Mr. Mercedes (Unnamed Trilogy #1)(120)

“That would be good.” Pure hell is what it would be.

“How can I help?”

“You’ve got a concert there tonight, Pete says. Some hot boy band. The kind all the little girls love.”

“Iy-yi-yi, do they ever. They’re already lining up. And tuning up. Someone’ll shout out one of those kids’ names, and they all scream. Even if they’re still coming in from the parking lot they scream. It’s like Beatlemania back in the day, only from what I hear, this crew ain’t the Beatles. You got a bomb threat or something? Tell me you don’t. The chicks’ll tear me apart and the mommies will eat the leftovers.”

“What I’ve got is a tip that you may have a child molester on your hands tonight. This is a bad, bad boy, Larry.”

“Name and description?” Hard and fast, no bullshit. The guy who left the force because he was a bit too quick with his fists. Anger issues, in the language of the department shrink. Romper-Stomper, in the language of his colleagues.

“His name is Brady Hartsfield. I’ll email you his picture.” Hodges glances at Jerome, who nods and makes a circle with his thumb and forefinger. “He’s approximately thirty years old. If you see him, call me first, then grab him. Use caution. If he tries to resist, subdue the motherf*cker.”

“With pleasure, Billy. I’ll pass this along to my guys. Any chance he’ll be with a . . . I don’t know . . . a beard? A teenage girl or someone even younger?”

“Unlikely but not impossible. If you spot him in a crowd, Lar, you gotta take him by surprise. He could be armed.”

“How good are the chances he’s going to be at the show?” He actually sounds hopeful, which is typical Larry Windom.

“Not very.” Hodges absolutely believes this, and it’s not just the Blue Umbrella hint Hartsfield dropped about the weekend. He has to know that in a girls-night-out audience, he’d have no way of being unobtrusive. “In any case, you understand why the department can’t send cops, right? With all that’s going on in Lowtown?”

“Don’t need them,” Windom says. “I’ve got thirty-five guys tonight, most of the regulars retired po-po. We know what we’re doing.”

“I know you do,” Hodges says. “Remember, call me first. Us retired guys don’t get much action, and we have to protect what we do get.”

Windom laughs. “I hear you on that. Email me the picture.” He recites an e-address which Hodges jots down and hands to Jerome. “If we see him, we grab him. After that, it’s your bust . . . Uncle Bill.”

“Fuck you, Uncle Larry,” Hodges says. He hangs up, turns to Jerome.

“The pic just went out to him,” Jerome says.

“Good.” Then Hodges says something that will haunt him for the rest of his life. “If Hartsfield’s as clever as I think he is, he won’t be anywhere near the Mingo tonight. I think your mom and sis are good to go. If he does try crashing the concert, Larry’s guys will have him before he gets in the door.”

Jerome smiles. “Great.”

“See what else you can find. Concentrate on Saturday and Sunday, but don’t neglect next week. Don’t neglect tomorrow, either, because—”

“Because the weekend starts on Friday. Gotcha.”

Jerome gets busy. Hodges walks out to the kitchen to check on how Holly’s doing. What he sees stops him cold. Lying next to the borrowed laptop is a red wallet. Deborah Hartsfield’s ID, credit cards, and receipts are scattered across the table. Holly, already on her third cigarette, is holding up a MasterCard and studying it through a haze of blue smoke. She gives him a look that’s both frightened and defiant.

“I’m just trying to find her diddly-dang password! Her purse was hanging over the back of her office chair, and her billfold was right there on top, so I put it in my pocket. Because sometimes people keep their passwords in their billfolds. Women especially. I didn’t want her money, Mr. Hodges. I have my own money. I get an allowance.”

An allowance, Hodges thinks. Oh, Holly.

Her eyes are brimming with tears and she’s biting her lips again. “I’d never steal.”

“Okay,” he says. He thinks of patting her hand and decides it might be a bad idea just now. “I understand.”

And Jesus-God, what’s the BFD? On top of all the shit he’s pulled since that goddam letter dropped through his mail slot, lifting a dead woman’s wallet is chump-change. When all this comes out—as it surely will—Hodges will say he took it himself.

Holly, meanwhile, is not finished.

“I have my own credit card, and I have money. I even have a checking account. I buy video games and apps for my iPad. I buy clothes. Also earrings, which I like. I have fifty-six pairs. And I buy my own cigarettes, although they’re very expensive now. It might interest you to know that in New York City, a pack of cigarettes now costs eleven dollars. I try not to be a burden because I can’t work and she says I’m not but I know I am—”

“Holly, stop. You need to save that stuff for your shrink, if you have one.”

“Of course I have one.” She flashes a grim grin at the stubborn password screen of Mrs. Hartsfield’s laptop. “I’m f**ked up, didn’t you notice?”

Hodges chooses to ignore this.