End of Watch (Bill Hodges Trilogy #3) - Stephen King Page 0,81

saved much when she worked on the Discount Electronix Cyber Patrol, and the work she’d been able to find as an independent IT when the store closed had barely been enough to keep her off the street. It might have been different if she’d had what Anthony Frobisher, her old boss, liked to call ‘people skills,’ but those had never been her forte. When the old geezer who called himself Z-Boy made his offer (and dear God, that was really a comic book handle), it had been like a gift from God. She had been living in a shitty apartment on the South Side, in the part of town commonly referred to as Hillbilly Heaven, and a month behind on the rent in spite of the cash the guy had already given her. What was she supposed to do? Refuse five thousand dollars? Get real.

Around and around goes the flask.

The guy is late, maybe he’s not coming at all, and that might be for the best.

She remembers the geezer casting his eyes around the two-room apartment, most of her possessions in paper bags with handles (all too easy to see those bags gathered around her as she tried to sleep beneath a Crosstown Expressway underpass). ‘You’ll need a bigger place,’ he said.

‘Yeah, and the farmers in California need rain.’ She remembers peering into the envelope he handed her. Remembers riffling the fifties, and what a comfy sound they made. ‘This is nice, but by the time I get square with all the people I owe, there won’t be much left.’ She could stiff most of those people, but the geezer didn’t need to know that.

‘There’ll be more, and my boss will take care of getting you an apartment where you may be asked to accept certain shipments.’

That started alarm bells ringing. ‘If you’re thinking about drugs, let’s just forget the whole thing.’ She held out the cash-stuffed envelope to him, much as it hurt to do that.

He pushed it back with a little grimace of contempt. ‘No drugs. You’ll not be asked to sign for anything even slightly illegal.’

So here she is, in a condo close to the lakeshore. Not that there’s much of a lake view from only six stories up, and not that the place is a palace. Far from it, especially in the winter. You can only catch a wink of the water between the newer, nicer highrises, but the wind finds its way through just fine, thanks, and in January, that wind is cold. She has the joke thermostat cranked to eighty, and is still wearing three shirts and longjohns under her carpenter jeans. Hillbilly Heaven is in the rearview mirror, though, that’s something, but the question remains: is it enough?

Around and around goes the silver flask. GH & FL, 4Ever. Only nothing is 4Ever.

The lobby buzzer goes, making her jump. She picks up the flask – her one souvenir of the glorious Gloria days – and heads to the intercom. She quashes an urge to do her Russian spy accent again. Whether he calls himself Dr Babineau or Dr Z, the guy is a little scary. Not Hillbilly-Heaven, crystal-meth-dope-dealer scary, but in a different way. Better to play this straight, get it over with, and hope to Christ she doesn’t find herself in too much trouble if the deal blows up in her face.

‘Is this the famous Dr Z?’

‘Of course it is.’

‘You’re late.’

‘Am I keeping you from something important, Freddi?’

No, nothing important. Nothing she does is particularly important these days.

‘You brought the money?’

‘Of course.’ Sounding impatient. The old geezer with whom she had commenced this nutty business had the same impatient way of speaking. He and Dr Z looked nothing alike, but they sounded alike, enough to make her wonder if they weren’t brothers. Only they also sounded like that someone else, the old colleague she used to work with. The one who turned out to be Mr Mercedes.

Freddi doesn’t want to think about that any more than she wants to think about the various hacks she’s done on Dr Z’s behalf. She hits the buzzer beside the intercom.

She goes to her door to wait for him, taking a nip of Scotch to fortify herself. She tucks the flask into the breast pocket of her middle shirt, then reaches into the pocket of the one beneath, where she keeps her breath mints. She doesn’t believe Dr Z would give Shit One if he smelled booze on her breath, but she always used to pop a