The Finder

43

A visitor? Victor was standing in his lot trying one clonephone after the next and getting no answer when he saw a car pull in. Those fuckers had turned off their phones-he'd make them pay for that. But now he watched the car. He shouldn't have left the gate open. The driver slowed and looked around. Vic stepped back behind one of his trucks. The car drove up to the trailer, then made a slow, investigatory circle around it. It parked, and an old man, tall and lanky, unfolded himself from the driver's door and walked up the trailer steps and knocked. There'd be no answer; the business was closed today, everyone gone.

The man knocked again. Nothing. He pulled something out of his sleeve and slipped it into the door. Ha, thought Vic, that won't work; it's also chained from the inside. The man was able to get the door open just enough to poke his head in for a quick look before he turned and descended the steps. He walked around the huge sewage trucks, stopping to write each license number on a pad of paper. The kind of thing a cop might do, Vic decided, but then again, there were ways to look up license information if you were not in law enforcement; you just had to have a friend who was.

After a few minutes, the man headed toward the warehouse. Vic hurried to the door and unlocked it, and even opened it an inch, not only to entice the man, if he was a cop, but also to help him get past any anxiety about making an unlawful search. If the door was un locked and open, then the guy would not be able to resist entering; he'd just cautiously push through the door and look around.

And that is what the man did, though now with his gun drawn. Fine, thought Vic. I can do that, too. I wasted a lot of bullets scaring the Chinese girl, but I have two left. Nobody is going to hear anything back here anyway.