Therein must lay the tipping point. Letha's declining health shifted some of Gerry's workload onto Wes. For a while, Shapiro understood and sympathized. Eventually self-pity whined that he was running the business, but not profiting from it. The insult to compensatory injury was the toll that stress, sorrow and helplessness had taken on Gerry's usual affability.
Shapiro had two choices: find a less moody, miserly employer, or use insider knowledge to deepen his personal revenue stream.
"He may have started small," Jack said. "For sure, careful. Avoided mistakes that land other fences behind the razor-wire kind at the state hotel."
"That's why he used pay phones and prepaid cell phones."
Jack nodded. "Except if you found him, he's becoming too well known. By volume, if not by name." He glanced in the rearview mirror. "Burglary was your last resort, not a vocation. That friend of a friend of your brother's has to be a regular customer."
A crease tined between Dina's brows. She wouldn't reveal Randy Wexler's friend's name without persuasion. Jack was a pretty good persuader.
"Tooling around in a Lexus tells me Shapiro's gone Superman, too. Unless a crook feels invincible, he doesn't drive a vehicle a tax bracket or two above his day-job income."
The dog-eared unexpected-inheritance story was almost a sure bet, but finite. It explained a few splurges or a boom-to-bust spend-athon. When splurges continue, people start to wonder. If the windfall was that big, or paid continuous dividends, why keep working at a dead-end job you bitch about constantly?
"So many perps," Jack said, as he approached the west entrance to Shiffen Park. "So little time."
The compass-point stone gates were patterned after the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. Bronze plaques embedded in each credited that source of inspiration, a 1902 dedication date, and identified the benefactor as A. N. Onymous.
A philanthropist with no ego and a sense of humor. As Jack always did, he saluted Mr. Onymous as he drove through the gates. Alas, they just don't build rich people and bas-relief granite arches like they used to.
The playground and picnic areas were deserted. The prospect of rain and encroaching darkness had discouraged all but a quartet of female joggers and an elderly gent walking a golden retriever.
"You're meeting deHaven here?" Dina's tone implied a major lapse in intelligence. "He can see you coming a mile away."
"And vice versa. Except it's a hundred feet at most with all the trees and shrubs."
The four sinuous entry roads led to the pavilion in the middle of the park. The original bandstand had burned to the ground in the 1920s. Its replacement and four others had suffered the same fate, until a concrete-company owner partnered with a metal fabricator to build a fireproof structure. The lucky seventh bandstand wasn't as large as the first, but its steel rafters and sheet-copper roof had defeated numerous arson attempts.
Jack parked the Taurus in the open and rolled down the windows. The engine dieseled, then shut down. Mugginess closed in, devouring the lingering coolness inside the car, but Jack needed to hear, as well as watch.
With century-old walnut trees circling in the distance, he was a sitting duck for a marksman with a high-powered rifle and scope. A shooter with a handgun would have to close much of the gap on foot.
"Okay, Annie Oakley. I'd be much obliged if you'd hand over that hog-leg
gently
and hunker down behind the seat."
"But that's"
"Dina Jeanne, I do
not
have time to argue. Give me the damn gun and get your head lower than the window ledges."
The .357 whomped on the front seat. The barrel pointed at Jack, surely by accident. He turned it over, hefted it, shuddered, then laid it down again.
From under the seat, he brought out a .38 Police Special bought from a backroom dealer that afternoon. It wasn't registered to Jack or anyone else, hence doubly illegal to carry concealed. If deHaven came armed, they were even in Jack's eyes, though not the law's.
A queasy flutter in his belly pushed an acrid taste into his mouth. At least nothing was visible in the rearview, except a shadowy pillow and clothes.
"Can I ask you something?" Dina whispered.
"Uh-huh. Gotta answer like a ventriloquist, though."
"Are you scared?"
"Shitless."
Perhaps not the response she'd hoped for, but there you go. Jack was a background checker, a fraud investigator, an adulterer's worst enemy, a skip tracer and a missing-person finder. He'd never confused himself with Doc Holliday and neither had anyone else.
"How long do we have to wait?"
"The note I wrote said eight. It's nineteen minutes till."
The cell phone in his T-shirt pocket cheeped. Jack nearly kneecapped himself on the steering column. "Private" flashed on the caller-ID display. "Yo," was his noncommittal greeting.
"That you, McPhee?"
He gulped down a howl of relief. "I knew I could count on you, McGuire."
"Makes one of us."
Jack scanned the perimeter. "Where are you?"
"Fifty yards due southwest. Tucked up under a bush." Five seconds ticked by. McGuire chuckled. "Can't even see the whites of my eyes, can ya? Shades and natural camo, man. Can't beat 'em for night work."
"I owe you."
"Damn straight." McGuire dictated his cell phone number.
"I dial you back and we're good, right?"
"Affirmative. Clear."
Jack punched the number, let it ring once and canceled the call. The first deep breath in an hour or more was taken and released. He slipped the phone in his pocket and returned to eyeball-and-eardrum patrol.
"So you weren't coming here alone."
"Was until you hitchhiked," he said, opting for diplomacy. "McGuire was a gamble, not a sure thing."
"Promise you'll tell me when you see deHaven? I don't want to miss the arrest part."
Unless a weapon was involved, McGuire wouldn't charge out of the foliage the instant deHaven showed himself. It wasn't illegal to stroll through a public park with or without a satchel containing a quarter million in cash.
On the other hand, innocent people don't pay off blackmailers.
Explaining the finer points of the extortion to Dina through clenched teeth wouldn't be easy. In silhouette, a motionless jaw and lips flapping and contorting signified another unseen occupant, a hidden microphone and transmitter, or serious mental-health issues.
