A Savage Place (The Spenser Series Book 8) by Robert B. Parker

Author:Robert B. Parker [Parker, Robert B.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780307569981
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2009-09-16T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

He was definitely fat, probably two hundred and fifty on a frame no more than five feet nine. On the other hand Vasili Alexeyev is fat too. The thought was not comforting. Franco was balding and he hadn’t fought it. What was left was cut very short, so that he seemed to be balder than he was. The Vandyke was black and so was the mustache. He was wearing a flowered shirt and green knit slacks and dark brown moccasins. The shirt hung outside the pants. Probably to hide a gun. Or maybe he thought it was elegant. I looked at Candy. Her face was frozen, without expression. She looked at Franco and was perfectly still.

Behind Franco was the blond charmer I had rousted in the parking lot at the Farmers Market. He’d never wear a flowered shirt. He wouldn’t let it hang outside. He’d hide his gun in a shoulder rig under an unstructured linen jacket with the collar turned up.

I looked at Felton. It was as if he didn’t have to pretend anymore and his glands could relax. His face was now shiny with sweat, and some had beaded on his upper lip. His expression was a mixture of gratitude and terror.

Franco looked at Candy and said, “Well, well, news-birdie. You thought I didn’t mean it last time?”

Candy was quiet. There was a faint sense of a foreign accent in Franco’s voice, too dim to identify, merely the echo of a distant birth.

“Huh?” he said. “Did you think I didn’t mean it?”

“I thought you meant it,” Candy said.

“Then what are you doing here, birdie, huh? If you thought I meant it, what are you doing here?”

“My job,” Candy said. There was no affect in her voice.

Franco looked at his helper. “How about that, Bubba. Her job, you hear that? She’s doing her fucking job. Huh? You like that, Bubba?”

“Yeah,” Bubba said. “Yeah, that’s good.”

Felton said, “What are you going to do, Franco?”

Franco looked at him for a moment and shook his head. “Look at the sweat,” he said. “Give fat a bad name, guys like you.”

Felton wiped his hand over his face. “Well, what’re you?” he said.

“You called us,” Franco said. “What’d you have in mind?”

“They were talking about me killing Rafferty,” Felton said.

Franco made a sound between a grunt and a laugh. “You ain’t got the ’nads to kill anything, except maybe a quart of tequila,” he said. Then he looked at Candy and said, “Come on, you and your date take a ride with us.”

Candy looked at me. I said “Nope.”

Franco looked at me for the first time. “I wasn’t asking,” he said. “Get moving, huh?”

I said “Nope” again. It had a nice rhythm to it.

Bubba had moved a little to Franco’s right, but neither showed a weapon yet. That’s one of the mistakes tough guys make. They overrate how tough they are. They aren’t careful.

I took the gun out from the cushions and pointed it at them. No harm in being careful. I said “Nope.

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