Quicksilver(36)

Butch said, “Frankly, we’re put off by the exclamation point.”

“I understand,” I said. “It gives the impression that we’re some kind of chamber-of-commerce hard sell. But we’re not.”

Before she could be asked about her career, Bridget said, “Cressie, however do you get so much flavor into such tiny cakes?”

We talked a little about baking, about the beautiful stained-glass lamps that Butch and Cressie crafted together as a second business, and about the photos behind the sofa, which were high-school and college graduation portraits of their six children, among whom were a doctor, a dentist, an Air Force fighter pilot, a Navy SEAL, and an investment analyst with a hedge fund. One daughter was currently earning an advanced degree in molecular biology.

Even though I had psychic magnetism and could see monsters and was not yet twenty, I felt like the king of the slackers.

Finally, Butch said, “So, the Explorer. I completely rebuilt that baby. She’s in tip-top condition. You’ll want to inspect her.”

Bridget eased forward on the sofa. “Having gotten to know you, we’ll take your word for it. We have an unconventional offer.”

“So you said earlier. I’m intrigued.”

“We have an old Buick to trade. We don’t want anything for it.”

“I like the deal so far,” Butch said.

“We want you to dismantle it for parts or take it to a salvage yard and have it squashed into a cube, so no one will ever find it.”

“So whoever’s looking for it,” Cressie said, “will continue to look for it.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Now I’m worried for you, child.”

“No need to be, Cressie. We’ve got our act together.”

“Famous last words,” Butch said. “But go on.”

Placing the plastic container on the coffee table, Bridget said, “Seventy-five thousand dollars.”

Butch’s bland expression suggested that he was accustomed to people insisting on greatly overpaying for things. He put aside his coffee, the mug like a demitasse cup in his big hands. “The Explorer’s worth a small fraction of seventy-five thousand.”

“We’re paying extra because we don’t want you to report the profits to the IRS or register the sale with the DMV.”

To her husband, Cressie said, “They don’t want their names and the vehicle linked.”

“I’ve got the picture, love,” he assured her.

Bridget said, “The money isn’t hot, the serial numbers aren’t sequential, nothing like that.” She opened the container and dumped the rubber-banded wads of bills on the coffee table.

Butch Hammer slid forward, propped his right elbow on the arm of his chair, rested his chin on his fist, and made eye contact with Bridget for at least a minute, as if her irises were disks of data that he could read. At last he said, “Where did you get the money?”

She continued to meet his stare. “We stole it. But not from anyone who rightly earned it. We stole it from a drug gang. They don’t yet know it was taken, and when they find it missing, they won’t know who took it.”

“So you say.”

“Yes, I do.”

Neither of them looked away from the other. “So are you and Quinn drug dealers?”

“No,” Bridget said. “We hate their kind. If you think I could be one, take a good look at Quinn. Him—not in a million years.”

“I already have his number. You’re harder to figure.”

“I’m telling you the truth.”

“Oh, I know that. But you’re still hard to figure.”

“She’s a bit like me,” Cressie told her husband. She winked at Bridget. “I was something of a firecracker, too, when I was your age.”

Butch Hammer got up from his chair and stood for a moment to look at the photos of his children. Then he went to a window and pulled aside a panel of the draperies and studied the night as if perhaps the place was being surveilled.

“Is there a GPS in the Explorer?” Bridget asked.

Butch let the drapery fall into place and turned and shook his head. “No. And I bought her from a salvage yard after she was in an accident. She was delisted by the DMV. I haven’t re-registered her yet.”

“Perfect. Then you can carry it on your books as if you never restored it, only used it for parts.”

Butch paced the room for a minute, pausing to gaze forlornly at one object or another, as if he might be leaving and never coming back. He seemed too big for his own house.

He returned to his armchair but no longer looked comfortable in it. “Who are you running from, Bridget?”

“The ISA. You know who that is?”

His expression of disgust was answer enough.

Cressie said, “The Gestapo Lite. Whoever thought anything like them would take root in America?”

Her husband’s gas-flame-blue eyes seemed like windows to a fire in his head. “Why are they after you?” He focused on me. “Something you wrote in that exclamation-point magazine?”

Bridget looked at me, and I shrugged.

She said, “No, sir, nothing Quinn wrote. He and I sent away to Getting to Know Me Dot Com, hoping to learn about our ancestry. The company alerted the ISA to something unusual in our DNA.”