Like a verbal text message, Jack told her about the packet and blackmail note delivered to deHaven at his office. If he took the bait, Jack would hit Redial on his cell phone through his pocket, then stall his exit from the car until the display screen went dark again.
His snug pocket T-shirt allayed suspicion that he was wired for sound. Oh, he was, but cell phones had become as innocuous as ink pens. An open connection to McGuire's cell-phone was a top-notch eavesdropping device, whether a tape recorder was nearby or not.
"Now that
is
slick," Dina whispered. "Did you think of it, or McGuire?"
"Old trick, kid. Done all the time."
On purpose and by accident. Bump the cell phone, jostle it in a pocket, or a purse and whoever you last dialed could be listening in on your current, live conversation.
No problem most of the time, other than burning up minutes on both phones. Very bad form if the spouse you called to tell about meeting a friend for dinner listens in on the hot date you're having with a lover.
Jack slapped a mosquito whining in his ear. Patted the .38 in his lap. Reminded himself to inhale. And exhale. His gaze swept the full darkness, jerking at shadows, at faint moon winks through tiny tears in the clouds, at nothing, expecting something to materialize.
Nocturnal birds sang and squabbled. A power line hummed a monotonous note. Rustling. Muffled snaps. Crunching. Squeaks. Poets who wrote of the night's unrelieved silence were out of their friggin' minds.
Eight twenty-three. Screw punctuality. DeHaven had laughed his ass off feeding the packet and the note into a shredder. Or he was out there, watching Jack sweat like a Clydesdale. Waiting for him to lose his concentration. Drop his guard. Stare too long at one spot.
By Dina's slow, even breathing, she'd dozed off. If the bugs weren't eating her alive, she was roasting in the airless nest behind the seat. Jack envied the oblivion with no relation to time. Missed her hushed voice. She made him think, made him laugh. Kept him honest.
He smiled at the paradox. Only it wasn't one. Actions don't always speak louder than words, much less character. Would he steal to buy medicine to keep his mother alive? To ease her pain?
Private
again appeared on the screen.
"Yo."
"Duty calls." McGuire's voice intimated he was already on the run to his vehicle.
It was a few minutes shy of nine o'clock. Early for Friday night's gun-and-knife club to draw blood. Must be the heat.
Paranoia raised the hair on the nape of Jack's neck. A bogus 911 to dispatch would decoy McGuire. "What's the beef?"
"Stab 'n grab. Vic bled out before EMS arrived."
Jack wiped away the sweat beading his forehead. Somebody died. A legit 10-19 shouldn't feel like a reprieve. And wasn't. "Be careful out there. And thanks again."
"You hangin' in?"
For another fifteen, was Jack's immediate thought. Were deHaven aware of McGuire's presence, he'd make his move. In full darkness. Out of nowhere. "Negatory," Jack said into the cell, then clicked it off.
He keyed the ignition. He wasn't a hero or an idiot. DeHaven wouldn't leave any witnesses. But his vehicle in the vicinity would be damning to an extent.
He dialed back McGuire, who confirmed no parked cars were on the southbound road. Jack would meander through the other three, for general shits and grins.
"Blackmailing the bad guy," he muttered, "only works in the friggin' movies."
22
J
ack shoved the holstered .38 under a suit bag in the trunk.
Tomorrow, he'd disassemble it and scatter the pieces in Dumpsters all over town. Eventually the cops would release its registered twin. Whether returned to Jack or scrap-heaped after a trial's conclusion remained to be seen.
He hoisted the .357 to add it to the makeshift armory.
"Oh, no, you don't." Dina gripped the barrel like a baseball bat. "This is my dad's, not yours."
"Well, it isn't going back in the house. A loaded gun lying around isn't protection. It's an accident waiting to happen."
So was a driveway tug-of-war with a cannon for the rope, but Jack wasn't about to turn loose. Neither was Dina.
"I'll unload it," she said, "after Mom goes to bed."
"And from what you told me, she'll reload it before breakfast."
Dina blew the hair out of her eyes, the better to glare up at him. "I don't expect you to understand, but to Mom, this stupid gun
is
my dad. As long as it's in the nightstand, just as it's always been, Earl Wexler is still here, still with her, protecting his family."
Her chin trembled and there were tears in her voice. "I don't care how crazy that sounds. I can't
won't
take that away from her. I'll be damned if I'll let you do it."
Safety and security were illusions. States of mind inconsistent with reality. Jack sincerely wished Harriet's symbol of them didn't have a trigger, but yeah. He understood. "Okay." He closed the trunk lid. "Annie gets her gun."
He turned the butt toward Dina. "If Little Annie promises to unload it and keep unloading it until Harriet runs out of ammo."
She laughed. "Think Phil will help me dig all those holes?"
"I'll take over the disposal end of it." Which included renting a metal detector to minesweep the yard. One thing about the Wexler women. They were never boring.
Harriet was shuffling around the corner from the kitchen when they walked in. Their faces must have told the tale. "No eye for an eye, huh. Pity."
"Mother."
Dina set her purse and the gun on the table, then went to disentangle the oxygen hose before Harriet tripped on it. "Jack wanted deHaven to implicate himself. He didn't want to kill him."
Well, Jack thought, as he flopped on the couch, unless it was in self-defense. No, not even then. Dead murderers don't stand trial. They're spared the perp walk, the pretrial media feeding frenzy, the public humiliation. Couldn't happen to a more deserving guy.
"Will you quit fussing?" Harriet shooed Dina away. "Go let that silly dog out. He's wiping dog boogers all over my drapes."
