Beauchamps: “I’ll lead. Clayton, you follow. Cole, you know the routine: you watch behind us, me’n Clayton will take him.”
“But easy,” Cole said, for Deese’s benefit.
—
“LIGHTS,” Beauchamps muttered. “Here he comes.”
They saw the Cayenne pass under a streetlight. The yellow finish was unmistakable. The car slowed, and Beauchamps said, “Ready?”
Then Cole asked, “What the fuck is this?”
They watched, dumbfounded, as the garage door of the house across the street went up. The Cayenne pulled in and the door started down again. No chance they could get there in time to confront Harrelson.
“That fuckin’ O’Conner got the address wrong,” Deese said. “I’m gonna cut his fuckin’ nose off.”
“Not fuckin’ O’Conner, fuckin’ Google,” Cole whispered. “I saw the map and they marked this house. You gonna cut Google’s nose off?”
“We gotta get out of here,” Beauchamps said. “Jesus H. Christ. We gotta get out of here.”
—
THEY GOT BACKto the house without incident, fuming but sometimes laughing about it. Deese had thought it over and finally told Beauchamps that he was dealing with Roger Smith on a possible payoff that would see him out of the country.
“I’m telling you but not them other ones. If I get the cash, I’llgive you enough to get you anywhere you need to go and get set up again.”
Beauchamps shook his head. “Cole is my friend. I’ll take you up on the offer, but I’m going to tell him it might be coming.”
“Well, shit...”
Beauchamps said, “Clayton, something you never learned—being a killer instead of a robber—that to be successful, you sometimes have to trust people. I trust Cole.”
Beauchamps told Cole and Cox about the possibility of getting money from Smith and that they’d get a cut, if only a small one, and Cole bobbed his head, said, “Terrific,” and Cox said to Deese, “That’s nice of you,” the insincerity clear in her voice.
Later that night, when they were all in their separate rooms, Deese got a call on his burner. Roger Smith. He spoke low, and pool balls clicking in the background told Deese exactly where Smith was. Deese rarely yearned for anything other than money, cocaine, and sex, but he was suddenly overcome with yearning to be back in his old haunts in Louisiana, the green-baize pool tables, the smell of chalk, the squeak when twisting it on the tip of a cue. He pushed the yearning away, and asked, “You get my message?”
“Yes. I’m gonna do this, but I want to make a point plain. It’s a lot of money. If you take it and don’t hold up your end of the bargain, to leave the country, I’ll find the best talent I can and hire them to kill you. You understand?”
“Man...”
“You understand?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Don’t be bullshitting me,bon ami,” Smith said. “New Orleans is now off-limits for you. If you get the idea in your head of coming back here to put me down, you won’t get two feet inside the city before I know it. We won’t set no dumbass Lugnuts on you. So take the money and run and have a happy life.”
CHAPTER
TWELVE
As the Gang of Four was doing reconnaissance and making the aborted run at Harrelson, Lucas, Bob, and Rae were pulling together what they’d learned in Las Vegas.
They’d planned to start the day by checking local hospitals for anyone who’d paid cash for a leg injury before the robbery at the Wrights’ place; Bob and Rae would do that. Lucas would get together with Las Vegas’s Sergeant Mallow to interview local fences about the missing jewelry.
“Here in Las Vegas, they’ve probably got a Yellow Pages listing,” Rae said. They were sitting in the hotel’s café, eating pancakes.
“When was the last time you saw the Yellow Pages?” Bob asked.
“This place is so wired up. It’s like methamphetamine lighting. Makes me jittery. Gotta be more neon here than anywhere in the world,” Rae said. “At night, the whole street out there looks like a slot machine.”
