Man had a point. Gibson threw an extra five on top of his bill, and they headed for the door.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Jerome Parker’s place did indeed belong to a shitty little development. An aspiring real-estate tycoon had cleared a few acres of land and thrown up rows of narrow vertical town houses that alternated in color starkly between a neon custard and mud. It was a new enough development that the trees along Parker’s street were only saplings, half of them brown and dying. Roughly one-third of the properties were unoccupied, and the wild, tangled lawns gave the neighborhood a desolate, uninhabited feel. Swonger pointed out a custard-colored townhome at the end of the block.
“Coupla vacant units back that way,” Swonger said. “If you maybe looking to upgrade.”
Gibson acknowledged the insult with his eyes and checked his phone. One bar. He tried making an outgoing call, but it wouldn’t go through. Satisfied, he created a new contact on his phone, leaving it blank.
“Is there an outgoing message on your voice mail?” he asked.
“Just the phone-company one.”
“Good. Put it on silent.” He added Swonger’s number to the new contact and saved it as “Lea Regan.”
Gibson wondered how Swonger would react if he knew Merrick’s daughter was tending bar in town. Could he be counted on to play things cool? Gibson didn’t think he would take that bet, but beneath all the flagrant stupidity, Swonger was plenty smart. Gibson would be able to keep the truth from Swonger for only so long. Once Swonger figured things out for himself, their fragile truce would be shot.
“Let’s go have a chat with our friend.”
“Cool. What you want me to do?”
“Follow my lead. Back me up. Don’t talk.”
“Why you gotta be such an asshole?”
The gray-blue flicker of a television seeped out under the blinds of Jerome Parker’s downstairs windows. Gibson rapped on the door hard, waited, knocked again, and when he heard the television go silent, took a step back. The door opened on a chain, and Jerome Parker regarded them through the crack.
“The hell you doing banging on my door?”
“Lea sent us.”
“I don’t know you.”
“No reason you would. I’m Quine. That’s Swonger.”
“And I’m Danny Glover. How come I never heard of you?”
“What makes you think she tells you more than you need to know?”
That slowed Parker down. “So what’s she want?”
“She said you came in tonight, yeah? Had a chat? Well, she got to chewing it over. Wanted us to follow up.” Gibson decided to take a chance. A lot of men didn’t like working for women, and misogynists always loved company. “You know how she gets. Pain in the ass.”
Parker chuckled but didn’t unchain the door.
Gibson pushed it a little further. “My opinion? She’s only going to get worse, closer he gets to getting out. Know what I mean?”
Parker didn’t confirm or deny but continued studying him through the crack in the door.
“Fine. Ask her yourself,” Gibson said, reaching for his back pocket. The unmistakable sound of a hammer drawing back on a gun slowed him to a pantomime pace.
“Hey, now,” Parker said. “Slow.”
Gibson held up one hand and carefully withdrew his phone with the other. When Parker didn’t shoot him, he dialed the fake entry he’d made for Lea’s number and held it out so Parker could see the name. The guard made no move to take it, and in the West Virginia night both men listened to it ring. It rang three times before the signal cut out. Gibson cursed and redialed the number.
“You aren’t going to get her out here,” Parker said.
Gibson made a show of letting it ring until it died again. “Can you try her?”
Parker shook his head. “Won’t make any difference. There’s no service out here. That’s why she sent you instead of calling.” Parker was filling in gaps in the narrative on his own. A good sign that a lie was gaining traction. “I don’t know what else I can tell you that I didn’t tell her.”
Gibson nodded in agreement but didn’t reply. Parker grunted and slid the chain off the door. He led them into a den, offered Gibson a seat, and settled into a red leather lounger. Swonger stood away by the door. The room was lit only by a massive Sony flat-screen television, but Parker didn’t move to turn on a light. On screen, a disdainful Humphrey Bogart cradled a black statue. An expansive DVD and Blu-ray collection spanned multiple bookcases.
