Dead Even - Mariah Stewart [4]
“What about your girl?” Giordano was smirking again. “Seems like she’s the real problem here. I’ll bet she’s the one who pressed charges, right? Seems to me that you’d want to call on her. I know I would, if it was me.”
“Oh, I’m gonna call on her, all right. I’m gonna call on her first thing, I get outta here.” Lowell’s jaw tightened, and his palms began to sweat at the thought of seeing Amanda again.
“What ’bout you, Channing?” Giordano turned his attention to the third member of the group. “Anyone you gonna go see?”
“Don’t know.”
“Oh, come on now.” Giordano lowered his voice a little more. “We’re just bullshitting here. There has to be someone, someplace, that you’d like to show a thing or two.”
Once again, Lowell thought there’d been some silent exchange between the two older men, and while he couldn’t quite put his finger on it, something about the wordless communication made him uncomfortable. That woo-woo shit spooked him.
“Well,” Channing began slowly, “if I were to pay a visit to someone in my past, I guess I’d look up my mother’s old boyfriend.”
“That can’t be all.” Giordano encouraged him to continue.
“And there’s this writer I wouldn’t mind having a chat with.”
“That’s only two,” Lowell reminded him. “You got one more.”
“Well, there’s a cute little FBI agent I’d like to see again. Just to see if the chemistry is still the same.”
Confusing, Lowell thought, his eyebrows knitting together. His mother’s old boyfriend, a writer, and an FBI agent? What the hell is that all about? Channing probably doesn’t understand what we’re doing here. He must think we’re talking about visiting.
But me and Giordano, we know what’s going on.
He felt a sudden kinship with the convicted murderer, and a sudden need to try to enlighten Channing as to the nature of their theoretical “visits.”
“ ’Course, if we really did these things, if we really did go see ’em and . . . well, you know, did stuff, it isn’t like the cops wouldn’t know who to look for, you know?” He met Channing’s eyes, trying to convey his meaning without words, but the older man’s expression never changed. So much for being subtle.
He tried again.
“Like Vince, they find your mother-in-law with a bullet in her head after you get out, the cops’ll be like, duh. Wonder who did her?”
Lowell continued to watch Channing’s face.
“Well, it was just talk. Didn’t mean nothing.” Giordano brushed it all aside and stared at the door as if he was afraid to have been overheard.
“Unless we like, you know, switch our people,” Lowell heard himself saying.
“What d’ya mean, switch our people?” Giordano asked suspiciously.
“You know, like that movie.” Lowell felt himself growing excited. “The one on the train, where these two guys meet and they each agree to whack someone that the other wants—”
“Whoa, buddy.” Giordano interrupted him brusquely. “This was just idle talk. That’s all. Just idle talk.”
Lowell felt the color rise in his face. Giordano was looking at him as if he were stupid or something.
“Sure. I know that.” Lowell defended himself. “But it doesn’t hurt to pretend. We got nothing else to do in here right now. No TV, no VCR. Gotta think about something.”
“How old are you, Lowell?” Giordano asked.
“I’m nineteen.”
“That explains it.” Giordano was wearing that smug look again. Lowell knew he could learn to hate him for that.
“Explains what?”
“Your loose mouth, that’s what.”
“No, come on.” Lowell tried to ignore that snotty tone in Giordano’s voice, that Lowell-you’re-nothing-but-a-dumb-shit tone that he’d heard from everyone all his life. “It’s just a game. A game, that’s all.”
“You ever kill anyone, Lowell?” Giordano’s voice dropped yet again.
Lowell shook his head.
“You, Channing?” Giordano turned suddenly.
Channing didn’t