The Second Mouse - Archer Mayor [84]
The source of his fascination, however, had nothing to do with such reminiscences, or even any yearnings to relive them. Mel was more interested in where he’d picked up Banger’s tail—the same address High Top had given him just before dying.
Which made of this innocuous encounter inside a faceless motel a beacon toward Mel’s major score. Of that, he’d convinced himself.
Banger worked for the mysterious two cousins who had captivated Mel’s imagination the way the lottery drives others to gamble away their life savings. And just as he had snuffed out High Top to get a simple address, so he was now willing to do whatever was necessary to extract the next level of knowledge from this source. His first knowledge of the elusive cousins had created something akin to a quest in him, based less on their reality than on the dream they represented.
In truth, Mel had no idea if Banger’s suppliers made any more money than he did conducting his much ballyhooed raids. The mere rumors that they did were good enough. And, perhaps incongruously, his sacrifice of High Top for so little was not a reflection of any concerns about insolvency. He was far more careless than that—if a single influence could be blamed for his growing thirst for violence, it might just as easily have been boredom.
He had killed before. High Top had been the third. The first had been an inebriated bum in an Albany alleyway one night when he’d been in his early teens. That had been mostly experimental—and a disappointment. He’d come upon the passed-out old man by accident, on his way from having broken into a hardware store only to find the till empty. On a whim, he’d closed off the bum’s mouth and nose, hoping for some paroxysm of death he could then add to his mental scrapbook. All he’d received for his efforts was a cessation of breathing. Presumably, the guy had been so drunk, he was already at death’s door.
The second time had been a slight improvement, if dissatisfying in other ways. Too much booze, an argument, a handy baseball bat. He didn’t remember much beyond feeling the bat’s reverberation as it contacted the other man’s skull. He’d stumbled away from that one, making no effort to avoid capture. But while there had been cops and an investigation, they’d touched him only peripherally, the victim having led a complicated life too full of potential lethal enemies. The whole affair had slipped away like the stupor that had given it birth.
High Top had been the best one yet, even though merely the result of a spontaneous urge. Still, Mel had been sober, and his victim had responded well, the obnoxious little shit.
Mel shifted in his seat, growing impatient. Apparently, Banger was hitting it off with his customers—either that or they’d knocked him off and made their escape through the bathroom window.
The thought made him uncomfortable. Had he brought Ellis into this, he would have had someone watching the back—a maneuver he’d certainly used in the past to good effect.
But he didn’t have Ellis. He hadn’t wanted him. Ellis was getting weird on him, changing in a way that made him uneasy. He’d once been the perfect student—cooperative, appreciative, submissive, and willing. He’d never challenged Mel’s primacy, never come up with ideas of his own, never done anything other than be the textbook sidekick. He was strong, obedient, held his liquor, and was good in a fight.
But not since they’d all moved to Bennington.
The Three Musketeers. That’s what Mel had once called them, but whatever that had meant then, it was no longer true.
Which made