by Max Austin
Vic shrugged. “Don’t we all? At the end, something kills you. A doctor. A virus. Some kid in a leather jacket.”
“I didn’t come here to hurt anyone.”
“That’s why you were carrying that .45.”
“I had it in my pocket,” Ryan said. “If I’d come here to shoot you, I would’ve had it in my hand.”
“Maybe you weren’t expecting a trap.”
Ryan couldn’t help smiling, though he could tell it irked Vic.
“A trap was exactly what I expected. I figured you’d be here alone. I wanted us to be face-to-face for this.”
“Taking one hell of a risk for a chat. What if I’d shot you as soon as you came in the door?”
“It would’ve been a short conversation. Instead, here we are. I’ve got some things to tell you. And some questions to ask. Couldn’t we sit down?”
“What the hell, we’re both here. Sit on that sofa. Keep your hands where I can see ’em.”
Ryan did as he was told, sitting on top of the dust sheet. Nearly all the furniture was covered in sheets, and the lumpy white shapes made him think of Halloween. He took a deep breath and tried to relax. He’d had this conversation in his mind, over and over. It seemed apt that it take place here, in a house full of ghosts.
“My mom is dead,” he said. “Cancer. Three months ago.”
Vic looked stricken. Ryan thought he might be acting, but at least the man had the decency to put on an act.
“I’m sorry to hear that. I have fond memories of Lisa.”
“So do I.” Ryan noted the edge in his voice and took it down a notch. “The last two years were tough. Chemo. Radiation. She’d been a nurse her whole career, so she knew everybody at the hospital and she knew what was coming. Brave to the end.”
Vic nodded.
“She was a good mom. A great one. She raised me by herself and never asked anyone for help.”
“That sounds like her. She was very strong-willed.”
“Is that why you didn’t stick around?”
Vic looked off into the darkness, then back at Ryan. “I’m not ready to talk about that yet.”
“No?” Ryan felt himself bristle. “Why not?”
“Let’s go back to what you’re doing here,” Vic said. “To why you’ve been following me around.”
Ryan reached inside his jacket. Vic’s silenced pistol rose from his lap like the head of a snake.
“You already took my gun,” Ryan said. “I’ve got some papers here.”
He pulled an envelope from his pocket and tossed it to Vic. It landed in his lap, but he never took his eyes off Ryan.
“What’s this?”
“I found it in a shoebox,” Ryan said. “Cleaning up the house after she died.”
Vic set the pistol in his lap and used both hands to open the envelope, which was full of newspaper clippings.
“Your business card was in there,” Ryan said. “Imagine how surprised I was to find that you still worked at the same bail bond company.”
Vic grunted. He was busy with the clippings, fingering through them, reading the headlines. Ryan knew what he was seeing; he’d read them a dozen times himself. Accounts of murders and missing persons from all over the Southwest. The victims were all men, most with criminal pasts. All the cases remained unsolved.
“She clipped those out over the years,” Ryan said, “and kept them with your card. She kept track of you.”
Vic held up a clipping from a San Diego newspaper. “I never heard of this guy.”
“But the others?”
Vic tilted his head to the side. “Let’s say a few of the names sound familiar.”
“So Mom was a good guesser. Cutting out those articles, connecting them to you.”
“She was a smart lady, your mother.”
“I suppose that’s why she never told me about you or what you do for a living.”
“Never? Nothing?”
“When I was a kid, I asked about my father all the time. She’d never tell me your name or where you lived. All I’d get out of her was you were a nice man and a good dancer.”
Vic smiled. “I do like to move around a dance floor. But now the women who want to dance with me are senior citizens. I can’t take that kind of risk. Somebody could break a hip.”
“Mom remembered the younger you. Just like you only remember her from twenty-five years ago.”
“She was a real beauty.”
“That was true to the end. She was beautiful inside and out.”
They sat silently for a while. Ryan remembered his mother in her hospital bed, surrounded by flowers sent by her many friends. Her hair all gone, but her spirit intact.
“I set that shoebox aside and finished what I had to do, settling up Mom’s estate and selling her house.”
“Big job.”
“I was distracted the whole time, thinking about those clippings and what they meant. Was my father some kind of serial killer?”
Vic snorted. “Come on.”
“Hey, it was a possibility. I didn’t know what I’d find. Once my responsibilities were met, I drove up here.”
“Looking for me,” Vic said.
“I checked out Lucky Penny Bail Bonds and found you still worked there, so I started watching the place. Saw you lived across the street.”
“How’d you know it was me?”
“I heard people call you by name. ‘Good morning, Vic.’ ‘How you doing, Vic?’ ”
“Why didn’t you introduce yourself?”
“I almost did. But I got kinda fascinated, you know? A bail bond office would be the perfect cover for a contract killer. And then you went to Phoenix not long after I got here.”
“Phoenix.”
“I was there,” Ryan said. “When you did that guy in the airport bathroom.”
He hadn’t meant to blurt it like that, but now it was out there.
“I mean, I didn’t actually see it happen. I followed you into the airport here and heard you buy a ticket for Phoenix, so I did the same.”
