The Payback. Mike Lawson

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       17

      Emma was picking the lock on Phil Carmody’s back door.

      Fortunately, Carmody had a big fence around his backyard. As long as nobody had seen them go through the back gate, they were probably okay. Provided Carmody didn’t come back home. Provided he didn’t have some kind of security system. Provided one of his neighbors didn’t see them through the windows walking around inside of Carmody’s house. DeMarco could just see himself: hands cuffed behind his back, a cop pushing his head down as they put him into a squad car.

      And then the dog started making noise, little whimpering sounds like it was hungry or had to shit.

      When DeMarco first saw the German shepherd in the backseat, he hadn’t wanted to get into Emma’s car. DeMarco wasn’t a big dog fan – too many stories about pit bulls gnawing off people’s arms – and the German shepherd was huge. He could just see it: they’d be driving down the road, and one minute the dog would be sitting there, its big snout sticking out of the window, and the next minute it’d be taking a bite out of DeMarco’s skull because his hair resembled rabbit fur.

      ‘Shut up,’ DeMarco hissed at the dog. The dog didn’t obey of course; it just kept making the whimpering noise. He felt like jerking on the leash, but was afraid that might piss it off. ‘Shut up,’ he hissed again at the dog. ‘And why couldn’t you get some kinda machine for this?’ DeMarco whispered to Emma. ‘They make machines for this, don’t they?’

      ‘There,’ Emma said, and she pushed the door open. Turning toward DeMarco she said, ‘A good dog is more reliable than most portable machines and they’re faster. Now come on. We’ll start on the second floor and work our way down.’

      ‘Should we close the blinds?’

      ‘No,’ Emma said and started up the stairs.

      They knew Carmody had rented the house and DeMarco assumed it had come furnished – haphazardly furnished. The place was neat enough, but you could sense that it was just a temporary residence for its occupant. There were no personal touches, no family photographs, no memorabilia from Carmody’s time in the service. It was a place where the man slept and ate and not much more.

      The second floor of the house had two small bedrooms and a bath. As Emma opened drawers and looked into closets, DeMarco walked around the rooms and let the dog poke its snout wherever it wanted. At least it wasn’t whimpering anymore; in fact it looked like it was having a pretty good time. DeMarco hoped it didn’t raise its leg and pee on something to mark its territory.

      They finished searching the second floor in forty minutes then went back to the first floor. Emma was thorough, and the kitchen was particularly time-consuming as she pulled things out of the freezer and poked around inside of boxes of cereal and rice. DeMarco was surprised the dog didn’t try to eat a roast when Emma put a leftover one on the counter. He had to admit the critter was pretty well trained.

      DeMarco checked his watch. They’d been inside the house an hour and a half.

      ‘Come on,’ Emma said, ‘let’s do the basement.’

      ‘Aren’t you going to put that stuff back?’ DeMarco asked, pointing his chin at the food sitting on the counter.

      ‘No,’ Emma said. ‘He’s going to know we’ve been here anyway.’

      DeMarco was afraid the basement would take forever. Basements are where people store boxes and boxes of old crap they don’t need but are too lazy to sort through and throw away. But the basement of Phil Carmody’s rented house was small and almost barren. A hot water heater and a furnace took up half the space, and Carmody had a set of free weights and a bench-press bench in the middle of the room. DeMarco mentally tallied the weights on the bar and concluded that Carmody bench-pressed three hundred and fifty pounds.

      There was an old Formica-topped kitchen table along one wall and above the table was a Peg-Board containing hand tools. Clamped to the table was a small vise, the sort fly fishermen use to tie flies, and a magnifying glass on a movable arm was mounted over the vise. On the table was a model sailing ship – a four-masted man-of-war under full sail. It appeared the model was ninety percent constructed, with only a few parts remaining to be painted. DeMarco could imagine Carmody sitting here alone at night, in the dimly lit basement of his silent house, slowly constructing the model. It was an image of a lonely man killing time – not a man passionate СКАЧАТЬ