Buck instinctively put up his guard but tried to sound relaxed. “I doubt it. Like he ever wanted to talk to me.”
“No?” Horse looked surprised. “We figured your status as state hero earned you all kinds of respect.”
Buck’s grin was tired, spent. “Wesner hired me for my football trophies, not my mind, and he never let me forget it.”
“One thing we don’t have, since no official report has been filed yet, is the contents of your safe,” Edgars said. “How much money did they take?”
Buck quickly went over it in his mind. “Maybe five thousand? I’m not really sure.”
“Anything else taken?”
“I’d have to see an inventory of what was left to figure that out,” Buck said.
Horse looked through a file and pulled out a printed sheet. “Here’s what they didn’t take, according to the on scene officer.”
Buck studied it for a moment. His insurance policies, will, legal papers seemed to be intact. He noticed none of his jewelry was listed. “Looks like they might have gotten off with a couple of diamond rings, and my national championship ring.”
“Sorry to hear it,” Douglas said with sincerity. “People got no respect for sentimental items.”
“Maybe they’ll show up at a pawn shop. We’ll put them on the list,” Edgars said.
“So, is that all?”
Edgars studied him. “When we can get you into your office, probably later today, you can do a walkthrough and see if there’s anything else.”
“Anything you can tell us about Wesner’s personal relationships with friends, family, staff?” Horse asked.
“He ruled the roost, often with an iron hand, I thought, but people stayed with him. People will put up with a lot if you pay them well,” Buck said.
“How did he act around his wife?” Edgars’ question threw Buck off balance. “Like when she came by the bank?”
Buck took a couple of moments. “I never saw them together at the bank, I don’t think. Only at social functions.”
Edgars looked doubtfully at him, a smile just behind his steely blue eyes. “How well do you know her? Really?”
“Not at all, really,” Buck answered.
Horse tilted his head, as though confused. “No kidding?”
“Because the way she looked at you down at the station earlier…” Edgars looked at his partner. “What is it Hollywood calls that?”
Horse took his cue. “Chemistry.”
“You two have got it in spades,” Edgars said, his eyebrows raised, like he was waiting for Buck to deny it.
If Buck’s face hadn’t already been red with injuries, his flush would have been apparent.
“What are you talking about?” Buck said, staring hard at Edgars. “Mrs. Wesner got the bank to put up my bail. That’s all. And I was grateful.”
“So, just for the record, you and the lady have no relationship. You barely know each other.”
“That’s right,” Buck said.
“Fine,” Edgars said, unruffled.
“Why? Has something happened?”
“You ever hear rumors of affairs, that sort of thing?” Horse asked. “She’s pretty hot.”
“No,” Buck said. But the photographs Twigs showed him from Gordon’s safe leapt to his mind. He looked from one detective to the other. “You think she was cheating on him?”
“Seems there may have been a bit of trouble in paradise.” Edgars offered it up like a tiny bone.
“I really don’t see what it has to do with me,” Buck finally said.
Horse leaned forward in his chair. “Maybe nothing. But my partner’s instincts are pretty good…what he saw this morning, I mean. If you are having an affair with her, then trust me, we’ll find out about it. It’d be better for you to come clean about it now than if we hear it first from her.”
“Buck, she’s fucking around with you,” Edgars said. “I saw the look. I’m not wrong.”
“You are way off base. I think you ought to go now.”
The detectives rose from their chairs. “That’s fine, we will,” Horse said, moving toward the door. “But you ought to talk with her, Buck, see what’s going on in her head.”
Buck steeled himself not to respond and opened the apartment door for them to leave.
Edgars paused at the door. “See, we’re talking to everyone now. This investigation has broken wide open. If I were you, Buck, I’d look to protect myself. That’s what she’s doing.”
“Goodbye, detectives,” Buck said. When they’d finally gone, he stood there by the door for a long time, not sure what exactly had just transpired. It was pretty clear they wanted him to contact her so they could put the two of them together. If she had admitted to it, they wouldn’t have showed up.
