Kermit texted me that Jake had done his morning business. Actually, what he said was that Jake had defected in the yard, but I got the idea. I’d been up for five hours at that point, but for my dog the workday was just getting started. Katie texted me she had gone into the office. My family thus secure and my stomach heavy and happy, I cruised past the Ferry Bar, but it wasn’t awake yet, so I took a drive over to Gaylord and got into an argument with a man who said he didn’t need to make car payments because his installments came out of his paycheck automatically. I concurred that had previously been the case, but in October he lost his job over a disagreement with his employers over whether he did any actual work. No job, no paycheck; no paycheck, no automatic deductions. This was too much math for my customer, who sought to prevail in the disagreement by virtue of his superior belligerence. When I seemed unfazed by his anger, he sought to intimidate me by threatening to call his lawyer, and while he was inside his house making good on his dire promise, I hooked up his vehicle and drove away. By the time I dumped the thing at the repo lot, I had run out of energy—too little sleep, too many carbohydrates.
I went home to nap but found it difficult to get sleep because my dog wasn’t on the bed. Alan passed right out, so I lay there by myself and thought about how different my life would be if I had just looked in the backseat of my car and noticed that Lisa Marie had gotten out. Maybe I would have gone looking for her. Maybe that one little change would have been enough for me not to drive down that ramp to the ferry landing and off into the icy waters of the channel. But even if I had gone into the drink, I would have told everyone I was by myself. They might not have believed me, but they would have had to check out my story. The cops might have located a girl on a bicycle, a girl who saw a man help Lisa Marie Walker after she got out of my car. And we’d have the semen, proving it was not me who had sex with her, and maybe, if Alan’s theory was correct, the killer’s DNA would be in a database somewhere.
I gave up on my nap when Dr. Schaumburg rang my cell phone. He told me he had a letter from the court. “Your probation is being lifted,” he told me sadly.
“First I’ve heard of it.”
“Ruddy, I strongly urge you not to see this as an excuse to discontinue treatment. You have a controllable condition, but it requires close supervision. Your medication needs to be monitored consistently.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I observed agreeably. “Nice talking to you, Bob.”
“Wait, please. Some side effects are unavoidable, but they can be reduced. It’s imperative you stick with the regimen I prescribed. I’m your doctor, Ruddy. Whatever the circumstances that brought us together, my role is to help you get well.”
“And you’ve done a fantastic job. Thanks,” I told him sincerely. “I’m all better now.” When I said good-bye, all I heard in return was dismayed silence, so I disconnected the call.
My call with Katie was a lot more fun. We decided to see each other the next night, and I promised I had some interesting things to tell her—namely, that by then we would have gone to the bank and arrested Blanchard for the crime of hiring a repo man to kill his wife.
I stopped by the Black Bear and chatted with Jimmy, who told me Alice Blanchard and their daughter, Vicki, had gone to visit Alice’s sister. “I didn’t even know she had a sister,” he confessed.
“You still worried about her soon-to-be-ex-husband?”
Jimmy shrugged, running a hand through his black hair. “She says his lawyer sent a pretty nasty letter, which she gave to her lawyer.”
I clapped him on the shoulder. “I think things are going to be okay,” I told him.
“I still can’t find my cell phone.”
“Something tells me it’ll turn up.”
Just then my own cell phone chimed, and I put it on speakerphone when I saw who it was, gesturing to Becky to join Jimmy and me at the bar.
“Ruddy!”
“Hi there, Claude. You and Wilma make it okay?”
“It’s seventy-seven degrees here! Can you believe that? In February!”
Becky leaned in. “Are you at your hotel?” she asked, glancing at me.
“Our hotel!” he gushed. Then there was a loud rustling and a loud squawk from Claude.
“Ruddy? It’s Wilma. This place is amazing. You should see our hotel room!”
“I wanted to tell him, dammit!” I heard Claude complain in the background.
“Everyone is here,” I told her, and they all chorused hellos.
Wilma responded with a giddy squeal. “Wait, hear this? Hear this?” she asked.
What we heard was Claude telling her to give him back the phone.
“That’s the ocean, guys! Our room is right on the ocean!”
“Tell him we’ve got our own refrigerator!” Claude ordered.
“It is so wonderful, you wouldn’t believe it,” she continued. “We got upgraded when we landed; there was a man waiting for us at the airport.”
“Two TVs!” Claude bellowed.
Becky was regarding me suspiciously. I gave her an innocent shrug.
