The Girl With the Deep Blue Eyes

Six

“Right on schedule,” the sheriff said. “But I don’t see the look of accomplishment that lit up your face the last time you wore a wire.”

“No.”

“I’d guess you got stood up, but you could have told me as much over the phone.”

“No, she showed up,” he said. “Simplest thing is to play it for you.”

“ ‘Over and out.’ You were a lot more formal at the beginning.”

He nodded. “By the time she got out of the car,” he said, “what I said and how I said it didn’t seem all that important. You and I are the only people who’ll ever have to listen to it.”

“Which is just as well, seeing as you came perilously close to entrapment toward the end there. All about those bugs that keep coming back inside, unless you let Frankie Boy hang a patch on your screen door.”

“I know. But it was all slipping away. She was calling it off, and I figured I’d give her one last chance to call it back on again.”

“I’m not blaming you. If she changed her mind once she could change it again, but once she’s out of the car it’s game over. Some of what she said was crap, you know.”

“I had the feeling.”

“I don’t believe she had that second conversation with Rich, where she tries to get him to call it off and he says handle it yourself. He never mentioned any second conversation, never said a thing to indicate she was having second thoughts.”

“Would he?”

“If the conversation ever happened, would he call and report it?” Radburn leaned back in his chair, folded his hands on his stomach. “Well, that’s a question,” he allowed. “Why would he bother? Still, she brought the thousand, didn’t she?”

“She didn’t show it to me.”

“No, but she didn’t deny it, either, and maybe it was in case you pitched a bitch about your time and expense, and maybe it was something else. You mind playing it again?”

They listened to the recording a second time through. “What she’s saying,” Radburn said, “is convincing enough, but it’s like her voice doesn’t quite match the words. You know what I mean?”

“I think so.”

“It’s like she decided that this is gonna be her story, so that makes it the truth, so all she has to do is tell it. And she does tell it, and she never exactly sounds like she’s lying—”

“But there’s no feeling behind the words.”

“There you go. Other hand, she’s sitting next to a cool son of a bitch who kills people for a living. Some people might find that to be a case of inhibiting circumstances.”

“It’s easy for me to forget what a desperate character I am.”

“If I had to guess, Doak, she meant it when she sat down with Gonson. She was working the floor that night, so she couldn’t have been all that drunk. A drink or two, maybe, and maybe she’d had a fight with George before she left the house and was still pissed at him. But when she brought up the subject, she genuinely wanted him dead.”

“And then she got to thinking it over.”

“Same as anybody would do. That’s a pretty big step, paying to have a man killed, even if you happen to be married to the fellow. And once you do it, there’s no Undo button.”

“No.”

“Easier to hit that button before there’s anything needs to be undone. Pull the plug, abort the mission.” He made a tent of his fingertips. “And when it’s time for the meeting, just stay home.”

“But she didn’t.”

“No, she showed up, and she brought along the thousand dollars, because you never know when you’ll see just the perfect little black dress.” He peered at Doak. “I dunno,” he said. “Maybe you’re the problem.”

“Me?”

“Say she got in the car, all set to go for the deal, and she took one look at your ugly face and said, ‘Hell no, I don’t want this degenerate getting anywhere near my George.’ ”

“That must be it. How big a payday was this degenerate supposed to be getting?”

“You mean how much is Gallatin County going to pay you? I hadn’t even thought about that, but—”

He was shaking his head. “No, don’t worry about that. I spent a few minutes sitting in my car, and I had better-looking company than I generally get. This can be my gift to the county. No, what I’m wondering is what Frank the Exterminator was supposed to get for his professional services.”

“Haven’t we been saying it all along? A thousand dollars in front.”

“In front of what?”

“Oh,” Radburn said.

“Because even in South Jersey, even in fucking Camden, you can’t expect to hire a hit man for a total price of a thousand dollars.”

“No, of course not. That was just a down payment.”

“Not even that, really. Earnest money, to show good faith. Before the deal went down, she’d be expected to come up with half the fee.”

“Sounds reasonable.”

“Traditional, anyway. But half of what, Bill? Did anybody set a price?”

Radburn frowned, thinking about it. “As far as I can remember, the only number I ever heard was one thousand.”

“She couldn’t have thought that was all she was going to have to pay. Didn’t your friend Gonson quote her a price?”

“He wouldn’t, not without letting me know about it. What he most likely did is told her the man she met with would discuss terms with her. Which you never had to do, on account of her pulling the plug.”

“Right.”

“Something the matter?”

“I don’t know. It never occurred to me I was going to have to negotiate a price. I wasn’t prepared, I wouldn’t have known how much to ask for.”

“You’d have come up with a number.”

“Well, I guess. If I had to.”

“Suppose you had to come up with one now. What would you say?”

“Jesus, I don’t know. Fifty?”

“Fifty thousand?”

“Why, is that too low? Too high? What?”

“No, it sounds about right. This isn’t New York or L.A., after all. It’s not even Miami or Atlanta. But, uh, Doak? She called the whole thing off, and even if she didn’t there was never going to be any cash changing hands beyond that thousand dollars we’ve been talking about. So what terrestrial difference could it make what price she might have thought she’d be paying?”

“Well, I can’t really say,” he said. “Not when you put it that way. But it sort of seems I ought to have some idea how much money I just missed out on.”