Linwood Barclay - Bad Guys

“What would you do if you were me?”

“Well, you could do nothing. Chances are he’s harmless and this whole thing will work itself out.” Lawrence put on his blinker.

“Or?”

“Or you could check him out. Find out a bit more about this kid. Which might put your mind at ease, or tell you that you’ve got reason to be concerned.”

“And how am I going to do that? Start tailing him?”

“Hey,” said Lawrence, “you’re not exactly learning from the master. I blew that tail last night in the first mile. What you could do, though, is follow Angie.”

“Huh?”

“Well, what you want to know is, is he following your daughter around? You follow her, you’ll find out whether he is, too.”

I shook my head. “That’s crazy. I couldn’t follow my own daughter.” But even as I dismissed the idea, I was working out the logistics in my head. Would I wear a disguise? Rubber nose and glasses? And if Angie was using our car for the evening, and Trevor was following her in his car, then how was I going to follow him following her if we didn’t have a second car? Well, we didn’t have a second car yet, but-

Enough, I told myself. This is crazy talk.

What kind of father would consider, for even a moment, actually tailing his own daughter around town? And what would his wife do to him if she found out he’d been doing such a thing?

“No, no, I could never do that,” I said quietly.

“Hey, I’m only talking out loud,” Lawrence said. “Your other option is, let someone else check the kid out.” He paused, considering. “I’ll do it if you want.”

“No, no, that’s okay. I don’t think Sarah and I really have money in the budget for hiring a private eye. No offense. I mean, if we were ever going to hire somebody, you’d be the guy.”

Lawrence smiled. “Don’t worry about it. When you finally do your story about hanging out with a private eye, I’m gonna be getting lots of business.”

“I can’t accept services in return for editorial coverage,” I protested, but not, I have to admit, very strenuously.

“We didn’t even have this conversation,” Lawrence said.

He was quiet for a few more blocks, then said, “The thing is, Zack, where your own family is concerned, you have to trust your instincts. If your gut tells you something’s wrong, it probably means something’s wrong. Read the signals. If a guy thinks, just because his wife is coming home late from work every night, closing the door when she gets a phone call, and dressing a lot hotter than usual, that maybe she’s having an affair, odds are she’s having an affair. If your gut says this kid is weird, he’s probably weird.”

“But weird doesn’t always mean dangerous.”

“No,” Lawrence said, “it doesn’t. You’ll have to listen to what your gut has to say about that. And let me tell you something else, pal. Don’t ever let anyone hurt someone who’s important to you. Don’t hesitate. Don’t second-guess yourself.”

“I hear ya,” I said.

“And don’t miss your moment.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Years ago, I was a cop, but off duty, didn’t have my weapon, and I walked into a drugstore right in the middle of a holdup, guy has a sawed-off pointed at the cashier, screaming at her to empty the till.”

“Jesus.”

“So I freeze, and the guy knows I’m there, tells me to back off, but he’s doing this thing with his nose, sniffing, you know? It’s ragweed season, and he’s doing these funny little intakes of breath, and not only has he asked the cashier for money, but a box of antihistamine on the counter behind her. The guy’s very jumpy, like he wants to use the gun even if he gets everything he’s asking for, and it’s clear he’s got a sneeze on the way, and I’m guessing that when it comes, it’s gonna be a doozy. So I wait for my moment.”

“The sneeze.”

“We’re in the windup, each intake a bit bigger than the one before, and it’s just about to happen, and I figure, this is the moment, there will never be a better opportunity to deal with this situation, and then he blows. Nearly blew out a window with this sneeze, and I tackle him the millisecond before it happens, because when you sneeze that big, you close your eyes. He never saw me coming.” He smiled to himself.

“How do you know,” I asked, “if it’s the moment?”

“If you don’t know,” Lawrence said, “then it’s not the moment.”

He brought the car to a stop outside a bureaucratic-looking red brick building that fronted the street and was flanked by a ten-foot-high chain-link fence, and beyond that, hundreds and hundreds of vehicles. Lawrence took the key out of the ignition. “Let’s go look at all the shiny cars. Maybe we can find one with a few million in coke still in the trunk, you and I can both retire.”

“We gotta find Eddie,” Lawrence said. “He’s not the actual auctioneer, but he oversees this whole operation. He’ll tell you everything you want to know, but don’t be afraid to make a run for it if he starts to drive you crazy.” Lawrence asked around inside the office and was told we could find Eddie out in the compound.

He was peering through the windshield of a Cadillac, double-checking the vehicle identification number against a sheet attached to the clipboard in his hand, when Lawrence called to him. He was a slight man, about five-six, probably late forties, bookish in appearance with his oversize black-framed glasses and half a dozen pens clipped to his shirt pocket. His hair was short, curly, and greasy looking, like maybe he hadn’t stood under a shower for a number of days.

“Hey, hey, Lawrence, how are ya, how are ya?” he said. Even with the big glasses on, he was squinting through them at us.

“Good, Eddie. How’s life treatin’ ya?”

Eddie Mayhew shrugged. “Oh, you know, busy, busy, all the time, busy. The stuff’s always coming in, you know, always coming in.”

“How’s the missus?”

I looked at Lawrence. Missus?

Eddie made a face, like he’d caught a whiff of something that smelled bad. “Oh, you know, still talk talk talking, wants me to drive her out to see her sister in the spring, out in Milwaukee. Both of them, talk talk talk, for a whole week.”

“They got a lot of beer there,” Lawrence said, trying to offer Eddie a glimmer of hope.

“Yeah, beer, yeah, that’s good. What I really need, really need, is something to put me out for the drive out, so I won’t have to listen, won’t have to listen, to my wife.”

“That’s kind of difficult if you’re the one doing the driving.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, I know. Can’t win.” But then, oddly, a look of calm came over him. “Oh well, oh well. Maybe it won’t be so bad, so bad after all. A lot could change by the spring, yeah.”

“I’d like you to meet my friend here, Eddie,” Lawrence said, allowing me to step forward. “This is Zack Walker. He’s a writer for The Metropolitan , he’s going to do a feature on the auction, have someone take a few pictures.”

“Oh sure, yeah, sure, that’s fine. Good paper, The Metro , I read that. Read that all the time.”

“Thanks,” I said.

I explained that I was doing a color piece on what it was like to buy a car at a government auction. Eddie said he could spare some time to answer my questions, and Lawrence excused himself to register and check out what vehicles were available.

“We’ve got boats, motorcycles, furniture, high-end stereo equipment, oh yeah, we got everything,” Mayhew said. “Sometimes we have people submit written bids, whoever bids highest wins.”

“Like those silent auctions my son’s high school does sometimes for fundraisers,” I offered.