“It’s the happiest day of my life,” Wilma told me.
“If you’re not going to tell him anything, then let me talk,” Claude insisted.
There was a noise that sounded like Wilma had taken the phone and hit him with it. Then he was back. We agreed that he should stop talking to us and go have some fun, and rang off.
“You’re not going to claim any credit for the hotel, are you?” Alan asked.
I didn’t want to answer him in front of people, but I figured he knew the answer.
I wasn’t really sure why, but Claude and Wilma, with their goofy, maladroit lives, meant an awful lot to me.
So Blanchard had made good on his end of the bargain. And, I didn’t care what D.A. Darrell thought; he had definitely delivered something of value.
* * *
At ten the next morning I met Cutty and her team in a parking lot in Acme, a small town on the outskirts of Traverse City. Alan was awake and nervous. The cops had the same panel van. I was introduced to two plainclothes officers who would pretend to be customers in the bank, both of them women, both of them looking like the sort of law professionals you simply don’t want to mess with, stern and tough and strong. I assumed Alan found them sexy, too, but he didn’t comment. I was given the hat and the gum and a file folder with several photographs of Alice Blanchard lying on her bedroom floor, dark blood pooled at her head. The photos were impressively realistic and gruesome. The Photoshop guy was almost too good—the head wound was pretty graphic.
“Where is she really?” I asked Cutty curiously.
She smiled at me warmly. Was Alan right? Did she think I was attractive? Why did I care? I chastised myself. “She and her daughter are someplace safe—don’t worry,” she assured me. “Okay, this is a little different circumstance than the last meet, because he’s gotten what he needs from you. Now you’re just a liability. Watch his hands,” she lectured me. “You don’t like what’s going on, same drill as last time, say not good. We hear that, we’ll be in that office in five seconds. You drop to the floor. We’ll wait to send you in until all the civilians are out and then we’ll block anyone else from entering—the only people in there will be mine. When he gives you the money, don’t count it, but makes sure it’s cash. That’s when you say bingo.”
“Right, don’t settle for travel coupons or something,” D.A. Darrell interjected. Strickland and Cutty both gave him a look. He held up his hands and gave a false smile. “All right. And say something for the mic, like, I did what you wanted and shot her in the head, so I’m here for my money.”
“You really need it to be that explicit?” Cutty demanded, looking exasperated.
The D.A. put an I’m-the-expert expression on his face and nodded solemnly. “Got to wrap things up tight for the jury.”
Strickland and Cutty plainly felt this wasn’t true but elected not to say anything.
“Just don’t take any unnecessary risks,” Alan urged, as if he were part of the briefing team.
He became particularly agitated when it was apparent I couldn’t wear a bulletproof vest under my coat. The thing was just too tight.
“The coat sort of shrunk over the years,” I explained lamely.
The laughter that followed cut a lot of the tension, except for Alan’s. “We really need that vest,” he protested as one of the cops put it back into the van.
“I really think the risk is pretty low. You shout no good and hit the floor, he’s going to have no idea what the hell is going on. By the time he stands up to see what you’re doing, my officers will have their weapons drawn and in his face,” Cutty said. “But it’s your choice. We can hold off until we find a coat that fits over the vest.” She didn’t want to wait, I could tell. The hunt was on, and her vivacious eyes were alive with it.
“Let’s do it,” I said.
* * *
The wooden arm at the bank parking lot was broken off, and Zoppi’s Jeep was gone from where I’d parked it with the other repos in the back. It would be fun to take it from him again. The two women cops were already inside when I arrived, filling out deposit slips or something at two counters. To my right were the tellers and a manager, all behind bulletproof glass. Straight ahead was an empty conference room, and to the right, in a glassed-in office, was Blanchard, talking on the phone. His eyes bulged when he saw me.
“He seems surprised we’re here,” Alan said.
I knocked on his open door. “Got a minute?” I asked as he ended his phone call.
“The hell are you doing here?” he demanded, looking afraid.
Unasked, I slid into a chair in front of his desk. “I did what you asked me to do last night, so I’m here for my money.”
“I never said to come here. This is where I work.”
“You never said not to,” I countered, sounding like the tough hit man I was supposed to be. “I came here after the Yancy job, remember?”
“That was completely different, you idiot! Close the door. Jesus.”
