Magic Line (21 page)

The sports bar called Ricky's was one of his favorite spots. Designed for noise addicts who liked their decibel levels just below nosebleed, it was dark and featured six big television screens showing professional sports. The babble from all those games was so noisy that no conversation was audible for more than two feet. In case it ever was, the place had small round tables and wooden chairs with metal glides that screeched when they were dragged across the bare tile floor, which they frequently were by groups of happy men who clustered in front of the screens and screamed orders for more beer. At Ricky's you could sell crack, fence a firearm, or agree to an assault, make the deal and collect the cash in peace and safety because the people at the next table would not have heard a word you said.

After he backed out of the carport off Valencia Road, he drove to his neighborhood where he circled the block around his building twice, looking for trouble. The two cars in the lot in front of his building belonged to tenants. There were no black-and-whites circling, or unmarked Crown Vics with plainclothes detectives sitting in them, pretending to read newspapers. It looked OK to go in. He decided to drive on to Ricky's, park this Taurus in Ricky's lot and walk back cautiously, looking all around. If all went well he would retrieve his bag from his flat, come back to the Taurus and drive out of town, fast.

It was just past noon, so Ricky's lot was about half full. The place served burgers and a few other sandwiches to attract people who liked to booze at lunchtime. A couple of cars he recognized – the liquor salesman's Nissan, the roofing guys' pickup – they were here almost every day. And there was the beat-up blue Saturn full of books and trash, belonging to that ditsy college girl he called, in his mind, the Snotty Student. Came down from the campus with her boyfriends, swinging that long hair around, looking to score some crack. Robin had never sold to her and didn't intend to, didn't need her kind of trouble.

He parked as far away from the street as he could, around the corner in one of the three overflow spots on the side of the building. Quick, while there was nobody around to see, he unzipped his pants, slid the Derringer out of the little holster he had sewn in his crotch and buttoned it into his right-hand cargo pocket. Since he had spun the ignition on this car and had no key, he couldn't lock the steering gear or the doors. He turned the motor off with his short-handled screwdriver, put the tool in his left-hand pocket and walked back to his place.

He walked straight to his door, not letting himself look around. He put the key in the lock and slipped inside without looking back. Leaned against the door with his heart beating fast, ka-bam, ka-bam.
So far so good. Hey, I can change into a shirt that fits.

He opened his bag, found a plain white T-shirt and changed into it. The stolen shirt from the hospital, what shall I . . . Thinking it might furnish some kind of a trail, he rolled it up tight, put the roll by the door so he wouldn't forget it. His money was where he'd left it, in the zippered inside pocket of the bag, alongside two joints and a dime bag of crack. He took two twenties from the money clip and put the rest back, used the toilet, washed his hands and face.
OK, no more stalling, here we go.

Still no extra cars in the lot. He passed a Dumpster and dropped the shirt inside.

Two blocks to Ricky's.
That little doctor won't be getting off shift for hours yet. This is going to be just fine. One block more – God, it's hot.

The parking lot looked the same as before. The front door of Ricky's opened as he walked past, letting out an inviting blast of cold air.
Maybe I should get some water . . . no, forget it. Keep going.
He walked straight and firm past the door of Ricky's Sports Bar and around the corner to where his car . . .
Oh, shit
.

A black-and-white patrol car was drawn up behind the Taurus, which abruptly was not his car any more. Now it belonged once again to the female physician with a cute butt who worked at Children's Hospital and must have come out mid-shift and found it gone. The driver's-side door was open now, the cap was off the ignition, and the patrol officer who had inspected its butchered disks was on his radio, calling in the license number.

Robin turned smoothly and headed back to Ricky's door. Another patrol car was just pulling into the lot, parking alongside the first. Robin walked into the dark, cool bar, where the insane noise level hit him like a fist. Hoping his bag was not too conspicuous, he walked toward the men's room. Halfway across the room, he saw the long-haired girl, the Snotty Student. She was sitting alone in a booth, nursing the last inch of a beer and scanning the room with her do-me eyes. She even had a couple of textbooks on the table, like she might be going to study any minute. What a laugh.

