At eight thirty I left the office. On the Granville Street Bridge I saw the Navigator hove into view behind me. Nagy at the wheel, no pretense of tailing.
Instead of turning off to Granville Island, I let the street carry me up past Broadway, down the ramp into a parking garage near a Chapters. The SUV followed, stopping behind me, pinning the Cadillac between concrete pillars.
I stepped out of my car and waited for Nagy. He took his time approaching me.
“He wants his check back,” Nagy said. “Seeing as you’re not smart enough to play along.”
“How do you know I wasn’t on my way to cash it?”
“By now you’d’ve done it. Turn out your pockets.”
I didn’t move. “Turn out your pockets,” he repeated.
He came forward, the cold light of the caged fluorescent overheads giving him a gaunt, sickly color. I shifted my weight to my back foot. Nagy reached to the small of his back and unsheathed a blade.
It was plastic-handled and coated with carbon fiber, and didn’t gleam or reflect anything. He held it loose in his left hand, chest-level, like a conductor’s baton. He stood between me and the exit ramp.
“Where’s Winslow tonight?” I asked.
“Worry about this.”
I’d once taken a knife away from someone. She’d been unskilled and drunk, and we’d both needed stitches.
Nagy looked comfortable holding the weapon. Faded red letters were tattooed on his knuckles. At this range they were unreadable.
“Jailhouse ink?” I asked.
He grinned and stepped forward. The right caught me on the temple. It wasn’t the hardest I’ve ever been hit but it stunned me. The second one sent me hard against the Cadillac.
Holding the blade in front of my eyes, Nagy reached into my pockets, removed my wallet and took the folded check. There were two twenties in the billfold. He took those, too.
“That’s just petty,” I said, the taste of blood in my mouth.
He flicked out with the blade. I recoiled. My head banged into the car. Nagy laughed.
“Next time,” he said.
He got in the SUV and drove up the ramp to Granville.