Dead Street

“Yeah. See, I... Shooter, I’m going to level with you. I’m going to level with you because it’s my best shot at not really pissing you off. And all I want right now is to not piss you off, okay?”

“Okay.”

Now Bucky spoke slowly, as if to a child. “The reason I was working at Credentials was because some top-secret government stuff was going through there. I don’t know why some little hole-in-the-wall computer outfit had such confidential federal dope on file, and I don’t know how the guys I worked for knew, neither. But they had stuff on file, all right, information about weapons and munitions stolen from federal armories... and about sales of the stuff to foreign countries. Enemy countries.”

“Why was that of interest to mobsters?”

“Because this atomic shipment was coming through, and the heist was all planned and everything... and they needed to know the players.”

“The potential buyers, you mean.”

“What else? That was what I was trying to get for them, that info... and my computer repair job with Credentials, that was my cover.”

“And did you get that info, Bucky?”

“Hell, yes. Stealing candy from a baby.”

“What about the files on your mob pals that Orbach left with Credentials?”

He shrugged. “I erased the sons of bitches. Wiped the computer drives clean. Used a magnet on the back-up discs, too.” His eyes tightened. “Only, I knew your girl...” But the words caught in his throat.

“Spill it, Bucky.”

His eyes were wild. “Shooter, now I’m leveling with you, man, you need this information, don’t go apeshit on me, man.”

“You give me what I need, Bucky, you never had a better friend.”

“Okay. Okay. This was a long time ago, and I was a stupid greedy little punk who didn’t know right from wrong.”

I decided not to remind him he’d been trying to sell the guts of a nuke to terrorists earlier this evening.

“Go on, Bucky.”

“I... I knew Bettie, knew she’d made copies of the files and took ’em home with her. And I knew she was your girl, and it was obvious that she was going to turn ’em over to you.”

If I smothered him with a pillow, no one would hear. If I covered his face with a pillow and used it to muffle t... .45, no one would hear that either.

“Don’t... don’t look at me like that, Shooter.”

“They’re still after her, aren’t they, Bucky?”

“I wouldn’t know, honest, man, I wouldn’t know! I had no idea they was going to snatch that snatch of yours!”

My hand clenched the pillowcase cloth again.

“Shooter, you got to believe me, I wanted no part of that shit. Why do you think I paid to fake my damn death? I wanted out, I got out, disappeared upstate and I been straight ever since. Computer repair, to this day. You think it’s easy keeping up on this computer crap, competing with these kids who had computers in their damn playpens?”

“I feel for you, Bucky. But like the man says, I just can’t reach you.”

“Shooter... Shooter....”

“If you went straight, what were you doing back in the big city, on that street, in that old building?”

“I saw in the papers Orbach was out of stir and then right away he bought the farm. So I kind of started thinking about the safe and what was in it, and how I must be the last one to know about it. And how, you know, valuable them contents was.”

“Why would a straight successful businessman start thinking bad things like that, Bucky?”

“I told you it’s been tough, competing. Plus I lost everything in my divorce, and... but it was just me thinking. I didn’t do anything about it. Not at first.”

“Oh?”

A short nod. “Then when those Saudi guys contacted me about buying the old building, I checked on the atomic stash and, damn, if it wasn’t still there! Orbach dead, and so many of the old mob guys gone. Why not make a buck?”

“So the Saudis didn’t approach you about the contents of that safe?”

“No — they’re developers. They’re going to build friggin’ condos or something. But I figured they might be connected to, you know, certain kinds of people. You know — crazy ragheads with money to burn.”

My stomach tightened, muscles twitching, but I didn’t let it show in my face.

“And so you told them about what you had for sale.”

“Yeah! Of course. Wouldn’t you?”

I let that pass. “And they were interested?”

“Not for themselves, but they got in touch with people who were. I guess that box of plutonium or whatever the hell it is, it’s something people have been looking for, for years.”

“Yeah. Only the safe was empty.”

His shook his head, eyes wild again. “Shooter, I checked that baby. I opened that safe and there it was, wrapped up in blankets just like when the heisters stuck it in there. Twenty years ago!”

“So you were double-crossed.”

“Not by the Saudis. You were there, Shooter. You saw how that went down. Somebody else got to that stash between the last time I checked it and when I opened up the safe for my buyers.”

“Who?”