The Late Show (Renée Ballard #1)(28)

“Uh, no. I think I’m just looking to buy.”

Through the showroom glass Ballard saw a man stand up in one of the booths on the rear wall. He was holding a corded phone to his ear. He put his arm down on top of the booth’s partition and spoke into the phone.

“Well, whatever you want, we’ve got,” he said.

Ballard heard the words at the same time the man in the showroom said them. It was Trent, though his appearance had changed some since his bust on Sepulveda Boulevard. He had a shaved head now and eyeglasses. Judging from what she could see of him, he had bulked up as well. His shoulders stretched the fabric of his short-sleeved dress shirt and it looked like his neck was too thick for him to connect the top button behind his tie.

Ballard saw something then and quickly reached into the storage compartment in the center console. She pulled out a compact set of binoculars.

“So, when you think you’ll get here?” Trent asked.

“Um...” Ballard stalled.

She put the phone on her lap and looked through the binos. She focused and got her first good look at Trent. The hand that was holding the phone to his ear appeared to be bruised along the knuckles.

She picked the phone back up.

“Twenty minutes,” she said. “I’ll see you then.”

“Good deal,” Trent said. “I’ll have an RDX ready to go.”

She ended the call, started the van, and pulled away from the curb.

Ballard drove up Van Nuys two blocks and took a right into a neighborhood of World War II–era homes. She pulled to a stop in front of one without any lights on and then climbed into the back of the van. She took off her gun, badge, and rover and put them into the lockbox welded to the wheel well. She pulled her wallet out of her shoulder bag and put it in there as well—no matter what happened at the dealership, she was not going to give Trent her driver’s license. She had already given a fake name and she would never risk him knowing her real name or address.

She quickly took off her suit next and put on a pair of jeans to go with her blouse. The jeans were loose-fitting so that she could wear her backup pistol in an ankle holster without it being obvious.

After putting on a pair of running shoes, she climbed back into the driver’s seat. She returned to the dealership and this time drove in through the entrance and parked in front of the showroom.

Before she even got out, a silver RDX glided up behind her van and stopped—a salesman’s trick. It would prevent her from leaving. Trent got out smiling and pointing his finger at Ballard as she stepped out of the van.

“Stella, right?”

Without waiting for confirmation he raised his hand to present the RDX.

“And here she is.”

Ballard stepped to the back of the van. She looked at the RDX even though she wanted to look at Trent.

“Nice,” she said. “Is that the only color you have?”

“At the moment,” he said. “But I can get you any color you want. Two days tops.”

Now she looked at Trent and put out her hand.

“Hi, by the way,” she said.

He took her hand and she squeezed his firmly as they shook. She studied his face as she made sure to apply pressure to his knuckles. He never lost his salesman’s smile but she saw pain pulse in his cheeks. The bruising was fresh. She knew that brass knuckles, if fitted loosely, could easily damage and bruise the hand of the user.

“You want to take a test-drive?” Trent asked.

“Sure,” Ballard said.

“Perfect. I just need to make a copy of your driver’s license and insurance.”

“No problem.”

She opened her bag and began looking through it.

“Oh, damn,” she exclaimed. “I left my wallet at the office. It was my turn to pay for Starbucks and I must’ve left it on my desk. Damn it.”

“Not a problem,” Trent said. “Why don’t we take the RDX and drive to your office, then we’ll make copies and you drive back here?”

Ballard had considered that he might offer that and she had worked a response into her play.

“No, my office is out in Woodland Hills and I live in Hollywood,” she said. “That will take too long. My wife’s already going to be waiting for me for dinner. We go out on Fridays.”

“Your—” Trent said before catching himself. “Uh, well...”

He glanced through the glass into the showroom as if looking for someone.

“Tell you what,” he said. “We’ll make an exception to the rules this time if you want to take a short test-drive. Then we’ll set everything up for tomorrow and you can come back with ID, insurance...and your checkbook. Okay?”

“All right, but I’m not completely sure I want the car,” Ballard said. “I also don’t like silver. I was hoping for white.”

“I can get white here by Sunday, Monday at the latest. Tell you what, let’s roll!”

He walked quickly around the car to the passenger side, his arms pumping as though he were running. Ballard got in behind the wheel, drove the car out onto Van Nuys Boulevard, and headed north.

Trent gave her instructions to go up to Sherman Way and then turn west to the 405. She could then take the freeway down to the Burbank Boulevard exit and back over to Van Nuys, completing a driving rectangle that would give her a sense of the vehicle in urban and freeway environments. Ballard knew that the pattern would twice take them across Sepulveda Boulevard, the street where Trent had been arrested three years earlier.