Madden blinks and recoils, as if Hodges has suddenly thrust a hand at his face. Jamieson really is Madden’s brother-in-law, but he hasn’t been arrested. At least not to Hodges’s knowledge.
‘Calling himself Fred Dawlings, Jamieson assured Mr Cramm that you had over twelve million dollars in First of Reno in several different accounts. I’m sure he was convincing, but the Caller ID thing was the clincher. It’s a fiddle accomplished with a highly illegal computer program. My assistant is good with computers, and she figured that part out. The use of that alone could get you sixteen to twenty months in a Club Fed. But there’s so much more. Five years ago, you and Jamieson hacked your way into the General Accounting Office and managed to steal almost four million dollars.’
‘You’re insane.’
‘For most people, four million split two ways would be enough. But you’re not one to rest on your laurels. You’re just a big old thrill-seeker, aren’t you, Oliver?’
‘I’m not talking to you. You assaulted me and you’re going to jail for it.’
‘Give me your wallet.’
Madden stares at him, wide-eyed, genuinely shocked. As if he himself hasn’t lifted the wallets and bank accounts of God knows how many people. Don’t like it when the shoe’s on the other foot, do you? Hodges thinks. Isn’t that just tough titty.
He holds out his hand. ‘Give it.’
‘Fuck you.’
Hodges shows Madden his Happy Slapper. The loaded toe hangs down, a sinister teardrop. ‘Give it, asshole, or I’ll darken your world and take it. The choice is yours.’
Madden looks into Hodges’s eyes to see if he means it. Then he reaches into his suitcoat’s inner pocket – slowly, reluctantly – and brings out a bulging wallet.
‘Wow,’ Hodges says. ‘Is that ostrich?’
‘As a matter of fact, it is.’
Hodges understands that Madden wants him to reach for it. He thinks of telling Madden to lay it on the console between the seats, then doesn’t. Madden, it seems, is a slow learner in need of a refresher course on who’s in charge here. So he reaches for the wallet, and Madden grabs his hand in a powerful, knuckle-grinding grip, and Hodges whacks the back of Madden’s hand with the Slapper. The knuckle-grinding stops at once.
‘Ow! Ow! Shit!’
Madden’s got his hand to his mouth. Above it, his incredulous eyes are welling tears of pain.
‘One must not grasp what one cannot hold,’ Hodges says. He picks up the wallet, wondering briefly if the ostrich is an endangered species. Not that this moke would give a shit, one way or the other.
He turns to the moke in question.
‘That was your second courtesy-tap, and two is all I ever give. This is not a police-and-suspect situation. You make another move on me and I’ll beat you like a rented mule, chained to the wheel or not. Do you understand?’
‘Yes.’ The word comes through lips still tightened with pain.
‘You’re wanted by the FBI for the GAO thing. Do you know that?’
A long pause while Madden eyes the Slapper. Then he says yes again.
‘You’re wanted in California for stealing a Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith, and in Arizona for stealing half a million dollars’ worth of construction equipment which you then resold in Mexico. Do you also know those things?’
‘Are you wearing a wire?’
‘No.’
Madden decides to take Hodges’s word for it. ‘Okay, yes. Although I got pennies on the dollar for those front-end loaders and bulldozers. It was a damn swindle.’
‘If anyone would know a swindle when it walks up and says howdy, it would be you.’
Hodges opens the wallet. There’s hardly any cash inside, maybe eighty bucks total, but Madden doesn’t need cash; he’s got at least two dozen credit cards in at least six different names. Hodges looks at Madden with honest curiosity. ‘How do you keep them all straight?’
Madden doesn’t reply.
With that same curiosity, Hodges says: ‘Are you never ashamed?’
Still looking straight ahead, Madden says: ‘That old bastard in El Paso is worth a hundred and fifty million dollars. He made most of it selling worthless oil leases. All right, I flew off with his plane. Left him nothing but his Cessna 172 and his Lear 35. Poor baby.’
Hodges thinks, If this guy had a moral compass, it would always point due south. Talking is no use … but when was it ever?
He hunts through the wallet and finds a bill of particulars in the matter of the KingAir: two hundred thousand down, the rest held in escrow at First of Reno, to be paid after a satisfactory test flight. The paper is worthless in a practical sense – the plane was bought under a false name, with nonexistent money – but Hodges isn’t always practical, and he’s not too old to count coup and take scalps.
‘Did you lock it up or leave the key at the desk so they could do it after they put it in the hangar?’