The Killing Kind (15 page)

He caught a break when Purkhiser reached the mall’s main atrium and tried to head up the down escalator. As he struggled against the tide of people and stairs, Hendricks hopped on the up escalator and glided past. Then he planted a hand in between the escalators, and vaulted onto the down one, three steps ahead of Purkhiser. Purkhiser pirouetted, flashing Muppet eyes at Hendricks, and took off down the escalator—but not before Hendricks got a hold of a fistful of his hair—pomade greasy in his hand. Eric screamed as Hendricks yanked him backward.

“Calm down, Eric—I’m trying to
help
you!”

“My name’s not Eric!” Purkhiser replied. He threw a wild elbow that caught Hendricks in the eye, and wriggled free. Then he burst off the escalator and tore across the atrium—splashing straight into its massive, rust-stained central water fountain.

Hendricks gave chase for a moment, and then stopped.

Mall security ringed the atrium, their Tasers drawn.

Hendricks raised his hands above his head.

Purkhiser, dripping wet and panting at the center of the fountain, smiled.

“You boys want to tell me what the problem is?” The man speaking was in his late fifties. Decent shape. Bushy mustache. Brush cut beneath his uniform cap. No wannabe, this guy, Hendricks thought; he looked like a cop who went private once he put in his twenty.

“Yeah, asshole,” said Purkhiser. “How about you tell the nice man why you’re chasing me?”

“Sure,” Hendricks said. His expression was neutral, his voice calm. “Officer, this no-good greaser stole my wallet.”

Purkhiser laughed. “I
what?
”

“Eddie,” the mall cop said, “is this true?”

“True? It’s goddamn ridiculous, is what it is. Why would I take some random dude’s wallet?”

“I don’t know
why
he took it, but he took it,” Hendricks said. “Search his pockets if you don’t believe me.”

“C’mon out of there,” the mall cop said. Purkhiser sloshed to the edge of the fountain and stepped out. “Now empty your pockets.”

“Gladly,” Purkhiser replied. But when he reached into his right front pocket, his face dropped—and his hand came out with an unfamiliar wallet.

“You son of a bitch,” Purkhiser said.

Hendricks didn’t react—but inside, he was all smiles. He’d seen the guards approaching during his ride on the escalator and planted the wallet when he and Purkhiser tussled seconds later, as insurance against this very eventuality.

“Let me see the wallet, son.”

Purkhiser reluctantly handed it to the mall cop. The mall cop glanced inside, and then gave it to Hendricks. “Well, Mr. Allard, it seems you’re telling the truth. Although I wish you’d simply notified security instead of chasing this idiot around my mall.”

“Please, Officer, call me Kent,” Hendricks replied. “And you’re right—I wasn’t thinking.”

“Would you like to press charges?”

“No,” Hendricks said, fixing Purkhiser with his gaze. “I think he’s learned his lesson.”

“I suppose he has, at that. C’mon, Eddie—you and me are going to go fill out an incident report. And when we’re done, you won’t be welcome back here anymore. I hope you got that high score of yours this morning.”

Purkhiser’s expression curdled. Hendricks blinked flatly back at him.

“So I’m free to go?” Hendricks asked.

“Yes, Mr. Allard, you’re free to go.”

15

Purkhiser spent an hour trying to convince security he was innocent, shivering in his wet clothes all the while. He explained that he’d been set up. That this Allard dude was after him. He’d even gone so far as to ask them to review the security footage—he was sure it would exonerate him. But apparently, there was some kind of mall-wide security camera outage, so he had no choice but to back away from his claims. Without evidence—or disclosing the fact that he was in hiding from the Mob—even Purkhiser was forced to admit he sounded like a loon.

Eventually, they released him—two guards escorting Purkhiser from the building and into the falling dusk. The mall parking lot was nearly empty. Most of its lights had yet to turn on, although a couple early risers flickered to life as night descended. Only three cars were in sight. Purkhiser’s rusted-out Buick Skylark sat a ways out from the other two, its windows reflecting the sky’s fading orange.

Purkhiser stood there for a moment—watching, waiting, looking for any sign of Allard. He was sure the name was an alias, but he had nothing else to call the guy. He told himself the parking lot was too big for one man to keep track of. That loads of cars had come and gone since he’d been detained. That there was no reason to think Allard knew which one was his. But he still sprinted to the car like a runner stealing home and unlocked it with jittering hands— peering wildly around the lot the whole time.

He ducked inside, slammed the door, and jammed the key into the ignition. As he turned the key, he closed his eyes, half-expecting the car to explode.

It didn’t.

It didn’t turn over, though, either.

“Yeah, sorry about that,” came a voice from the backseat, “but after your freak-out in the mall, I didn’t want you gunning the engine and crashing us both into a light pole before we had a chance to talk.”

Purkhiser went for the door handle. Didn’t realize he’d put his seat belt on. Hendricks reached forward with his left hand and locked the door—and with his right, he grabbed the shoulder strap of Purkhiser’s seat belt and yanked. The lap belt tightened, pinning Purkhiser to his seat.

“Relax, Eric,” Hendricks said. “I’m not here to kill you.”

