Brett Halliday - Win Some, Lose Some

Earlier, Downey had drawn on his personal cache for the negotiation with Simpson. He had a horror of the stuff personally, but sometimes it was the only way to get information. He had another three ounces in a manila envelope in his car. Benjamin and Vaughan had left the pickup unlocked. Downey sneaked past and stuck the manila envelope on the floor under the front seat, the first place a cop looks when he is searching a vehicle.

They left DeLuca in Miami. Greco didn’t expect a man like DeLuca to involve himself on the point-and-shoot level, but considering that they were strangers in town, it would have been helpful to come along and make sure they were going the right way on the Interstate. The arrows got confusing as hell out by the airport, and Greco wasted an hour before he could get himself straightened out. Nick slept through it all. He was in a terrible mood when he woke up, depressed and paranoid, and Greco had to give him a real locker-room talk-don’t let your friends down, so on and so forth-and tell him how easy it was going to be. It had to be easy, in fact, or they would go back to the girls, and tell DeLuca they hadn’t been able to find the fat man.

According to DeLuca, Canada had been kidnapped, not by professionals who knew what they were doing, but by a couple of two-bit boppers. Their target would be immobilized, without bodyguards, pinpointed, an easy knock-over. It would seem that the kidnappers had killed him, and there would be less heat. Canada’s loyal followers wouldn’t be thinking in terms of revenge, and the transition would go smoothly. There would be rumors that DeLuca had masterminded it, but that was O.K. It would show he was capable of using his head. If he saw a chance of avoiding trouble for himself and his people, he took it.

Greco was used to parking lots, but this one, plunked down in the middle of unfriendly countryside, was ridiculous. He thought at first it was going to be like looking for one particular car at Shea Stadium during a Mets double-header, in short, impossible. They were looking for a white pickup with a camper body over the cab. It turned out that there weren’t too many of those. They drove up and down the streets until they found it. Now what to do? As far as he could tell, only one road connected the parked trailers with the highway. That could be blocked by a single car. Whenever Greco went into a restaurant, he looked around for the exits before sitting down because he wanted to have a choice of directions. He decided there was only one thing to do here-leave the car on the highway and walk in. He drove back, found a grassy place where he could pull over, then raised the hood when he left, to indicate engine trouble in case anyone wondered.

Nick didn’t like it. His platform shoes were designed for walking across carpets, not ground. Greco explained it: if they got caught in there, with their car on the wrong side of a barricade, they were in trouble. There were no subway stations in this part of the world. They needed wheels.

Nick continued to grumble. He tried walking in stocking feet. That wasn’t much better. Strange noises came from the vegetation. He was hobbling badly by the time they came in. Greco immediately saw one defect in his plan. In here, nobody walked. On their own two feet, they stood out, especially in their Miami Beach clothes. So he picked up a gas can from beside one of the dark trailers. Now if anybody saw them, they were going for gas.

“I didn’t think it would be like this,” Nick complained.

Neither had Greco. Having lived his whole life in a city, he would have preferred a city location. To date, he had killed two people. The first time, he had been angry. The guy had lied to him and tricked him, and he deserved what he got. Greco was surprised at how little it affected him. He had thought it would be more of a high. The next time, he was driven to a bar in the South Bronx. His man didn’t know him, but he saw something in Greco’s manner. He had a reddish face, with a little map of the circulatory system on his cheeks, and in one second he turned as white as a piece of paper. He shrank back, holding up one hand. That had been nice.

Now, if he did well on this, it could lead to something else. The word gets around: Greco isn’t only a short-range bar shooter, he’s a boy who can hit the good curve. Anybody could do that Bronx job. But to go after somebody in a strange environment with an inexperienced partner, come through, and get away clean, for that kind of out-of-the-ordinary thing you can name your own price.

“You’ve still got the gun.”

“Mother of God,” Nick exclaimed, clapping his stomach. Then he gave his goofy laugh. “Sure I got it. Stop pissing your pants.”

It was his first joke in an hour, which meant he was feeling better. Greco was sharp and ready. Simpson, the scared junky, had said there were two vehicles parked separately, the trailer with the stolen stuff in it and their own pickup. A gun to their head. “Where’s the fucking trailer?” No point in a massacre; tie the jerks up after they told him would be good enough. Then Canada. Strangulation would be quieter, neater.

At the pickup camper, he whispered directions to Nick. They took out their guns. But out of the corner of his eye, he saw a police car blinking its way in from the highway. It couldn’t have anything to do with them, Greco and Nick, because as far as they were concerned they hadn’t done anything yet.

“What’s the matter, what’s the matter?” Nick whispered.

One more difference between a trailer park and an ordinary parking lot is that most of the vehicles are too tall to see over. The police car came on, appearing and disappearing. When it turned into their street, Greco hit Nick on the shoulder, and they got down out of sight, wriggling well in. It was a trailer on blocks, far enough off the ground so Greco didn’t think they would get too much oil on their clothes.

The patrol car stopped beside the Benjamin-Vaughan pickup, and the cops came boiling out.

“Shake it down,” a voice said.

The two guys inside were awakened roughly and made to step out while the truck was searched. When something was found under the front seat, the cops were extremely pleased, the guys were surprised and indignant. A search warrant was mentioned. The cops had one, as it happened, for precisely this pickup, with the right marker number. It was a dope thing, as far as Greco could figure. There was a lot of loud talk. Lights went on, and the people in the trailer above them began moving around. Greco put a hand on the small of Nick’s back to keep him from shaking and transmitting his shakes to the trailer floor. One of the cops crawled part way under the pickup with a flashlight. Greco and Nick, only one vehicle away, lay absolutely still, hoping to be mistaken for unevenness in the ground.

It was over finally, and the area began to settle down. Above them, the man wanted some sex before he went back to sleep. The woman didn’t, and she prevailed. The quarrel was clearly audible through the floor. Time went slowly for the two New Yorkers. Was there anything they could do now but go home? They couldn’t break into every unattached trailer on the grounds, looking for the one that held Canada. DeLuca would understand that.

Still, Greco wasn’t quite ready to give up. When the guys said they’d never seen that envelope, it had sounded sincere. And if they were out robbing in Homestead, they couldn’t be down in Key West picking up shit, could they? So if somebody wanted them out of the way, it would have been easy to walk by and drop an envelope in the truck. It would do no harm to stick around a few minutes and find out.

Nick had to piss. Greco told him, for God’s sake, to roll over and piss. The stream was cut off abruptly as footsteps approached.