Bubba looked over his shoulder at me. I nodded vigorously.
“Yeah,” he said.
“Okey-doke.” She started to rise from the couch.
“No, no,” Bubba said. “Stay there. We’ll leave. We got to go upstairs anyway.”
“Mmm. Better.” She slipped back down into the couch and hit the remote and Mickey and Kim started huffing and puffing to bad eighties synth-rock again.
“You know, I’ve never seen this movie,” Angie said as we followed Bubba up the stairs to the third floor.
“Mickey’s actually not very greasy in this one,” I said.
“And Kim in those white socks,” Bubba said.
“And Kim in those white socks,” I agreed.
“Two thumbs-up from the pervert twins,” Angie said. “What a boon.”
“So look,” Bubba said as he turned on the lights on the third floor and Angie wandered off to look through the crates for her weapon of choice, “you got any problem with me, ah, how do I say this-boning Vanessa?”
I covered a smile with my hand, looked down at an open crate of grenades. “Ah, no, man. No problem at all.”
Bubba said, “Cause I haven’t had a, whatta ya call it, a steady-”
“Girlfriend?”
“Yeah, in like a long time.”
“Since high school,” I said. “Stacie Hamner, right?”
He shook his head. “In Chechnya, ’84, there was someone.”
“I never knew.”
He shrugged. “I never offered, dude.”
“There’s that, sure.”
He put his hand on my shoulder, leaned in close. “So we’re cool?”
“Cool beans,” I said. “What about Vanessa? She cool?”
He nodded. “She’s the one told me you wouldn’t care.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Said you two never cared about each other. It was just exercise.”
“Huh,” I said, as we crossed back toward Angie. “Exercise.”
Angie pulled a rifle from a wooden crate and rested the stock on her hip. The barrel towered over her. The rifle was so thick and looked so heavy and mean, it was hard to believe she could hold it without tipping over on her side.
“You got a target scope with this baby?”
“I got a scope,” Bubba said. “What about bullets?”
“The bigger the better.”
Bubba turned his head, shot me a deadpan look. “Funny. That’s what Vanessa says.”
On the roof across from Scott Pearse’s loft, we sat and waited for the phone call. Nelson, intrigued by the rifle, stayed and sat with us.
At ten on the nose, Scott Pearse’s phone rang and we watched him cross the living room and lift the receiver of a black phone attached to the brick support column in the center of the room. He smiled when he heard the voice on the other end, leaned lazily back into the support column and cradled the receiver between neck and shoulder.
His grin faded gradually, and then his face turned into a sickened grimace. He held out his hands as if the caller could see him and spoke rapidly into the phone, his body bending with his pleading.
Then Carrie Dawe must have hung up on the other end, because Scott Pearse jerked his ear back from the phone and stared at it for a moment. Then he screamed and smashed the receiver over and over again into the brick column until all he had left were a few shards of black plastic and a dangling metal mouthpiece.
“Gee,” Angie said, “I hope he has a second phone.”
I pulled the cellular phone I’d gotten at Bubba’s from my pocket. “How much you want to bet he breaks that one, too, once I’m done.”
I dialed Scott Pearse’s number.
Before I hit send, Nelson said, “Hey, Ange,” and pointed at the rifle. “You want me to do the honors?”
“Why?”
“Fucking recoil’ll knock your shoulder back a few blocks is all.” He jerked a thumb at me. “Why can’t he do it?”
“He’s got shitty aim.”
“With that scope?”
“Really shitty aim,” she said.
Nelson held out his hands. “It’d be my pleasure.”
Angie considered the rifle stock, then glanced at her shoulder. Eventually, she nodded. She handed the rifle to Nelson, then told him what we wanted.
Nelson shrugged. “Okay. Why not just kill him, though?”
“Because,” Angie said, “A, we’re not killers.”
“And B?” Nelson asked.
“Killing him’s too nice,” I said.
I depressed the send button on the cell phone and Scott Pearse’s phone rang on the other end.
He’d been leaning with his head against the brick column, and he raised it slowly, turned his head as if unsure what sound he was hearing. Then he walked over to the bar curled around the edge of his kitchen and lifted a portable off the top.
“Hello.”
“Scottie,” I said. “What’s happening?”
“I was wondering how long it would be before you called, Pat.”
“Not surprised?”
“That you learned my identity? I expected no less, Pat. Are you watching me at the moment?”
“Possibly.”
He chuckled. “I sensed as much. Nothing I could put my finger on, mind you-I mean, you’re not bad-but in the last week or so, I had the feeling eyes were watching.”
“You’re an intuitive fella, Scott. What can I say?”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
“Was it your intuition that told you to bayonet five women in Panama?”
He wandered into the living room, head down, index finger scratching the side of his neck, a wry smile curling up one side of his face.
“Well,” he exhaled into the phone. “You’ve done some extra credit in the homework department, Pat. Very good.”
The grin left his face, but the scratching grew a little faster.
“So, Pat, what’s your plan, buddy?”
“I’m not your buddy,” I said.
“Whoops. My bad. What’s your plan, asshole?”
I laughed. “Getting testy, Scott?”
In the loft, he put a palm to his forehead, then brushed the hair back off his head with it. He looked out at his black windows. He toed a shard of black plastic on the floor with his shoe.
“I can wait you out,” he said. “You’ll tire of watching me do nothing.”
“That’s what my partner said.”