بخش 03 - فصل 12

12

Morris visits another computer café that Sunday night, and does his own quick bit of research. When he’s found what he wants, he fishes out the piece of notepaper with Peter Saubers’s cell number on it, and jots down Andrew Halliday’s address. Coleridge Street is on the West Side. In the seventies, that was a middle-class and mostly white enclave where all the houses tried to look a little more expensive than they actually were, and as a result all ended up looking pretty much the same.

A quick visit to several local real estate sites shows Morris that things over there haven’t changed much, although an upscale shopping center has been added: Valley Plaza. Andy’s car may still be parked at his house out there. Of course it might be in a space behind his shop, Morris never checked (Christ, you can’t check everything, he thinks), but that seems unlikely. Why would you put up with the hassle of driving three miles into the city every morning and three miles back every night, in rush-hour traffic, when you could buy a thirty-day bus-pass for ten dollars, or a six-month’s pass for fifty? Morris has the keys to his old pal’s house, although he’d never try using them; the house is a lot more likely to be alarmed than the Birch Street Rec.

But he also has the keys to Andy’s car, and a car might come in handy.

He walks back to Bugshit Manor, convinced that McFarland will be waiting for him there, and not content just to make Morris pee in the little cup. No, not this time. This time he’ll also want to toss his room, and when he does he’ll find the Tuff Tote with the stolen computer and the bloody shirt and shoes inside. Not to mention the envelope of money he took from his old pal’s desk.

I’d kill him, thinks Morris – who is now (in his own mind, at least) Morris the Wolf.

Only he couldn’t use the gun, plenty of people in Bugshit Manor know what a gunshot sounds like, even a polite ka-pow from a little faggot gun like his old pal’s P238, and he left the hatchet in Andy’s office. That might not do the job even if he did have it. McFarland is big like Andy, but not all puddly-fat like Andy. McFarland looks strong.

That’s okay, Morris tells himself. That shit don’t mean shit. Because an old wolf is a crafty wolf, and that’s what I have to be now: crafty.

McFarland isn’t waiting on the stoop, but before Morris can breathe a sigh of relief, he becomes convinced that his PO will be waiting for him upstairs. Not in the hall, either. He’s probably got a passkey that lets him into every room in this fucked-up, piss-smelling place.

Try me, he thinks. You just try me, you sonofabitch.

But the door is locked, the room is empty, and it doesn’t look like it’s been searched, although he supposes if McFarland did it carefully … craftily—

But then Morris calls himself an idiot. If McFarland had searched his room, he would have been waiting with a couple of cops, and the cops would have handcuffs.

Nevertheless, he snatches open the closet door to make sure the Tuff Totes are where he left them. They are. He takes out the money and counts it. Six hundred and forty dollars. Not great, not even close to what was in Rothstein’s safe, but not bad. He puts it back, zips the bag shut, then sits on his bed and holds up his hands. They are shaking.

I have to get that stuff out of here, he thinks, and I have to do it tomorrow morning. But get it out to where?

Morris lies down on his bed and looks up the ceiling, thinking. At last he falls asleep.