Page 21 of Havoc

Fifteen years I have not lied to him. Not about money, not about women, not about a job that went sideways in Vidalia in twenty-nineteen when a lie would've saved me a broken hand.

Fifteen years.

"Motel was cold," I say.

The frogs.

"Cold."

"She'd already cleared out. Desk man says she paid through Thursday and left this mornin' with her bag."

"Blitz had a location on her at four."

"Blitz had a location on a phone. Phone was in a trash barrel by the ice machine." Comes out of me smooth. Comes out easy, like somethin' I've been carryin' around ready-made. "She ain't stupid, Storm. She figured somebody'd run the number and she ditched it, and I'd bet she did it two days ago and it's been sittin' in a bin ever since."

Long pause on the line.

I sit on my own back steps in the dark and I listen to a man I'd take a bullet for decide whether to believe me.

"Well, hell," Storm says.

"Yeah."

"That's a smarter woman than Lucien made her sound."

"That's what I thought."

"You want Blitz on it again in the mornin' or you want to run the pawn shops first?"

"Pawn shops."

"Alright." I hear him move — the chair in his office, the one that pops. "Havoc."

"Yeah."

"You'd tell me."

Not a question. He don't ask questions. He puts a thing out on the table and lets a man pick it up or not.

"Yeah," I say.

"Alright then. Get some sleep."

He hangs up.

I sit there a while with the phone face down on my knee and the frogs hollerin' and the water movin' around out there in the black where I can't see it.

Behind me, down the hall, a dresser goes across a wood floor about four feet.

Then it stops.

Then it goes another six inches, which is her doin' it twice so I'd hear it the second time.

CHAPTER EIGHT

LENNOX

There is nothing in this house.