Don Winslow - Way Down on the High Lonely

“I’m on a diet, sir.”

“I did think you looked a bit thin.”

Ed set his coffee down and heard the cup rattle in the saucer. He realized that there was a tremor in his hand.

“Sir,” he asked, “are you authorizing the use of terminal remedies?”

“If necessary,” Kitteredge answered.

In fifteen years with the company, Ed had never received, nor had he sought, permission to kill anyone.

Kitteredge selected a shortbread cookie, bit off a tiny piece, and chewed it twenty-eight times before swallowing. “And if it develops that any of these creatures are culpable in the death of Cody McCall, then a terminal remedy will be necessary. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Ed answered. I understand perfectly. We’re talking Old Testament justice here.

“Will you be staying the night or should I ring for the helicopter?” Kitteredge asked.

“I should get back to New York,” Ed said. He had a lot of work to do.

“Of course,” Kitteredge answered.

“Uh, sir… should I call Anne Kelley, or would you prefer to do that?”

“I don’t see any purpose to be served by terrifying Miss Kelley at this point, until we know about the fate of the boy.”

“Yes, sir. Uh, may I use the phone?”

“Of course.”

Joe Graham picked up the phone. He usually didn’t like calls, but this one came as a relief. The small room in the cheap SRO hotel was beginning to close in on him. The rug needed a shampoo, the mattress was mushy and the springs were shot, and about all he could see from his window was a fire escape and the doughnut shop and liquor store across the street. The guy in the next room sounded like he was going through the heebie-jeebies, the toilet was running, and a car alarm had been going off now for at least ten minutes.

“Hello,” Graham said sourly.

“Hello, sweetheart.”

“Get bent, Ed.”

“We’re operational.”

Graham sat straight up in the bed. “What?”

“We’re operational,” Ed repeated.

“How’s our boy?” Graham asked. If they were operational it meant that Neal had orders to take the operation into an active phase. A dangerously active phase.

“I haven’t heard from him,” Levine said.

Graham felt the sticky, nauseating anxiety come over him. He didn’t like this at all. I’m Neal’s handler, not Ed, he thought. Ed is good, Ed is thorough and careful, but he doesn’t know Neal as well as I do. Nobody does. And now the kid’s out there-he’s rusty and he’s hurried, and that’s a bad combination. You hurry and you make mistakes.

“Are you monitoring?” he asked Levine, even though the answer was obvious.

“Of course.”

“You-”

“I’ll let you know the second I hear. Get ready to move.”

You’re damn right, Eddy boy.

“Another thing,” Ed added. “We might be going in heavy.”

“How heavy is heavy?”

There was a pause. Graham heard Ed sucking on a cigarette.

“If our client is terminal… very heavy.”

Jesus Christ, Graham thought. This started as a simple custody bag job. Now Ed is talking about killing people. If the boy is dead.

Another thought hit him. “Hey… what if our boy doesn’t make it out? Do we still go in heavy?”

Another drag of smoke.

“No,” Ed replied. “That’s just the business, right?”

Graham hung up the phone. No, Ed, he thought. That isn’t right.

Neal Carey stood inside the gas station and fed nickels into a slot machine. His mind wasn’t on the game, it was on the telephone outside.

Finally it rang. He listened to it ring for thirty seconds before it stopped. He glanced at his watch. Thirty seconds later it rang again.

Once: ditch the operation, come back.

Twice: stay in place and wait.

Three times: destroy them.

He walked out and got into Peggy’s Volvo. He thought for a couple of minutes and then drove up to Karen’s house, where Peggy had assumed he was going anyway when he asked to borrow her car. He sat outside for a minute, got his nerve up, and knocked on her door.

She was wearing a gray sweater over old jeans. She was barefoot. She had her glasses on and a pen stuck behind her ear. He could tell by the look on her face that she didn’t know whether to be pleased or annoyed.

“Did I give you my phone number?” she asked. “I’m in the book, anyway.”

“I’m sorry. I should have called.”

“Now that we’ve agreed on that, would you like to come in?”

“Just for a minute.”

He stood awkwardly in her living room, not knowing what to say or do, not knowing why he was even there.

“You interrupted my work,” she said. “You at least owe me a passionate embrace. Come here.”

He held her as tightly as he could.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“Dark night of the soul?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“No fun. You wanna mess around?”

“I want to make love.”

“Darlin’, don’t you know it’s the woman who’s supposed to use the L-word first?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know much about this at all.”

She took him by the hand and headed for the bedroom. “Then it’s a good thing you got yourself a teacher,” she said.

They got up an hour or so later, she to go back to her work, he to go back to his.

The woman smiled her professional smile as she opened the door. “Hi, I’m Bobby, what’s-” She stopped suddenly as she saw that the three men in the doorway were wearing masks.

Neal stuck a pistol under her nose. “Hi, Bobby. This is a stickup.”

Randy Carlisle grabbed her, swept her out of the doorway, and put a forearm choke hold around her neck. The bouncer in the black hat and shades woke up and tried to get his boots off the footstool as he reached for his gun.

“Uh-uhn,” Cal warned. He was pointing his own pistol at the bouncer’s head. He stepped into the room and ripped the phone cord out of the wall.

The bouncer put his hands up. Neal walked over, took the bouncer’s cowboy hat and shades off, and pushed him to the floor. Then he stepped on the shades, crushing them under the heel of his boot.

“We just want the money,” Neal said. “We don’t want to hurt anyone.”

Bobby warned, “You don’t know who you’re messing with.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, you’re mobbed up, right?” Neal asked. “Isn’t everyone? Where do you keep the money?”

Bobby made a show of folding her arms across her breasts and clamping her mouth shut.

Neal pointed his revolver at the bouncer’s head and cocked the hammer. He smiled at Bobby and said, “Your choice.”

Bobby let out a disgusted sigh. “A safe in the office.”

“Show me.”

She led Neal down the hallway into a cramped office. He held the gun to her head as she dialed the combination.

“Put it in the bag,” he said as she pulled stacks of bills from the safe.

She did what he ordered but said, “You’re really getting into big trouble, cowboy.

“I’m terrified.”

“Y’oughta be.”

When they got back to the corral, Neal leaned over the bouncer and asked, “You live here, stud?”

“No.”

Neal put his boot down on the bouncer’s hand. “Maybe in a trailer out back?”

“Maybe.”

“Let’s go.” Neal gestured to Cal. “Come on.”

The bouncer walked them back to a cheap aluminum trailer. Cal opened the door and pushed the bouncer inside. Doreen was asleep on a hide-a-bed. The bouncer shook her awake.

“We got company,” he said.

Cal covered them while Neal searched the trailer. He found what was left of his money, about three hundred dollars, on a shelf in the bathroom.

Doreen gave her boyfriend one withering dirty look when she saw the cash.