The Second Mouse - Archer Mayor [61]
Ellis became a little resentful. “What the hell would you’ve done?”
She didn’t bother answering that. “Why’d he do it?” she asked instead.
He shrugged. “One moment he was talking to the guy; the next, he’d strangled him. It was like an impulse. He was trying to find out who the kid was selling his stolen radios to.”
“And the kid refused?”
“No,” Ellis said emphatically, shifting around to face her. “That’s the thing. He told Mel what he wanted to know—names, an address. It was only at the end, when Mel asked him how to approach the buyers, that he said something snarky, and that was it.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that. I mean, I thought the conversation wasn’t even finished, but it was like Mel had just had enough. It was weird.”
“You didn’t think Mel could kill somebody?” Nancy demanded incredulously.
But Ellis was already shaking his head. “No, no. I meant that Mel was making headway. He’d found out about the kid, staked him out, planned how he was going to squeeze him, and then, just as he was getting what he wanted, he kills him. Why?”
Nancy was looking glum. “We are so screwed. That crazy bastard is going to put us all in jail forever.”
Ellis didn’t have an answer to that. It came too close to his own premonitions. “Yeah—probably,” he finally muttered.
Nancy suddenly looked up at him, her face hard with anger. “Why? It’s not fair. He’s the one who does all this shit. When was the last time you cooked up one of these stupid deals?”
Ellis looked dumbfounded.
“Exactly,” Nancy continued raging. “We just do what we’re told so he doesn’t rip our heads off. We let ourselves get pushed around like nothing. But that’s not how they’re gonna look at it when we get caught. You know that, right? We’ll be lumped with him just like soldiers are when the boss gets into trouble for telling them to do stuff they’re not supposed to. That’s exactly the way it is with us.” She readjusted herself on the couch, getting up onto her knees, moved by her own growing enthusiasm. “You hear about that all the time. Some lieutenant tells his people to blow something up, or kill a bunch of villagers, and next thing you know, they’re all in shit up to their necks. Why? Because they had to follow orders. They don’t do it, they get court-martialed. They do it, and the judge throws the book at them anyhow.” She placed both her hands on Ellis’s shoulders for emphasis. “That’s what’s gonna happen to us. Mel’s like that lieutenant.”
Ellis was processing what she’d said. He didn’t disagree with any of it, but he wasn’t sure he saw her point. She was merely voicing with more passion the same feelings he had every time Mel launched one of his plans. But it still didn’t mean anything. Mel always went ahead anyway, and so did Ellis.
He put his hands on her waist, hoping to show support, and nodded. “Yeah,” he said.
Her expression brightened. “So we need to do something. To fight back. We can’t let him do that anymore.” She suddenly kissed him, hard and fast. “Especially now that we’ve found each other. We need to figure out how to turn the tables. There’s gotta be a way we can make sure he gets what’s coming to him without being caught in the same wringer.”
“Like call the cops?” Ellis asked.
Nancy laughed. Her face was flushed with the excitement of having located at least the outline of a solution. She kissed him again, this time longer, more passionately. He began to respond, his hands searching out her blue-jeaned bottom.
She broke away again, her lips moist. “No, silly. The cops’ll just lump us all together. What do they care? Bunch of trailer trash. We gotta make it easy for them. Give ’em one single target, so big and juicy they don’t even think of us.”
“Like an anonymous call telling them he did the kid,” Ellis mused, moving his hands up under her tank top and around to the front. Nancy arched her back in response but kept talking.
“No. You’re too close to that one. You’ve seen those shows. They’ll