John Smith was sitting in the blue Chevelle, on the rider’s side. Slouched against the door, smoking a cigarette, two fingers resting gingerly on his bandaged nose. Where surveillance was concerned, he’d been an incompetent agent, but you could hardly ask for a better subject. It was like sneaking up on a corpse.
The parking lot, dimly lit except directly under the small neon over the door, was empty of anything but cars at the moment. Ten o’clock was too late for many people to be arriving and too early for many people to be leaving. And a perfect time to go out to my GT on one side of the lot, unlock the glove compartment and get out the silenced nine-millimeter, and walk over to the other side of the lot and the Chevelle.
The door he was leaning against was unlocked, I noticed, and when I opened it he fell out like an ironing board from its closet.
He had a gun, a Smith and Wesson snubnose. 38, but it, like his cigarette, tumbled out of his fingers while he was tumbling out himself. I scooped up the. 38, dropped it into a jacket pocket and pointed the nine-millimeter at the middle of his face.
He was sprawled on his right side and looked like he was trying to swim in the gravel. He looked comical. More so, when his eyes crossed to look at the barrel of the nine-millimeter.
“You motherfucker,” he said, lamely, like he’d never used the word before in his life.
“Shhh,” I said.
“What’s going…”
I poked his nose with the gun’s.
“Shhh, I said.”
He put a hand over his nose. He started to weep.
“Please,” I said. “This is embarrassing enough as it is.”
I patted him down with my free hand. He had no other weapon.
“Keys,” I said.
He pointed at the car.
I looked over and the keys were in the dash.
“Get them,” I said.
He pushed himself up, hesitantly, and leaned into the car. I leaned in with him, pressing the flat snout of the silenced gun against his back, his ribs, and he got the keys. We leaned back out and he turned slowly and held out the keys to me. They dangled like a vulgar earring.
I didn’t take them. I shut the car door and said, “Open the trunk.”
He cocked his head, like he couldn’t quite make out what I was saying. With those ears of his, you’d think he wouldn’t have any trouble hearing.
“The trunk,” I said.
He shrugged, but the casualness of that gesture didn’t work for him. This was one scared shitless character.
Which didn’t keep him from opening the trunk, fumblingly of course, but he opened it.
I had, by this time, stuck the nine-millimeter in my waistband. For a guy like this I didn’t need the gun. In fact I could’ve given it to him to hold for me.
I glanced around, looking for the beams of light that would indicate someone coming up the drive into the lot, looking to see if anyone was coming out a Barn door, or if anyone might be able to see us from a window. The latter was barely possible, but between the lack of windows downstairs and the shuttered ones upstairs, and our being way over to the far side of the lot, I felt it unlikely there were any eyes on us.
So we were standing in front of the trunk of the Chevelle like a couple of guys in front of an altar, or urinal. And my bland-looking college kid companion, with his busted nose and big, apparently nonfunctional ears, looked at me wondering what to do next. I told him.
“Get in,” I said.
He cocked his head again.
“In,” I said, and pointed at the trunk.
He cocked his head and pointed at the trunk with me.
“Oh Jesus,” I said, and pushed him in there and shut the lid.