Page 41 of Open Season

TWELVE

Saturday night was always the busiest night of the week at the Buffalo Club, so Jimmy, the bartender, wasn’t sure how long Mitchell had been there before he saw him, holding a beer and leaning over a redhead with enough makeup on her face to cover the San Andreas Fault. The redhead didn’t seem impressed; she kept turning back to her friend, an equally made-up platinum blonde, as if they were trying to carry on a conversation and Mitchell was intruding.

Jimmy didn’t look at them again; the last thing he wanted was for Mitchell to notice he’d been noticed. Since Mitchell had a beer, he must have had one of the waitresses bring it to him, instead of bellying up to the bar the way he usually did. Jimmy picked up the phone under the bar, punched in the number, and said, “He’s here.”

“Well, damn,” Sykes said genially on the other end of the line. “I really need to talk to him, but I can’t get away. Oh, well, another time.”

“Sure,” said Jimmy, and hung up.

Sykes broke the connection, then quickly called two men he knew and said, “Meet me at the Buffalo Club, forty minutes. Come prepared.”

Then Sykes himself got prepared; he pulled on a baseball cap to hide his hair, boots to make himself seem taller, and stuffed a small pillow inside his shirt. In good light this effort at disguise would be obvious, but at night those small things would be enough to make it difficult to identify him if anything untoward happened at the club. Sykes didn’t plan on doing anything at the club; he just wanted to get Mitchell and take him some-place where there weren’t a couple of hundred potential witnesses, but something could always go wrong. That’s why he wasn’t driving his own car; he had borrowed one again, just in case, then replaced the license plate with one he’d taken off a car in Georgia.

Barring any unforseen occurrences, such as another brawl, their little problem with Mitchell should be taken care of tonight.

Daisy found that it took a lot of nerve to go back into a club where one had accidentally caused a brawl. There shouldn’t be too many people who actually knew the cause: herself, Chief Russo, perhaps the guy whose testicles she had smashed—though she thought he hadn’t been paying much attention to what was going on around him—and maybe one or two perceptive people who had been watching. So, five at the most. And what were the odds any of the four other people were here tonight? She should be perfectly safe; no one was going to point at her as soon as she walked in the door and shout, “That’s her!”

That’s what logic said. Logic, however, had also told her buying condoms would be no big deal, so logic obviously was not infallible.

So she sat in her car in the dark parking lot, watching couples and groups and singles enter the Buffalo Club, which was swinging. Music poured out every time the door was opened, and she could feel the heavy beat of the bass drum throb even through the walls. She was all gussied up, without the nerve to go inside.

But she was working on it; every time she gave herself a pep talk, she got a little closer to actually opening the car door. She was wearing red, the first red dress she’d ever owned in her life, and she knew she looked good. Her blond hair still swung in its simple, sophisticated style, her makeup was subtle but flattering, and the red dress would make all the tube-top wearers look low-class, which was kind of a redundancy. The dress was almost like a sundress Sandra Dee would have worn back in the early sixties, with two-inch wide straps holding it up, a scooped neckline—but not too scooped—a slim fitted waist, and a full skirt that stopped just above her knees and swung around her legs when she walked. She was wearing the taupe heels again, and the gold anklet glittered around her ankle. That and her earrings were the only jewelry she wore, making her look very cool and uncluttered.

She didn’t just look good, she looked great, and if she didn’t get out of the car and go inside, no one except herself would ever know it.

On the other hand, it might be best to let the place get completely full, to lessen the already small chance that someone might recognize her.

She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. She could feel the music, calling her to get on the dance floor and just dance. She’d loved that part of the night, loved the rhythm and feeling her body move and knowing she was doing it right, that the lessons she’d taken in college had paid off because she still knew the steps and men evidently loved dancing with someone who could do something other than stand in one place and jerk. Not that country nightclubs were much into the jerking; they were more into line dances and slow-swaying stuff—

“I’m stalling,” she announced to the car. “What’s more, I’m very good at it.”

On the other hand, she had also always been very good at obeying the time limits she set for herself. “Ten more minutes,” she said, turning on the ignition to check the dash clock. “I’m going inside in ten minutes.”

She turned the switch off again and checked the contents of her tiny purse. Driver’s license, lipstick, tissue, and a twenty-dollar bill. Taking inventory didn’t occupy more than, say, five seconds.

Three men came out of the club, the light from the overhead sign briefly illuminating their faces. The one in the middle looked familiar, but no name sprang to mind. She watched as they walked across the crowded parking lot, wending their way through the roughly formed lines of cars and trucks. Another man got out of a car as they neared, and the four of them headed toward a pickup truck parked under a tree.

Another car pulled into the parking lot, the lights slashing across the four standing near the pickup. Three of the men looked toward the new arrival, while the fourth turned to look at something in the bed of the pickup.

A man and a woman got out of the car and went inside. The music blared briefly as the door opened, then receded to a muffled throb when it closed. Except for the four men under the tree and herself, there was no one else in the parking lot.

Daisy turned on the ignition switch again to check the time. She had four minutes left. That was good; she didn’t really want to get out of the car and walk across the parking lot by herself, not with those four men standing there. Maybe they would leave. She turned off the switch and glanced up.

One of the men must have been really, really drunk, because two of the men were now supporting him, one on each side, and as she watched, they hefted him into the bed of the pickup, supporting his head as they did so. That was good; they weren’t letting him try to drive home in his condition, though from the looks of him, he’d already passed out. All three of them had seemed to be walking okay when they left the club, but she’d heard of people who walked and talked okay up until the very second they passed out. She’d always thought that was so much malarkey, but there was proof of it, right before her eyes.

The two men who had helped their friend into the bed of the pickup got into the cab and drove off. The fourth man turned and walked back to his car.

Daisy checked the time again. Her ten minutes were up. Taking a deep breath, she took the keys out of the ignition, dropped them into her little purse, and got out, automatically hitting the Lock button as she opened the door.

“ ‘Cannon to the right of them, cannon to the left...’ ” she quoted as she marched across the parking lot, then wished she had thought of something else, because the Light Brigade had perished.

Nothing happened to her, however. She wasn’t shot out of the saddle, nor did anyone point at her as soon as she opened the door. She stepped inside, paid her two dollars, and was swallowed up by the music.

Glenn Sykes sat in his car, his eyes cold and burning as he watched the woman walk into the club. Where in hell had she come from? She had to have been sitting in one of the cars, and in the dark they hadn’t noticed her.

It wasn’t whether or not she had seen anything, but how much she had seen, and how much she realized. It was dark, details were difficult to make out, and there hadn’t been any loud noises to alarm her. If Mitchell hadn’t tried to call out to the couple who had driven up, there wouldn’t have been anything for her to see. But, hell, as soon as he’d seen Sykes get out of the car, he’d known they were going to kill him, so what did he have to lose? Sykes didn’t blame the bastard for giving it a try. Too bad Buddy was greased lightning with that knife; Mitchell hadn’t gotten out more than a squeak.

She didn’t know them; she evidently hadn’t noticed anything unusual going on. But she was a loose end, and Sykes didn’t like loose ends. His original plan had been to pour enough GHB down Mitchell’s throat to kill three men, which had seemed like a fitting end to the bastard. He’d even decided to leave the body where it would be found before the GHB broke down so the cops would know exactly what killed him, and they’d think it was just another overdose. He couldn’t do that now, not with that gash in Mitchell’s throat, plus there was blood in the parking lot if anyone cared to look.

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