AllFreeNovel
Share Us
In Eddie's, the bar a block from the lockup, Rich Culbeau said sternly, "This ain't no game."
"I don't think it's a game," Sean O'Sarian said. "I only laughed. I mean, shit, was just a laugh. I was looking at that commercial there." Nodding at the greasy TV screen above the Beer Nuts rack. "Where this guy's trying to get to the airport and his car--"
"You do that too much. You prank around. You don't pay attention."
"All right. I'm listening. We're going in the back. The door'll be open."
"That's what I was gonna ask," Harris Tomel said. "The back door to the lockup's never open. It's always locked and it's got that, you know, bar on the inside."
"The bar'll be off and the door'll be unlocked. Okay?"
"You say so," Tomel said skeptically.
"It'll be open." Culbeau continued, "We go in. There'll be a key to his cell on the table, that little metal one. You know it?"
Of course they knew the table. Anybody who'd spent a night in the Tanner's Corner lockup had to've barked his shins on that fucking table bolted to the floor near the door, especially if they were drunk.
"Yeah, go ahead," O'Sarian said, now paying attention.
"We unlock the cell and go in. I'm going to hit the kid with the pepper spray. Put a bag over him--I got a crocus sack like I use for kittens in the pond, just put that over his head and get him out the back. He can shout if he wants but won't nobody hear him. Harris, you be waiting with the truck. Back it right up near the door. Keep it in gear."
"Where we gonna take him to?" O'Sarian asked.
"None of our places," Culbeau said, wondering if O'Sarian was thinking they were going to take a kidnapped prisoner to one of their houses. Which, if he did, meant the skinny kid was even more stupid than Culbeau thought he was. "The old garage, near the tracks."
"Good," O'Sarian offered.
"We get him out there. I got my propane torch. And we start on him. Five minutes is all it'll take, I figure, and he'll tell us where Mary Beth is."
"And then do we..." O'Sarian's voice faded.
"What?" Culbeau snapped. Then whispered, "You gonna say something you maybe don't want to say out loud in public?"
O'Sarian whispered back, "You were just talking 'bout using a torch on the boy. Doesn't seem to me that's any worse than what I'm asking--about afterward."
Which Culbeau had to agree with, though of course he didn't tell O'Sarian he may have a point. Instead he said only, "Accidents happen."
"They do," Tomel agreed.
O'Sarian toyed with a beer-bottle cap, dug some crud out from under his nails with it. He'd turned moody.
"What?" Culbeau asked.
"This's getting risky. Woulda been easier to take the boy in the woods. At the mill."
"But he's not in the woods at the mill anymore," Tomel said.
O'Sarian shrugged. "Just wondering if it's worth the money."
"You wanta back out?" Culbeau scratched his beard, thinking it was so hot he ought to shave it but then you could see his triple chin more. "I'd rather split it two ways than three."
"Naw, you know I don't want to. Ever-thing's fine." O'Sarian's eyes strayed to the TV again. A movie caught his attention and he shook his head, eyes wide, looking at one of the actresses.
"Hold on here," Tomel said, eyes out the window. "Take a look." He was nodding outside.
That redheaded policewoman from New York, the one so damn fast with the knife, was walking up the street, carrying a book.
Tomel said, "Nice-looking lady. I could use a little of that."
