Chapter 13
Ricky Lee Pink used an old pair of binoculars to study the Weatherford cop’s farmhouse across ten acres of sun-scalded pasture. Even the prickly pear cactus were beginning to look parched.
They’d parked Duvall’s one-ton on a dirt road behind the property so as to keep out of sight of nosy neighbors.
Pink paid careful attention to the old sheds and barn—places a dog might hide out from the heat of the day.
A rusted yellow sign on the barbed-wire fence boasted a drawing of a snarling German shepherd and the words FORGET THE DOG, BEWARE OF THE OWNER!
Pink was tempted to shoot it full of holes.
The article in the Weatherford Democrat said Ray Gene Bryant was the first officer at the scene of the armored car robbery. It made sense that he’d have the diamonds.
Duvall grubbed around in the briars and found a stick, running it up and down the barbed-wire fence like guitar strings.
Pink let the binoculars fall against the strap around his neck and took the pistol. “I’m ready to get my hands on that cop,” he said with much more bravado than he felt. “But I don’t want to hurt no dog.”
He had no doubt he could hit something the size of a German shepherd, even if it was running at him. But he liked dogs a hell of a lot more than he liked people.
“Let’s see if you feel the same way when some sweet little pooch is about to rip your throat out.
” Duvall strummed on the barbed wire a few more times.
“It’s hot as blazes out here. I guess the dog could be hanging out under the porch—but I say any hound worth its salt should be all over us by now. ”
“No cars in the driveway,” Pink said. “Could be they took the dog with.”
“Maybe.” Duvall said. He chanced a shrill whistle, eyes on the house. Nothing. “Let’s go. Just stay ready with that hush puppy.”
There was plenty of dog evidence the closer they got to the house—piles of crap in the yard, a gnawed cow bone by the front door—but no German shepherd.
Pink had broken into a couple of businesses, hit the armored car of course, and had now been involved in two murders—three if Foster kicked the bucket.
But he’d never rifled through anybody’s house.
He thought it would be like the movies and that they’d start ripping the stuffing out of the furniture right from the jump.
Duvall said that was a good way to miss something.
Neither Bryant nor his wife got off work until three p.m. That gave them time to be methodical.
Duvall decided they should start in the bedroom, reasoning that if Bryant had taken the diamonds, he’d want to keep them close. Besides, the window-unit air conditioner was in there. The rest of the house relied on box fans.
Duvall walked the floor first, listening for creaks, feeling for loose boards—like he spent a lot of time looking for hidden compartments. Pink figured he’d seen it in a movie.
The Bryants made their bed before heading off to work. Pink chuckled at that. His aunt was always on him about making the bed right after his feet hit the floor in the morning. He would have, except the old lady told him to do it. Nobody told Ricky Lee Pink what to do.
Duvall rolled back a carpet runner, checking for hidden hidey-holes, then knocked on the wainscotting beside the oak headboard. He gave a satisfied chuckle when the wooden trim made a hollow thumping sound and then gave way, opening inward to a stiff shove.
It was an old farmhouse with six-inch interior walls packed full of dusty wool batting and newspapers from the 1940s for insulation and sound proofing.
Everything had been pulled away between two wall studs, leaving a hiding spot that was just big enough for a Folger’s Coffee can—the red metal piggy bank of the masses.
“Jackpot,” Duvall said. He rubbed his hands together like a housefly and then peeled the plastic lid off the can to look inside. “That’s what I’m talking about.” He lifted a purple Crown Royal bag—almost as common as the Folgers can. “This is bullshit!” He spat and then pitched the bag on the bed.
Pink snatched up the velvet bag and had a look for himself. “What the hell?”
“Cash,” Duvall said. “And some of Grandma’s cheap-ass pearls.”
Pink flipped through a stack of bills, mostly twenties and hundreds, held together with a thick rubber band. “None of this makes sense.”
“This shit heel was first one there after we left,” Duvall said. “He sat with that truck for over an hour while the rest of the pigs chased us all over the county.” Duvall turned and started tossing through the drawers of a tall oak bureau.
“What if Watts was wrong?” Pink said.
Duvall threw him a wary side-eye. “What do you mean, wrong?”
“Wrong,” Pink said again. “About the diamonds. What if they were never on the truck in the first place?”
“No way,” Duvall said. “Moffit wouldn’t put three guards on a Sunday morning. They were watching over something very expensive … unless …”
Pink frowned. “Unless what?”
“Get this,” Duvall said. “What if there weren’t any diamonds on the truck?”
“That is what I just said.”
The compressor in the window unit air conditioner kicked on, causing both men to jump.
“Right.” Duvall held up his index finger. “But what if the reason there were no stones on the truck is because good old Gerald Moffit walked off with them beforehand. Remember, I wanted to hit the ranch before the stones were even on the truck, but he said no.”
Pink nodded. “The rancher had too much security.”
