“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?”
“At the desk.”
“Okay, good.” Hodges regards Madden earnestly. “Here comes the important part of our little talk, Oliver, so listen closely. I was hired to find the plane and take possession of it. That’s all, end of story. I’m not FBI, MPD, or even a private dick. My sources are good, though, and I know you’re on the verge of making a deal to buy a controlling interest in a couple of casinos out on the lake, one on Grande Belle Coeur Island and one on P’tit Grand Coeur.” He taps the briefcase with his foot. “I’m sure the paperwork is in here, as I’m sure that if you want to remain a free man, it’s never going to be signed.”
“Oh now wait a minute!”
“Shut your hole. There’s a ticket in the James Mallon name at the Delta terminal. It’s one-way to Los Angeles. Leaves in—” he looked at his watch—“in about ninety minutes. Which gives you just time enough to go through all the security shit. Be on that plane or you’ll be in jail tonight. Do you understand?”
“I can’t—”
“Do you understand?”
Madden—who is also Mallon, Morton, Mason, Dillon, Callen, and God knows how many others—thinks over his options, decides he has none, and gives a sullen nod.
“Great! I’ll unlock you now, take my cuffs, and exit your vehicle. If you try making a move on me while I do either, I’ll knock you into next week. Are you clear on that?”
“Yes.”
“Your car key’s on the grass. Big yellow Hertz fob, can’t miss it. For now, both hands on the wheel. Ten and two, just like Dad taught you.”
Madden puts both hands on the wheel. Hodges unlocks the cuffs, slips them back in his left pocket, and exits the Navigator. Madden doesn’t move.
“You have a good day, now,” Hodges says, and shuts the door.
7
He gets into his Prius, drives to the end of the Zane Aviation turnaround, parks, and watches Madden grub the Navigator’s key out of the grass. He waves as Madden drives past him. Madden doesn’t wave back, which doesn’t even come close to breaking Hodges’s heart. He follows the Navigator along the airport feeder road, not quite tailgating but close. When Madden turns off toward the main terminals, Hodges flashes a so-long with his lights.
Half a mile farther up, he pulls into the lot of Midwest Airmotive and calls Pete Huntley, his old partner. He gets a civil enough “Hey, Billy, how you doin,” but nothing you’d call effusive. Since Hodges went his own way in the matter of the so-called Mercedes Killer (and barely escaped serious legal trouble as a result), his relationship with Pete has frosted over. Maybe this will thaw it out a bit. Certainly he feels no remorse about lying to the moke now heading for the Delta terminal; if ever there was a guy who deserved a heaping spoonful of his own medicine, it’s Oliver Madden.
“How would you like to bag an extremely tasty turkey, Pete?”
“How tasty?” Still cool, but on the interested side of cool now.
“FBI Ten Most Wanted, that tasty enough? He’s currently checking in at Delta, scheduled to leave for LA on Flight One-nineteen at one forty-five PM. Going under James Mallon, but his real name is Oliver Madden. He stole a bunch of money from the Feds five years ago as Oliver Mason, and you know how Uncle Sam feels about getting his pocket picked.” He adds a few of the more colorful details on Madden’s resume.
“You know he’s at Delta how?”