“So what does she want now?”
Gibson shrugged. “Just felt like there was something she was missing. Wanted me to ask if maybe there was something you’d forgotten.”
“Didn’t forget nothing.”
“Did he say anything else?”
“Who?”
“Merrick.”
“He didn’t say anything at all. He was just acting odd after he met with that lawyer. If he was a lawyer. Then when that other visitor showed up yesterday, he got plain spooked.”
That was interesting, but Gibson nodded as if he already knew this part of the story. He wanted to know more about the lawyer who wasn’t a lawyer, but the trick here was not to ask questions that he should already have answers to.
“Spooked how, exactly?”
“You mean besides making that damn phone call?”
“Who’d he call?”
“How should I know? Look, goddamn it, I gave her Slaski. I did my part.”
Gave her Slaski? Gibson paused. Something was off here. Had he misread the situation and nearly blown it?
“I know. That’s good. Just tell me everything you know about Slaski.”
The disgruntled Parker didn’t know much about his fellow guard, only that Slaski had cleared the prison library so Merrick could make a call using Slaski’s phone.
Gibson realized he’d made a major miscalculation. Chelsea Merrick, or Lea Regan, wasn’t her father’s partner on the outside. It was whomever was at the other end of Merrick’s phone call, and Chelsea Merrick wanted to know who that person was, the same as Gibson did. That spun the ball in a different direction. If she wasn’t working for her father, then what was her angle? Was she going after the money herself? If she got to Slaski’s phone first, then there was no chance he’d find Merrick’s contact. Chelsea Merrick would control the board.
“She’s going after Slaski?” asked Gibson.
Parker nodded.
“When?”
“Tonight, man.” Parker checked his watch. “Right now. Guess I’m not the only one she doesn’t tell everything. She’s going after the phone.”
“That won’t work,” Swonger spoke up.
“Why not?”
“’Cause there won’t be no SIM card in it.”
“What the hell’s a SIM card?” Parker asked.
Gibson turned to Swonger. “How do you know it won’t have one?”
“It’ll have one. Just not the right one. That’s how it worked at Buckingham anyway. The guards playin’ Ma Bell had one phone for all their customers. They give you their empty phone for a price; inmates hold on to their own SIM card. Real tight. On their person, twenty-four-seven, so when there’s a search, they can break it and flush it real quick. Guards can’t give ’em up that way either. They didn’t know nothing about no phone numbers.”
“What’s a SIM card?” Parker asked again.
“Subscriber identification module,” Gibson said to shut him up. “A cell phone doesn’t have a phone number without one. SIMs hold users’ personal information.”
If what Swonger said was true, and Gibson believed him, then Slaski’s phone was worthless. The guard was just a mule and wouldn’t know anything. Confronting him would only tip off Merrick, who would shut down entirely or else switch to a different system of communicating for his last few weeks in prison. Either way, unless he stopped Lea, Gibson would lose his only shot at finding Merrick’s contact on the outside.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
They drove like hell to Slaski’s house, the Scion caroming across lanes on unlit back roads, headlights throwing meandering shadows that lit the way they’d already been. Swonger took the wheel while Gibson navigated from the crude map Parker had drawn them. It had been a long time since Gibson had been anywhere without GPS, and it cost them three wrong turns. He needed a damned sextant to make sense of this place, and Swonger’s driving didn’t help. The tension mounted each time they were forced to double back, losing still more time. Somewhere Dan Hendricks was laughing at him for his overdependency on technology. Hendricks’s road-map brain would be damned useful right about now.
“Turn when I tell you to turn.”
“Give me a little warning, then.”
“Stop. Stop. What did that sign just say?”
Gibson craned his head back as Swonger slammed on the brakes, threw the car into reverse, and backed up the hundred yards to the sign. What the actual . . . , Gibson thought. How are we back here?
“Turn around. We went too far.”
