Джо Горес - Dead skip

Ballard had been right about Sharon’s obvious physical charms, but Parker looked at her like something for sale by the pound. “He wants Odum. Tell him.”

“Odum?” Her voice was strident. “I haven’t seen Howie since—”

Parker made an impatient movement with one hand. Her eyes tried to meet the onyx ones, couldn’t.

She cleared her throat. “1684 Galindo Street.”

The address Ballard had gotten from the parole officer. No good. Kearny wanted the rabbit’s bolt-hole, not the main burrow. And she would know what it was. She’d have gotten it from Odum on the back seat of the T-Bird in some country lane while he was busy between her legs.

Parker looked over at Kearny queryingly. Kearny shook his head. He turned back to Sharon. “Try again.”

It was impossible for her to look innocent, but she tried. “Honest,” she said, “that’s his address.”

Parker didn’t move, but the atmosphere changed. To Kearny it was as though the other man were leaning over her like an oncoming storm. You could almost see the shadow crossing her face. “Once more,” Parker said, and there wasn’t anything in his voice at all.

“Well, uh—” She licked her lips, gave Kearny a quick pleading look, as though somehow he might protect her from what was happening. Kearny kept his own face blank, and she looked back at Parker, saying, “Maybe he means, uh, Howie’s girl friend over in Antioch.”

Parker glanced at Kearny, and Kearny nodded. Parker looked back at Sharon, and waited.

Sharon had started to blink now, and once she started talking, the words poured out in a nervous stream: “He... stays over with her a lot. She... I don’t know her name, but her address is... ah, 1-9-0-2 Gavallo Road. It’s a like new apartment building, twelve units. Howie said—”

“Good,” Parker said. “I’ll be right in.”

She’d been dismissed. It took her a second to get it, and then she scrambled back into the house like a cat leaving a full bathtub.

Parker turned to Kearny. “I’d hate to think you’d memorized those car plates to find out who rented them.”

“What cars?” said Kearny.

The door closed behind him before he was even off the porch.

Some kind of heist, probably. Parker had the sort of cold, lawless control that went with that sort of planning. He’d watch the papers for the next few days for something big, local: a bank vault, an armored car, something like that. Or Parker might kill the whole deal because Kearny had recognized him. Parker wouldn’t still be around if he weren’t a very cautious man while being simultaneously a very bold one.

Getting into the car, Kearny realized that the back of his neck ached. When he rubbed it, his hand came away smeary with sweat. Tension. But what the hell, he had Odum’s ass nailed to the wall. Thanks to Parker.

“You going to start the car?” asked Kearny mildly. He checked his watch. “Your seventy-two hours are almost up.”

That was it. That was just it. Kearny bringing up the goddamn deadline now . The perfect psychological moment. Waste an hour on stakeout while Kearny is wasting an hour at the Beaghler house, then he comes back and gets into your car and calmly tells you to get going. Get going where?

With a muttered curse, Ballard started to open his door.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” demanded Kearny.

“I’m going back inside and turn sweet little Mary upside down and shake her until an address falls out. That bitch knows where Odum is, Dan, and I’m—”

“So do we.”

“I’m going to— Huh?” Ballard froze, stupidly, half in and half out of the car.

“1902 Gavallo Road, Antioch. We don’t know the name of the girl Odum’s shacking with, and we don’t know the apartment number, but there’s only twelve units in the building...”

Ballard had a sinking feeling. “How in hell did you get all that?”

“I turned a bitch upside down and shook her until an address fell out.” Kearny added nothing about Parker. The big, hard criminal had played straight with him.

“Sharon?” Dammit, would he ever get so he didn’t blindly believe whatever they wanted to tell him?

Kearny gave him a version of the interview with Sharon Beaghler sanitized of Parker as they headed east on California 4, out across the valley floor toward the Sacramento River delta and Antioch. Right out of reach of KDM 366 Control, on which Giselle would shortly be trying to call them.

Bart Heslip opened his eyes and looked at the ceiling. What in the hell went on? Where... He licked his lips. He turned his head from side to side. How...

“Christ,” he said, “I’m thirsty. What time...”

His voice trailed off. Before anyone could tell him that it was a handful of seconds past 8:47 on the evening of Friday, May 12, and that he had been in coma for three days, he started snoring again.

Dr. Arnold Whitaker looked around at the exhausted Corinne Jones, the slat-thin red-headed nurse whose behind he had a passion for patting, the little Filipino aide who had just brought Corinne a glass of orange juice and who had recently been catching Whitaker’s magnificently roaming eye. Whitaker beamed.

Corinne, laughing and crying at the same time, headed for a phone.

Their headlights splayed a little white world out in front of them which fled down the highway at their approach. It was still warm enough, in the cup protected by the dim round-topped hills, for them to have their windows open. The wind raked their hair like blowing leaves. Tension was building inside Ballard.

“Do you really think this is it, Dan?” he asked tightly.

“If it isn’t, we’ve wasted the day.”

Kearny drew on his cigarette, stubbed it in the ashtray. Ballard found his lips were dry. Howard Odum, murderer. He couldn’t leave it alone.

“Ah... how do you plan to play it if he is there, Dan?”

“By ear,” said Kearny.

A car on the other side of the highway divider poured a long stream of horn-noise against their windshield as it whipped by. Probably teen-agers, juiced up on the warmth of the night and the fact of their youth.

“Do we... ah, try to take him ourselves?”

Kearny’s square face was without expression; the glare of another passing car momentarily touched his massive jaw. “We aren’t cops, Larry; and we don’t have enough evidence to give the cops. We don’t have any evidence. Not about Griffin, not about Odum, not even about Bart being attacked.”

“Then what—”

“We’re private investigators on a routine repossession assignment, remember? Running down a 1972 Thunderbird two-door hardtop for our clients, California Citizens Bank. When we find the car we will take possession of it on their behalf.” He paused to light another cigarette, and shook one from the pack for Ballard. “But I’m betting that Odum will have to do something about us when we take the car away from him. Whatever he was willing to kill for last February, or last Tuesday, sure as hell hasn’t gone away.”

Meaning they were deliberately trying to provoke some sort of action by Odum. Action, for instance, like the attack on Bart. Well, Ballard thought, fair enough. There were two of them. Then another, oddly disturbing thought struck him. “What if he doesn’t try to stop us, Dan?”

“Then we wait. We wait for Bart to wake up and point the finger at him. And while we’re waiting, he won’t unzip his pants in a men’s room without somebody putting it in a DKA report. Twenty-four hours around-the-clock overt surveillance if necessary.”

His voice was surprisingly rough, full of a suppressed fury that Ballard found totally unexpected. Dan Kearny involved in a case? Kearny? For the very first time Ballard realized that he had been given a deadline so he would think only about investigating instead of about why he was investigating.