“Just like that. You bought a ticket.”
“I told you, I’ve got money from Mom’s estate. Not a lot, but it seemed worth the cost at the time.”
“And then?”
“I sat around the Phoenix airport, watching you. It was pretty clear you were interested in this fat guy who was wearing an ugly sports coat. When you followed him into the restroom, I took a chance and went in, too.”
Vic said nothing. His eyes had gone cold.
“I heard the guy choking and kicking inside that stall,” Ryan said. “So I went right back out again.”
More silence. He wished Vic would react in some way. He couldn’t tell if he was making things better or worse.
“Few minutes later, you come out of the john,” Ryan said. “You’re not even breathing hard. Your clothes are barely wrinkled.”
“Did you go check on the other man?”
“No, I followed you. We got on an airplane, costing me another bundle, and flew right back here. I read about the death in the newspapers. The guy was choked to death? How’d you manage that?”
Vic’s crusty demeanor cracked into a little smile.
“Stainless steel pen-and-pencil set. Went right through security. They see ’em all the time. I bought some long shoelaces at a newsstand. Tied ’em together and twisted ’em around the pens until I had a garrote with sturdy handles.”
“Ah.”
“Once the guy was on the throne, I reached over from the next stall and looped it around his neck. All I had to do was hang on for a couple of minutes. Let his weight do the work. When it was over, I dropped the pens and shoelaces into different trash bins.”
“No fingerprints.”
“What? No, it’s an airport. There are a million fingerprints. What you got to worry about are cameras. They’re everywhere in airports. But not in the bathrooms.”
“Ah. Nice.”
“Really? I tell you about strangling some douche bag, an
d that’s what you say, ‘Nice’? You admire this sort of work?”
Now it was Ryan’s turn to smile.
“I’m interested in the business. That’s part of why I’ve been following you around, helping out. I was trying to get your attention.”
Chapter 11
Vic couldn’t believe this kid. Cocky as hell. Unafraid. Anybody else—crook or cop—got on the wrong end of Vic’s pistol, and he’d be shitting himself. Not this kid. He smiles and talks and talks and smiles, so confident in the alleged genetic relationship that he’s sure Vic won’t put a bullet in his melon.
“You went to Phoenix and drowned some guy to get my attention?”
“It didn’t start out that way—”
“No, that’s right. First you bugged Penny’s office.”
“Did I mention where I worked in Tucson?” Ryan said. “RadioShack. Six years. Started right out of high school. I’ve always had a way with electronic gizmos.”
“You hack her computer, too?”
“Didn’t even try. I just wanted to hear what you two talked about in the office. After what happened at the Phoenix airport, it looked like Mom had been right about you. The newspaper clippings, all that, it clicked into place.”
“And you figured it involved Penny, too?”
Ryan shrugged. “The office seemed the most likely place to hear something important.”
“And then you heard something.”
“Yeah, the whole deal about Harry Marino. Between what you two said, and what I found on the Internet, I was able to track him down. I caught an earlier flight over to Phoenix. Must’ve beat you there by only an hour or two.”
“Then you left him there for me to find.”
“I thought it would make you wonder.”
“How did you get him to hold still for it?”
“I squatted down, waved him over. He doesn’t know me, but he’s curious. So he paddles over. I grabbed him by the ears.”
“And held him under.”
“I took off my jacket first. I didn’t want to get the leather wet.”
“God forbid something happen to your biker jacket.”
Ryan smiled.
“Were you still around when I got there?” Vic asked. “Were you out there in the desert, watching me sneak up on an empty house?”
“No, I was gone. I was going to call you after you got back to Albuquerque and set up a meeting. But right away Penny started talking about this job in Santa Fe. I think you were rushing things. You never saw me when I followed you to the guy’s house.”
“But why? Why not just approach me?”
“I wanted to watch you work.”
“You what?”
“I had a rifle in my trunk,” Ryan said. “I used the scope to watch you go up to the house. I would’ve stayed out of it, but that dog looked like trouble. Once he was out of the way, you made quick work of the guy.”
“You wanted to watch me pop that guy? You get off on it? You some kind of freak?”
“No, no. I look at it as on-the-job training.”
“For what job?”
“Same as you,” Ryan said. “I want to get into the family business.”
“Oh, for shit’s sake.”
“No, really.” The kid leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “I’ve sort of always felt it, you know? Homicidal tendencies. I’d get pissed at some bully and I wouldn’t just mope. I’d picture the guy with an ax in his head—”
“That’s not what I do,” Vic said. “It’s not an emotional thing with me. It’s business.”
“Of course. I respect that. Got to be cool to do what you do. I’m just saying I always kinda knew I’d kill somebody someday. That I’d be good at it. I thought, if I showed you what I could do, maybe you’d consider teaching me, giving me a crack at the family business.”
“Stop staying that. It’s not a family business. I don’t have any family.”
Ryan looked crushed.
Vic sighed. “I don’t mean to hurt your feelings. But you’re asking me to choke down a lot here. First, I’ve got a son that Lisa never told me about. He’s creeping around the edges of my life. And he wants to go around murdering people.”
