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  The big man was just bringing up his pistol to finish me off when he realized my outstretched hand was holding a two-shot over/under derringer strapped to my wrist and he was looking straight down both of its barrels. He never even heard the two shots that hit him in the face and blew his brains and blood all over the bedroom and the dead man behind him. They were incredibly loud compared to the much more subdued sounds of the big man’s silenced pistol.

  ******

  The Bluetooth had been on ever since I started into the alley. Norm had heard everything there was to hear, but didn’t have a clue as to what any of it meant. He was worried and anxious.

  “Talk to me, Cage; talk to me. What happened? Are you okay?” He was so shaken that he violated one of our most basic agreements—never to utter the other’s name when it might be recorded. We were so shook up that neither of us realized it at the time.

  I didn’t answer. I was too busy and badly shaken. I was only vaguely aware that my chest and stomach hurt as I struggled to my feet. All I knew was that I had to leave and leave fast. The loud sound of my derringer’s shots had been overwhelming. Hotel guests were almost certainly calling the hotel operator and opening their doors to look into the hallway.

  There wasn’t a moment to lose. And yet I did—I rushed around the room and the bedroom looking for the diamonds that were supposed to be there. Nothing. They weren’t there and there was no time to get into the room’s guest safe to look for them, no time at all.

  I rushed to the shooter and pulled the dead man’s wallet out of his pocket and shoved it into my hoodie. Then I scooped up my would-be killer’s cell phone and the wallet and cell phone I saw lying with a pair of glasses and some change next to the reading lamp by the bed. I was still shoving them into my hoodie’s front pouch as I rushed out of the room and into the hotel corridor.

  I didn’t bother to look for the pistol that had gone flying out of my hands when I was shot. It was new and unfired and couldn’t be traced to me. I’d never handled it except when I had been wearing gloves.

  The silencer was another story entirely. It was homemade. I’d built it myself. But I’d wiped it clean and left it soaking in a plastic paint bucket full of solvent for weeks before I pulled it out and carefully wiped it clean once again. There were three more just like it still in the bucket where I’d left them, four blocks away from where I lived, in the old wooden tool shed of an empty house whose owners were in court trying to settle a disputed estate.

  ******

  Norm had been spooked by the gun shots but could hear enough of my breathing and muttering to know that I was alive and moving. Even so, he was constantly asking questions as I ran down the hallway towards the fire escape exit. He had already started the Chrysler.

  As I ran I was aware that at least one door in the hallway had opened in response to the loudness of my two derringer shots and that my departure was being watched.

  “Come to the alley and pick me up. Hurry,” I finally gasped as I flew out of the metal exit door at the end of the corridor and headed down the fire escape’s steps as if the devil himself was nipping at my heels. I didn’t stop to pick up the pry bar.

  I ripped off the ski mask and stuffed it into the front of my now-bulging hoodie as I rushed down the metal steps of the fire escape. I had just grabbed the blanket roll and pushed down the metal ladder so I could climb down the last twenty feet, when Norm turned into the alley with his headlights on. I reached the alley as the car silently came to a stop next to me. There was no desperation in the behavior of the car such as screeching tires and turning too fast into the alley that might have attracted attention. Just swift and steady driving, the reason I’d invited Norm to the job in the first place.

  I was less under control than Norm. “Go. Go,” I shouted as I ran around to the passenger’s side and dove in, slamming the door much too loudly. I immediately began taking apart my derringer and wiping the parts off on my hoodie even before we cleared the alley. The various pieces would either go into the next river we saw or be tossed out the window after we got well away from the hotel.

  Norm was a professional and didn’t attract attention. He drove slowly and sedately out of the alley and turned right on to the one-way neighborhood street behind the hotel and then right again on to a major thoroughfare running through the center of the city.

  We were stopped at another red light seven or eight blocks later when a fast-moving police car with its siren going and flashing lights blew through the light where we were waiting. We knew exactly where it was going. That’s when I began telling Norm what the police would find.

