Crooked Little Vein

Tim Cardinal laughed. It made me jump: it sounded like a gunshot in a small room. “Oh, I like you. Now. I won’t ask again. You wanted to see me?”

I put the flashlight beam square on his face. I wanted him to focus on me, not Trix.

“Alexis Perez received a book as payment from a client,” I said, in as loud and steady a voice as I could manage with Trix looking down a gun barrel. “I believe you took the book for yourself. It’s a rare antique. My client has hired and empowered me to purchase it from you for a significant fee. Under-the-table purchase, bank transfer, no records.”

“How do you do a bank transfer with no records?” Cardinal sneered.

“My client is very important. It’s not an issue. I’m here to give you a lot of money for a book that’s no good to you. There’s no need for any of this.”

“If the book is so very important to your very important client, how do I know it’s no good to me?”

“Are you intending to go into politics any time soon?”

He laughed again, a genuine snort of amusement. The tunnel still made it a flat and horrible noise. “No.”

“Then it’s no good to you.”

He considered. “This would be the old leatherbound thing that she got from the Texan?”

“Right.”

“And she told you I had it?”

“She’s dead. She died a few hours ago. Death by misadventure. Home-brew plastic surgery.”

“Oh,” he said. For a moment there, he almost looked concerned. And then, “So how do you know I have it? Who told you?”

“I’m a detective. I worked it out. Let go of her now.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because you want me to. You’re not armed, are you?”

“No.” Damnit.

He threw the smile away, but there was light in his eyes for the first time. He was amused. He had all the power in the situation, and he knew it, and that was the only thing in the world that could make him register a pulse.

“I don’t have the book,” he said.

“Then we’ll be on our way. No hard feelings, no comeback. You won’t see us again.”

“But you have money, don’t you?”

“Not with me. Who has the book?”

“Ah. I have two things you want, then. What price do you set on that name and her life?”

“Screw the name. Let her go.”

Cardinal grinned. “I am finding this very interesting. I think I’m going to kill you both. Her first. Let you watch. Would that be nice?”

“I have access to four hundred thousand dollars,” I said.

“Where is it?”

“In a bank account. It’s yours if you let her go.”

Trix’s jaw dropped.

“And how do I get this money? Do we go into a bank together? I don’t think so.”

Shit. I thought furiously, trying to find a way to make this work.

“Mike,” Trix said in a small voice. “The handheld.”

“There’s a handheld computer in my inside jacket pocket,” I said. “It connects to the Internet. I can get to my account through it. I’m going to take it out, very slowly, okay?”

I opened my jacket wide and carefully extracted the device with two fingers. He watched me like a hawk the whole time. I snapped it open and began pressing buttons. The net connection coughed a bit—I was a little surprised it even worked, being two floors underground—but it got to the online banking thing. I was all fingers and thumbs, and I barely understood the fucking thing to begin with. I held it out.

“Trix is better with this thing than I am.”

He thought about this. I was visibly trembling. He liked it. Cardinal withdrew the gun from her eye and carefully placed it at the back of her head, at arm’s length. “Do it,” he said to her.

Trix took the handheld and began keying it, quickly and precisely. She cocked her head toward Cardinal. “What’s your account number?”

Amused, he gave her the number and codes, and she keyed them in with superb focus. Handed the device over her shoulder to him. “Check it.”

He took the device, and spent a few moments studying it. The light from the glowsticks was fading now, and his drawn features were lit coldly by the screen.

“Well, now,” he eventually said. “It appears that your bank account is empty and mine is full.”

“It’s nonreversible,” Trix said. “It’s marked as such at the bottom of the page there. You’ve got the money and we can’t take it away from you.”

Cardinal passed the handheld back over Trix’s shoulder.

“It has been a pleasure doing business with you both.” He fished in his coat pocket for something. The glow was almost dead, and I played my flashlight over him as he rummaged. He produced a matchbook.

“Before you arrived, I wrote the name and address of the entity I sold the book to on this. I prefer to be fully prepared for all eventualities, no matter how outlandish. So should you.”

The last of the glowsticks died. He tossed the matchbook on the ground. I put the flashlight on it. When I brought the beam back up to find Cardinal, he was gone. His footsteps stolen by the wet stone.

Chapter 40

Back in the car, Trix couldn’t stop shaking. She tried a weak smile on me. “Suddenly, this isn’t so much fun.”

“I told you I hate Las Vegas,” I said, cranking the ignition.

“Hold on a second,” she said. “You just gave someone four hundred thousand dollars to save my life.”