Brett Halliday: Win Some, Lose Some

“I just came from the site. A couple of places where he might be, like a stretch of conduit, and there’s that whole swamp country around there. I’m not saying we ought to go out and look. We wouldn’t know where to begin. We don’t care about Canada-write that off. The money’s the thing. Listen, remember that payloader?”

“I’ll never forget.”

“I found out this morning that Benjamin, one of the guys who ripped off the stuff, is a payloader driver. That’s pretty conclusive.”

“They’re in jail.”

“Not anymore they’re not. Somebody bailed them. They stashed Canada somewhere, in a junked car or wherever, and he’s still there, isn’t he? They wouldn’t have time yet to move him. Now if I was in their shoes, I’d go to work as though nothing happened. They’re working overtime on that highway job, to seven or eight most days. Four-thirty is when they want the money to be ready. They’ll slip off to go to the john or something, pick up the dough, however they’ve got it arranged, hide it, and get back on the job. That’s guesswork, but it fits the facts. So what we do, we work on it on both ends. The money guy’s somebody nobody ever heard of, DeLuca. He’s my responsibility. You guys get over to the site and watch the exits, keep an eye out for Vaughan and Benjamin. We’ll rig up something good. When they go looking for the money, it may not be there. Or we’ll let them pick it up, put on the masks, and take it away, whichever. I’m not talking nickels now. I’m talking a million bucks.”

They didn’t see any of this as clearly as he did. The more he argued, the realer it looked. It took him over an hour to get them out of the house. At the end he was talking wildly, hardly knowing what he was saying.

He drove back to the site, showed his badge to the foreman, and asked him to identify a whole string of names, made up on the spot except for Benjamin and Vaughan. Vaughan was a dump-truck driver, in and out. Benjamin, the payloader guy, was working back and forth between the gravel pile and the hot plant.

Downey deployed his troops. He wanted them both to be really invisible, which meant they had to have a legitimate reason for being here. Downey attached his own police blinker to the roof of their rented Ford. With that long hair, Werner was hard to believe as a cop, so Downey bullied him to a Homestead barber, who cut a lot of it off. It changed his appearance completely. He looked like a detective Downey knew-that man, too, looked angry most of the time.

He drove Pam to the top of the site, where dump trucks bringing in sand and gravel had to cross the highway. A flag girl in a yellow hat and bright orange vest brought the traffic to a halt to let them pass.

Downey stopped beside her. “We got a call from your family, dear. Do you have your own car?”

“What do you mean? Is anything wrong?”

“Some kind of accident. She was so hysterical I couldn’t make out. Your dad? Somebody.”

The girl’s hand went to her mouth. “Is it bad?”

“She was leaving for the hospital. She wants you to go straight home.”

The girl was already untying her vest. “Oh, God. That’s a two-hour drive. Did she say what hospital?”

“Just to go home. Somebody’ll be there by then.”

“Now isn’t that just like my mom?” the girl cried. “I’ll be worrying all the day. Dad-he drives like a crazy person. I hope it’s not too bad.”

Pam put on the vest and hat and accepted the flag. Downey drove off with the girl.

After counting the money, and counting it again to be sure he’d been right the other times, DeLuca had a final exchange with Canada’s wife.

“Lou, you’ll be careful?” She put a moist hand on his arm. “You won’t provoke them? Because he meant that. You know Larry, he wouldn’t put his money in any obvious place. I’ll bet you it’s in the Bahamas someplace. If anything goes wrong I’ll never find it.”

“If anything goes wrong,” DeLuca said, “it won’t be Lou DeLuca’s fault. I want to stay alive myself, you know. Most of this dough is other people’s. If Larry lives through, he’ll pay them back. Otherwise they’re out. So I’m going to play this strictly according to the book.”

Her hold tightened. “Lou, you’ve been such a good friend today. When this is over, I hope we can see each other more. You don’t know how lonely it’s been.”

He stood on the front doorstep for a moment to let anybody who was watching see that, as instructed, he was completely alone. Then he drove to the Miami High School, on Twenty-fourth Avenue. He had played the tape for a number of people during the day, but he had always cut if off at the point where it started to get specific. He didn’t want anybody lying in wait along the way. He was the only one who knew he was going to change cars. He spotted the pickup at once. A Chevy several years old, it had been used hard. Empty beer bottles were rolling under the seat. He turned on the radio. It was set on Channel 19, but was producing nothing but frying noises.

As he went up the westbound ramp of the East-West Expressway, he saw his man Greco swing into place behind him. Greco was driving a Honda 750, a machine he claimed to know intimately, and DeLuca hoped this wasn’t more of his New York bullshit. He was concealed behind dark glasses and a wraparound crash helmet. Only his nose showed. He was wearing a black leather jacket studded with rivets and emblems. DeLuca knew he would be followed and watched. Any kind of automobile escort would be spotted at once. But except to motorcycle lovers, all motorcycles look more or less alike. Under the black jacket, Greco wore another that was white and silver, the on-the-road uniform of a club that called itself Ghouls on Wheels. At some stopping point he could discard the top jacket and become a new person. Later, if necessary, he could throw that jacket away and ride in a striped tank shirt-still another identity.

At forty everybody was passing DeLuca. Greco zoomed by without a look, then throttled back and stayed within sight.

The frying noise stopped. A voice said abruptly, “DeLuca. If you can hear me, blink your lights.”

The dashboard radio had no transmitter. Apparently they didn’t want to be bothered with stupid questions. He snapped the lights on and off. The voice told him to hold his speed and turn south at the interchange.

He signaled in plenty of time. Greco went down first, pulling off at the bottom to look at a road map. By the time he showed up in DeLuca’s mirror again, DeLuca was beginning to miss him. He was no longer an Angel, and was now a Ghoul on Wheels. He kept a good interval.

Twenty minutes went by. They were approaching Homestead. The voice said suddenly, “DeLuca. Pull off the highway. Set your blinkers.”

Startled, DeLuca signaled and pulled over. The traffic streamed by-two Detroit sedans, a big Dodge Sportsman with a bike mounted behind, the white and silver Ghoul on his Honda.

“There’s a cooler in back,” the radio said. “Bring it up in the cab. Do that right now.”

The cooler was a battered Styrofoam box with a centered handle and a clamp at each end. There were two stickers on it, one a playful leaping dolphin, the identifying emblem of the Miami football team. The other sticker had been there a long time and had partially eroded: “-allace for President.”

“DeLuca. You know what we want you to do now. Transfer the money. Then get going.”

DeLuca unclamped the lid. Several loose cans stood in a shallow drawerlike compartment. He lifted that out and stacked the money in the body of the cooler. He hesitated for a fraction of a second, holding the last two packages of hundreds. Would they call everything off if the count was a little short? Probably not, but what the hell. He tossed them in.