Twenty minutes later they were back in the kitchen.
Jack dumped the man’s wallet, the woman’s pocketbook, and the contents of the glove compartment onto the table, then began sorting through them.
Lyle had this dazed expression. He’d looked that way since they found a .32 caliber pistol in the trunk’s now-empty spare tire well.
“Those two people,” he muttered. “They want me dead.”
“What gives you that idea?” Jack said. “Just because they
shot at you, tried to burn down your house, and run you down with their car?”
“This isn’t funny.”
Jack looked up from the car registration and driver licenses he’d collected. He had to lighten this guy up.
“Damn right it’s not funny. Especially cutting their clothes off.” He cringed at the memory of the woman’s pale, squat, flabby body. “I had to keep mentally dressing her.”
Finally a smile from Lyle. This was one major stiff.
“Okay,” Jack said. “From what I can gather here, we’re dealing with a married couple, Carl and Elizabeth Foster.”
Lyle pulled a stack of business cards from the purse and shuffled through them. “I’ll be damned!”
“Not if I can help it,” Charlie said.
If Lyle heard, he didn’t acknowledge the remark. “She’s Madame Pomerol! I’ve heard of her. She was on Letterman.”
Jack rarely watched talk shows. “She’s big time?”
“Pretty much. Upper East Side. I hear she’s been hot the past few years. Her name’s popped up quite a bit from my sitters—a lot of them used to be Pomerol regulars.”
“There you go,” Jack said. “You know who, and now you know why.”
“They Upper East Side?” Charlie said. “How come they got such a hooptie ride?”
Jack was about to explain that it was a city thing, but Lyle cut him off.
“The bitch!” he muttered, still staring at Madame Pomerol’s business card. “She tried to kill me!”
“The husband was driving the car that just missed you, don’t forget,” Jack told him. “Looks like a joint effort to me.”
“Yeah, but I bet she’s been running the show.”
Charlie said, “Yeah, well, don’t really matter who was the shot calla. The right-now real is that our garage is holdin’ two butt-naked honkies tied up like calves ready for slaughter. What we gonna do with them?”
“Not sure yet,” Jack said. He was winging it here; usually he went into a job with at least half a plan, but events tonight had moved too swiftly. “The more immediate question is, What are we gonna do to them?”
Charlie was watching Jack. “What you mean, ‘to’? I know they tried to hurt us—”
“They tried to kill us, Charlie,” Lyle said. “Not hurt us, kill us! Don’t you forget that!”
“A’ight. So they tried to off us. But that don’t give us no right to off them.” He was fingering his WWJD button again. “We gotta turn the other cheek and hand them over to the police.”
Jack didn’t like the way this was going. “Do that and you leave yourself open for charges like assault and battery, kidnapping, unlawful confinement, and who knows what else,” he said. “You want that?”
“No way,” Charlie said.
“And who said anything about killing them?”
“Well, the way Lyle talkin’—”
Lyle said, “I didn’t mean we should kill them, Charlie. For Christ sake, you know me better than that! It’s just that I don’t know what we’ve accomplished here besides figuring out who they are. We let them go and they’re right back on our asses tomorrow, trying to off us or run us out of town. I don’t want to keep looking over my shoulder, man. I want this done with!”
“That’s where I come in,” Jack said. He felt the adrenaline start to flow, singing along his nerves as the beginnings of a plan took shape. He took one of the Madame Pomerol business cards from Lyle and waved it in the air. “We’ve got their address. We’ve got a set of their keys. Let’s see if we can rig some surprises for them.”
Charlie nodded. “I’m down with that. What you got in mind?”
“Still working on it, but I think I can find a few ways to keep Madame Pomerol too distracted to worry about bothering you. At least in the short run. We can worry about the long run later. But if I’m gonna make a move it’s got
to be tonight, and that means I’ll need some help.” He turned to Charlie. “Where’s your key cutter?”
Charlie blinked and looked at Lyle. “Key cutter?”
“I know you’ve got one. Take me to it. We’re wasting time.”
“Do it,” Lyle said.
Charlie shrugged. “Okay. We doin’ copies of their crib keys?”
“You got it. And while we’re at it, what do you keep in the way of spare parts for your magic tricks?”
Charlie grinned. “Got boxes and boxes.”
“Swell. Show me your stock and let’s see if you’ve got anything we can put to use.”
Jack didn’t know how the night would turn out, but he knew he’d be a lot later getting to Gia’s than he’d planned. Had to give her a call soon. But not now. His blood was tingling and he felt more alive than he had in months.