“Huh. All right. That’s the best idea I’ve heard,” Behan said.
“If Jaquell goes for it. She was skizzed out about the Coast Guard guys. If she’s decided to get lost in the Bahamas, we won’t be able to dig her out. I’ve tried calling her, but her phone’s been turned off.”
“Well, we’ll see. You look for a boat, maybe do a dry run. No big hurry. A month or two is fine. Let things quiet down. And maybe... Do you even know how to sail?”
“Sure. I mean, some, but Jaquell’s good at it,” Cattaneo said. “I can take some lessons if I need to. How hard can it be, some of the assholes you see on sailboats? Otherwise, we use the engines, then it’s just a powerboat.”
Behan slapped Cattaneo on the knee, stood up, stretched, yawned, and said, “I’ll talk to Dougie about it. If he green-lights it, you handle it. I’ll call when something happens with the marshals. Sorry about that last piece of ass. Plenty of choice girls hanging around at the Angelus, though. Stop up, I’ll introduce you.”
“Yeah. All I need is a good brisk case of the clap.”
“Not with these girls.” Behan was insulted by the idea. “These girls are certified. Go to the doctor all the time.”
“I’ll check them out. When are you going up there again?”
“Dougie’s coming down in a couple of days, he’s staying there, we can hook up then. Tell Belinda it’s purely business. And you know, she doesn’t see eye-to-eye with Dougie. She thinks he’s a criminal.”
“That’s true. Okay. I’ll take a look. Something... brunette, maybe. Brown eyes. Gotta have an ass on her.”
“We can do that.” Behan chuckled and looked up at the sky. “Great night, huh? This is the best time of year down here. Maybe we ought to ditch the condos and buy houses. Golf course somewhere.”
“I was thinking along the same lines—give Belinda a real studio.”
Behan laughed again: “Fuckin’ Belinda. If I had her talent, I never would have started killing people.”
Cattaneo said, “It mystifies me, man, the whole art thing. But she does good. I’ll take the cash.”
“Hey: check you later.”
They slapped hands and ambled off in their separate directions. Cattaneo glanced back once, shook his head. The whole white-on-white outfit, ruined by the sandals worn over the white athletic socks. Pathetic.
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
Bob and Lucasgot off the Ronald Reagan Turnpike at a Barnes & Noble bookstore and spent a hundred and nineteen dollars on books and magazines. They’d refused to share rooms, which annoyed Weaver until Lucas said, “Hey, the Marshals Service will cover it.” They got side-by-sides with a connecting door and Bob knocked on his side until Lucas opened his side, and Bob said, “I don’t even know why we’re here. Why do we need seven guys to watch one building?”
“We’re here out of politeness,” Lucas said. “Weaver will let us watch for a couple of days, then if nothing comes up, we’ll make something up and the SWAT team kicks the door down.”
“Two days in this room will anesthetize me,” Bob said. “I got a pink bedspread, for Christ’s sake.”
“Well, whatever you do, keep an eye on your gear bag. If a cleaning lady sees that M4, she’ll call the FBI.”
“Can’t leave it in the truck,” Bob said. “If we go out, I’ll leave it with one of the other teams.”
“Good.”
Bob: “So... you wanna watch a movie tonight? I been looking at the TV lineup.”
“Like what?”
“There’s a Sandra Bullock comedy about the FBI...”
Romano’s warehouse wasdirectly across the street, a single-story white concrete block building with angle parking for eight cars in the front, and a dumpster on a mostly unused dirt parking space in the back. The parking lots were empty when they checked into the motel and stayed that way. That night, no lights showed in the two side windows they could see and no light splashed out the front windows onto the parking lot. A single pole light lit the back parking lot.
The surveillance didn’ttake two days; it took barely two hours.
They were semi-watching Bob’s choice,Miss Congeniality, in Lucas’s room, when Weaver called.
