“Okay.” I paused to catch my breath. “I appreciate this.”
“Ten minutes,” he said again, and hung up.
I pulled up behind Lawrence’s old Buick. I was hoping the cops, during their investigation of the attack on Lawrence, wouldn’t have bothered to search this car. After all, it had bogus plates on it. There was a chance that if they’d rooted through any car, it would have been Lawrence’s Jag, whose plates were legit.
I popped the Virtue trunk, left the engine running, walked around back and lifted up the cover I’d looked under only a few minutes earlier. I grasped the tire iron, walked over to the passenger side of the Buick, and smashed in the window.
I pulled up the lock button, opened the door, and reached for the handle to the glove box. It was locked. Using the thin end of the tire iron, I wedged open the glove box door.
I reached into the back, past the ownership manuals and tattered maps, and found the gun Lawrence had used to fire at the Annihilator two nights earlier. I took it out, and a roll of masking tape that was tucked in there. I knelt down next to the car and rolled up my right pant leg as far as my knee and taped the gun around my leg. I didn’t much care what Bertrand Magnuson might think of this.
And if it hadn’t been for Angie’s suggestion that I go for ample-fit khakis, I wouldn’t have been able to roll the pant leg back down over the gun so easily.
29
I WAITED AROUND FRONT, on the sidewalk, by the door to Lawrence Jones’s apartment. I’d driven the Virtue around, left it running. Its excellent fuel economy was a major blessing now that I was afraid to turn the damn thing off.
Five minutes later, Trimble arrived in the same unmarked four-door Ford he’d shown up in the night before at this same location.
He put down his window, motioned me over. “Have they called yet?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Any moment now, I’m guessing.”
“You said these people are the same ones who tried to kill Lawrence,” Trimble said, his eyes narrowing.
“Yeah. I think that’s how they got to me, they found my address on a check in Lawrence’s apartment, maybe in his office or his wallet, I don’t know. All this time, I’ve been worried about some kid following my daughter around, not knowing there was someone else out there a whole lot more dangerous.”
Trimble got out of the car. “Are you going to be okay?”
I looked into his face. “I’m not okay now, I can tell you that much. These people, what they did to Lawrence, you really think they’re going to let me walk out of wherever they are, with Angie, alive?”
Trimble’s face didn’t move. He chose not to answer.
“Do you really think they’ve got cops on the inside?” I asked. “Because maybe, if there are some you trust, we should get more help?”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Trimble said. “There’ve been rumors for a while that Lenny Indigo had people on his pad, in the force. But there’s never been anything hard, nothing concrete. But more than once, we get ready to make a move on him, and he knows before we get there. We’re lucky we finally nailed him a few months back, but his organization is still alive and kicking.”
“That’s Bullock? This Barbie Bullock guy?”
“Yeah. His real name’s Willy, or William. You’d think a nickname like Barbie would be hard to take, but if people are going to be calling you Willy, maybe it’s not that much worse. He’s dangerous, but not always a hundred percent competent. He’s been struggling lately to prove to Indigo that he’s got what it takes to run the organization. And there’s talk that he does have informants on the force. And I don’t think right now would be the best time to test that theory, not if you want to get your daughter back in one piece.”
I didn’t like his choice of words. They conjured up an image I had to push out of my mind.
“This Bullock, is he the kind of guy who’d kill Angie, even after I give him the car?”
“Look, let’s just take this a step at a time. You got a paper, pen, ready for when they call? Because they’re probably going to give you an address, where to make the trade.”
I patted my jacket, where I had my pen and the reporter’s notebook. Almost as if my tapping had activated it, my cell phone rang inside my coat. I grabbed for it nervously, nearly dropping it as I pulled it from my pocket. I was sweating, and a drop had rolled down into my right eye, stinging and causing me to blink.
“Okay,” said Trimble. I had my thumb poised over the button, ready to take the call. It had now rung twice. “Just take it easy. Listen carefully to what they have to say.” He eased his head up close to mine. “I’m gonna listen in. Okay, go.”
I pressed the button and put the phone to my ear, tilting it out a bit so Trimble could hear the person on the other end.
“Hello,” I said, breathlessly and a little too fast.