Ocean Prey (A Prey Novel #31) - John Sandford Page 0,71
and Marc Regio. They’re looking at addresses.”
* * *
Virgil got a beer from the refrigerator, took a swig, swished it around his mouth, swallowed and poured most of the rest of it down the sink, sat on the couch and put the bottle on the floor by his feet. Rae shoved her .40-caliber Glock under a pillow at the opposite end of the couch, turned the TV to a SpongeBob SquarePants rerun, and then laid back on the gun pillow and put her bare feet on Virgil’s leg, flashing her bloody-red toenails.
She asked, “What do you think?”
“You could scale palm trees with those nails,” Virgil said. ‘They’re perfect.”
The two guys knocked, and after some shouting around, Virgil answered the door. “You Jack’s friends?”
“We are,” said the bigger of the two big guys. He waved his hand in front of his face. “Jesus Christ, I’m getting a contact high.”
“That’s from the previous occupants,” Rae called, a barefaced lie told without shame.
“Yeah,” said the smaller of the two guys. He said his name was Marc, the bigger guy was named Matt. Matt was carrying a plastic-backed notebook.
Rae asked, “You guys got last names?”
Marc said, “Regio,” and nodded at Matt: “And Lange.”
They looked like they shopped in the same menswear boutique: Regio wore a burnt orange Tiger Woods golf shirt, beige no-iron slacks with an Indian-weave belt, cordovan loafers, and a beige linen sport coat. Lange went with stretch jeans, a button-up Tommy Bahama short-sleeve shirt worn loose, and boating shoes. They both were fleshy-faced and sunburnt.
They checked the apartment and the four Porsche wheels lined up along one wall, but didn’t mention them. Lange looked at Virgil and asked, “What kind of diving you done?”
“All kinds, but mostly divemaster stuff. I made sure nobody drowned. Some instruction in night diving and navigation. I worked off a dive boat taking guys out to the Channel Islands.” When the two looked blank, he added, “You know. LA.”
“You ever do any recovery?”
“Some. I mean, a boat would sink out there about once a week, sometimes they wanted to get the fishing gear off it, or personal stuff. Four rods and reels, for those movie guys, that could be five or six grand. I did that a few times, but I gotta tell you, I don’t do ships. I don’t do anything with an overhead. That scares me.”
“What’s an overhead?” Lange asked.
“Caves. Old shipwrecks or boats where you go inside. Stuff where you can’t get straight back to the surface. I don’t do that shit,” Virgil said.
“He’s a little claustrophobic,” Rae said. “Lock him in a closet and he cries like a baby. Tries to kick the door down.”
The two men looked from Virgil to Rae and back again, and then Lange asked, “How often does that happen to you? You get locked in a closet?”
Virgil, sullen, said, “Once.”
Rae said, “Twice.”
After thinking about that for a moment, Regio asked, “What’s the deepest you ever been?”
“I once did a bounce to four hundred on Trimix, with a client who wanted to look at a sunken boat. I won’t be doing that again. That’s just fucked up.”
“A bounce is where you go down and bounce off the bottom and come right back up?” Lange asked.
“Yeah. We were only down there for a couple of minutes, so he could take some pictures. I got a bunch of certifications, but I’m not a real happy tech diver, if you know what I mean.”
“How about a hundred and fifty, hundred and sixty?” Regio asked.
“Do that in my sleep,” Virgil said.
Regio and Lange glanced at each other, then Lange said, “You didn’t mention to Jack you’d done two in that Iowa state prison.”
Now Rae and Virgil looked at each other, and Rae said, “Ah, shit.”
Virgil said, “He didn’t ask.”
The two men peered at Virgil and Regio said, “You’re Willy.” He turned to Rae: “What’s your name?”
“Ally.”
“As in alley cat?”
“I guess.”
Back to Virgil: “You said you did night diving?”
“All the time. Like I said, that’s one of the specialties I used to train people in. Night diving and nav.”
Lange said, “Huh.”
Rae said to Virgil, “Willy, I need to consult with you. In the bathroom.” And to Regio and Lange: “We’ll be right back.”
In the bathroom, she said, “The Marc guy’s got a gun.”
“Yeah, I saw.”
“I think this is where we tell them we’ve figured them out.”
“Okay.”
* * *
Back out in the living room, Rae sprawled on the couch, her head on the gun pillow. Virgil sat at the other end, Rae’s feet on