“Don’t mince words.”
She shook her head.
“I found it in some old stuff. I wasn’t going to leave it there.”
“Right.”
“Let’s just go,” I said.
You had to be clever about it. The subject couldn’t think the incident was staged. That was the key.
Mia backed her 1968 Mustang into a space at the front of the complex, near the exit. I parked the Caravan in a spot near the corner of Wally Crouch’s building, where I could see both his car and Mia’s. The plan was to sit for an hour or so and wait for Crouch to emerge. In the previous three days, he hadn’t left his apartment before ten o’clock. If he hadn’t left his apartment by 10:30 or so, Mia would reposition her car closer to his apartment and actually knock on his door, which would be risky. He might get suspicious.
It didn’t come to that. At nine-fifty, Crouch came waddling out to his Toyota. He climbed in and started it up.
I was sitting on the bench seat in the rear of the van, behind the tinted glass. I grabbed my cell phone—we had a line already open between us—and said, “The cow is leaving the barn.”
A second later, I heard Mia’s reply: “You are such a dork.”
I watched as she stepped from her Mustang and raised the hood. The car was almost as eye-catching as she was. It was a fastback model that her dad had passed down to her a few years ago, mostly because he wasn’t driving it much anymore. Same kind of car that Steve McQueen drove in Bullitt, with that famous chase, except Mia’s was red, and her dad had insisted on some after-market safety improvements. But a girl like her driving around in a car like that? It was like something out of a Van Halen video.
Now Mia was bending over the engine, holding her hair back with one hand, her skirt riding up, showing a country mile of gorgeous thigh, and I knew right then that Crouch was dead meat. No warmblooded heterosexual male in America could resist a damsel in distress who looked like that.
And here came Crouch, rounding the corner in his Tercel. I ducked as he passed the front of the van, then I raised back up and saw him slowing as he approached the Mustang. I lifted my handheld video camera and started recording.
I couldn’t help smiling. Crouch had stopped and was leaning toward the passenger window, saying something to Mia. I could imagine the conversation.
You need some help?
Mia turned and looked at him. Oh, God, yes. My battery is dead.
You know anything about cars?
You got jumper cables?
Mia gestured toward the Mustang. Actually, I have a new battery in my trunk. I went to get it last night, but I don’t know how to put it in. I bought a wrench, too, but I can’t remember which thingy goes where.
Right on cue, Crouch pulled into a parking spot beside her. I zoomed in a tad as he came around to Mia’s car and proceeded toward the trunk. I noticed that she touched his arm—sort of a thank-you-so-much gesture—as he went by. You are so sweet to stop and help. He was grinning like a kid who’d found a twenty on the street.
Then Crouch bent over and came out of the trunk with a car battery weighing nearly forty pounds. His maximum was supposed to be ten. Searing pain? Nope. He hoisted the battery like it was made of Styrofoam.
Gotcha, you fat bastard.
“Damn, you are good,” Heidi said an hour later, after we’d watched the recording twice.
“Thank you. Women often forget that I’m more than just a hot slab of beef.”
The two of us were in a small conference room down the hall from her office. Heidi was sitting across from me, wearing a blue blouse, her blond hair cut in a pageboy. Cute as a button. Petite. Happily married, despite our occasional flirtations and innuendos. I’d seen the way her face glowed whenever she talked about her husband Jim, and I understood that, when it came down to it, our relationship was as inconsequential to her as that of a customer and a convenience-store clerk.
She pointed at the video screen. “That was all a set-up, right? The hottie in the Mustang?”
I shrugged. “Sometimes you have to get creative.”
“Who is she?” Heidi asked. “Girlfriend?”
“Local prostitute.”
She rolled her eyes. “Such a bullshitter. Hold on. I’ll go get the other file.”
She came back a minute later, holding a manila folder not unlike the one with my name on it in Harvey Blaylock’s office. She handed it to me. I expected manila folders in a bureaucrat’s office, but this was the private sector. I tended to tease her about it.
I said, “You know, they have these things called computer nowadays.”
“Don’t start with that again. We’re getting there. Supposedly just days from pulling the trigger. Sadly, that means we will no longer be able to rendezvous like this.”