Tucker sighed. “Fuck it. What have you got?”
Mitch told him what he knew.
“How’d you get that?”
“Tell you later. But we gotta move.”
“On it,” Tucker said and clicked off.
Mitch went back to Dylan and reached for her hands. She didn’t give them up easily, but he clasped them and held on. “It’s him.”
She took a quick breath, and tears came to her eyes. “Congratulations.”
“But we don’t have him. I’ve got to go.”
“I know. Go.”
“I don’t want to leave you, having you think—”
“Mitch!” John rushed up to them, breathing hard. “Beth is having contractions. Dylan will have to stay with Andrew. And you’ve got work to do.”
Chapter 44
A good job as always, sweetheart,” Allen Busby said to the makeup artist as he admired his reflection in the lighted makeup mirror. “But a little more spray right here,” he said, indicating the top of his hair.
He’d gotten the idea for this unusual Saturday recording session last evening before going to the meat locker. He’d called his new ad man, whom he’d terrorized earlier in the week, and instructed him to reserve the studio and assemble the crew.
“Guarantee them overtime. Two new commercials. It shouldn’t take more than an hour. I want to be in and out. I have plans for the evening.”
That taken care of, he’d gone to the meat locker to watch the butchering of Malone. Then, standing unseen in the background watching silently, he’d made certain that El Paso did as he’d been instructed. He had, and Oz had left reassured that he’d made a good choice on the matter of Roland Malone. He’d been too old school, too old, period. And it was bad enoughthat he’d been seeing a therapist secretly, but having her in the restaurant had been the final straw.
He’d lost tens of millions today in that DEA raid. The entirety of the product had been seized. The three men he’d lost had been reliable in the past. But, in hindsight, they couldn’t have been all that good or they wouldn’t have been ambushed by either the feds or the Caballeros.
He’d had to alert his customer in St. Louis of the fiasco. Naturally, he’d been furious, but he would get over it, because he wanted to remain in Oz’s good graces.
Oz himself had learned of the debacle while winding up a gin rummy tournament at his country club. After reading the text from one of the survivors who’d escaped capture, he hadn’t let his outrage show. Instead, he’d invited several of the card players to join him for lunch.
Following that convivial meal, he’d gotten a massage, then had gone from the club to a fitting with his tailor. Now he was about to record a couple of new commercials.
Allen Busby had deliberately spread himself thin this rainy Saturday, in places where he’d been seen by many people. What would he know about a drug raid and the grisly murder of a known gangster except for what he’d seen on TV news?
Hair now perfect, he leaned in to the makeup mirror and peeled back his gums to check his teeth for trapped food, then pronounced himself ready. He strode down the hallway and into the studio, where the crew was double-checking camera positions and making last-minute adjustments to the lighting.
“Ready to roll,” Busby called up to the control booth, which was on an elevated platform. He gave a jaunty little wave to those behind the tinted glass.
The director’s voice boomed through the studio. “Mr. Busby is on set. Sound?”
“Here.”
“Ready to mike him?”
“Ready.”
Busby, who’d been adjusting his cuffs so that the jeweled cuff links would show, looked up as a man with a thin, stringy Fu Manchu mustache sauntered out of the shadowed perimeter of the studio.
As the man got closer, Busby saw that his eyes were bloodshot. “Who are you?” he demanded. “Where’s the regular guy?”
“He’s got the trots. Norovirus, I think they said.”
