Linwood Barclay - Stone Rain

The whole way back downtown, I considered my options.

If I got a chance to get away, I could call the police. But between the time that I got hold of them and the time they arrived at my house, Merker’d be able to get in touch with Leo. They’d be able to make good on their threat against Katie before the police arrived.

So that wasn’t a good plan.

If I could somehow get the drop on Merker, put him out of commission before he could make a call to Leo, then I could call the police, fill them in on the situation, and they could surround my house, with Leo and Katie and Ludmilla still inside. Once Leo and Ludmilla knew they were trapped, there wouldn’t be any point in harming Katie.

So that was a plan.

The only problem with that was that it involved subduing, somehow, Gary Merker, who, in addition to being a psychopath who could beat the living shit out of me without breaking a sweat, was in possession of not only a knife and a stun gun, but a real, honest-to-God gun that shot bullets.

Could I get hold of my friend Lawrence Jones? I’d seen him deal with bad guys with a certain degree of efficiency. And they didn’t scare him the way they did me. But how, with Merker watching me all the time, was I supposed to reach him?

And so here I was, in a bar with Gary Merker, trying to locate a woman named Annette who Merker thought, with the help of a red wig, could pass herself off as Miranda Chicoine as Trixie Snelling as Marilyn Winter. The only signature she’d have to forge convincingly would be that last one.

Merker approached the bar, which was hosting a late-lunch crowd, more interested in chowing down on chicken wings than getting plastered, and called the bartender over.

“Annette around?” he asked.

“Not in till six,” the bartender said.

“Oh shit, that’s too bad,” Merker said. “I had some money I owed her.”

I thought, No, surely this old ruse won’t work.

“Oh yeah?” said the bartender, a tall, bearded man with a bent nose. “Whatcha owe money to her for?”

“She helped, on her day off, at a party I was giving. A work thing. She ran the bar for me, but I couldn’t pay her then, so I was dropping by to make it right.”

The bartender scowled. “We got party facilities here. You could have had it right here, you know?”

Merker laughed nervously. “Yeah, well, that woulda been good, but there was a bit of other entertainment, the kind you don’t offer here, you know what I mean?”

The bartender smiled and nodded. “Okay.” He tipped his head toward me. “Who’s your friend?”

“Hostage,” I said.

“Listen,” Merker said. “You got a number for her, or a home address, I could take care of this?”

“We don’t give out addresses or numbers for the staff,” the bartender said. “Sorry.”

“Oh,” said Merker. “’Cause I’m heading out of town today, won’t be back for three weeks, and I wanted to get this money to her before I left. But fuck it, I’m sure she can wait. Can you tell her I was by, that I’ll try to get back in a month or so to pay her what I owe her?”

Now the bartender was reconsidering. Maybe this was going to work. He didn’t want Annette blaming him when she didn’t get what she was owed. He didn’t want to listen to her whining for a month, or till whenever this guy came by again. “Shit,” he said. “She could probably use the dough, what with the kid and all.”

Merker shrugged, like it wasn’t up to him anymore. Don’t push too hard, he was thinking.

“Hang on,” said the bartender, and he disappeared to a back room. He was back two minutes later with a piece of paper. Written on it were an address and phone number. Merker glanced at it, folded it once, and shoved it into his pocket. “Thanks,” he said, and the bartender saluted.

Back in the truck, we headed for Galveston Street, a low-income neighborhood of semidetached homes with sagging porches. He ran the truck up onto the curb out front of 18 Galveston, a two-story house with a tattered stroller by the door. “I didn’t know she had a fucking kid,” Merker said. “Bring the wig and the ID and shit.”

We’d put everything into a plastic grocery bag that sat on the seat between us. I grabbed it and followed him to the front door. The bell didn’t work, so he knocked.

A moment later, a woman, who no matter her age was probably at least five years younger than she looked, came to the door. She was thin with short black hair and large breasts, and had a child of about two balanced on her bony, jean-clad hips.

“Jesus, Gary,” she said, not sounding entirely pleased to see him. “What are you doing here?”

“Hey, Annette,” Gary said. He forced his way inside and, despite how wrong it felt to me, I followed.

“Hey, Gary, like, you couldn’t have called first?” Annette said. “Do you mind?” She swung the child, a boy, over to the other hip. The inside of the house was a mess of children’s toys, dropped clothes, empty food containers.

“Nice place,” Merker said.

“How’d you find me?” Annette said, placing the child on the floor in the midst of some multicolored oversized Lego-type blocks.

“Listen, Annette, I got a chance for you to make some money,” Merker said. “How’d you like to make a grand for the afternoon?” That got her attention.

“What are you talking about?” she said. Baffled but interested.

Merker grabbed the bag from me and pulled out the red wig. “Try this on.”

Annette shook her head. “Oh no. I don’t do that no more. What’s this, for your friend here?” She looked at me scornfully. “This guy likes redheads? So what else you got in the bag? A little schoolgirl’s uniform?”

Merker shook his head. “It’s nothing like that. Jeez, that you would even think that of me.”

Annette’s eyes went wide. “Are you kidding me? The stuff you used to have me do at the Kickstart-”

“Forget that shit,” Merker said. “Just try this on.”

“What’s it for?”

“Would you just do it?”

Tentatively, she reached for the wig, inspected it as if it might be infested with head lice, and pulled it on. She didn’t have that much hair to tuck under it, and it fit pretty well. Didn’t look cheap, either. I figured Trixie was able to afford the best when it came to this sort of thing. Maybe that was why there was only three hundred thousand, instead of half a million, left over.

“Ooh, you look good,” Merker said. Annette went to check herself in a front hall mirror. She cocked her head from side to side, watched the way the wisps of hair fell across her face.

“So like, what’s this about?” Annette said.

Merker invited her into her own kitchen to sit down and listen to what he needed her to do. First, Annette shoved a Finding Nemo tape into an old VCR, then joined the two of us at the table. Merker had the ID and the key out on the table for demonstration purposes.

“I need you to go into a safety-deposit box,” Merker said.

“Huh?” Annette said.

“You wear the wig, you use this ID, you sign this name, and you’re in. You take everything out of the box, put it in the bag, and you come back out. Simple as that.”

Annette looked at him openmouthed. “Huh?” she said again.

I was starting to have doubts about whether Annette was the best candidate for this operation.

“Listen,” she said, “I’d like to help, but I got no one to watch the kid.”

“Fuck, Annette, I’m going to give you a grand. Hire a fucking babysitter.”

“Who’m I gonna find in the middle of the day? You ever try to find a babysitter like that?” She snapped her fingers. “It’s not easy.”

Merker was thinking. “We could drop the baby off,” he said, and looked at me. “We could leave the baby at your place, with Leo and the fat Yugoslavian chick and the kid. They’re already looking after one kid, they could handle another one.”