Thirteen Million Dollar Pop

68

Shug Saunders sat in a back booth of the Steer-In and poured a swirling ribbon of cream into his ink-black coffee. His triglyceride level dictated he ought to be using skim milk or better yet no dairy at all, but now what difference did it make? He felt like he was in quicksand, falling down a hole, with the hole closing right on top of him.

“We’re going to need you to stay back, be the home base guy for the time being, Shug.”

“But, Bernie, I-”

“Yes, you had much to do with this, and the gratitude is there, but everyone needs to do his part now …”

That was how the brief meeting with Kolodnik had gone a few days back, when Shug had been told he wasn’t going to D.C. It felt like a life sentence. He’d analyzed every word of their conversation, as he had every conversation between him and Kolodnik since the night of the incident.

Does he know? It was the question that burned in Shug’s brain 24-7 now. At first it had been there only during his every waking moment, but there was little sleep lately. Some wise man once said: “The guilty wish to be caught.”

Yeah? Well bullshit to that, was Shug’s feeling on the matter.

The waitress headed his way. “You ready to order, or you still want to wait, sugar?” she asked.

Where the hell was Pat Teague? Shug wondered.

“Guess I’ll keep waiting,” he said. Then a slight smile suddenly appeared on his lips. It was odd considering his situation, the danger of it, but despite all that, the last two days had been the most wonderful, amazing days of his life. “You know what?” Shug said, “bring me a 10th Street Skillet.”

To hell with the lipids, Shug decided. Spending this much straight, uninterrupted time with Lori was his idea of heaven. He couldn’t believe he’d gotten her to go for it. Sure, it was costing him a fortune, but recent events had given him a new perspective: life is now. Maybe Lori had shown him that, or he’d just figured it out in her vivacious presence, but she was better, and more than he even expected. Whether it was ordering in dinner or him driving her to the gym or just watching TV on the couch, her in her nightclothes with her feet across his lap, he’d never felt such intimacy. Not even with his first wife. And in the bedroom … oh my, it thrilled him just to think about it. He didn’t even mind going to sleep on the pullout sofa afterward. It could’ve been a lifetime of this, if that night in the garage had worked out, and with Bernie Cool out of the way Gantcher and the rest had gotten the tax rebate and he could’ve cashed in his share of Indy Flats for full value. Sometimes you just get what you get. He shrugged.

Shug rubbed his hands together in anticipation of his breakfast skillet, and getting back to her. He reached for a newspaper resting on the edge of the counter that a departing customer had left behind. It was folded back to the business section, so he flipped it over to start from the front page and felt his throat go thick.

Ex-Fed Slain in Thorntown, bannered the article, with an old FBI class photo of Teague twenty-five years and fifty pounds ago. Shug read on in organ-gripping dismay:

In what appears to be a home invasion robbery gone awry, Patrick Teague, a former FBI agent and current security specialist, and his wife, Margaret, were found dead in their Thorntown home …

It went on from there, reporting too many mundane details and leaving out the most important ones, like who did it and where was he? Shug felt his eyeballs might roll out of his head onto the table beneath him. He began waving at the waitress-trying to short-circuit his breakfast order, to ask for the check, to announce he was leaving. His flapping lips and gasping breath were no help. Finally, he rose, gathered his feet under him, and pulled some cash from his wallet. He staggered out the door, both hands on the glass, and out into the parking lot, raising his face toward a cover of chunky gray cloud belly hanging low in the sky. The air felt close, and he throttled the air conditioner the minute he climbed into his Acura and drove away toward Lori’s.

69

“Lookit that,” Ruthless said when the lone man crossed from his car to the diner, “that’s fucking Saunders, ain’t it? The bloke who’s supposed to be in D.C.”

It was. Waddy Dwyer and Rickie Powell were sitting at the far end of the Steer-In parking lot, as they had been for over an hour, waiting for Teague’s meeting partner to show up. They figured they’d be able to spot the likely candidate, but now they were beyond sure. They knew Saunders’s face from photos on the Internet, and considering they thought he’d slipped away, it was unbelievably good fortune.

“Stand in the right place and the ball falls right on yer fucking foot sometimes …” Dwyer said.

After a brief wait the restaurant door swung open and Shug moved toward his car. Dwyer turned over his engine and put it in gear. As Shug’s car jutted erratically into sparse traffic on 10th Street headed west, Dwyer and Rickie Powell dropped in, smooth and unnoticed as a creeping shadow behind him.

“I imagine he’s heading back to his flat,” Dwyer began. “When we get there, there’s a way in through the-” But Saunders turned in a different direction. “Belay that,” he said.

They veered toward a more commercial area than Saunders’s, before he parked near a brick factory building that looked like it had been converted to residential space.

“Come on, then,” Dwyer said to Rickie. “Gear up. You’ve got to follow him in and find out what floor he goes to.”

“Copy,” Rickie said, opening the door.