Swonger pulled a U-ey, accelerated to eighty, then slammed on the brakes to make the turn that they should have originally taken. Gibson gripped the hand strap to keep from clattering into Swonger. Last call at the Toproll was three a.m. What time would that put Lea at Slaski’s place? He checked the clock. Anytime now, really. If they were too late, then they might as well go home.
Swonger pulled up at Slaski’s like the Road Runner stopping at the edge of a cliff, throwing Gibson forward into his seat belt. Slaski lived in a small white Cape Cod on a bare plot of land that had been mowed to within an inch of its life. On the side of the house, a vegetable garden, protected by more chain link than Niobe Prison, grew wild inside its enclosure. A solitary deer, gorging itself through a gap in the fencing, watched them while it chewed. Dinner and a show.
Across the street, Lea and Margo sat in a red pickup truck. Swonger had stopped directly between the pickup and Slaski’s house—a move loaded with unfriendly symbolism. The two sets of passengers stared each other down. No one moved. Gibson hadn’t really had time to formulate a strategy that didn’t lead to bloodshed. The standoff stretched for more than a minute. Margo, in the driver’s seat, turned and asked a question, but Lea didn’t reply.
“Stay here,” Gibson said, opening the passenger door.
“Oh, hell no.” Swonger graced him with an adrenaline grin. “I got your back.”
Swonger popped the mag on his gun, checked it, and slapped it back into place. For all the good it would do, since the firing pin was in Gibson’s back pocket.
“Don’t wave that around,” Gibson said.
“Guns don’t wave—people do.”
Gibson had been impressed with how Swonger had handled himself at Parker’s, but the drive had cranked him up and now he was writing his own little action movie.
“Just be cool.”
He was halfway across the street when Margo stepped out of the pickup, baseball bat resting on her shoulder, an unseasonal ski mask pushed back on her head. Swonger hung back, keeping his distance.
“Little late for baseball, ladies,” Gibson said.
“Hospital’s open all night,” Margo countered.
“Just want a word.”
“Which one?”
Lea didn’t look happy, and Gibson couldn’t blame her. Strangers crashing your home invasion had to be disconcerting. But she wasn’t panicked; she was calm and managing to seem unsurprised that they were there. A neat trick, given that Gibson was still a little surprised himself.
“Hello, again,” he said.
“Something I can do for you?”
“I talked to Parker.”
“Who?”
“The guy who drew me the map of where you were.” He held up Parker’s map and watched a lightning storm pass across her eyes.
“Did you hurt him?”
Gibson was encouraged that her first question was about the well-being of her man. It said good things about her. A soul was alive and well under her hard-ass exterior.
“He’s fine. All we did was interrupt his movie.”
“So he just told you where I was—”
“And why.”
“—out of the goodness of his heart?”
“Well, I may have given him the impression that we work for you.” He shrugged. “You didn’t pick him for his independent thinking. Look, can we cut the crap? You’re here for the phone Merrick used.”
“And what? You and bunny rabbit there are going to take it from us?” Margo demanded.
Behind him, he felt Swonger take several angry steps forward. Gibson held up a hand. The footsteps stopped, but Swonger’s shadow loomed on the asphalt.
“No,” Gibson said. “We’re not taking it.”
“Damn right,” Margo said.
“But neither can you.”
“I knew you were an asshole at the hotel,” Lea said.
“That might be, but you still can’t take it.”
“And why’s that?”
He explained SIM cards and how Merrick would keep his own card on him, per Swonger’s prison experience. Lea listened, working the corner of her lip between her teeth. She was taking him seriously, at least.
“The phone’s worthless,” he finished. “It’s just a shell.”
“You don’t know that.”
“If you go in there now, all you’re doing is tipping Merrick off. He’ll shut everything down, wait out his sentence, and disappear. You’ll kill our only shot at breaking into his communications.”
“Why? Because some white-trash ex-con says so?”
