Hines back to the clearing, where Vic’s Song Serenade was parked behind Hines’s GI sedan. I found Hines’s handcuffs and snapped them on the wrists he obligingly stretched out to receive them. I could see the questions starting to form in his head, all of them amounting to one version or another of What the fuck?
“You’re probably wondering, ‘What the fuck,’” I said. He didn’t answer. Wouldn’t give me the satisfaction.
“At the end of the day,” said Allie, “it was a garden-variety snuke.
We all convinced you that we’d flipped on Radar, and you bought it because you wanted to.”
“It’s the sign of a good con, mate,” added Billy. “Play into the mark’s cherished beliefs.”
I have to say that for someone held in handcuffs at gunpoint, Hines didn’t look too worried. “So what now?” he asked. “Are you going to kill me? I don’t think you have the stones. Allie, maybe. Not you girls.”
“Murder is the last refuge of the unimaginative,” I said. “So tell me if this works for you: We tie you to a tree or whatnot, pack our bags, and grab the first flight to anywhere. Our last phone call before takeoff tells someone where to find you, and you sleep in your own bed tonight.”
“You’d better just kill me,” he said.
“Oh, why? Because otherwise you’ll track us down? Follow us to the ends of the earth?”
“You bet your ass I will.”
“I’m saying that’s a bad idea.” I pulled out the Hackmaster and tossed it gently back and forth from hand to hand. “Your whole sordid history is right here. And here it stays unless, you know, it doesn’t.”
“Naked bluff,” sneered Hines.
“Maybe. But you can’t afford to call. So: You keep your distance, we keep ours. It’s a big world. No real reasons why our paths should cross.”
A shadow of doubt passed over Hines’s face. “What about Scovil?” he asked, grasping at a certain straw.
“She’s sorted,” said Billy.
“Sorted?”
I flashed on the errand I’d run to the Blue Magoon. I hoped Scovil was okay. She was a bitch and all, but still …
Vic, meanwhile, had fetched from his car a padlock and a coil of braided cable. He ran the cable twice around a suitably girthy tree and prepared to lock the loop ends to Hines’s handcuffs.
“We’ll leave the keys over there somewhere,” I said, nodding to the far side of Hines’s sedan. “It’ll probably be dark before help arrives. I’ll tell them to bring a flashlight.”
“At least let me piss first,” said Hines. It seemed like a reasonable request, so I nodded my assent. Hines unzipped right there in the clearing, which seemed odd, but triggered the not-odd reaction of all of us momentarily looking away. As I studied a treetop, I had the vague sense that I was overlooking something crucial. Did I handcuff him right? Don’t they usually handcuff behind the back? The thought lingered on the tip of my mind, then floated away. I wondered how long I would have this butterfly brain, or indeed whether I’d ever think fully straight again.
Then I suddenly remembered what I’d forgotten.
Mirplo’s gun!
Too late. Hines already had it out and pressed against Allie’s ear.
A frozen moment opened while the shock of the reversal settled in. Mirplo took a step forward, but a growl—literally, a growl—from Hines stopped him. Allie looked stoic. Knowing her history, I figured this wasn’t the first gun she’d had held to her head. I’ve been there myself; needless to say, it’s nothing you get used to, but if you’re strong, you don’t fall to pieces. I caught her eye, and she gave me a look like, If you don’t get me out of this, we are so over. Billy, meanwhile, had taken a couple of steps to his right. For my part, I slid left, widening the angle.
This, apparently, was not an angle Hines would let us shoot. “Don’t fucking move,” he said. “Get down on the ground.”
“Well, which is it?” I said. “Don’t move or get down?”
“That’s right, asshole, keep making jokes. Trust me, there’s plenty of bullets to go around.”
Bullets. Now why did that ring a bell? Again, I had a thought I couldn’t immediately finger. I made a mental note to get a CAT scan at the first opportunity.
But you know what? If you’re in the game, you play the game, even when you’re not feeling game, so I struggled to view the situation from Hines’s point of view. I suppose he was weighing a number of factors. Like: was the Penny