Hard news - Jeffery Deaver [19]
He rinsed off, stepped out of the shower and spent a lot of time shaving then getting his hair into shape. He dressed in a dark-green, short-sleeved knit shirt and the gray pants he always wore. Dungarees. He wondered why anybody would call pants anything that started in “dung.” Shitarees, Craparees. He pulled on thin black nylon socks, sheer like women’s stockings, then strapped on black sandals.
He stepped out of the bathroom, which was filled with steam and hair spray mist, and smelled the food, resting on the TV. The woman was sitting at the chipped desk putting on her makeup. For a minute, looking at her buoyant breasts in the tight yellow sweater, Nestor’s hunger for food wavered, but then the McMuffins won and he sat on the bed to eat.
He ate the first one quickly and then, with the edge off his appetite, lay back on the bed to read the paper and sip his coffee while he worked on the second one. He noticed she’d bought some insurance; a third McMuffin was also in the bag—to keep his appetites and his hands occupied. He laughed but she pretended she didn’t know he’d caught on.
He’d gotten halfway through the front section of the Miami Herald, reading the national news, when he sat upright in bed. “Oh, shit.”
She was curling her eyelashes. “Huh?”
But Nestor was standing up, walking to his dresser, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He pulled out a jumble of underwear and socks and knit shirts.
“Hey, iron these for me?” He handed her the shirts.
“Jacky what is it?”
“Just get the iron out, okay?”
She did and spread a thin towel on the desk for an ironing board. She ironed each shirt, then folded it precisely.
“Whatsa matter?”
“I’ve got to go away for a little while.”
“Yeah, where you going? Can I come too?”
“New York.”
“Oh, Jacky, I’ve never been—”
“Forget about it. This’s business.”
She handed him the shirts then snorted. “What business? You got no business.”
“I got a business. I just never told you about it.”
“Yeah, so what do you do?”
Nestor began to pack a suitcase. “I’ll be back in a week or two.” He hesitated then took out his wallet and handed her two hundred and ten dollars. “I’m not back then pay Seppie for the room for next couple weeks, okay?”
“Sure, I’ll do that.”
He looked at the dresser again then said to her, “Hey, check in the bathroom, see if I left my razor?”
She did this and when she wasn’t looking Nestor reached way back into the bottom drawer of the dresser and took out a dark-blue Steyr GB 9mm pistol and two full clips of bullets. He slipped these into his bag. Then he said, “Hey, never mind, I found it. I packed it already.”
She came up to him. “You gonna miss me?”
He picked up the paper and tore out the story. He read it again. She came up and read over his shoulder. “What that about? Somebody getting some guy outta jail in New York?”
He looked at her with irritation and put the scrap in his wallet.
She said, “Who is that guy, Randy Boggs?”
Nestor smiled in an unamused way and kissed her on the mouth. Then he said, “I’ll call you.” He picked up the bag and walked outside into the blast of humid heat, glancing at a tiny chameleon sitting motionless in a band of shade on the peeling banister.
chapter 7
“IF HE DIDN’T DO THIS CRIME HE DID SOMETHING.”
The man’s voice went high at the end of the sentence and threatened to break apart. He was in his late forties, so skinny that his worn cowhide belt made pleats in slacks that were supposed to be straight-cut.
“And if he did something the jury says, ‘What the hell, let’s convict him of this.’ “
Rune nodded at the taut words.
Randy Boggs’s lawyer sat at his desk, which was piled high—yellow sheets, court briefs, Redweld folders, letters, photographs of crime scenes, an empty yogurt carton crusty on