“Shut up,” Rae said.
“What’s the reason?” Lucas asked.
Rae said, “Shut up, both of you.”
“Quiet. I’m talking to Bob,” Lucas said.
Bob said, “Well, being a handsome guy with a job, a nice car,expensive threads, and a gun, and being located in downtown New Orleans, with one of the largest known concentrations of redheads, hairdressers, and cocktail waitresses outside of Dallas, I believe Tremanty is well tended to. Rae made the mistake of indicating her interest, which means she’s always there if Tremanty needs a backup, or, you know, feels like going out of town for a long weekend.”
“Big mistake,” Lucas said. “Can’t believe she made an amateurish error like that.”
“I’m heavily armed,” Rae said. “Shut up and tell me about your jack.”
“I could have a word with Tremanty,” Lucas said to Rae. “He’s like a son to me.”
“One more fuckin’ word...”
Lucas said to Bob, “She’s not only armed, I think she’s actually suffering, at some level, from heartbreak. We’d best leave it alone.”
“You could be right,” Bob said. “Tell me about the jack.”
They stopped to let a right-turning car nearly run over their toes. “While I was sitting on my ass in St. Paul,” Lucas said, as the car drove on, “I called up an old friend who happens to be a deputy director at the FBI.”
Rae said, “Louis Mallard.”
“That’s correct. Not only a deputy director but a major law enforcement politician. He called up a pal with Scotland Yard—”
“You gotta be shittin’ me,” Bob said. “There reallyisa Scotland Yard?”
“And asked, politely, for any information about Oliver Haar. They had a file. Haar was the youngest member of a smash-and-grab gang in London. He ran his mouth too much and theLondon cops busted him. They gave him the old ‘Don’t drop the soap in the showers’ talk, being a nice-looking young kid looking at five years or so. He cut a deal to serve no time and ratted out the rest of the gang.”
“Should have taken his chances with the soap,” Rae said.
“Maybe. The guys he ratted out are a rough bunch. It gets better. The leader of the gang, whose name was George Wilks, and who had a lot of experience, was responsible for fencing the stuff they stole, and he parceled out the money to the gang in weekly payments. He told them he didn’t want them buying Series 7s or anything else that would catch the eyes of the cops. They had enough to live well, buy decent cars and dope, go to Italy or Portugal in the winter, and so on. Anyway, Wilks and the others all went to prison. Not long after they went away, somebody kicked in the door of Wilks’s house while his wife was out, pulled a dummy wall out from behind a toilet, and took out the two hundred thousand pounds that Wilks had stashed there. Haar knew about the stash. That’s just a rumor, but the London cops think it’s probably true. In the meantime, the Brits let Haar keep his passport—wink wink, nudge nudge—and he hasn’t been seen in England since Wilks’s bathroom got robbed.”
“What a bad boy Oliver is,” Bob said.
“That’s what everybody thinks,” Lucas said. “That was twelve years ago. All the gang members got out of prison since then, although two are back in again. The others are still involved in various kinds of crime, according to the London cops. If Oliver were discovered by U.S. Immigration to have come here with an undisclosed criminal record, and to be involved in criminal activity here, he’d be deported. Back to England. Where he probably doesn’t want to go.”
Rae: “Oh-oh.”
“Yup.”
“That’s an excellent jack you got there,” Bob said.
“I thought so,” Lucas said.
A young couple walked past. The guy was wearing a T-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops, and the woman was wearing a brief strapless top, tiny shorts, and sandals. Rae said, after they passed, “Here we are, walking down the street wearing long pants and jackets. You think anybody in LA hasn’t made us as cops? We need to revise our dress code if we have to work here.”
“What are you thinking?” Bob asked.
“What that guy was wearing: shorts, T-shirts, but maybe running shoes. We carry some weight, so maybe cargo shorts. We need to go shopping.”
“Tomorrow,” Lucas said. “Though I’m feeling a little moist right now. And I can tell you up front, the Davenport doesn’t wear cargo shorts.”
—
FLOWER CHILD’Swas nowhere near crowded. As Lucas remembered the waitress saying during their first visit, it was pretty much a middle-aged meat market, gold chains and all, though no leisure suits were in sight. Or any suits at all, for that matter—too hot.
