“Nothing. I am perfectly fine.” He worked hard to say “perfectly” perfectly. And the “I am” instead of “I’m” was a bit weird and Data-like. “Where are you?”
“At the doughnut place, a couple of blocks from Garvin. Listen, if Lawrence calls, have him call my cell.”
“Okay.” Sleepylike. Like maybe he’d had a few beers.
“Paul,” I said, “did you find what Trevor left for you out back?”
“Huh?” More awake now. “The what?”
“The six-pack. Sounds like you found it.”
“I don’t know—what?”
“He get your booze for you all the time?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Did Angie tell you—” And then he cut himself off, still sober enough to know that he was letting the cat out of the bag.
“We’re going to have a talk when I get home.”
Paul paused at the other end of the line. “Do you have any idea when that might be?”
“Probably not for a few hours. I’m sort of working right now.”
“Because I’m really tired, and going to bed, so if you’re going to ream me out, could you do it in the morning instead of when you get home?”
“Fine. We’ll talk in the morning.”
“Okay. See ya, Dad.” And he hung up.
I shook my head as I hit the button to end my call. It was after eleven now. I tried Lawrence’s cell a third time, without success.
Maybe he was already in position, down the street from the men’s store. Maybe he’d gotten to the doughnut shop on time, waited a few minutes for me, and when I was a no-show, he’d left. After all, his responsibility was to Mr. Brentwood, the owner of the men’s shop, not me. He was doing me a favor letting me hang out with him; he didn’t owe me any consideration.
So I walked out of the doughnut shop and headed in the direction of Brentwood’s. I decided to leave the Virtue in the parking lot. Pulling up behind Lawrence’s Buick might attract unwanted attention on the street. There was a hint of autumn chill in the air, and I pulled my shoulders up, as if that would somehow keep me warm.
I came around the corner onto Garvin, half a block down from the men’s shop, and looked for Lawrence’s aging Buick with the brand-new rear window, not that a brand-new window was something that stood out. A quick scan of both sides of Garvin turned up nothing. The street was lined with several parked cars, but there was almost no traffic, and there was a slight drizzle starting to come down. Within a couple of minutes the street was damp and shiny.
As I walked up the street, nearly to Brentwood’s, I tried to think of other scenarios that could have delayed Lawrence. What if he wasn’t planning to come at all? What if there’d been some arrest in the case, just in the last couple of hours, and Lawrence had gotten a call about it from his contacts in the police, so there was no point in staking out Brentwood’s tonight?
Just then, a massive black SUV appeared at the top of the block. Its headlights, resting high atop the huge grill, cast a wide beam down the street.
“Jesus,” I whispered.
I sidled up against an unlit storefront, beneath an awning, as the SUV began to move slowly down the street. Then, inching along, I rolled myself around a corner and found myself in a three-foot-wide alley directly across the street from Brentwood’s. The SUV glided past, as if moving through a tall, narrow frame. I poked my head out, watched as it went up the street, turned right at the next corner, and disappeared.
I got out my cell and tried Lawrence’s cell again. Even before he’d finished his short message, I was shouting, but in a whispering kind of way, into my phone: “Man, you gotta get here! It’s going down! The bad guys are here! They’ve just gone by once and I think they’re coming around again! I’m in an alley right across the street! Where the hell are you?”
I hit the button to end my call. Even in the cool night air, I felt myself breaking into a sweat.
The cops, I thought, maybe I should call the cops. Get them out here fast, because I had a feeling, I just had a feeling that the next time these guys came around in that Annihilator they’d—
I heard the roar of the engine for only a second, then a huge crash. The sound of shattering glass and crumbling brick and twisting metal.
I looked across the street and saw the tail end of the Annihilator. The front of it was, literally, in Brentwood’s. The two back doors of the SUV flung open and two men dressed entirely in black, with black hoods or ski masks pulled down over their heads, were leaping out and charging through the destroyed storefront. The Annihilator was already backing out, then screeching to a halt, turning around and backing up to the shattered window. The rear tailgate rose automatically, and in the time it had taken for the driver to conduct this maneuver, the two guys inside had evidently cleared several racks of suits and were throwing them into the back of the SUV, then leaping back into the still-open rear doors, and now the Annihilator was back in gear and screeching up Garvin.