His stomach turned acid at the thought of dealing with her anxiety and her lacerating tongue. But he told himself,
She's got a car and she's here for the old wants and needs. My kind of a girl.

To get his mojo working, he took a deep renewing breath and held it, the way Owen Chu had taught him. As he let it out he said fiercely in the deepest part of his brain,
Fair game, fair
game
. He walked quietly to where she sat facing away from him and bent till his lips were next to her ear. That way he didn't have to shout when he said, ‘Every time I see you in here I want to tell you how beautiful your hair is.'

She turned the full force of her bright eyes on him and said, without smiling, ‘That's pretty lame but it'll work if you buy me a beer.' Robin slid his bag into the seat across from her and waved to the waitress, who was already watching them. In two minutes they each had a beer and he was learning that her name was Valerie.

‘Mine's Richard,' he said, and then, watching her eyes, ‘but you can call me Dick if you feel like it.'

‘We'll see,' she said. ‘What about the nuts?' He blinked and she laughed, pointing to the sacks of mixed nuts that hung on a rack behind the bar. He got the waitress back and ordered a sack for each of them.

‘Bring some of those eggs, too,' she said, pointing to the jar of hard-boiled eggs, disgusting, he thought, on the end of the bar. ‘And a bowl of popcorn, will you?' She nodded at him as if confirming something he'd said, though he hadn't said anything. It was kind of fascinating, watching her wants and needs keep bubbling up. ‘Salty stuff goes good with the beer, hmmm?'

‘I like more salt with my salty stuff,' Robin said, and shook some over the eggs from the shaker on the table. He shook some over his hand too, and then over hers, and they both licked their hands, watching each other do it. Her laugh was like worn gears shifting, metal on metal.

The two patrolmen walked in and stood by the bar, chatting with the bartender. Robin dredged up some more jokes, making sure Tucson's finest would see two young students, laughing and flirting in a booth. Valerie was helping him, pretending she found everything he said very funny. Her eyes were a raptor's eyes now; she was on the hunt. Robin pushed his bag aside and slid around the booth to sit beside her.

‘This way I don't have to yell,' he said.

‘And if things get slow we can lick each other's hands,' she said, and they laughed together.

When their beer was a little over half gone, he stretched lazily, sighed, and said drinking beer always made him want to smoke a joint.

She stretched in imitation of him and said, a little too loud, ‘Oh, Lordy, that sounds like a grand plan!'

‘OK,' Robin said, as softly as possible, into her ear. ‘But let's not share that idea with our friends who are just leaving,' nodding at the two officers who had handed their cards to the bartender and were going back out to their cars, ‘because all those legal marijuana plans don't seem to have quite gelled yet.'

‘Oh, right,' she said, quiet at once, desperate to keep him thinking about the plan, ‘souls of discretion here.'

‘Absolutely. So here's how I think we ought to do this,' he said. Conspiratorial, enlisting her help. She was giddy with anticipation so she never questioned his statement that he didn't have the weed on him and had to go get it. ‘But I don't want to get you involved in that part, so after we finish this beer and I go to the men's room,' he was making it up as he went along, ‘give me a couple of minutes,' pulling ideas out of the air, ‘and then take your books on out to your car . . .'

She was nodding, nodding. Anything, her face said, just bring me the dope.

She agreed to meet him on a corner a couple of blocks north. Robin used the men's room, came out and turned right instead of left – the back door was just a step away.

EIGHTEEN

D
oris' neighbor was named Betty Lou, ‘Like half the other girls in my high school class,' she said. ‘For a while there after I got married I thought about changing it to something exotic like Hedy or Rosalind, but my husband said, “Oh, honey, can't you let it be?”' She sighed. ‘I was kind of an adventurer at heart but Clem was never much for trying new things.'