“That’s what Moffit told us,” Duvall said. “But we’ve never laid eyes on the place. Moffit’s the boss. He’d be the one to put the stones in the strongbox and make sure it was sealed. A little sleight of hand and he stuffs them into his pocket and then frames us for the robbery.”
“I guess so,” Pink said. “But is it framing us if we actually hit the truck?”
“You’re missing my point, kid,” Duvall said. “Everyone thinks we stole the diamonds, while Moffit walks away with them and no one’s the wiser.”
“But we know he’s part of it,” Pink said. “What’s to say we won’t rat him out?”
“A bullet in our brains,” Duvall said. “That’s why we gotta watch out for each other.”
A sudden thought occurred to Pink, like a black cloud passing in front of the sun.
“Hey. You’re putting an awful lot of blame on a guy who wasn’t even there.
Someone popped that strongbox. You were the first one into the back of that truck when the guard opened the doors.
Millner and me were up front taking care of the others. ”
“Yeah,” Duvall said. “And you both got there lickety-split.”
“Nope,” Pink said. “You had the back of that truck all to yourself for well over thirty seconds. A hell of a lot can happen in half a minute. You sure that box was empty?”
Duvall turned slowly in place to stare hard at Pink. “You better check it before you wreck it, kid.”
Pink’s hand rested on the butt of the pistol at his belly. “That ain’t an answer.”
“Yeah sure, I stuffed the diamonds down my pants and then hid them in the woods.” His voice rose in pitch and volume.
“Then I swung around to pick up your sorry ass instead of shooting you in the face and leaving you in a shallow grave. I convinced you to come here so we could give this bitch’s panties a toss when I should be digging up said diamonds and flying south to Bolivia. ”
“Makes sense,” Pink said.
Duvall shook his head. “Do you really think I’d double-cross you like that?”
Pink stood and looked at him for a long minute, hand still on the pistol.
“Nah,” he finally said. “If I thought you took the diamonds, I’d nail you to the floor and then go to town with this box cutter until you told me where they were.”
Duvall gave a low whistle, impressed. “Damn, kid. That’s medieval shit for somebody your age. You got the right idea, though. I’ll turn you into a real killer. But you gotta learn to trust me.”
“You’d be asking me the same questions if I’d got to the stones before you did.”
Duvall turned his attention to the bureau again.
He slammed one drawer in frustration and opened another, pulling out a skimpy black negligee like Pink had seen in the Sears catalog.
Duvall put it to his nose, eyes closed. “Shows how much you know,” he said.
“If I thought you were holding out on me, I’d have shot you in the back of the head from the get-go. ”
Pink laughed. “You kill me, and you’d never get your hands on the diamonds.”
Duvall stuffed the nightgown down the front of his shirt. “I’m keeping this,” he said, resuming his search through the woman’s underwear drawer. “You know, some things are more important than diamonds—like honor and friendship.”
Pink had been around long enough to know Duvall didn’t believe that was true, but it made him sound noble, and he seemed to need that. If any one of them had honor, it was Vince Millner—and that son of a bitch, Cutter, blew him away in cold blood.
“We may have to nail Moffit to the floor and let you go to town with your box cutter,” Duvall said.
The sudden crunch of tires on gravel interrupted Duvall’s life lesson. A car door slammed.
Pink sprang to the bedroom window and peeked around the mini blinds.
“Must be the wife,” he whispered over his shoulder. “What’s she doing home this early in the day?”
A blond woman who made Pink think of that new girl on Charlie’s Angels opened the door of her Honda Civic. She juggled her purse and a stack of loose mail while she scooped up a paper grocery sack from the back seat. Probably in her early twenties, she was not much older than Pink.
Groceries in her arm, she glanced up suddenly, as if she’d seen a movement in the window.
Pink froze. “I don’t like the look of this,” he whispered. “She’s wacked-out about something.”
“She alone?” Duvall asked.
“Looks that way.” Pink imagined the heat of the box cutter in his pocket.
“Well, don’t just stand there,” Duvall hissed. “Let’s go haul her ass inside so you can get to work.” He rummaged around in the drawer, found what he was looking for, and then threw it to Pink.
Pink held up a gauzy black bra.
“What am I supposed to do with this?”
“Wrap it around your face like a mask.”
“Why?”
The footsteps outside grew closer.
“So she can’t identify us.” Duvall wrapped the black negligee around his own face. “Besides, she walks in and sees us wearing these, it’ll scare the piss outta her. She’ll probably faint.”
“From laughing her ass off,” Pink hissed. “Let’s just drag her in here and cut her up some. She’ll tell us what we want to know.”
“Trust me,” Duvall said. “Put it on. Things go wrong, kid. You never let ’em see your face, even if you’re gonna kill ’em.”
Boards creaked on the porch. Pink took one last look, craning his neck to see her at the front door.
“She’s fiddling with her keys.”
Duvall adjusted the idiotic nightgown around his eyes. He looked like one of those ninja assassins in that movie Killer Elite, except with lace.
“Come on kid,” he said, leading the way to the front door. “You and your box cutter are batter up.”