“YOU SAID you needed a messenger,” Barry hissed into his cell phone, wincing when it brushed the gauze taped over his split cheek. “That’s all I agreed to.”
It was maybe an hour after they’d left Griswold in the BART station. Barry and Clyde had jumped on a streetcar and hightailed it to Pier 39, where they could get lost in the crowds. They were on the wooden walkway behind the stores and restaurants. Through a breezeway came the buzz of tourists, the carousel cranking out its song. At the end of the pier, a cluster of people looked down at the sea lions sunning themselves on floating platforms in the harbor, braying like a bunch of rowdy men arguing at the horse races. And there was Clyde, sitting a few feet away from Barry, just out of earshot, cool as a cucumber and shoveling doughnut holes into his mouth.
“Who is this guy you partnered me with, anyway?”
A voice barked through the phone. Barry ducked his head like a scolded dog. “It’s all over the news, man!” Barry said. “I’m kind of freakin’ out over here. Even bums on the street know Garrison Gri—you know who.”
Barry pressed the knuckles on his free hand against an eyeball and listened. “Yeah, we got rid of it. Clyde said he wiped it clean and threw it in the bay.”
Crazy Clyde stared down a seagull perched on the railing in front of him. He pelted a doughnut hole at the bird. The seagull flapped up and then down to retrieve its prize.
“Look,” Barry said into his phone. “Can I just get my money? You can find someone else. Or let Clyde take over from here.”
He listened for a moment and then slapped his thigh. “But that’s not my fault! He didn’t have it on him. I might have been able to talk to the guy about it if the Sundance Kid hadn’t shot him.”
“We did look everywhere,” Barry argued. “There was only one book in his bag, but it was brand-new.”
“But you said it would be super old. You made that very clear.”
“I don’t know. It was by Poe. Gold-something-or-oth—”
“Well, I didn’t know! You said an old book. If you’d said ‘take any book’—”
“No, it’s not with Griswold. I threw it in the trash.”
“I’m sorry, okay? We’ll go back and look. Then you give me my money and I’m out. Right?”
“Fine. But we can’t go now. That place’ll be swarming with cops. We’ll go this weekend. Tomorrow. That’s the best I can do—take it or leave it.”