Walker was on foot. He tucked his cap down over his eyes, and was wearing just his T-shirt and jeans and boots. He headed back up the dead-end alley, and around the block. He’d left the Colt in the car. It would be overkill to bring it. From what he’d seen of the guy, glances at a distance, he was around fifty and heavy-set, the kind of jowls that suggested a long-time desk man. Sure, he might well have a firearm, but Walker would not give him the time or room to use it. He crossed the street.
Monica was in the burger joint; trucker cap and sunglasses on, in a booth, out of sight.
Walker watched the road from a seat on the stoop of a double-story townhouse. The Crown Vic did a slow pass. The driver clocked the Cuda parked down the lane and pulled over to park halfway down the street. He stayed in his car, the quick flick of the reverse lights signaling that the transmission had gone into park. He watched the laneway from his mirrors, waiting.
Walker gave him a few minutes to settle. The engine was running, vapor trickling out the exhaust. The guy hadn’t got out of the car for at least a couple of hours, from outside the motel to the diner to where Walker had seen him near the gas station to here. He would be well formed into that seat, probably with the aircon set to a comfortable temperature: high sixties or so, for a guy of such girth. He wore glasses, large and silver- or gold-rimmed. He squinted against the sun hitting his windscreen. No seatbelt.
Walker used that sun. The street ran east–west, and he skirted around the block and approached from the east, the guy facing him but his eyes on his mirrors, looking behind. Walker put his sunglasses on. No shirt or jacket. A different silhouette from how he’d appeared earlier this morning. The last few paces came quickly.
The driver didn’t know what hit him. Literally. By the time he did, it was far too late.
Walker gripped the metal NASA key ring of the Cuda in his left fist and smashed the driver’s window out with one sharp blow that made a cracking, popping sound as the safety glass shattered into a million pieces. The guy reeled to his side, away from the onslaught, hands up to protect his face. Walker opened the door and dragged him out and up to the stoop, sticking to the shadows. A truck rumbled by. The man in his grasp was five-nine and 190 pounds and Walker had him pinned up against the door of the stoop, a hand at his throat and the other patting him down. He came up with a snub-nosed .38 from a leather holster under the guy’s jacket.
“Talk,” Walker said, the pistol up under the man’s chin. “Now or never. Who are you and what are you doing?”