I was supposed to leave it open but didn’t see how I could refuse. I eased it shut, momentarily meeting the eyes of one of the two female cops in the lobby. “I printed up some pictures for you,” I told Blanchard, not having to fake a chill demeanor after the idiot crack.
He was so jumpy, I expected him to all but faint when he saw the fake murder scenes. Instead his face changed completely. His eyes widened, like a little boy unwrapping a birthday gift. He picked up the photo, then the next one, a gloating smile on his face.
There was something so ugly and reptilian about the way he was receiving this information, I felt a cold anger building in me. This was his wife.
“It’s almost sexual for him,” Alan observed.
“I had to kill the kid, too,” I blurted, not even realizing I was going to say it until the words came out. Blanchard stared at me. “She saw me. Sorry.”
“I said not to touch her!” he snarled at me, his face turning crimson. Finally some emotion. So he did care about the child, at least.
“I had no choice.” I shrugged.
“Well, goddammit, you fucking moron. I don’t have any insurance on the kid. Won’t get a dime for her, and now I’ll have to deal with all the funeral expenses,” he fumed.
“My God,” Alan said.
Enough. “I did what you asked. I shot your wife. I want my fee.”
“Your fee.” He shook his head wonderingly. “Just how stupid are you? Come in here the morning after my wife is murdered, before anyone has even found her body. Everyone in the bank has seen you now. And what do you think, I’m just going to hand you a bag of cash now? Place of business?”
“You handed me a bag last time. And it’s a bank: Are you saying you don’t have any money here?”
“I’m saying, I don’t have any money for you here. Not that kind of money.”
I stared at him, unsure what I should do next. We were hardly at bingo. Almost unconsciously, I turned to look at the two police officers, but they were both studiously ignoring me. One of them was laboriously counting out a small stack of one-dollar bills; the other was punching buttons on a calculator. I glanced back at Blanchard, and he was nodding furiously.
“That’s right; even some customers have seen you. Now, here’s the deal. Story is that you came in to discuss a repo, all right? See the damage to my gate? Tony Zoppi stole his Jeep back, the moron. You go get the thing, let him know he’s messing with the wrong guy. Got it?”
“What about my money?”
He seemed impatient with me, as if the job itself should have been its own reward. “Need to think about where we can meet.”
“Why not where we were the other morning?”
His eyes narrowed. “You don’t decide this. I’ll think of something and call you later today, all right?”
“He hasn’t even thought that far ahead,” Alan marveled. “He doesn’t have a plan.”
Well, that was just how Blanchard rolled.
“Okay,” I agreed. “My cell phone’s almost out of juice. If I don’t answer, just leave a message.”
“Not leaving a message,” he replied in a mocking voice. “You don’t answer, you are shit out of luck.”
“All right. Then call me at the Black Bear.” I handed over another one of my professional bar bouncer cards, and now I was down to ten. I stood up. I didn’t know if I had messed this up or not, but I hadn’t gotten to bingo and felt like I needed to say something to salvage the situation. “Don’t forget to call me. You won’t like what will happen if you forget to call me.”
He gave me a cold smile. “Don’t worry. You’ll get your money. Going to do lots of business together, you and me.”
“Lots of business?” Alan repeated incredulously. “More murders? How does someone like this get into banking?”
I left the building, one of the two women cops coincidentally departing at the same time. The other one went to the teller window.
I smiled at the woman cop, who gave me a completely noncommittal expression in return as I held the door for her. I guessed she was waiting to find out from her bosses whether we were all happy with Ruddy McCann.
I noticed the panel van parked across the street as I got into my repo truck, and followed it when it pulled out into traffic.
* * *
We went back to the same parking lot in Acme. The van side door slid open and Strickland, Cutty, and D.A. Hughes all got out, stretching their limbs.
“I think we got enough,” Cutty told me. “But he really wants some cash to change hands.” She jerked her thumb at D.A. Darrell.
“What was the whole thing with the cell phone?” The D.A. asked me.
“My cell phone is running low on battery, and I don’t have a car charger,” I explained.
“Great,” he muttered.
“What is your problem?” I asked.
“My problem is that you keep making changes to the plan without authorization.”
“Look…,” I said, the blood flowing to my face.
“Let’s all relax,” Strickland suggested.
We all stood around, relaxing. “So, what do we do now?” I finally asked.
“Now,” Cutty replied, “we wait for Blanchard to call you.” She eyed me. “This isn’t going to go down behind bulletproof glass. He might think it’s best not to pay you anything. We better get you a vest.”