Terrapin Sky Tango

Chapter 8

8

I’m right at the edge of the desolate intersection. Stabbity Joe’s on the other side by his van. Thirty feet or so should be plenty of distance against a guy armed with knives, but I’d seen him fling a knife through a car window into someone’s ear. The space between my shoulder blades has this sudden, ferocious itch.

Stabbity Joe is holding a knife by the tip of the blade. I’m pretty sure he could put it in my eye, even at this range. But he’s frozen up. He’s got his head tilted so the brim of his baseball cap blocks the sun rising over my head. The shade beneath the brim is deep enough that I can’t see his eyes. His lips turn straight and hard, though.

The only sound is the distant drone of the freeway.

I hold myself still, weight on the balls of my feet and my attention on Stabbity Joe’s shoulders. If he so much as twitches I’ll need to throw myself to the side. But if I let him think for a moment—

“This better be good,” Stabbity Joe says. All that sympathy I’d heard from him before? Evaporated like my fresh sweat in the desert’s appallingly dry heat.

“It is,” I say. “The important thing first. Can you ask Candy to go over to the utility box?”

“Utility box?”

And that’s why Stabbity Joe will always be in the minor leagues. He’d surely looked everywhere as he drove up, but he didn’t remember. “Other side of the van. Gray utility box. It’s not locked.” I raise my voice so she can hear me. “Be careful, it’s hot.”

“Candy,” Stabbity Joe says. “Do it.”

“I have him,” Deke says in my ear.

I don’t answer. I don’t even nod. Stabbity Joe looks ready to earn his name all over again. Sure, Deke can shoot him, but not before he throws those knives into me.

Minor league pitchers sometimes strike out major league batters.

The van quivers. A rectangle of light shines through it—Candy’s opened the far door.

I let myself blink. If we stand in this dry heat much longer, my eyeballs are going to dry into powder and blow away. The sun is at my back, but the wind on my face feels like foundry exhaust.

Joe looks both perfectly relaxed and perfectly unhappy.

Something clangs beyond the van.

“Careful!” I say. “It’s heavy.”

“What is it?” Joe shouts.

The van and the distance muffles Candy’s voice, but I can make out the words. “It’s another of those big black cases. It’s stuck in there.”

I raise my voice. “You have to turn it a little.”

Stabbity Joe’s shoulder tenses a little. “Talk.”

“We got into that museum Baywater calls a home,” I say. “The cello’s there in a display case, all set out for us to admire. It might as well have had a sign on it saying Free to a good home.”

“So you did,” Stabbity Joe says.

“Nope,” I say. “It’s a fake.”

“We checked,” Stabbity Joe snaps.

“It was a great fake,” I say. “It was a fake meant to fool us. You’d turn the fake in to your boss, I’d take the money, and Baywater would hide the original or expose that we’d been had. I don’t know about you, but I’d never work again.”

Another clang. Candy shouts, “I’ve got it!”

“Bring it out!” Stabbity Joe’s mouth is twisted downward. To me he says, “You had best be able to prove this.”

I risk shrugging. “That’s what YouTube is for. You do have signal out here, don’t you? Tell me you don’t have Verizon.”

Candy appears around the van. I know for a fact that this cello case is as heavy as the first one, but she hauls it more easily than Lou had managed.

Fresh sorrow flashes through me again. I breathe deeply through my nose to soothe myself, but the heat scalds my sinuses and burns its way into my lungs.

I should have changed things for Lou.

I should have changed things for Father.

I can’t change anything for anyone.

Stabbity Joe says, “Bring it around in front of me.”

Candy hurries, dropping the case in front of Stabbity Joe.

I can’t help wincing.

“Easy!” Stabbity Joe snaps. “That might be valuable.”

Candy flinches at his tone.

I want to tell her to stand up for herself, that it’s going to be okay, and to not hurt the merchandise all at once. I settle for, “It’s worth something. It’s worth a whole box of bearer bonds.”

“We’ll see.” Stabbity Joe’s attention doesn’t leave me.

Candy fumbles with the case, eventually heaving it right side up and snapping the latches. “It’s another one.”

“Check it,” Stabbity Joe snaps.

She hoists the cello, turning it around. “It looks exactly the same.”

“Exactly?” Stabbity Joe says.

“Everything you said to look for!” she says. “It’s there.”

I say, “Candy, do you have a cell phone?”

“In the van,” she says.

“You talk to me,” Stabbity Joe snaps at me. To Candy he snarls “And right now, you don’t talk at all.”

Candy withers.

I want to slap Joe. Instead, I say “Then you ask her to check. Do a YouTube search on Felicity, Baywater, cello. There’s a video from two weeks ago. We want three minutes and twenty-six seconds in.”

“Do it!” Stabbity Joe says.

Candy scurries off.

“Baywater left the fake for me to find,” I say. “He had it laid out for me, buffet style. The real one was in the conservatory. Locked in a closet.”

“So you stole two cellos,” Stabbity Joe says.

“The fake really was a work of art,” I say. “You don’t see that kind of craftsmanship in forgery these days. It’s a shame.”

“Then why did you shoot it?” Stabbity Joe snarls.

That’s the heart of what’s going on. All the pieces of the exchange are here, but our little game had confused Stabbity Joe. He’s scared, and angry, and searching for an excuse to earn his name.

“They knew I was coming,” I say. “Baywater had armed men waiting for me to leave. Somebody told him.”

Joe’s chin raises a notch. “You think it was me?”

“Nope.” I spread my open hands. “When we shot the fake? You’re not that good an actor, Joe.” Use his name. Connect. “You had no clue there even was a fake.” I lower my hands. “But someone told Baywater. And it sure wasn’t me or Deke.”

Joe’s chin drops back down. It’s the second half of a slow-motion nod. “And My Problem?”

“Had no idea what the gig was until go time.”

Candy hops out of the van, holding a tiny cellphone in one outstretched hand.

“Over here,” Stabbity Joe says.

Candy trots towards him. She’s way past the “peeing herself in terror” stage and on to “stunned automaton.”

“What am I looking for?” Joe says.

I smile. “The spot where a very nervous Miss Felicity Baywater slips with her bow during her first public performance and gouges the hell out of a priceless Stradivarius cello.”

Stabbity Joe snorts. He watches Candy’s upheld phone for all of two seconds, then his eyes glance down to the exposed Grand Duke.

There’s a fresh white scrape in the front, right by the right-hand F hole. Nothing an instrument specialist couldn’t sort out, but it’d need a few months in the shop. And the performance had been two weeks ago.

“What makes you think she played the real one and not the fake?” Stabbity Joe says.

“Baywater showed it off,” I say. “You and I, we learned the markers to identify it. But there were actual musicologists at that show. Specialists who’d shown up just to see a teenage girl play a Strad. That girl had to mop their drool off the Duke before she could play. They’d know if it was fake.”

Joe studies me.

I fight to not hold my breath.

“So you involved us in your little fight,” Stabbity Joe says.

I fight down a sigh of relief. He believes me. One problem down. “Your boss wanted the Grand Duke. Baywater’s thugs wanted it back. Someone told them I was coming. It could have been you.” Now sweeten things a little. “And seriously? I’d much rather have you inside stabbing out than outside stabbing in.”

Stabbity Joe’s frown breaks into a smirk. I can see him decide to swallow the sugar.

I let myself relax a touch. It could all go bad still, but he wasn’t ready to slice me right now.

“So,” I say. “How about those bearer bonds?”