Джон Сэндфорд - Ocean Prey [calibre]

Rae looked at the seven-foot green sofa, crouched against the wall like an overgrown fungus. “I don’t think that color is the natural one. I mean, how could it be? And those brown spots . . .”

“I’ll wrap it. We’ll throw a blanket over the plastic. That’ll still look authentic.”

“You think the Marshals Service would buy us a new TV?”

They both looked at the eighteen-inch TV sitting on a window ledge. Virgil scratched his chin and said, “Lucas told me that they were picking up a bunch of electronics that we supposedly stole from some guy. I’ll tell them to make sure there’s a better TV in it. We’ll leave this on the floor.”

“More authenticity. I’ve never seen an eighteen-inch flat panel before. Must have been a special order.”

They went out to a Home Depot and a Bed Bath & Beyond, wrapped the beds and then covered them with sheets and new pillows, threw all the old bed stuff in the cockroach closet. They covered the couch with a fuzzy blue blanket that began to pill as soon as they sat on it. They hosed the closet down with the bug spray and the rest of the place with lilac-scented air freshener.

A plastic tablecloth covered the square kitchen table, a dozen plastic glasses, four cups and plates in a package, along with a box of stainless-steel flatware, completed the move.

“Just like home,” Rae said, pleased, looking at the line of red plastic tumblers next to the rust-stained sink. “All we need now is to throw a rubber on the bedroom floor.”

That night, Lucas showed up with an FBI agent and a van.

“Place stinks,” Lucas said. “Smells like a funeral home.”

“The floral spray,” Rae said. “It’s the Fred’s Mortuary scent.”

They moved in a bigger TV along with two used laptops and a printer, stereo speakers and a turntable, two pawn-quality electric guitars, a Korg electric piano with three inoperable keys, a bronze statue of a little boy peeing with a small gauge brass pipe bent and dangling from the bottom of the statue—“The kid’s supposed to pee vodka,” Lucas said. There was a lot of other crap, including a tool chest, bottles of high-end liquor, a load of men’s size 46-short suits with a bunch of Hermès neckties, and four Porsche wheels, all with a newly stolen vibe.

Rae picked up an unopened bottle of Don Julio Real tequila and said, “Oooh. Somebody’s got good taste.”

The next day, Virgil and Rae made their first visit to Brill’s, where they spotted Cattaneo. Cattaneo didn’t go to Brill’s the next day, but he did on the third day, when they talked.

Cattaneo didn’t call that night, but they hadn’t expected him to: he’d be doing research.

At nine o’clock, in the light of a flickering neon sign, Virgil and Rae walked down the street to the Ouroboros Bar and Grill, went inside, and looked around. Virgil said, “The guy in the black T-shirt.”

Rae: “I think so.”

They sat at the bar, Virgil got a Budweiser and Rae went with a Tequila Sunset and they made eye contact with the guy in the black T-shirt a few times, and then Virgil slid off his barstool and wandered over to the guy and asked, “How ya doin’?”

“Doin’ fine. Nice-lookin’ lady you got there.”

“She’s good. Listen, we just come down from Iowa . . .”

“Where in Iowa?”

Pause. “Fort Dodge?”

“I come from Waterloo, originally,” the guy said.

“Yeah? I’ve gone through there, on my way from Vinton out to Sturgis.”

“Sturgis. I wanna go. Bad. I been to Daytona about a hundred times. What’s your ride?”

“At the time, an old Harley softtail . . .”

They talked bikes for a couple of minutes, then Virgil sat down and said, “I’ve been looking for somebody who can hook me up.”

“With what?”

“A little weed. I don’t want to break any laws or anything. You looked like a rider, I thought you might know somebody.”

Rae came over and sat down and asked, “You the guy?”

“I don’t sell anything except auto parts . . .”

“Really? We got four wheels we might want to get rid of, off a Porsche.”

They talked some more and the guy asked how much weed they wanted and they talked about an ounce. The man, whose name was Roy, told them to sit still for a few minutes. He went out the back door and came back six or seven minutes later with another man, who said his name was Richard. Richard, who looked more like a shoe salesman than even the narcs did, slid a baggie across the table to them.

“Two hundred.”

“Whoa.”

Richard smiled: “It’s top-grade Chemdawg. My sources say this particular batch . . .” He tapped the baggie. “. . . has a THC level of thirty-one percent. It’s like a cross between Thai and Nepalese and it will float your ass to Oz.”

“Well, shit, gotta have it,” Virgil said.

He looked at Rae, who opened her clutch, took out a roll of twenties and counted out ten of them. Richard took the cash and said, “Nice doing business with you.”

“You got an empty baggie on you?”

“Yeah?”

“I thought we’d maybe throw an eighth to Roy. For hookin’ us up,” Virgil said.

Roy said, “I knew you were a stand-up guy, soon as I saw you.”

Roy got his cut and Virgil tucked the baggie away. They talked about the local altered-consciousness scene over a couple more beers and Richard spoke earnestly about his paddleball game. Before they broke up, Richard gave Virgil a half pack of orange Zig-Zags, and they all parted friends.

Cattaneo called the next morning. “I might have found something for you,” he said. “There’s a couple of guys who’d like to come over and talk to you. About diving.”

“Well . . . I’m here,” Virgil said, and from behind him, Rae shouted, “He wants the job.”

“Be twenty minutes or so,” Cattaneo said. “Half hour.”

Virgil called Lucas, who said, “We’ll be across the street.”

“Be careful. They might already be out there, watching to see if anybody comes in.”

“We’re careful,” Lucas said. The “we” were Lucas and Andres Devlin, another marshal, who’d been recommended by Rae. She’d told Lucas, “Devlin’s a tough guy. Smart. He reads nonfiction books with world maps in them. I know because I looked.”

When Lucas rang off, Virgil got out the Zig-Zags and rolled a slender joint, fired it up, inhaled, and passed it to Rae. “This is so fuckin’ illegal,” she said, taking a toke.

“Like traffic-ticket illegal,” Virgil said. “Don’t tell me you don’t speed. Blow some of that smoke into my hair.”

When they’d given the room and themselves the necessary ripeness, Virgil shredded the joint and flushed it, all except the last quarter inch. That, he fired up again, snuffed it between his thumb and forefinger, said, “Ouch,” and put the roach for safekeeping on a Dos Equis bottlecap and put the bottlecap on a windowsill, where it might be seen.

Twenty-five minutes after Cattaneo called, Lucas called and said, “We’ve got two guys coming down the sidewalk. They’re Sansone people, a step down from Cattaneo. Names are Matt Lange and Marc Regio. They’re looking at addresses.”

Virgil got a beer from the refrigerator, took a swig, swished it around his mouth, swallowed and poured most of the rest of it down the sink, sat on the couch and put the bottle on the floor by his feet. Rae shoved her .40-caliber Glock under a pillow at the opposite end of the couch, turned the TV to a SpongeBob SquarePants rerun, and then laid back on the gun pillow and put her bare feet on Virgil’s leg, flashing her bloody-red toenails.

She asked, “What do you think?”

“You could scale palm trees with those nails,” Virgil said. ‘They’re perfect.”