Jack Hardway

Seattle Saturday Night

       The blond brought out the .22 and pointed it at the head of the little man cowering against the inside of the rear passenger door. The Colt hanging under the killer's arm would go through the skull and spray the glass and headliner with pieces of brain and skull before leaving the car and landing somewhere on the asphalt of the freeway's opposing lanes, but the .22 would go in, make some soup of what was inside, and stay there.
       "He took her. She was all I had. I only did it to get her back. I'd of never took the money except she said she'd come back and we'd go away. Lookit, I'll tell you where the money is if you promise not to hurt her. He ain't out nothing now. He'll have her and he'll have his money. He ain't out nothing."
       "It doesn't matter now, kid."
       "Please, buddy. I never did anything like this before. I got some money, I'll give it to you."
       "It's business, kid, that's all it is. We've been paid. We took his money. There's ethics in our business just like any other. It's not personal."
       The kid's expression went cold. "Then you kill him. I'm hiring you."
       "With what?"
       "Greyhound locker, number forty-seven. You do it."
       "Money's not there, kid. Anyway, it's his money, not yours."
       The mark shook his head. "My money. Will you do it?"
       The blond sighed, said, "Sure, kid," and shot him through the eye. The man convulsed briefly, then relaxed, staring at the blond with the other eye.
       The big man behind the wheel glanced back and said, "Why do you think he told us the money was in a Greyhound locker?"
       "He didn't know we already delivered the woman back to the Irishman, and he didn't know we found the money with her at his apartment. He was trying to stay alive for another ten minutes while we drove to the bus station, until he could come up with another ten minute's worth of something, that's all. That's all there was to it."
       "Sure. We did all right, though. Thirty thousand for a couple hours' work. Why do you think he didn't use the organization's people for this? Why'd he contract it out to us and play it so close to the chest, so fucking secretive about it? Would have been a lot cheaper the other way."
       "I don't know. He's part of the organization here. You can't just whack somebody without a sit-down with the people up the line. Maybe he tried and they wouldn't okay it. My guess is the dough the kid shagged from him was his skim money, dough he was holding out for himself that the outfit didn’t know about, so he couldn't bring in the outfit without putting himself in a jam. Hell, I don't know. Why do people do anything? Let's drop this one at the place, have our final face-to-face with the Irishman, and get the fuck out of this concrete swamp. I hate Seattle."
       His partner nodded and pulled off the freeway. "We have to look in the locker now."
       "What?"
       "The bus station locker. We have to look now."
       "Look for what?"
       "The other money."
       "There isn't any other money. We've already got the Irishman's money back. The other money was bullshit."
       "What if it wasn't?"
       "It was."
       They drove in silence for a few minutes, then the big man pulled over to the side and twisted in his seat until he could see his partner in the back. "I think we ought to look."
       The blond lowered his head and shook it. "I knew it. You get something in your head and you're like a fucking dog with a frisbee, just can't let go of it. No. The kid didn't want to die. There-is-no-god-dam-money. We have got to go."
       "This is what I think. I think this guy knew he was going to die and there was nothing he could do about it and he made a decision. I think he was serious. I think maybe this is different money."
       They looked at each other for a few seconds, then the blond looked down again and blew out his breath at his knees. "Let's get it over with."
       "You don't mind?"
       "Why should I mind? The kid and I'll just play a couple hands of jacks-or-better while you're in there fucking around. Don't you think you're going to draw a little attention jimmying the locker?"
       "Check him, will you?"
       The blond went through the pockets and eventually came out of the inside jacket pocket with a large key with 47 stamped into it. He handed it up to the driver and lit another smoke.
       "I'm starving to death," said the big man. "You want to stop on the way and get something to eat?"
       "Why not?" said the blond. "Can I ask you one thing, though?"
       "Sure."
       "What the fuck is the matter with you? Why don't we stop by a car wash and get the car detailed while we're at it? Why don't we just do everything on your list of things to do in Seattle in a car with a dead man in the back seat? No, I do not want something to eat and I do not want to go shopping for a new suit. I just want to get this goddam locker thing out of the way so I don't have to hear you complaining for the next three days back in LA about all the fucking imaginary money you think we missed out on. You wear me out."
       Eight minutes later the Lincoln stopped in the loading zone of the station. The driver tapped his fingers on the wheel, thinking, then put the lever back into drive. "We better pull into a spot," he said. "You don't need somebody knocking on the glass telling you to move the car."
       "That's why you're the brains of the outfit. If you're not back in five minutes I'm leaving your ass. I mean it."
       The big man parked the car and left the key in the ignition. He waved the locker key as he opened the door. "Back in a flash, with or without the cash."
       The blond pulled out a deck of cards and dealt two hands on the seat between him and the dead man. He checked his own and laid down the jack, then looked at the kid's hand and sighed. "Jeez, kid. You can't catch a break today, can you?"
       He played out the hand. He won. They played three more, and he won all of them. Beginning to feel depressed, he put the deck away and looked at his watch. Nine minutes. Sonofabitch. Cursing under his breath, he decided to go in; he reached for the door latch and touched it as the driver door opened.
       His partner peered in at him, smiling. "That wasn't so long, was it?"
       "Almost too long."
       The big man chuckled and slid in behind the wheel. "Didn't cross my mind."
       "I think you want to get pinched. In fact, you know what, fuck it, I'm getting out and taking the bus back to LA."
       The big man shrugged. "Well, this isn't going to improve your mood any." He reached down with his left arm and brought in a brown attache case from the pavement. He passed it back and pulled the door shut. "I didn't want to stand in there with it open, so I just glanced inside. You can count it."
       He backed out and drove toward the meeting place as the blond leafed through the rubber-banded stacks. "Well?"
       "There's a little more than twenty-seven here. I'll be damned."
       The big man nodded. "Told you."
       "Okay, you called it. I'm just along to hold your hat. All right?"
       "That's a start."
       "Where the hell did this come from?"
       "Beats me. Maybe he was squirreling it away over a long time. He was the big man's accountant, so he knew the angles. He might have been skimming off his boss the way you said his boss might have been skimming off the organization. The money fell out of the sky, I don't know. It's not any of the Irishman's missing money, though. This is unconnected to that."
       "Shit. Why do you think he had this stashed separately?"
       "Maybe he didn't completely trust his lady love not to take off on him once she had her hands on the Irishman’s three hundred grand. This was his hole card, his getaway money. Or not. The only thing we know for sure is that it's our money now, like it or not."
       The blond sank back in the seat. "You know I only said that to the kid because I thought he was bullshitting, just wanted to stay alive a little longer. You know that."
       "Yeah, I know that. But he didn't. He offered you the money, and you took it."
       "Only because I didn't think there was any."
       "Doesn't matter. You said it before, there's ethics."
       The blond shook his head. "It's not the same thing. He's dead. It doesn't matter anymore. It's found money now. Let's finish this shit and chew up some interstate."