  Chapter Three

  “You’re sure you heard him say I got one of them, you’re sure you heard him say that into his cell phone?” Norm’s voice sounded both incredulous and worried.

  “Yeah, that’s what he said alright, I got one of them. There’s no question about it. He was telling somebody that he’d shot me.”

  After a pause, I added “And he sure as shit did; it’s a damn good thing I was wearing a vest.” I was still upset about it and talking too loud and too fast; the bastard almost got me.

  Norm could hardly believe it and said as much. Several times. Neither could I. But the facts were the facts—it almost sounded as if someone had gone to elaborate lengths to draw me or both of us out of the shadows where we’d been hiding so we could be killed. But why? If we could figure that out, we would know who it was and what to do about it. But we couldn’t; at least, not now while we were still all pumped up from our narrow escape.

  “Was it you or me or both of us?” Norm asked as we passed through a stoplight that turned green just as we reached it. “Christ knows I’ve pissed off a lot of people, but not very many who would do that to get even and only a few that could. Besides, if they knew about us, they would know that all I usually do is drive. If it was just me they were after, they would have set me up for a gig and hit me in the car.”

  I had already thought of that. Norm was in the clear, at least so far. Besides, he might be useful in what was to come, whatever it might be.

  After a long pause, while we waited patiently at the next light, which had stopped us when it turned red, Norm added, “It must be either you or both of us they want. Don’t tell me who you think might be after only you, I don’t want to know.”

  I thought about it and finally mused out loud.

  “None of the legit businesses and organizations I ever hit would come at us like that, and I know it wasn’t you since the gig came to me from someone you don’t know. At least, I don’t think you know Robbie and Jack Douglass. So it must be somebody I hit or we hit in the past who is embarrassed or pissed at us, maybe because some of their friends know we hit them and got away with it.”

  I’d been thinking a mile a minute ever since my heart settled down from beating so hard and Norm stopped at the first red light. I already knew exactly where we’d start—the Phoenix jeweler, Jack Douglass; the man who knew about the deal because he’d provided the diamonds. He’d know who brought him the deal and provided the woman who could spot the deliveryman who would end up with the diamonds.

  Norm was worried and rightly so.

  “Well, count me in if it’s someone pissed at us for something we did together. We can’t afford to have someone out there who’s trying to bury us. This shit has got to stop. I’ve got a wife and children to take care of.”

  I agreed to call Norm as soon as I knew something. I promised him that when I did, I’d call and mention the word golf if I needed him. Norm was like Pencie; he liked to golf when he wasn’t working. The only difference was that he rarely took time off to enjoy himself; he was always either on his ranch taking care of his cows and family, or on a crew.

  ******

  A little over a week later, Norm was back home on his ranch and I was driving into Phoenix to visit Jack Douglass in a big Toyota SUV with Texas plates. I’d flown into Dallas and bought the Toyota off a Craigslist seller. It was clean and the name of
its new buyer on the title was the same as the name on the driver’s license I was using. It would be the “clean car” I’d use to drive out of town when my visit with Jack was finished. It would never be used on the job or in any way connected to it.

  When I finally got to Phoenix, I checked into one of the city’s several Travel Lodges as George Turner from Toronto “in town to buy a property for winter use because the wife likes it here.” I ate lunch across the street at a coffee shop and then returned to the motel for a brief nap.

  Later that afternoon, I signed up for a year of long term parking for the Toyota SUV and bought a ten-year-old Ford sedan from a Craigslist seller. The Ford would be my burner; I’d use it on the Douglass job and abandon it as soon as the job was finished.

  ******

  The next morning, I headed for Scottsdale to visit Jack Douglass at his upscale jewelry store. I’d never met the man, but I had gotten a pretty good description of him from Robbie who periodically ran into him at pawnbroker conventions. Robbie never said it, of course, but I suspected that Douglass was a jewelry fence to whom Robbie periodically sent referrals and got job suggestions.

