“He’s not giving you the money?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Rick Weiss hurled himself into the back of a kitchen chair and its legs belched against the linoleum. “He’s an asshole. An asshole that’s trying to rip us off.” He slapped the underside of the table with his knees.
“But it’s him, right? Jimmy Spears? Jimmy’s the guy he’s looking for?”
“Of course it’s Jimmy,” Rick said. “A rich judge like him don’t come all this way just to say no thanks. He could’ve done that on the computer.” He pushed aside the mail in dull number 10 envelopes and opened up the September 20 Sports Illustrated, paging through it without glimpsing a single photo or headline. Peg, his wife, sat down across from him, her pale face lined and worried, but not yet betraying that she had already run up a six-thousand-dollar debt with Visa that she had planned on paying with the bounty on Jimmy Spears’s head.
“Then why won’t he pay?” Peg squealed.
“Asshole,” Rick said.
“Asshole!” Peg said.
“Fucking crooked judge!” Rick said.
Every Saturday night, Ricky and Peg watched a TV show that profiled bank robbers and murderers and molesters on the lam, and twice they phoned in tips that, privately, they knew to be thin as 20-weight oil. When Peg came across the composite Davis had created at a crime stoppers Web site, however, she was certain they were clutching a pot of gold with both hands.
“Who does this look like to you?” Peg had asked that day, handing him the printout.
“Hell,” Rick said, curious, having not yet read the vague paragraph Davis had written to accompany his query. “That’s Jimmy.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“Sure as shit.”
Jimmy Spears had been in Rick’s class, two years ahead of Peg. Rick was in a different social circle than Jimmy – shop/wrestling/chewing, as opposed to AP English/football/smoking – but Rick always thought Jimmy was a good guy. Since Jimmy’s appearance in the Rose Bowl, every between-classes encounter Rick had once shared with Jimmy in the Brixton High School hallway had been embellished into a hilarious buddy story to entertain the Thursday night crew at Millie’s Tap Room on Pioneer Street.
When he saw Jimmy’s face on that piece of paper, however, Rick conjured a new fantasy, one that would pay him and Peg $25,000. After exchanging e-mails with tips@justiceforak. com, after the visit to Brixton had been arranged, Rick could imagine a five-figure balance on every ATM receipt.
“I fucking gave that judge Jimmy Spears. Whatever the fuck Jimmy did to him, I handed that boy, my friend, over on a golden platter, and now he’s gonna screw me. You just watch. Next week, Jimmy will get arrested or he’ll show up dead. Dead’s my bet.” He shook his finger at Peg. “Yeah. That’s why Forak’s so secretive. He’s gonna kill the sonofabitch.”
“Oh damn,” Peg said. “You think?”
Rick nodded. “Remember these words: Jimmy Spears will show up deader’n a doornail. It’ll be in all the papers.” His voice had gone quiet. Conspiratorial.
“Jesus,” Peg said. “And then we’ll turn Forak in, yeah?”
“Yeah, we will,” Rick nodded. “No, we’ll do better than that. We’ll go to the papers.”
Giddiness and love pushed a flat smile across Peg’s face. “Yeah.”
Rick picked up the magazine and turned the cover to face her.
“Sports Illustrated,” Rick said. “ They’ll pay us twenty-five grand.”
“You think?”
“Hell, that’s a fraction of what those swimsuit models make. We’ll sell more copies than them. This guy, the judge, and the lady who’re looking for Jimmy. He’s a smart sonofabitch. Nice clothes. And he’s got connections, all respectable and shit. He’s gonna kill Jimmy and he’d get away with it, too. But you and me, we’re gonna crack the case. Sports Illustrated will get the scoop. We’ll get the money. Be on Dateline NBC. Maybe Oprah. Jenny. Ricki. All that shit.”
“Fa-a-a-amous,” Peg cackled, and twisted in her chair.
“Fame and fortune, hon. Fame and fortune.”