CHAPTER 76
CARSON PULLED VICKY’S HONDA to the curb in front of Michael’s apartment building. She did not engage the parking brake or turn off the engine.
They sat staring at the place for a minute. A bland structure, slabs on slabs of apartments, it didn’t look menacing. It was a big, dumb, happy kind of building where nobody would be stalked and killed by relentless meat machines.
“What’s that thing they say about going home again?” Michael asked.
“You can’t.”
“Yeah. That’s it. You can’t go home again.”
“Thomas Wolfe,” she said.
“Whoever. I’m definitely getting a you-can’t-go-home-again vibe.”
“Me too.”
“I’m glad I put on my new white shoes this morning. I’d have felt bad about never having worn them.”
“They’re cool shoes,” Carson said as she pulled away from the curb. “You’ve always got the right look.”
“Do I?”
“Always.”
“That’s nice. That’s a nice thing to say. I’m sorry about earlier, when I said you were going female on me.”
“Water under the bridge.”
“You hungry?”
“That Red Bull gave me an appetite.”
“I’ve got a what-would-you-like-for-dinner-before-we-strap-you-down-in-the-electric-chair kind of appetite. I want to eat everything before the switch is pulled. I’m starved.”
“Want to get po-boys?”
“That’s a start.”
They rode for a longer while in silence than was customary for them, at least than was customary for Michael, and then she said, “You know that plan we had—shooting our way into Helios’s mansion, taking him out?”
“I’ve been revisiting that bit of strategy myself.”
“It took two of us to kill that guy in Arnie’s room, and it was a close thing. And then that pair at the house—”
“Fred and Ginger.”
“They did sort of look like dancers, didn’t they? Okay, Fred and Ginger. I’m not sure we could have held them off if Deucalion hadn’t shown up.”
“Everybody on staff at the mansion is going to be as hard to take down as those two.”
After another silence, Michael said, “Maybe we should drive up to Shreveport to visit Aunt Leelee.”
“Deucalion will have some idea when we meet at the Luxe.”
“He hasn’t called back. He doesn’t leave his phone on, and then he forgets to check his voice mail.”
“Cut him some slack on the telecom stuff,” Carson said. “He’s a late-eighteenth-century kind of guy.”