       "The guy wanted us to kill you."
       "I bet he did," said the Irishman. "Before you brought her back to me, did she want me dead too?"
       "She didn't say so if she did."
       "You know, I hated like hell to have to kill her. She was really something, if you know what I mean." He winked.
       The blond studied him with narrowed eyes. "You said you didn't want us to hurt her."
       "That's right. I said I didn't want you to hurt her. What difference does it make?"
       "No difference."
       The Irishman sighed. "I liked the kid a lot. He had it wrong, too. She was strictly for sale. She came to me with open arms. She ditched him because I could give her more, she ditched me because he had my three hundred thousand, and I guarantee she would have ditched him the second she had her hands on the money at the same time he had his back to her. He was better off done with her. Too bad he didn't leave it that way. I might throw something away when I don't want it anymore, but nobody takes anything from me."
       To the blond, that seemed an odd thing to say considering that he'd gotten her by taking her away from the kid, but he told himself it was only the moral inconsistency that intrigued him. He told himself that, beyond that, he didn't care, and it was none of his business anyway.
       "What'd he do," asked the Irishman, "try to pay you with the money he stole from me?"
       "That's what I thought," the blond said. "When he knew he was done, he said he had a stash and we could have it if we did you."
       The Irishman chuckled. "I never paid him more more than eight hundred a week. Some stash that would have been." He eyed the parachute bag on the floor beside him. "All there. Looks like they never got around to spending any of my dough." He lowered his arm, patted the bag, and added, "My retirement fund, I guess you'd call it."
       The big man looked at him, mulling over the kid's words and the money from the locker and his personal distaste for the man on the one side, and the mootness of the obligation on the other side, then decided that, in this instance, his partner was probably right. There was no percentage in creating a potential problem where there wasn't one. "I think we're done," he said.
       The Irishman shrugged. "They told me you were good. Pay you and forget about it. I could use a couple like you here. It's hard to get anybody with the stuff to stick around long. It rains ten goddam months out of the year in Seattle, did you know that?"
       "Thanks," said the blond, "but I like to see the sun sometimes. They were right, though. Once we take the money, you don't have to worry about a thing." The Irishman tried to get under his jacket to his Beretta when he saw the blond reaching under his coat, but never touched it. The magnum wheel gun came out fluidly with the speed and ease of much practice, and the seated man had only the time to suck in a gasp through his open mouth before the big bullet raged through his clothes and his bones and his heart, impelling him and his wheeled desk chair back a foot or so, where they both reclined back and rotated a quarter-turn from the leftover energy.
       The big man looked at the corpse for a couple seconds with only mild surprise, then turned toward his partner and smiled and shook his head. "'It doesn't matter anymore, it's found money now.' You're as predictable as a Volvo. There's—"
       The blond stepped on his partner's words as he put the gun away. "Blow me. And if you start with me again, I'm gonna shoot you, too."
       "I should have known you wouldn't walk on a deal, even if you didn't mean to make it."
       "Didn't mean to make it? How about didn't know I made it until you felt you had to point it out. It was your idea to go looking for the money, too." He gestured toward the dead man and added, "Actually, I blame you for this."
       "Uh-huh." The big man gestured with a serious expression toward the desk. "What about the three hundred behind the desk? Nobody knows about it, and it doesn't have a home anymore. If we don't, somebody will."
       The blond thought about it for a moment, then shook his head. "Not our money."
His partner started to speak, then closed his lips with a smirk. He made a gun of his fist, thumb, and index finger, pointed it at his own head and dropped his thumb.
       "Satisfied?"
       "It's not the same."
       "Nothing is. Let's roll."