“I
told
you,” he said, thrashing against the seat belt like a trapped animal, “my name’s not Eric—it’s
Eddie.
Eddie Palomera. You’ve got the wrong guy.”

“No, I don’t—and the sooner you stop trying to bullshit me, the better this will go for the both of us. See, while I’
m
not here to kill you, there are others close behind who mean to—and they’re doubtless good at what they do. If you want me to, I’ll let you go right now and disappear from your life forever—just say the word. But understand that if you do, you’re on your own. I won’t be able to protect you.”

Purkhiser stopped struggling while he digested what Hendricks had said. His eyes met Hendricks’s through the Buick’s rearview. “You’re here to
protect
me?”

“That’s right.”

“Are you with WITSEC?”

“No,” Hendricks replied. “I’m not with WITSEC.”

Purkhiser laughed then, black and bitter as old coffee. “ ’Course not. I figured maybe they saw my picture in the paper and sent you to keep an eye on me, but I shoulda known those ass weasels don’t give a damn about me anymore.”

“You’re no longer in the program?”

“Nope. I told those fuckers to take a hike about a year back. Always keeping tabs. Checking up on me. Poking ’round my business. I couldn’t get at a dime of the dough I socked away—”

“Stole, you mean.”

“—with them looking over my shoulder all the time. So I dropped out. Told ’em I was fine. And I woulda been, too, if it wasn’t for that fucking picture. That
is
what brought you here, ain’t it?”

“Yeah,” Hendricks said. “That’s what brought me here. Honestly, Eric, what the fuck were you thinking letting them print it?”

Purkhiser shrugged. “I didn’t have a choice. The casino made me sign a bunch of shit that said I’d do whatever publicity they wanted or I wouldn’t get my goddamn winnings. So I figured what the hell—it’s just some tiny local rag. Probably nobody’d even see it.”

“
I
saw it. And I’m not the only one.”

“So if you ain’t with WITSEC, who the hell
are
you? All I know for sure’s your name ain’t Allard.”

“You don’t need to know who I am. All you need to know is who I work for.”

“Okay, then—who do you work for?”

“You, actually. Or, rather, I
will,
for the bargain-basement rate of a quarter million dollars.”

“A quarter million dollars.”

“That’s right.”

“Which gets me what, exactly?”

“You know those guys coming to kill you?”

“Yeah?”

“I kill them first.”

“Shit—you’re like some kind of hitman entrepreneur? Now I’ve fucking heard
everything.
But seriously, dude, don’t you think a quarter mil’s a little steep?”

“Hey, that’s your call to make. But I would’ve thought a guy with damn near thirty million of the Atlanta Outfit’s dollars in the bank would have no trouble forking over a paltry quarter mil to avoid his own grisly murder.”

“You’ve seen my car, dude, and the shithole I’ve been working in these past two years. Do I look like I got thirty mil to you?”

Purkhiser had a point. Hendricks told him so.

“Damn right. See, the Marshals Service took it personal when I kicked ’em to the curb. Guess once I did they figured out I wasn’t square with them when I told ’em I didn’t know shit ’bout all the money that went missing. Next thing I know, I got a federal prosecutor sniffing around, asking all kinds of questions about unreported income and wondering if maybe I had any back taxes needed filing.”

“Wow. Bad break.”

“You’re fucking telling me. I ain’t been near my stash since, for fear they’d bust my ass. I don’t have to tell you that if they locked me up, I’d be shanked within the week—and no pile of money’s worth that. I was gonna skip the country and wire my money to a new account once I was clear, but those assholes revoked my passport. So instead, I decided it was time to get some dough that I could actually use. Hence my trip to the casino.”

“A six mil payout goes a long way toward putting you back in the upper class,” Hendricks said. “Picture in the paper aside, that was quite a stroke of luck.”

“Luck? You think that shit was
luck?
Took me eight months to write a program that could get through the casino’s firewall and hack those slots. I earned every fucking
dime
of that money.”

“And now that you have it, you’ll have no trouble paying me.”

“Yeah, only that’s just it—I don’t
have
it yet. Maybe Vegas does it different, but a two-bit slot joint in KC don’t exactly hand over that kind of coin right on the spot. I gotta go back Thursday to pick it up.”

A puzzle-piece clicked into place, and suddenly, Hendricks saw the whole picture. The instructions in Lester’s decoded communiqué said to make the hit as public and messy as possible. “Let me guess,” he said, “big crowd, oversized novelty check—that sort of deal?”

“That’s right,” he said. “Not ideal for a guy on the lam, I know—but I figure nobody’s got better security than a casino, and once I get my money I can disappear for good.”

“Be careful what you wish for. I’m pretty sure that’s where they’re going to hit you.”

Purkhiser made a little whining noise in the back of his throat. “Why? What makes you so sure?”

“Their instructions were to make a show of it. Their goal is to make sure no one ever tries to burn them like you did again. What better way to make their point than to take you down in front of God and everyone during your supposed moment of triumph?”

Even in the dim light of the Skylark, Hendricks saw Purkhiser go pale. “Fuck,” he muttered. “Fuckity fuck fuck fuck.” Then he brightened. “But you said that you could stop ’em, right?”