Page 101 of Lone Wolf

He fell three stories and landed with a clang worthy of a comic book.

Evan took two slow steps forward, leaning to look over the edge. The guy had landed in the fucking bed of Evan’s pickup.

He said, “Damn it.”

Then he looked up. The rooftop gave him a great sight line across the flatness of the Mojave basin, and that meant the approaching line of flashing red and blue lights about a mile and a half to the north was clear in the pristine night.

Maybe the capo and his khakied henchmen hadn’t unhooked the security monitors after all.

He said, “Damn it.”

He ran back to the rooftop door, flung it open, and leapt down the flights of stairs, his boots rattling the building.

Bursting out on the ground floor, the sibilation of the hive murmuring back to life once more.

“—dead? Are they all—?”

“Will you send help?”

“—why are you why did they why am I—”

Bolting down the corridor, cutting left around one corpse, hurdling the other. He grabbed the doorjamb to the last room on the left and swung into the nerve center. The computer hardware was large and intensely cord-entwined with a jungle of apparatuses, but there were three black cell phones lined up like blackjack cards at the edge of the desk.

He swept the burners into a cargo pocket, ran through the front door, cornering the side of the building just before a wave of headlights lit the stuccoed front from a block away.

A leg crooked a few wrong ways was slung over the side of Evan’s pickup bed, the rest of the onetime dancer piled inside out of sight.

Evan said, “Damn it.”

He flung the leg up over into the bed and it hit the heap of matter on the other side softly and out of view. He hopped into the driver’s seat, shot away from the rear of the building, and carved a block-wide U-turn to head back into the fray.

Having a body in the bed of his truck wasn’t even the most pressing reason he didn’t want to be spotted fleeing a crime scene. As he waited at a red light, he watched a half dozen police cars whip past, sirens roaring.

He waited for them to pass, signaled dutifully, and then aimed his Ford in the direction of Tommy Stojack’s place.

45

Help Burying a Body

Tommy’s armorer den fronted as an auto-repair shop. As Evan’s wheels popped and crackled across the rocky dirt drive, his headlights illuminated the graveyard of props strewn in the front yard—rusting engine blocks and sedan carcasses and a tractor tire conscripted into planter duty for black mustard weeds. The neon sign over the entrance of the low-slung building was unlit as usual, the cover business perennially closed.

Evan didn’t get far before Tommy stepped through the metal door in a pair of cargo pants and a half-buttoned shirt, bowed legs shoved into unlaced boots, an FN SCAR in 7.62×51 in the low carry position in case things sparked off.

He squinted through the headlights, recognizing the truck, and let the semiauto swing to his side as Evan climbed out. Tommy stood there, crooked on his bad hips and bad knees and bad ankles but somehow holding vertical.

Evan said, “I need help burying a body.”

Tommy rolled his lower lip inward, making his horseshoe mustache bristle, then spit a stream of tobacco juice through the gap in his front teeth. Had he shoved Skoal into his mouth upon being awakened by the surveillance system’s alert? Was it part of his routine like stepping into boots and grabbing a carbine? Or did he sleep with his lower lip packed to save time?

He bobbed his head a few times. “Okay,” he said.

He disappeared back through the metal door. Evan waited in the cold desert wind. Not thirty seconds later Tommy reemerged, two shovels in hand.

“C’mon then,” he said, in his low grumble of a voice. “Let’s get ’er done.”

46

That Fuckin’ Dog