  I was in Phoenix because having a talk with Jack was all I could think to do. The dead men’s cell phones and the two wallets had been dead ends except for the large amount of money in each of the wallets. The IDs had been good fakes and, according to Robbie, the credit cards had been stolen.

  The drive from the resort hotel where I was staying to Douglass’s jewelry store in an upscale shopping center in Scottsdale was enjoyable. Phoenix is clean and beautiful, especially outside of the older areas of the city where its low income people and illegal immigrants live, and Scottsdale is even nicer. I’d been here four or five years ago on a job and was surprised to see how much the upper income areas of Phoenix had grown.

  I passed several golf courses and thought briefly about vacationing here with Pencie sometime when the coast was clear. Pencie loves to golf, and I love the way she shakes her long hair before she takes each swing or gets into bed. I’ve always had a thing for women with long hair.

  *******

  Douglass’s jewelry store was in an upscale strip mall in Scottsdale. One look at the limited number of parking spaces in front of the store and I thought it likely that Douglass and his employees would park in the rear. Sure enough, in addition to several less expensive cars, there was a big, near-new black BMW four-door parked at the rear door that no jewelry store sales clerk would ever be able to afford. There was a security camera over the door so I drove on past and parked about four hundred feet away at the rear entrance of a toy store. It didn’t have a surveillance camera.

  I didn’t know what would happen when I met Douglass, or what, if any, his role in nearly getting me killed had been, so I wasn’t about to be seen anywhere near Douglass or near his shop or anywhere else there might be surveillance cameras. That’s why I’d driven on past the BMW without slowing down until I reached the back door of the toy store. Now I was parked where I could watch the rear door of Douglass’s jewelry store. Almost an hour later someone came out of the jewelry store’s rear door and got into the car I was watching.

  I was stunned. It was the fairly attractive woman who had picked up the Mob’s heroin seller and spent a couple of hours with him to find out which room he and the diamonds were in. I didn’t have a clue as to who she was. All I knew is that she’d come out of the hotel a little after midnight and said “Room 3207” as she walked past our car.

  ******

  I followed the unknown woman at a distance as she drove to a stand-alone and obviously expensive steakhouse and bar at the entrance to one of Scottsdale’s expensive shopping centers. She gave the valet her car and went through the door with an expectant smile and cheerfully swinging her purse. She was obviously looking forward to meeting whomever it was she was meeting.

  I drove on past and parked elsewhere in the shopping center’s parking lot without using the restaurant’s valet. I wanted to be able to get into my car quickly if I needed it. Waiting for a valet was not a good idea.

  “Hello. Would you like to be seated in the restaurant or bar?” one of the steakhouse’s two hostesses asked me a couple of minutes later as they both flashed big smiles and the one on my left picked up a menu and started around the podium to seat me.

  “Thanks, but no. I’m just meeting a friend. I’m sure I can find him if he’s beaten me here,” I said as I walked past them with a smile and entered the restaurant. The bar was to the left, the restaurant to the right. I walked into the restaurant and looked. It was early and the place was almost empty. She wasn’t there.

  The bar was something else. It was obviously happy hour and it was packed. I spotted her almost immediately. She was sitting and chatting with two other well-dressed women wearing similarly expensive blouses and pantsuits. I was clean shaven and well dressed with a long-sleeved shirt and neatly pressed slacks. The blondish ponytail wig I was wearing when she walked past to give us the hotel room number was gone; my own grey-flecked dark hair was neatly barbered around my substantial bald spot and I was wearing glasses.

  Best of all, the fake black tooth cap I’d worn in the brief moment she might have seen me had been removed and I no longer had dental wadding between my teeth and chin to disfigure my face. I didn’t think she would recognize me when I took a seat at the nearby bar and ordered a glass of wine instead of the beer I usually drink. From where I was sitting I could keep her in sight.