Before he'd finished fixing the venetian blind over her sink, Zeb knew a lot more than that about Clem – his widow had shared details of his digestion, TV viewing habits and problems with footwear. Zeb got the new cord threaded through the holes in the blind all right but he was desperately afraid that before he got the spider gear to work she would have progressed to Clem's sexual proclivities, and he would have to plead a sick headache and leave without his haircut.

But he got the stupid thing turning just in time, and they had so much fun crowing about his success that she forgot about Clem and got absorbed in details of Zeb's haircut. He had come over to her house determined to get a super-short one, high and tight like a marine so it would last. But Betty Lou talked him out of it.

‘Honey,' she said, turning him in the rotating chair she kept in her front bay window, ‘you've got just the right head and that nice thick hair for the Justin Bieber 'do, why in the world would you want to change it?'

‘Well, it grows out so fast—'

‘So what? I'm right here, and I've got so many repair jobs— Shucks, Zeb, you could get free haircuts for months just fixing the doorknobs and dresser drawers in this place.' Those all sounded like jobs he could do, but how much more would he have to know about Clem before they were done?

When she got out her beautician's tools, though, the change was amazing, she became Betty Lou the proud artiste. No more stories while
she
was working. She snipped away at him for half an hour and followed the cut with a blow-dry and brush-out, humming to herself. Finally she handed him the mirror, twirled him around so he could see the back in the panel mirror by the window and said, ‘How about
that
?' making it clear she expected praise.

And he had to admit, it looked just as good as the first time in the Unisex shop, maybe a tad better. So he said it was fine, thanks.

‘No need to thank me, this is strictly business,' she said. ‘Why don't you come back next week and oil my hinges? I'll give you a manicure and pedicure that'll make you feel like King Hussein of Jordan. Clem used to say that when I fixed his feet he felt like it would be just a shame to walk on them ever again.' She laughed heartily at that old chestnut and Zeb did his best to join in.

By then he was beginning to think of his haircut as well earned, so he said he'd let her know after he found out how much work Doris had lined up for him. Walking home he decided that if he had to adopt somebody to survive, it was a lucky chance he'd found Doris at that bus stop. She might be a tough old bird and critical about a lot of things but at least she didn't have a jolly little story about every item in her damn life.

‘Looks like that deal worked out OK,' Doris said when he got home. ‘You and Betty Lou get along all right?'

‘Fine,' he said. ‘She's quite a talker, though, isn't she?'

Looking oddly pleased, Doris said, ‘How about a quick run to Walmart before lunch? Then we need to move some boxes into the shed this afternoon and get groceries, but maybe if we do all that fast we could read another couple of chapters before dinner, what do you think?'

NINETEEN

‘
T
urns out buried treasure's no fun even after you get it back to the station,' Sarah said. ‘Did you ever think you could get so sick of counting money?'

‘And signing my name,' Ray said. ‘A few days ago I couldn't even spell affidavit; this week I've signed so many my hand hurts.'

‘Too bad we didn't have the cut-out money yesterday when we did that dog-and-pony for the media. You think the chief will make us do another one?'

Ray's grin was a dazzling flash of white teeth in his brown face. ‘Might be worth it to see Delaney making cute again with the TV reporters.'

‘You ever see him smile like that before?'

‘Never. I have to say, Sarah, I think you furnished a little too much contrast. Standing there with your “let's wait till we catch the ex-dead-guy” face on, really . . .'

‘Bite your tongue. That was my “I just came back from three autopsies” face.'

‘Oh, that's right, your feet hurt. Anyway, now we got all this money, this is the time when all the agencies work together and we tighten the net – isn't that the plan?'

‘You sound dubious.'

‘Dubious doesn't begin to cover it,' Ray said. ‘Any plan that includes catching Robin the ex-dead-guy gets a big laugh from me.'

‘Why can't we catch that little sneak? Are you going to nose around for his address by the rodeo grounds some more? Check your snitches, ask if anybody's seen him?'

‘You bet. Right now. You?'

‘Delaney says ballistics found something – says come to his office in ten.'

‘Say you couldn't find me, OK? I've got a . . .' he made a mock-swaggering move with his shoulders, ‘a
hunch
.'