CHAPTER 12

Silent pernicious demons gained on a terrified Gillespie as he scrambled across a dark room with legs like sacks of sand. Light glowed from a corner of the ceiling. It was an open trapdoor that must lead to an attic. As he struggled to get up there, his pursuers grabbed him by the ankles with hot, steely hands. The physical pain and dread were all one, an indistinguishable horror. He couldn’t scream, could only blubber like an infant. Scraping skin, he wriggled through the opening. His body was still maddeningly torpid, but this new place offered a seed of hope. Until he looked around to find himself in an identical dark room, another trapdoor in the corner of the ceiling, the demons still in pursuit. Oh no, no. “No, no, no!” Someone was shaking him. He curled up in a ball, covering his head, his face, his nuts. It was real. And he looked around and saw he was home in bed but felt no relief.

Tina watched him with concern, saying nothing. Nothing new about that. She’d already edged away in case he flailed his arms like he did sometimes. He tried to ignore his shame as she casually took everything in, the smug, unfeeling cunt.

“What time is it?” he asked her.

“It’s almost seven. Your cell phone’s been ringing.”

“Why don’t you ever wake me on time? . . . Cocksucker! Gimme my phone.”

“I tried . . . to. You—” She mumbled the rest of it.

“Bullshit you tried. You forgot.” Tina wouldn’t ask him why he didn’t set the alarm. That was one of the good things about his wife. She didn’t try to win arguments. But it was one of the bad things too. She left the room and returned with his cell phone, which he took outside by the pool.

Shrek must have called seven times. It was unusual for him to call even once. Gillespie always called him. Maybe they were closing in. Any pressure at all and Shrek would open up like a can of tuna. They’d love it down at the station too. D’ja hear? Smurfy got busted for the Sussman thing! Nothing left to do but hunker down and hope no one stumbles down the right trail. But what about the money? Gillespie had counted on it. Jesus, he’d put $500 down on the boat.

He texted Shrek: “same place—4” Seconds later he got back an “ok.” He’d have to hustle.

He found Shrek, his beloved braid cut off, standing in front of his mother’s house near the airport. Guys like him stood in front of their mothers’ houses all over the city, all over the country, selling drugs. They were peaches you picked off a tree whenever you needed one. “You didn’t write down the address,” Shrek complained as soon as Gillespie pulled over. He climbed in and was struggling with his seat belt as Gillespie pulled away. He could barely get it around him.

“One eighteen, I said. One eighteen’s not hard to remember.” Gillespie didn’t holler. Hollering could frighten Shrek into making more mistakes, stupider ones. Handling him was like trying to call cats. Dumb, nervous cats. But it wasn’t just that he didn’t want to scare him. The truth was, Shrek was the only friend he had left in this asshole city. A mile down the road Gillespie pulled into the lot outside a diner. Shrek went inside and brought back their drinks—coffee for Gillespie, a Perrier for himself. Gillespie always got a kick out of the fairy dust substances Shrek was faithful to.

Twenty years earlier seven people had been murdered in this diner, herded into the kitchen by crazy stickup men and shot like pigs. After such calamities places would always change hands, get a new name, a new sign out front. But Gillespie didn’t forget. They never found the killers, never cleared the books anyway, though they were almost certainly dead or in prison for other crimes.

“All that money sitting there,” Gillespie said. “Twenty thou at least. Just like I said. Right next door. Open sesame. What the fuck. I mean I could find a thousand guys who know the difference between one eighteen and one fucking sixteen. I try doing you a favor and this is what I get.”

“But those addresses, they’re all screwed up down there. It’s like the people living there? They don’t want you to know which is which. And you told me not to write anything down, remember? It’s what you said.”

He was right on both counts. Don’t put it in writing. Number two rule behind don’t get caught. Addresses down there were hard to find. People with serious money were secretive. Gillespie should have cruised past and checked it out. Instead he’d provided inexact information and shifted the blame. Such a sweet setup too. Gypsy jokers don’t call 9-1-1 when somebody steals their drug money.

“Guess I can’t go back, huh?” Shrek asked feebly. When he got nervous, as he was now, he tilted his head up as he spoke, squinting slightly as though reciting something from memory.

“You think that douche bag’s still there? He probably hauled ass back to the desert soon as the patrol cars left. Look, numb-nuts, tell me something, will you? Will you tell me?”

He’d promised Shrek never to call him numb-nuts but couldn’t bring himself to apologize. Shrek was looking at him funny, like he expected something.

“What?” said Gillespie.

“You wanted to ask me something.”

Christ, what was it? He must be losing his mind.

“We were talking about the douche bag,” Shrek said helpfully.

“Now I remember. It was—I’m not even gonna ask you what you were doing in the closet. But the knife, what’s with the knife?”

“I don’t know. I got scared.”

“An old guy you could break in half and you got scared.”

“You said it was a dealer there.”

“Next door, numb-nuts. Next door there was a dealer. Probably got taken down by somebody else by now.”

At least nobody found any DNA or fibers. In fact, except for Sussman’s statement and the one from that vampire chick, there was no evidence that anything occurred at his place. The gal, she resented Sussman, maybe even hated him. That was easy to spot. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. He’d heard that somewhere. Maybe in a Batman movie. And if no crime occurred at Sussman’s place, if no one jumped out of that closet, everyone would stop looking for Shrek. Sussman would just be an old man who fell down and made up a story. A has-been looking for attention, a treasonous asshole exposed for his lies, leaving Gillespie in the clear.