He barely let himself consider what would happen if it did come down to just the two of them. Buck really could not answer that. It was certainly possible that she would save herself first.
It was just as possible he would do the same thing. He knew that now.
Chapter 91
Tony couldn’t figure out why Chuckles, and even the old fart now, were playing him. Now of all times. He needed to get back on the road before he lost the motor home. But now the old man was calling Chuckles Billy.
The old guy and Tony were standing just inside the office, while Chuckles listened by the garage door. Both were staring at Tony like he just stepped off a spaceship. Tony was doing his best to explain his situation, and most of it was true, but these idiots weren’t buying a word of it.
Even though Tony was experiencing sporadic acid flashbacks—at least that’s what they seemed like—he kept his calm face on. “Gimme a break, guys. I gotta get back to where the wreck went down first. Where I lost my money.”
“And you wanna take your bike and we just trust you to bring it back.” Chuckles’ face morphed into somebody Tony didn’t even recognize. An ugly acting son of a bitch.
“Hey,” Tony said to Chuckles, “why don’t you drive me back there. Can’t you? Won’t take five minutes.” Tony thought it would be a chance to talk to him, see what the play was here.
Tony’s head felt wiped out now, with blurred images popping up and then fading away. Sometimes he had to pause in the middle of saying something until the pictures went away.
“Tell you what,” Chuckles sneered, “you leave the bike here, walk back there, then bring back what you owe us. That’s the fucking deal.”
That was the end of the rope for Tony. He had given Chuckles every chance to man up. Tony backed away from them, moving toward his bike, reaching into his jean pocket as he went.
Both men came to attention, and the old man piped up, “Where you think you’re going, boy?” He started toward Tony.
Tony whipped his hand out of his pocket and with two quick jerks, his butterfly knife clicked open slicker than snot. He could tell from the old geezer’s stunned face he hadn’t seen that coming.
“Don’t move another inch, motherfucker,” Tony told him.
Then Chuckles put his hands up in the air, showing no resistance. “Dad, back off. Peace, brother, ain’t no need pulling that out over a tire, man.”
“Now you’re all nice,” Tony said, reaching the bike. “Now that I got this baby out.” He flipped the knife from one hand to the other.
“Hey, man, just go,” Chuckles said.
“Fuckin’ A, I will,” Tony assured him as he mounted the bike.
As he looked down to find the ignition key, his vision blurred for a moment, though.
He missed the quick flash from the garage in his peripheral vision.
Chuckles, moving with a speed and agility that defied his enormity, grabbed a 12-gauge shotgun from just inside the service door.
Tony recognized the sound as Chuckles racked it.
By the time Tony looked up again, it was aimed right at him. His turn to be stunned.
Tony slowly raised his hands off the handlebars.
It wasn’t even Chuckles standin
g there anymore. This was some asswipe who’d just been pretending to be Tony’s friend. And he looked ready to leave a hole in him with that 12-gauge.
What was worse, Tony was seeing two and sometimes three images of Chuckles, like pictures layered one over the other. He needed another hit of something. He was a sure goner if he couldn’t even focus.
“Good job, son,” the old man crowed.
“Put it down,” Chuckles said, indicating Tony’s knife. “Lay it on the concrete in front of you and kick it toward me.”
Tony glanced around, searching for an out, as he complied as slowly as possible. He could see only one play.
He dropped the knife, but kicked it in the old man’s direction instead of toward Chuckles.
“Leave it there,” Chuckles said, but his dad was already shuffling toward the weapon. Tony was watching Chuckles, though, whose eyes flashed back and forth between the two of them. Just what Tony wanted.
“It’s okay, I got it,” the old man said. But when he bent over to pick up the knife, he stumbled, off balance.
