Carrottop walked back into his house.
Bubba used one finger to type on a laptop computer on the floor between us. He pulled a grimy piece of paper from his pocket. In his second-grader’s scrawl, he’d listed the cell phone types and serial numbers, and then the frequency numbers for his recording devices beside them. He typed a frequency number into the computer, then sat back on the floor.
“Never tried this before,” he said. “Hope it works.”
I rolled my eyes and sat back against the side panel.
“I don’t hear anything,” I said after about thirty seconds.
“Ooops.” Bubba raised a finger above his head. “Volume.”
He leaned forward and pressed the volume button at the base of the laptop, and after a moment, we heard Diane Bourne’s voice through the tiny speakers.
“…Are you drunk, Miles? Of course it’s an issue. They asked all sorts of questions.”
I smiled at Angie. “And you didn’t want to follow the redhead.”
She rolled her eyes and said to Bubba, “One good hunch in three years, he thinks he’s a god.”
“What questions?” Miles said.
“Who you were, where you worked.”
“How did they get onto me?”
Diane Bourne ignored the question. “They wanted to know about Karen, about Wesley, about how the fucking session notes got in Karen’s possession, Miles.”
“All right, all right, just relax.”
“Fuck relax! You relax! Oh, Jesus,” she said through a long stream of air. “The two of them are smart. Do you understand?”
Bubba nudged me. “Talking about you two?”
I nodded.
“Shit,” Bubba said. “Smart. Oh, sure.”
“Yes,” Miles Lovell said. “They’re smart. We knew that.”
“We never knew they’d trace anything to me. Fucking fix it, Miles. Call him.”
“Just-”
“Fix it!” she snapped. And then she hung up.
No sooner had Miles hung up than he dialed another number.
A man answered on the other end. “Yeah?”
“Two detectives sniffed around today,” Miles said.
“Detectives? You mean cops?”
“No. Private. They know about the session notes.”
“Someone forgot to retrieve them?”
“Someone was drunk. What can Someone say?”
“Sure.”
“She’s rattled.”
“The good doctor?”
“Yes.”
“Too rattled?” the calm voice asked.
“Definitely.”
“She’ll need a speaking to?”
“She may need more. She’s the weak link here.”
“The weak link. Uh-huh.”
There was a long pause. I could hear Miles breathing on his end, static and hiss on the other.
“You there?” Miles asked.
“I find it boring.”
“Which?”
“Working that way.”
“We may not have time for your way. Look, we-”
“Not over the phone.”
“Fine. The usual, then.”
“The usual. Don’t worry so much.”
“I’m not worried. I just want this dealt with faster than your usual inclinations allow.”
“Absolutely.”
“I’m serious.”
“I recognize that,” the calm voice said, and then he broke the connection.
Miles hung up, immediately dialed a third number.
A woman picked up a phone on the fourth ring, her voice thick and sluggish. “Yeah.”
“It’s me,” Miles said.
“Uh-huh.”
“’Member that time we were supposed to pick something up at Karen’s?”
“What?”
“The notes. Remember?”
“Hey, it was your deal.”
“He’s pissed.”
“So? It was your deal.”
“That’s not the way he sees it.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying he could go on another of his warpaths. Be careful.”
“Aww, Jesus,” the woman said. “You…you fucking kidding me? Jesus, Miles!”
“Calm down.”
“No! Okay? Jesus! He owns us, Miles. He owns us.”
“He owns everyone,” Miles said. “Just…”
“What? Just what, Miles? Huh?”
“I dunno. Watch your back.”
“Thanks. Thanks a lot. Shit.” She hung up.
Miles broke the connection and we sat in the van and watched his house, waited for him to pop his head out and take us wherever it was he intended to go.
“That woman sound like Dr. Bourne to you?”
Angie shook her head. “No. Definitely younger.”
I nodded.
Bubba said, “So this guy in the house, he did something heinous?”
“Yeah. I think so.”
Bubba reached under his trench coat, pulled out a.22 and screwed on a silencer. “So, okay. Let’s go.”
“What?”
He looked at me. “Let’s just kick in the door and shoot him.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “You said he did something heinous. So, okay, let’s shoot him. Come on. It’ll be fun.”
“Bubba,” I said, and placed my hand over his so he lowered the gun, “we don’t know what we’re dealing with yet. We need this guy to lead us to whoever he’s working with.”
Bubba’s eyes widened and his mouth dropped open and he stared at the van wall like a child whose birthday balloon just popped in front of his face.
“Man,” he said to Angie, “why’s he bring me along if I can’t shoot someone?”
Angie put a hand on his neck. “There, there, fella. All good things come to those who wait.”
Bubba shook his head. “You know what comes to those who wait?”
“What?”
“More waiting.” He frowned. “And still no one gets shot.” He pulled a bottle of vodka from his trench coat, took a long pull, and shook his massive head. “Don’t seem fair sometimes.”
Poor Bubba. Always showing up for the party in the wrong clothes.
18
Miles Lovell left his house shortly after sundown as the sky saturated itself in tomato red and the smell of low tide rode the breeze inland.
We let him get a few blocks away before we turned out onto the beach road and picked him back up again near the gas tanks on that industrial-refuse stretch of 228. Traffic was much lighter now, and what there was of it headed toward the beach, not away from it, so we hung a quarter mile back, waiting for the light to leave the sky.