“Hey,” Swonger said, stepping forward again. “I ain’t afraid to hit a girl.”
“You ought to be.” Margo tightened her grip on the bat.
Gibson could feel the situation spinning away. If it were Lea and him, there was a chance of talking her into it. But Margo and Swonger knew only escalation, and they were headed to blows.
“I’m trying to help,” he said.
“I don’t need your help.”
“Don’t be this stubborn. You can’t afford it.”
Margo poked Gibson in the chest with the baseball bat. “You two need to get up out of here.”
Gibson shoved the bat aside. There was a moment of silence, before the four of them set to cursing each other in the street. In the heat of the moment, they all forgot where they were, and as their tempers rose so did their voices. They were all exhausted. Maybe that explained their collective stupidity.
“Would you all shut the hell up!”
They all froze and then turned slowly toward the voice. Tim Slaski was standing on his front porch in a threadbare bathrobe, squinting in their general direction.
They fell silent and stared at him, openmouthed.
“I mean, it’s four in the goddamn morning. What the hell is the matter with you?”
Gibson and Lea looked at each other. He shrugged as if to ask, What’s it gonna be? She wouldn’t even need to break in now—the lamb had come to the lion. He watched her calculate her options.
“Sorry,” she called to Slaski. “Thought there was a party out this way.”
“Ain’t no damn party. It’s four in the morning. Go on and get before I call the police.”
“Say you’re sorry,” Lea hissed at all of them.
Sheepishly, they all raised a hand and called out an apology like a group of rowdy teens.
“Never mind that, just get,” Slaski said.
“We need to talk,” Lea said to Gibson. “Now.”
“We’ll follow you,” Gibson said.
It was a relief when she agreed. He didn’t like their chances of finding their own way back to Niobe at night.
It was a tense scene back at the Toproll. The darkest part of the night was over, and Lea could see the Wolstenholme Hotel coming into focus against the sky. She waited on the street for the two men while Margo opened up the bar. It had been a long night, and they’d all think more clearly in the morning. That would b
e the smart move, but smart moves seemed to be in short supply tonight. She shook her head at the yelling match outside Slaski’s house. They’d all acted like clowns. She’d need to be smarter if she hoped to see this thing through. The best place to start was to learn these men’s intentions before she let them out of her sight. They were still sitting in their car, staring at her, talking. Conspiring. Get a good look, boys.
“Are you coming?”
Inside the Toproll, Margo slipped into bartender mode and put on a pot of coffee. The bar wouldn’t get mopped down until morning, and the stink of stale beer and cigarettes clung to every surface. Lea could tell Margo was still adjusting to the shift in the nature of their relationship. The boss had become the employee, and Lea wondered if she’d been wrong to mix Margo up in all this. She’d always had a gift for bringing people around to her point of view, and Margo’s financial difficulties had made her an easy convert. But maybe this was one time that she should have left well enough alone. What had once seemed a complex but fairly linear puzzle was branching out of her control.
She watched two of those branches enter the bar. The skinny, tattooed one slipped behind the bar to pour himself a beer, but Margo shooed him away. He retreated grumpily to a barstool and sat staring at the row of taps. His companion stood silently at the door watching her, watching her like some microbe at the far end of a microscope. She didn’t care for it.
“You really screwed us back there.”
“I saved you.”
She’d expected him to yell, try to intimidate her, but his voice was calm and considered; it surprised her, and that angered her still more.
“The hell you did. Slaski is burned. He saw our faces.”
He shook his head. “Slaski wears contacts.”
“Contacts? And you know this how?”
“He was squinting. When he came out on the porch, he was squinting because he couldn’t make us out. We were blurs to him.”
“Oh, bullshit.”
“Hey,” he called over to the bar. “It’s a small town. Would Slaski know you if he saw you?”
Poisonfeather (The Gibson Vaughn Series Book 2) Page 16