Old Man B straightened in his seat and grabbed his chest. Slowly, his hand went inside his jacket, and pulled out a phone. He flipped open the phone. “What? No. No. Oh for Pete’s sake! No. Uh-uh. Forget it! Maybe? Nah. What on earth? Are you a moron? No! Okay, see you tomorrow Clarence.” Old Man B tossed the phone into the passenger seat.
***
Jeremiah started the car. The black Cadillac rolled away from the apartment complex. Jebediah sat the stack of discs on the dash. He reached into the backseat and pulled out a laptop computer. “This shouldn’t take too long, we only found about 75 discs. What if the disc is in the car?”
“We’ll worry about that later. There’s no use in worrying about what we can’t control. When can you check their hard drives?”
“I didn’t lift their hard drives. I turned their computers on before we left. I can hack in from outside. Besides, the odds are that Gerrard wouldn’t have tried to put the data on a computer like theirs. One didn’t even have a virus program.”
Jeremiah opened his mouth as if to talk, but stopped. He reached into his jacket and produced a vibrating Nokia. The two exchanged glances, and then Jeremiah answered the call. “Hello?”
“Where are you two?”
“Mokoto? So nice to hear from you.”
“Can it. How did the trip to the CD store go?”
“We got everything we wanted, except we didn’t see any releases from Grand Prix.”
“I was going to pick that one up, but I decided to get an album by the Police.”
***
For a Friday night, it was slow going at the 66 Station. Francis turned another page, and looked up. A tall woman was walking in from the gas pumps, and she was talking on a cell phone. Her long black hair blew in the evening breeze. Francis stared as she walked in and headed right for the beverage cooler. She was easily the best looking customer of the night, or the week, or even the month. She didn’t notice him staring, as she was still talking on her phone.
“Well, I don’t know. No, you can’t burn my Police. Look, just check what you have. No, I’ll call. J…J…no, you listen…” She stood with her hand on her hip. Francis was still staring. His glance happened to wander from her body to her head, and off to the side he saw her face reflected in the glass. She was staring at him in the reflection. He quickly went back to his magazine. Great, my chance went from infinitesimal to zero he thought. The cooler opened and quickly slammed. He kept looking down as the slow sound of boots came towards the counter. “No. No. We do this my way. I’m not the boss of you, but today I am the boss in this town. We don’t need to make that call. Just…just do what you’re doing and keep your eyes open. Dammit! Don’t even go there.” He heard a button being pushed quite angrily and the sound of a phone going into a pocket.
“Hmm-mm.”
Francis glanced up. The woman was standing at his counter, with her arms crossed and a stoic look on her face. He tried to think of any of a dozen smooth lines, but she spoke first.
“Gas on number three. And this.” She put a bottle of the cheap bottled water on the counter. Francis tried to think of a snappy comeback, but he was again interrupted as another customer came in. Except it wasn’t a customer. It was a man in a ski mask, waving a gun at his face.
“No heroics. Just empty the register.”
