*
Jerry glanced over Jamal’s car with professional expertise. A stocky black man a couple inches shorter than Nick’s six foot frame rubbed his closely kept bearded chin before addressing Nick. “Very nice. I will have it taken care of before morning.”
“It gets better, Jer. There’s a ten grand bonus in it for you. I already transferred it to your account.”
“Well now… that’s lovely. Do I need to know anything else about my treasure here?”
“Nope. The loose ends will never surface, and I know you’ll do an excellent job in making sure this fine vehicle doesn’t resurface either. It is a win/win situation.”
Jerry handed Nick some keys. “Take the old silver Corolla. Drop it off whenever you get a chance. You’ve been worrying me lately, Nick. You’re all over the news, and you actually offed a guy in the middle of a school.”
“The deceased shot himself while I struggled with him for his gun.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet he did. Are you okay now? If I can help, you’ll let me know, right?”
“You better believe it,” Nick replied. “I’m fine. We have an ongoing case we’re working on. Some things are a little more complicated than imagined at first, but we’re working through them. It won’t be long before all is normal once again. Thanks for taking this on such short notice.”
Jerry shook hands with Nick and then Gus. “No problem. Nice meeting you, Gus.”
“Same here, Jerry. Thanks for loaning us the car.”
Jerry gave Deke a hug. “Nothing’s too good for my favorite dog. Take care of these two, Deke.”
*
“Nice guy,” Gus commented on the way home in the loaner Toyota.
“Since I’m messing with bad people so much where I live, it might turn out we’ll need him to make a couple more vehicles disappear. Someone has us on their plate, and I don’t like it. That reporter being on the payroll of a Saudi firm promoting Sharia Law is an odd one. I know the incident at Jean’s school caused most of this uproar. I’m not certain it should have elicited the response of the magnitude it has. Jamal was flat out nuts. That the idiot would think to do a drive-by killing in nearly broad daylight shows it’s a mistake to overestimate the intelligence level of murderous morons.”
“It would have worked on someone else, Nick,” Gus pointed out. “You’re right about the freaky reporter connection in all this. We are going to wait this out a few days to see how Jamal’s disappearance plays out, aren’t we.”
“We have to. By now our confrontation with the other reporter, and her attack on me, will have hit the TV news. Then there’s the clown they had fronting the demonstration. If he knew how close he is to visiting my crypt of horror, he’d already be on his way to parts unknown. You do understand now why I always follow the old adage ‘no good deed goes unpunished’, right?”
“For a writer, you have the largest repertoire of overused clichés I’ve ever heard. You need some new material. How about ‘every dog has its day’, or ‘a stitch in time saves nine’, or ‘a penny saved is a penny earned’.”
Nick grinned appreciatively. “Good one. The karma you prattle on about, that I don’t believe in, may have made a good case to be recognized. After we did the Halloween special down in the crypt with Jean’s friend Lisa’s folks, followed by yet another attempt at a good deed with Jean’s teacher, we may have stretched our cosmic good graces to the breaking point. The cleanup is going to be a bitch.”
“Agreed. That damn road trip is sounding a hell of a lot better with every passing hour.”
“I may have to forget my head wound, and get the hell out of town with all of you for a while. It would throw our CIA tail off track, especially on a multi-city road trip. I doubt my old recruiter, Carol, could afford to use Company assets to follow me on a book tour. I wish we had time to find out what that’s all about, but it’ll have to wait.”
Gus slowed his approach to Nick’s house, making sure they weren’t arriving in the middle of another media ambush. The coast looked clear. Gus stopped in front. “I’d come in and get smashed with you, but I think I’ll call Tina, and see if she wants to have a late dinner.”
“An excellent plan. I’m not getting blitzed tonight, but I admit I will likely sip a couple while putting Diego through his paces. I’m thinking he needs to kill someone, and I have the plot device I need in my head to make it happen.”
“Do you ever confuse reality and fiction?”
Nick opened his door. “Nope, but sometimes Diego reflects my mood perfectly. Want to hit the Point tomorrow before walking Jean to school?”
“Not if I entice the lovely Tina to a late night meal. Goodnight, brother. I’ll have Tina follow me over to return Jerry’s Toyota sometime tomorrow. ”