Stone Quarry (26 page)

"Fuckin-A right I can! You wanna see, just keep flappin' your yap!"

Lydia spoke. "Who writes his dialogue?" she asked me.

"Mike Tyson. So what now, fellas? You shoot us here in the parking lot in the middle of the day and drive away?"

"You see anyone around who'd care if we did?" Otis snickered. The secluded area was empty except for us. "But I'm not supposed to shoot you till after Frank talks to you."

I shook my head. "I don't get Frank. I've been looking for him since yesterday. I even dropped by his place this morning. How come every time he wants me he thinks he has to send armed assholes to pick me up? And which of you assholes shot Tony Antonelli?"

Arnold growled, started toward me, but Otis said, "Uh- uh. Not here. Get in the car." He waved his gun around. Ted echoed gleefully, "Get in the car."

Lydia and I got in the car, in the places where they told us, Lydia in the middle of the back seat, me next to her. Arnold climbed in behind Ted, who was driving, Otis having been put on the Disabled List.

Otis waved his gun at me. "Turn around." I shifted in the seat. Arnold pulled out a set of handcuffs, leaned across Lydia. Ratchets clicked as steel closed tight around my wrists.

Otis put the gun about two inches from the end of Lydia's nose. "Now, we got no cuffs for you, cutie pie," he said. "But we also got no use for you. So if you or smartass here do anything dumb, even once, I'm gonna blow your pretty face off, and no one's gonna care. Got it?"

Lydia said, "I've got it." Her voice was clear and steady.

Ted threw the Ford into gear and we started down the road.

It took us half an hour to climb to the green house through hills heavy with the weight of the sky. Maple trees shimmered with the shiny red-brown of buds waiting to open. A pair of hawks wheeled low against the clouds. In the heaviness of the day even the snowdrops seemed dulled, subdued.

From the corner of my eye I watched Lydia concentrate on the road, the turns and the miles we covered. Otis smoked. Every cell in my body begged for a cigarette, but I didn't give Otis the satisfaction of turning me down.

I knew where we were going; I had no need to do what Lydia was doing. I stared out the window, saw other things. I saw Eve Colgate's eyes, tiny jewels glowing in them; I saw blood from her heart spread across six paintings, blood which was still, after all this time, too fresh for the world to see. I saw Tony's blood, and Tony's face, backlit in red neon, trying to find a way to tell me something he needed me to know. I saw Jimmy as I'd seen him last night, filthy, exhausted, scared, but his eyes full of the same mixture of bravado and belief that had been there, years ago, when he'd followed me onto a wobbly rope bridge across a swollen creek because I'd said it was safe. And I saw a little girl with those same eyes.

And I heard voices, words: Lydia's; MacGregor's; Brinkman's, at the hospital.

And suddenly I knew.

A late-model Buick Regal was parked between Otis's black truck and a dark green Aries in the spongy place next to the house when we got there. The Aries had a triple-A sticker above the left tail light and cracks spiderwebbing out from a small hole in the rear window.

The air as we crossed to the decrepit porch was sharp, bringing on it the scents of pine and water; but that was only outside. I saw Lydia's nose wrinkle with distaste as we walked through the door.

Grice stood in the living room opening. "Well," he said. "It's about time. Nice of you to come, Smith."

"I've been looking for you. You didn't need this."

"Yeah, I heard you wanted to see me. I didn't like the way you put it."

"How'd I put it?"

He shrugged, smirked at Lydia. "Who's this?"

"A friend of mine."

"She got a name?"

"Lydia Chin," said Lydia, looking steadily at Grice.

"Cute," Grice said. He reached to touch her cheek. She slammed his hand aside. Her eyes blazed. "Grice!" I said sharply. My arms tugged uselessly against the cuffs. "You want to deal, leave her alone."

Grice stopped, open mouthed, eyes on Lydia. Then he laughed. "Well," he said, "maybe later." He looked at me. "Deal? I don't think so." Smiling, he asked Otis, "Where'd you find them?"