  She never once gave me a look for the almost two hours of drinking and eating that followed, particularly when I began chatting up the two women who sat next to me. I watched as the three expensively-dressed women, all bottle blondes who looked like they spent a lot of time in tanning and various other beds, soon had their own gentlemen friends sitting around them. They were all talking to each other with the animated enthusiasm one inevitably finds in such bars and constantly consulting their cell phones.

  I followed her when she finally left a couple of hours and more than a few drinks later. Or, more accurately, I followed her as she followed the man she had picked up to his home in a row of side-by-side condominiums on a street where about half the units were for sale. It was obviously his home because the man she was following opened the garage door and drove in while she parked in front.

  Several hours later, I watched by the light of the neighborhood’s street lights as she came out the front door, reached into her suit pants to adjust something, and climbed into her car. I was waiting at the end of the street and followed her as she drove much too fast along three blocks of virtually identical side by side condominiums with identical single-car garages. She barely slowed down at the red light as she turned right on to a larger street.

  I didn’t have a clue as to where I was or where she was going. I just followed her. Only one thing was certain, she either drove too fast all the time or was in a hurry to get to wherever she was going.

  ******

  Twenty high-speed minutes on the interstate that circles Phoenix and then on the side streets of a subdivision of expensive homes and I knew exactly where she was going even though I didn’t have a clue as to where it was. One of the signs at the beginning of the driveway where she turned in said The Douglass Family. The other was a security protection sign that announced to someone like me that all the Douglass’s had in the way of security was an easily defeated door alarm system that was rarely, if ever, turned on.

  “Hi,” I said as she answered the door a minute or so after I pressed the door bell and a gave a friendly and rhythmic 'shave and a hair cut' knock. “I’m Rolf, Rolf Mueller, “is Jack home?”

  “No,” she said. “But I expect him shortly.”

  “Is it okay if I wait for him? It’s really important. I’ve got to talk to him.”

  She looked me up and down, and then nodded.

  “I suppose so, if it’s really important. But can’t it wait until tomorrow? You look familiar; don’t I know you from somewhere? Are you
from Tucson?”

  “No, sorry, I’m from the Bay Area, San Jose,” I said as she opened the door and let me in. It was a nice house with the kind of carpeting and furniture and pictures on the wall which suggested everything had been bought at the same time in a department store.

  “Can I get you a drink of something?” she said as I smiled and walked in past her as she held the door open for me. “I’ve had a hard day and I’m ready for a drink. Would you like to join me for a glass of wine? I’ve got something stronger if you like,” she said with a teasing little girl giggle that didn’t fit her age.

  “No thanks.” ... “Nice place; you and Jack live here alone?”

  “Yes, except for a couple of cats who are probably out prowling, lucky devils. And why don’t I get you something stronger. Now that I think about it, Jack won’t be home until later tonight, much later. So we might as well relax and enjoy ourselves.” ... “wait here and I’ll be right back.”

  She came back about three minutes later. Except she wasn’t carry a couple of glasses and a bottle, she was carrying a purse and a gun she had obviously just taken out of it, a dinky little lady’s pink-handled .22 caliber pistol that would probably blow up and take her hand off if she fired it. On the other hand, she had a hard look of determination and her hand wasn’t shaking.

  “Okay, “she said. “I saw you at the bar. Who are you?”

  “Feds,” I said as I flashed a fake badge and ID picture at her and sat down on her couch. “Organized crime. And we’ve got you cold for your part in fingering the drug seller in a diamonds-for-drugs trade a few weeks ago. I’m here to offer you a deal. But first, put away the goddamn gun before it goes off and hurts someone.”

  ******

  It took a while because she didn’t believe me at first. But I knew enough about how the feds operated and the Witness Protection Program to convince her that a couple of men had been killed in Chicago and her choice was between spending most of the rest of her life in prison or telling me everything and going into witness protection. She wanted to seal our relationship with a quickie on the couch or by giving me a friendly blow job. I pushed her inquiring hand away and deferred as only a good fed would.