Chuckles instinctively glanced with concern toward his father and lowered the 12-gauge an inch, giving Tony the split second he needed to go for his .38 from his back waistband. As he grabbed it, he ran the few steps he needed to duck behind the bike.
Before Chuckles could readjust his aim, Tony popped up and got off his shot. The report echoed against the corrugated garage walls.
Blood exploded out of Chuckles’ enormous stomach. Stunned, he took a couple of steps forward, then stood there, gaping dumbly at the flowing wound.
The old man hurried to him. “Billy. No, Billy.”
Tony jumped on the bike, roared it to life and squealed out onto the highway. He fired a couple more blind shots behind him for cover, then leaned low on the bike. “Fuck you, piece of shit,” he muttered to himself.
Tony couldn’t understand why, all of a sudden, he felt choked up. Tears were filling his eyes. He gave them a swipe.
What Tony didn’t see behind him was the iron will of Billy Inman. He may have been badly wounded and bleeding, but with charged adrenalin, Billy, somehow, got up, shotgun still in hand, and stumbled out into the road.
“Cocksucker,” Billy screamed and aimed for Tony’s receding back on the fleeing Kawasaki.
The 12-gauge erupted. Billy wobbled backwards from its kick, then, unable to muster any more energy, dropped to a sitting position in the middle of the road.
Tony heard the gunshot that blasted into his back, but it never registered in his mind that he had been hit. His body involuntarily shuddered, but his head shifted into an unreal sense of well-being.
With a grin, he leaned his blood-spackled face into the windshield, and kept driving as though nothing had happened.
Then somebody was talking to him. It was Chuckles.
“What’d I tell you, buddy? I’s afraid you wouldn’t last long out there with the normies. Now you went and done it.”
“Shut up,” Tony said, in that half-joking tone he liked to use with Chuckles. The motorcycle was weaving in and out of lanes now. Blood streamed down Tony’s t-shirt.
“Hey, Tony, this is it, kiddo, the end. Told you I’d be here for you.”
“It’s you, man,” Tony managed, more feeling the presence beside him than seeing it. “You made it.”
Tony’s sight began blurring on the road ahead. Suddenly, his body seemed incredibly light and relaxed.
“Here to help, son. Just let ‘er go now. You’re free.”
“Yeah, free,” Tony whispered to the wind, struggling to keep his eyes open.
“All your shit, just set it down. Look at you, man, you’re flyin’ now, ya hear?”
Tony smiled and lifted his hands off the handlebars and stretched them up into the air. The bike started a slow drift toward the shoulder.
Chuckles was whispering again. “Let go now, Tony. Let go and just fly.”
Sure enough, Tony could see himself elevating above the earth. He leaned his head as far back as he could, surprised at the closeness of the mottled gray sky. He could almost reach out and grab it.
“What a ride,” he said to the air. From somewhere came the smell of alfalfa and pine trees. The wind tickled his cheeks. He closed his eyes and felt his hair swirl around his face. Then he was being lifted up into the sky.
“I’m way up here now,” he whispered to the wind. He could see beneath him then, the motorcycle drifting toward a fence, the two lanes of asphalt, the tops of green trees framing it all like a painting.
And when Tony’s heart stopped beating a minute later, he was still soaring, up into the gray underbelly of heaven itself.
Chapter 92
Angie studied her image in the rearview mirror. There was barely any trace of her left under the black wig, sunglasses, and shapeless, flowered house dress. She looked more like Juanita, who had left for the day at Angie’s insistence. Her plan was risky enough, without allowing an easy witness to it.
She drove Gordon’s black Mercedes. Not perfect, but not the advertisement her silver BMW would be. She picked up the throwaway cell she’d purchased shortly before, while wearing the same disguise, and punched in Buck’s apartment number. Almost holding her breath, she waited through several rings before he finally picked up.
“Hello?”
“You alone?” she whispered.
Then a moment as he realized who it was. A sharp intake of breath. “Yeah.”