“Like you said. It’s business.”
“It’s still death,” Vic said. “It’s never pretty. I would’ve thought you’d learned that, watching your mother die.”
“It’s not the same thing and you know it. She was a fucking saint. She suffered.”
“I’m sorry. I really am. It’s a terrible thing, watching a loved one die.”
“How would you know? I thought you didn’t have any loved ones.”
“I used to, right? Everybody has parents. It’s always a shock when they pass away. I remember the day my mother died, and I realized, what the fuck, I’m an orphan. I was eighteen years old, practically on my own already, but that’s how I thought of myself. As an orphan. Alone in the world.”
Ryan nodded.
“So you were in the same place,” Vic said. “Bereaved. Alone. And here are these clippings, possibly leading you to a long-lost dad. Maybe something sorta snapped inside you. Made you do things you wouldn’t normally do.”
“Like Harry Marino?”
“Exactly. Maybe you didn’t know what you were doing.”
Ryan smiled. “Ask Harry if I knew what I was doing.”
“I didn’t say you weren’t effective. I was talking about your motivations.”
“You think I was showing off?”
“Weren’t you?”
They stared at each other for a long time.
“Let’s get out of here,” Vic said finally. “Nobody’s getting any sleep tonight. We’ll go get some waffles.”
“Waffles?”
“You want me to teach you things? Here’s lesson number one: Most every situation can be improved by the immediate application of waffles with real butter and maple syrup.”
“Sounds messy.”
“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day,” Vic said.
“Is that lesson number two? ’Cause I gotta tell you, I’ve heard that one before.”
“How much am I charging you for this advice?”
“Not a thing.”
“Then it’s worth every penny.”
Ryan smiled. “Maybe I’ll pay for the waffles.”
“Now you’re talking.”
Chapter 12
Ryan hesitated only a second as he got into Vic’s big car. The hit man said they were going for predawn waffles. But Vic still hadn’t returned his .45, and there was something ominous about the black Cadillac.
“I’ll bring you back here when we’re done.” Vic looked around the dark neighborhood. “I assume you’ve got a motorcycle around here somewhere?”
“A car. I locked it up. It’ll be okay.”
Ryan settled into the passenger seat. Leather upholstery, soft as a sofa.
“Hey,” Vic said as he got behind the wheel, “do you have a photo of your mom?”
“Sure. Lots of ’em.”
“Show me.”
“I don’t have them on me. You think I carry a picture of my mom in my wallet?”
Vic shrugged.
“You still don’t believe me, do you? You think I’m lying about being Lisa Mobley’s son.”
“No, I—”
“You want photo ID?”
“I can see what you look like. I was interested in her. How she looked as she got older, I mean. Never mind.”
“I’ve got several photos back at my room—”
“Forget it.”
They drove in silence. The streets were empty. Lights were coming on in some of the houses as working stiffs got up to greet the day.
Ryan hadn’t meant to piss him off, but Vic kept acting as if he were being tricked. Kept looking over his shoulder, as if trying to catch a Candid Camera crew sneaking up on them.
They stopped at a red light and sat there, though nothing was coming in any direction.
&nbs
p; “Ten years ago,” Vic said, “I capped a guy at this intersection. I think about it every time I drive through here.”
“Really?”
“Right over there by the bus stop. Guy took the bus home from work, so he was waiting there five nights a week.”
The light changed and the Cadillac purred away from the intersection.
“He had to ride the bus because they’d taken away his driver’s license,” Vic said. “He was DUI, ran over a little girl. He copped a plea and got off light. A year in the county lockup, counting time served, then a few years’ probation.”
“He killed a kid and that’s all he got?”
“The system sucks, doesn’t it? The girl’s father thought so, too. He took out a second mortgage to scrape together the money to hire me.”
“Sounds like one you would’ve done for free.”
“I never work for free,” Vic said. “But let’s say I didn’t mind pulling the trigger. The guy was a punk, and a year behind bars had done nothing to improve him. He was trash that needed taking out.”
“Right on the street. Out in the open.”
“I pulled up to the curb in front of him. He’s sitting alone on the bench, sipping from a brownbag forty. I powered down the window and leaned across. I say, ‘Excuse me. I think I’m lost.’ He gets up and comes over, hitching up his baggy pants. He says, ‘Where you tryin’ to go?’ I used a silencer, so there was only the flash from the barrel.”
“Then you just drove away.”
“Went and had a late dinner, as I recall. Pork chops at this place over in Nob Hill.”
“Pork chops.” Ryan shook his head. “You still had an appetite?”
“Some scumbag gets his ticket punched. That means I shouldn’t eat?”
“No, I—”
“I did a public service, getting rid of a drunk like that. He sure as hell didn’t run over any more children.”
“Sure, I see that. I’m just amazed you could eat right away.”
“Wait until you see how I put away waffles.”
He wheeled the Cadillac into a parking lot jammed with pickup trucks and vans though it still was an hour until sunrise. The flat-roofed diner was painted white with red and green trim. Light spilled from its steamed-over windows. A hubcap-sized sign above the front door said, “Josefina’s Cafe.”