Slaughter - Lutz John (читать книги без txt) 📗

“That’s how I got here,” Nancy Weaver said.

No one had heard the street door open, but there she was, in four-inch heels and a businesslike pants suit that was a size too small for her and looked completely unbusinesslike.

She displayed no injuries.

Helen, in the complete silence, watched Weaver move all her parts as she crossed the room and sat down in one of the desk chairs. Her pose and posture were calculatingly prim. The effect looked nasty.

Helen crossed her arms and glanced around. All the maniacs were present.

All of us.

Except for the police commissioner.

Quinn smiled at her, reading her thoughts while she was reading his. “Renz doesn’t want to know.”

Helen knew he was right. Not that anything would prevent Renz from throwing them all under the train if it was to his advantage. As long as he held that strategic position he was fine with whatever they did.

“Okay,” Quinn said. “I’ll clue in Minnie Miner later.”

“What if she doesn’t want to play?” Helen asked. Knowing how foolish the question was even as she spoke.

“She’ll play,” Quinn said. “Here’s the plan.”

He felt the familiar thrill as he realized that at that moment no one in the room wanted to be anywhere else. Feel anything else.

Be anyone else.

Two hours later, after her show, Quinn made his pitch to Minnie Miner. As he spoke, he saw in her face what he’d seen in the faces of the others. In their eyes and in the slight forward lean of their bodies.

An acknowledgment and a readiness.

Wolves and gray wolves.

She said, “I’m in.”

When Quinn got home he found a message on his answering machine.

It was Renz, informing him that the pieces of the broken coffeemaker were clean of fingerprints.

What they’d both expected.

The coffee-bean press was only a coffee-bean press.

65

St. Louis, 2000

They were by the river, just north of downtown St. Louis, in the commercial part of the city. The doors of the empty shipping container opened out and were cracked just enough to let a breeze in. Jordan wished it had been luck instead of a breeze.

Things had gone wrong for Jordan and Jasmine. Jordan had been turned down for half a dozen jobs. Most places simply weren’t hiring, or at least told him that. The last place he’d applied, unloading cargo from one of the many barges that moved up and down the river, had resulted in a fight with the man who would have been Jordan’s boss.

He was a large man whose face was like a map of madness. Yet he succumbed early and turned away from Jordan after a brief exchange of punches. There was something about the boy’s eyes. The man had seen eyes like that in a winded fox that had been cornered by half a dozen hounds and knew it was going to die. It had fought even harder, and almost survived. It wasn’t going to give up—ever. That in itself could be a force.

“You’re the only man I know,” Jasmine told Jordan, “who can lose a job and a tooth in the same day.”

“Least it’s a molar,” he said, flashing his handsome smile.

“But you can’t chew your steak,” Jasmine said.

Jordan spat off to the side. “I don’t anticipate that’s gonna be a problem.”

“We can go to that diner up on South Broadway.” For the first time, she noticed that the knuckles on his right hand were reddened and cut. The hand was slightly swollen.

“We get done eating,” he said, “and we’re gonna experience an issue.”

“Issue?”

“They’re gonna be unreasonable at the diner and want money from us after we eat. You know how they are. They’ll see it as some kinda trade.”

“They’ll just have to learn to share,” Jasmine said.

“Share?”

She smiled. “Somebody say something about sharing?”

Jordan felt something shift in the core of him. Where his heart maybe should be. The thought amused him.

Jordan remembered telling Jasmine that if two people knew a secret, it was no longer a secret. That had seemed wise then. It seemed wise now.

Even if they trusted each other totally now, and felt they would share that trust forever, they both knew a day might come—would surely come—when things would change. If they delayed long enough, the secret that was murder would become again a real secret.

Jordan knew it, and was sure that when the time came, he would act in his own best interest.

Jasmine also knew this, and had contemplated killing Jordan first. Then she’d become resigned.

She decided that if Jordan didn’t want her enough to let her live, she wanted to die.

Love? she wondered.

Actually, she thought, there was no titanic struggle raging in her breast. It was really kind of obvious and simple. She and Jordan were like two shipwrecked people in the middle of an ocean, starving in a lifeboat. Neither spoke what each knew the other was thinking. Eventually, one could only survive by eating the other.

66

St. Louis, the present

Jordan had this persistent notion that the police were gaining on him. He had plenty of net worth, and stolen credit and debit cards that were too hot to use. He knew the police could quickly trace that kind of plastic, so he stayed with the rapidly diminishing cash that he kept hidden in a money belt.

Only now the ready cash had about run out, and the dangerous cards beckoned more and more to him. There seemed to be only one thing to do—or rather several things. They all had to result in the acquisition of money.

Jordan noticed what seemed to be a young college guy walking toward him. He changed course slightly and approached the boy, making note of his expensive-looking sweater tied by the arms around his neck. Mr. Preppy. A closer look took in deliberately worn-out jeans, and expensive-looking leather boots that had built-up heels that made the kid appear taller.

They were pretty much alone, in a place not far from where the Eads Bridge crossed into Illinois. Across the Mississippi the grim outline of East St. Louis was sharp against the cloudless sky. Down here on the levee the sun seemed to burn with an extra brightness, casting sharper shadows. River traffic seemed not to move until you looked away and then back at it and realized the scene changed slightly. It made Jordan wish, in some part of him, that he was a French impressionist painter, wise to the ways of light and shadow.

A man and woman walked close together and stopped now and then to kiss. They were the only other people in sight. Jordan waited until they disappeared into what looked like some kind of parking structure.

A car emerged five minutes later. It was a dented convertible with the top up, and was in no way a rental. The woman was driving and was alone. She was in a hurry and didn’t look anywhere except straight ahead. She didn’t apply the brakes as she pulled out onto the road.

Almost immediately, the preppy-looking guy reappeared and walked along the levee, seemingly enjoying the lingering morning and the nearby rush of muddy water.

Jordan approached Mr. Preppy, keeping his hands in his pockets so he’d seem more casual than dangerous. Noting that the boy appeared scared, he smiled with false assurance and said, “You look like a fella who’d give a desperate man a small loan.”

Now the kid did look afraid. His eyes darted around, seeking company or some sort of help.

But there was no one.

He tried a smile and a head shake. “Sorry, I don’t have a cent on me.” He stepped to the side and walked around Jordan.

Jordan moved to block him and took his hands out of his pockets.

At first he thought the kid was going to turn and run. Jordan didn’t want that. In fact, he decided that if the boy did break and run, he, Jordan, would run the opposite direction.