“Stay put.” She hung up and sighed.
They were probably monitoring Buck’s movement, but she was betting they wouldn’t have tapped his phones this quickly. Even if they had, a call that brief could be written off as a wrong number. They might suspect, but at least they couldn’t prove who made it.
A few blocks from his apartment, she found a parking spot. Angie had disguised herself plenty of times to rent motel rooms for her and Buck, and had been amazed how easy it was. She had never realized that people rarely looked at those around them, even clerks taking money. She was betting they wouldn’t even glance at an Hispanic woman in a house dress and ugly shoes. With an added head scarf over the black wig, she was unrecognizable, even on surveillance cameras.
Angie walked quickly to the apartment building and buzzed Buck’s apartment to open the building entrance door. She held her breath a moment. Quickly, with no exchange, he buzzed her up.
Moments later Angie pushed his doorbell, then waited, head down. Buck opened the door, puzzled for a moment at her appearance. But he had seen her in disguise before and quickly waved her in. She slipped inside and he shut the door behind them.
Then he grabbed for her, clutching so tightly she could barely move. Shaking, they held on to each other for a long, charged moment.
Finally, he released his grip and took off her sunglasses and wig. She touched his bruised face with tender fingers and shook her head in sympathy.
“We make a fine pair,” Buck said with a grin.
“I know this is insane. I’m sorry. I had to come.”
“It’s alright,” he pulled her into him again. “I’ve been aching, I wanted to see you so bad. Right now I don’t care what happens.”
He kissed her and she stayed close against him. Angie felt safe for the first time since they had parted after the poker game, even if they were both still trembling.
Angie gingerly touched his swollen black eye. “When I saw you all beat up this morning, I didn’t think I could stand it.”
“They sent these thugs. They wanted their money. I got worked over.” He showed her his bandaged finger. “They took it,” he said in a breaking voice.
Angie cried and listened as he explained how it had all gone down.
“Oh, God,” he said, “if I had just paid them before I went into work on Friday—”
“You couldn’t have known. They’re animals.” Then Angie told him everything about how it had been at her end.
“When I couldn’t find you, I was dying. Then when I saw your car, with some gi
rl in it, I just fell apart. I went nuts.”
They both sat shaking their heads at how crazy bad it had all gone. Yet all Angie could think about was wanting to be close enough to smell every part of him again, to feel their bodies melt together.
She took his hand and pulled him into his bedroom, both undressing as they went. Their bare bodies fell together in their sweet, familiar way. Yet, it was different somehow. Angie sensed it from the beginning.
Something darker was affecting them. It was as if the unspoken guilt lay there between them, alongside the desire. The usual lightness of their lovemaking, their sense of abandonment, was almost gone.
This time, when Buck pushed himself inside her, a heaviness, a need, came with it. He went slowly, as though it almost hurt to continue.
Then she heard him whispering in her ear. “Just this one time…please. Just once.”
Angie could feel Buck abandoning himself to her, and asking with his whole heart for something just as real back from her. He was entirely present with his love, leaving her somehow on the outside, looking in.
It broke Angie’s heart that she didn’t know how to give herself to him completely. She wanted with everything in her to open her heart, open her soul and let all of him in. But the harder she tried, the more it wouldn’t budge. Not even after all he’d been through. All he’d done for her.
Chapter 93
Later, as both lay half-dressed on the bed, they stared at the ceiling without speaking. Buck felt a weight settle over him that he was too exhausted to fight off.
Angie whispered, “I’m sorry.”
He watched the ceiling fan throw circling shadows on the ceiling. “I get lost in you, always have.”
“Oh, Buck—”
“No, it’s true. Last night when I knew I was going to die, I thought…I was wondering, why did I spend so much of my life trying to find something? But that wasn’t it. I wasn’t wanting to find something, I was looking for something to get lost in, you know? Football. Celebrity. Gambling. Then you. You were the sweetest.”
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