"We was lucky," Otis said. "When we was crossing the bridge, Ted spotted that fancy car of his going into the Appleseed lot. We sat and waited till they come out."

Grice whipped to face me. "You talked to Sanderson?"

"Yes."

He started to say something else, but recovered himself. Turning to Otis and Ted, he said casually, "Thanks, boys. Make yourselves scarce for a while. I'll let you know." Ted gave a mock military salute, headed to the kitchen. He lifted a six-pack of Miller from the fridge, clomped behind Otis up the stairs.

Grice waited until we heard the canned laughter of daytime TV drifting down after them. Then he looked at me, asked softly, "Did you tell him?"

"No. I didn't know. I didn't catch on until about ten minutes ago, on the way here."

He looked at me strangely. "Bullshit. You told Mike you knew, at the Creekside. You told everyone. Why do you think Arnold tried to take you out last night?"

At the Creekside. What had I said? I thought back, seeing the hostile faces, smelling the dull air, hearing my words.

"That wasn't my idea, by the way," Grice went on. "I was busy last night." He winked at Lydia. "So Arnold had to decide what to do about you, and Arnold gets a little carried away sometimes."

Arnold, who'd settled on one of the shabby brown chairs, smiled sheepishly.

"I figured that's why no one's found her yet," Grice went on. "Because you and that painter lady, or whatever she is, were going to try to shake me down." He grinned.

"No," I said. "That's not why. Eve doesn't know anything about it. And I didn't have it at the Creekside, Grice. I knew Ginny was with you. I knew she had the paintings and the truck. That was all I knew."

"You're kidding." His crooked mouth pursed. "Christ, you disappoint me, Smith." He shook his head in mock sorrow, spoke to Arnold. "See? I told you we could afford to back off. Plus, of course," he added, to me, "you're not worth as much to me dead, yet."

"You set Jimmy up for it, didn't you?" I said. "Like with Wally Gould? That was your frame, even though you didn't kill him, right?"

Grice laughed out loud. "Maybe you're not so dumb.

That was good, wasn't it? Quick thinking in a crisis, I mean."

"Any idiot would have thought of it. What was she doing, just showing off?"

"Uh-huh." He took a cigarette case from his pocket, opened it. Arnold jumped up, did the number with his lighter. "Give one to Smith," Grice told him. "He looks like he needs it."

I did need it. Arnold lit a cigarette, held it about six inches from me, grinning. Finally he stuck it in my mouth. I drew deep on it with the resentful gratitude of any addict who's waited too long for a fix.

Grice perched on the arm of Arnold's chair. "Sit down," he offered.

"I'll stand."

"Ma'am?" courteously, to Lydia.

"Go to hell," Lydia said.

Grice winked at her again. He went on: "Ginny thought I'd be impressed by the paintings. They were worth a cool million, she said. She talked like that. A cool million.' Shit." He shook his head, laughing. "She wanted me to fence them for her." He mimicked a prim young voice. '"We're gonna be rich, Frank. You and me!'"

"But you couldn't fence them, so they weren't worth anything."

"Sure I can. There's nothing can't be fenced. But that kind of shit takes time. I mean,
years.
She didn't want to wait."

"And you didn't want her trying it on her own."

"She was a fucking idiot. She couldn't keep her goddamn head down pushing nickel bags at Pussy Prep."

"And you couldn't afford for her to get caught. That would've screwed up your deal with Sanderson, if she'd dragged you in and he found out you'd been messing with his baby."

"Maybe it would've, maybe not," Grice shrugged. "But why take the chance? That pipeline thing is worth two, three million, all legal. 'Go back to Daddy, baby whore,' I told her. 'You're not ready for the big time.' 'Oh, no?' she says. She smiles that smile she had, kind of scary, you know? She walks up to Wally, presses her tits against him like she's been doing for days. He gets all hot. He was so dumb, Wally." Grice took a drag on his cigarette. Arnold nodded solemnly. "He never noticed when she pulled his gun outta his pants. Three lucking shots she put in that jerk. Then she said, 'Is that big time enough?' You know, she never stopped smiling."

