So honestly, what other qualifications were required.
Hopping up the steps, he rapped on the door, which was hanging rather loose. When there was no answer, he knuckled louder and glanced at the truck. Fucker was in, and they’d made this appointment yesterday. Besides, Dave wasn’t the sort who double-booked. In his line of work, anonymity was everything. You didn’t want your suppliers to cross with your buyers or you found yourself out of your middleman job.
“Come on, Dave,” he called out. “Open the fuck—”
He pulled on the busted door as a way to rush Dave off whatever phone call he was on—
The scent that wafted out was of blood that had aged a little.
Balz already had his gun discreetly palmed, and with his vampire vision, he could see some of the dim interior. Breathing in deep, he made sure there was no one else in there.
Looked like good ol’ Dave had played his hand a little too hot.
Stepping inside, he found the man in a recline on the ratty sofa with most of his brains blown out the back of his skull, abstract art without a frame.
“Damn it,” Balz muttered as he glanced around. “I got these watches, my guy.”
The bedroom was on the other end, and he strode down to the bare-mattress-on-the-floor decor just to see—well, lookey-lookey. Somebody had busted open Dave’s Glock-in closet and cleaned it out.
Back in the trailer proper, Balz stared down at where the sitting area had had its gray-matter, blood-splatter renovation. Fucking wonderful. Now he had to find another fence.
It was like Starbucks discontinuing the Verismo. He’d been hoarding pods for months, and when that goddamn machine broke or he finally ran out of them, he was going to have to reinvent his perfect coffee.
Fucking inconvenience over nothing.
Just as he was turning away, he caught sight of something on the floor, half-concealed under the filthy fringe of the death sofa. It was a Hannaford plastic bag, and the thing was partially open . . .
. . . and flashing a whole lot of B. Franklin faces.
Going over, he pulled the bag free of the dust bunnies and the grab of something nasty on the carpet. As he fought the resistance, he heard Flula’s voice from “Beer Pong, You Are Terrible.”
Cranberry juices. Sticksy, sticksy. Lick, lick, lick, lick—
The bag came free, and as he opened the thing wide, he whistled at all the bundles of hundies.
“Well, this is just about right, isn’t it, Dave.” Determined to be a team player, he smiled over at the pasty face with its sightless eyes and the little red hole off center on the forehead. “Gotta be about twenty grand in here. Fair trade.”
Retail, the watches from Mr. Commodore’s collection would be over a hundred grand. But you were lucky to get twenty percent when you were on Balz’s side of commerce.
“I’ll just leave these right here.” He winked at his cold, immobile business associate as he put the watch case on the coffee table. “I’d hate to steal from you. It’d just ruin my reputation on LinkedIn.”
He would have rolled the bag around the cash and just shoved it inside his jacket, but licky, licky, don’t you know. So he took the bills and let the nasty bag drift down to the matted carpet.
“Take care, big guy.”
Just as Balz was about to step out of the trailer, a pair of headlights washed the front side with all kinds of hi-how’re-ya. The blinds were down, so he went over and parted the dusty slats. It was a shitty sedan with a lot of rust lace behind its tires. An older man in a set of overalls got out, his scruffy beard and chopped hair gray, his face lined and loose. He lit a cigarette and looked at the trailer with an expression of exhaustion.
Dave’s dad. Had to be. They had the same bone structure, but more than that, the way the guy stared forward? It was like he had been waiting for what he was going to find inside.
An unexpected sadness wrapped around Balz’s heart.
Thieves should still be mourned, he thought as he dematerialized. Even if their lives aren’t worth shit.
• • •
Over at Luchas House, Nate walked into a bedroom on the southwestern corner of the farmhouse. There were large cardboard boxes tilted against the wall, a rolled-up carpet, and two mattresses stacked in the middle—so not exactly cozy and inviting. But as he went over to the window, he got a good view of the big maple in the front lawn.
“If you put your bed against this wall”—he pointed to the longest stretch in the room—“you’ll be able to look at it lying down.”
When there was no response, he glanced over his shoulder. Elyn was in the en suite bath, leaning into the mirror, staring at herself like she didn’t recognize the reflection—or maybe like she wasn’t sure where she was and was trying to ground herself in her own features.