Neon Prey (Lucas Davenport #29)(88)

“Still . . .”

“Listen. They’ll catch Deese or kill him, the FBI will. After that, nobody’ll really care about the rest of us. And ten to fifteen years from now, they’ll care even less. I’ve been to Panama. It’s a real decent place. A girl like you, even if you don’t want to be with me . . . There are all kinds of American expats down there, guys looking for women to hang with. You’ll hook up with some guy . . .”

“I’ll hang with you, at least for now,” Cox said.

“Well, that’s fine. I do like you. We got to be careful, though, when Deese and I get back tomorrow,” Cole said. “We need a piece of that money and he might want to keep all of it. I’ve got my pistol, but he knows that. So we’ll have to be really careful.”

He reached into his back pocket, pulled out the Panther pin he’d palmed when they raided the Harrelsons’ safe. “Didn’t tell Deese about this—I saved it for you. I looked at it, it’s a Cartier. That’s a jeweler, top-end. It’s got some diamonds, and shit. I thought you’d like it.”

Cox took the pin, turned it in her hand. “Oooh. It’s so beautiful, John. That’s the best gift I ever got. So . . . It sparkles, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah. That’s why I grabbed it.”

Cox pulled herself forward, pulled a bag out from under the front passenger seat, groped inside it, and produced Beauchamps’s 9mm. “Deese doesn’t know about this, either.”

“You know how to use it?”

“Oh, yeah, I shot guns like this a few times.” She pulled back the slide, let it snap forward. “All cocked and ready to shoot. All I have to do is push this safety thingy forward. Marion told me that if I ever have to shoot somebody to get as close as I can and then keep pulling the trigger until the gun stops shooting.”

“You can do that?” Cole asked.

“With Deese? Yeah.”

“This time tomorrow, we could be in Denver.”

“Or dead,” Cox said. She didn’t mention the money in the bag.





CHAPTER


TWENTY-THREE


Lucas shouldered the bag of money, pulled open the bank door, trotted around to the Porsche, pushing his gut out as he went, waved the key fob at the car, and climbed inside. Everything looked just like the inside of his 911. The earbud was in his right ear, the passenger side, already wired into the handset. Tremanty said in his ear, “Okay, you looked right. I would have bought it, if I were Deese.”

“Now I sit and wait,” Lucas said. “I don’t see anyone on the street coming my way.”

“They’ll make you drive,” Tremanty said.

He sat there for three minutes and then the phone rang. He put it on speaker, held it next to the handset, and Deese asked, “When was the last time you and Gloria got it on?”

“Saturday . . . No, Sunday night,” Harrelson said in his ear.

Lucas said, “Ah, let me see, Saturday . . . No, wait, Sunday night. Sunday night.”

“All right. Go on out to Howard Hughes and turn right. We’re watching you. Better not be anybody following you.”

“There’s nobody. I got your money. Gimme Gloria. Where do I get Gloria?”

“You get Gloria after we get the money.”

“That’s fucked up,” Lucas said. “This is a lot of money for nothing. Don’t hurt her. Remember, I’m a witness, I can identify you as well as she can, so don’t hurt her. There’s no need to hurt her.”

Deese: “Keep driving.”

Tremanty, in the earbud: “That was good, Lucas. That was great.”


LUCAS DROVE out to Howard Hughes Parkway and turned right. Tremanty said, in his ear, “Okay, the box is rolling, you’re in the box. The Cessna’s up on top of you, thank God for that yellow car. And, yeah, we got you on the GPS.”

Deese: “Drive on up to Sands. Don’t drive too fast. Don’t go gettin’ stopped by no cop.”

Lucas: “I want to talk to Gloria.”

“When we got the money, Gloria will call you from a gas station,” Deese said. “We’ll turn her loose three blocks from the station.”

“That doesn’t sound real to me,” Tremanty said in his ear. Lucas couldn’t reply without Deese hearing it. And Tremanty, talking to somebody else, said, “Let’s stretch the box a bit, stretch it out a vertical block on both ends. They’ll do that tricky thing now.”

Lucas was looking in his rearview mirror. He couldn’t see anybody obviously tracking him.

Deese: “I don’t know exactly where you’re at now, but you gotta be close to Paradise. Take a right on Paradise.”

“I’m still on Sands,” Lucas said. “I’ll take a right on Paradise.”

“Got that,” Tremanty said. Lucas could hear him talking to the FBI agents driving the box.

He came back to Lucas. “They’re starting to worry me. Nothing tricky yet. But if they take us way out in the desert, we’ll lose the box.”

Another voice, in the background, maybe the AIC. “Yeah, but they’d never be able to lose the Cessna or the chopper out there. I don’t think that’s it. I think they’ll do the trick here in town.”