Grice pressed his cigarette down into the ashtray. He smiled, folded one hand over the other in a gesture of finality.

My cigarette wasn't finished yet. I watched him through the smoke that drifted up past my eye. "And after you had Jimmy set up for that one, you figured you'd make it two," I said.

"Well, what the hell was I gonna do, send her home? She was bragging to everyone and his brother-in-law about the burglary, like she was the only broad ever stole anything. She would've called the
newspapers
to say she'd
killed
somebody."

"And that would have gotten you involved."

"You bet your ass. Besides, I was thinking about the paintings. I didn't want her to fuck that up for me."

"For you?"

"That's right. For me." He smiled the smile of a python thinking about a mouse. "We went back to my place. Christ, that's what she wanted. We spent the whole next day in the sack. Just me and those tits and that pink ass. She was a great lay, Smith. You ever have her?"

I couldn't do anything but shake my head.

"Well, you should've. You missed something. She told me she talked to you, that night."

I spat my cigarette butt onto the floor, squashed it under my foot. "She was looking for Jimmy."

"She told me. She thought I'd be impressed if she found him for me. I would've, too. But you wouldn't tell her shit."

"After that," I said, trying to keep my voice calm, even, "that night, you took her to Eve's studio?"

"Hell, she took me! She still thought I just didn't believe her. She thought showing me where the goddamn paintings came from would change my mind. 'She's real famous, Frank.'" Mimicking, again. "'I learned all about her in school.' Christ, a million-dollar education, that broad was still dumber than shit."

"She was fifteen, Grice."

"And she'd've been sixteen one of these days, if she'd kept out of my way. I tried to get rid of her. I told Mike and those guys, Jimmy too, not to let her hang around, but she was balling 'em all, what were they gonna do?"

Grice stood, faced me close, slipped his hands in his pockets. "So tell me, Smith. Why hasn't the shit hit the fan yet?"

I ignored the question. "What was the setup?"

He stared, then shrugged. "I found Jimmy's gloves in the truck, left one of 'em next to her in the shed. Didn't you notice?" he asked sarcastically.

"That was all?"

"What did I need? Everyone knew he'd been screwing her. I had the truck, I had the gun. I had Brinkman chasing all over the county hunting Jimmy for doing Wally. The glove was plenty."

"The blood in the truck was hers? And the gun you killed her with—Gould's gun?"

"You know so fucking much, how come the whole county isn't screaming about it? You expect me to believe you weren't counting on a little shakedown?"

"Blackmail's your game, Grice. It isn't mine."

He was starting to speak when the telephone shrilled loudly. Grice may have jumped; I know I did. Lydia was still as stone. Grice backed over to the phone, picked it up. "Yeah?" Silence. His twisted face twisted some more. He tried to speak a few times, finally yelled, "Hold it! Dammit, hold on! No. No! Look, I'll call you back." He dropped the receiver back between its prongs, said to Arnold, "Take them upstairs." He stood by the phone, watching, as Arnold pressed his gun against my spine and showed us the way upstairs.

On the next floor were three disheveled bedrooms and one closed door. Arnold, with a lift of his eyebrows, rousted Otis and Ted from a decaying couch and a
Gilligan's Island
rerun. He passed Ted something from his pocket, nodded toward the closed door, and thumped back down to join Grice.

"Doesn't he ever talk?" Lydia asked into the cold air as we were shepherded up the steep steps beyond the door.

"He talks to Frank," Otis said. "He don't like to talk to no one else."

The stair stopped in a small, slant-ceilinged room. It held two chairs and a table, a sink full of ancient dishes, and a sense of chill neglect.