effort they should try. She said to them, "Before you leave, cover up poor Harry."
She turned and walked across the open lawn. Jake hurried after her. "Shouldn’t we call the police or something? They’ll come after us."
"No, they won’t," she said. "They know I don’t know anything. Never did." She walked on. Now and then her foot would light on a flat metal marker, but she paid no attention. If the dead could feel anything, it wouldn’t be anger at a foolish girl far from home, stumbling in the darkness.
22
Later that night, Jane didn’t agree to Jake’s proposal to move out of Harry’s apartment building. She just didn’t resist. She didn’t seem to care where her body was, just so there was no distraction while she stared at the opaque surfaces of walls and at the reflections in darkened windows. He picked out a small, cheap motel on Cabrillo Boulevard across the street from the ocean that he had discovered earlier that day. He parked the car and went inside while she sat motionless in the passenger seat. She walked into the room he rented, lay down on the bed, and closed her eyes. The next afternoon when Jake went out alone, she might have noticed that he had taken both of the shotguns with him, locked in the trunk of the car, but she didn’t show any interest in what he did or where he went.
When he came back and knocked on the door after the sun had set, she let him in. She didn’t ask where he had been. When she saw that he had brought dinner from a take-out fish restaurant, she sat down at the little table across from him and ate. When they were finished eating, as Jake stood up to take their two plates out to the trash bin in the parking lot, she looked up at him with a curious alertness.
"How good a friend is Dave Dormont?"
Jake was surprised to hear her voice after so many hours, and relieved to have a chance to talk to her, to be able to look at her and see her eyes. "A good friend," he said. "I’ve known him for close to sixty years."