Strip by Thomas Perry Read Free Book Online

on Kapak and his businesses. Slosser would try to find out who Kapak’s enemy was, and that would give Kapak a bit of room to work.

4
    S PENCE WAS OUTSIDE the police station when Kapak emerged from the front entrance, walking with a strange stiffness, as though his knees had locked. Spence knew that it was the terrible discomfort of having glass fragments in his pants, so he took pity on Kapak, got out, opened the door of the Town Car, and stood at something like attention while Kapak eased himself onto the passenger seat. “Thanks,” said Kapak. “I feel like my dick is being sawed off”
    “Better try sitting in a bath or something, until you get all the glass off.”
    Spence got in and drove. He knew Kapak’s main concern for the moment was to get away from the toxic atmosphere of police headquarters and begin the important work of forgetting he had ever been there. Spence drove with some urgency, moving in and out of lanes to work his way among the slow stream of cars through the city.
    He was up the freeway ramp and on his way out of the downtown section, where tall buildings shouldered up to the streets on both sides and made them seem narrow and dark. Kapak sat in the passenger seat, staring out the window at the glimpses of sunny hillsides far off beyond the buildings.
    At last he seemed to catch his breath. “That was something. I’ve got a fucking police lieutenant showing me pictures of the two Hummers, which looked as though they’d been dropped from an airplane. There was no sign of any of the guys in them. Meanwhile, not one of our guys has seen fit to call me and tell me what’s up. Did Joe Carver kill them all and drag their bodies to a pit to be covered by cement? Did he scare them off? Buy them off?”
    “Leave them alone and they’ll come home. If there were bodies, the cop would have said something.”
    “What if he killed them quietly and took the bodies with him?”
    “Can you imagine killing the Gaffney brothers without noise and blood?”
    “No. You’re right. But the whole thing worries me. What is this Carver guy? He could be the wrong man. What if he’s just some pissed off little guy who got surprised by a case of mistaken identity? What if he’s not? He could be anything, even the advance man for some big players.”
    “You met him and talked to him. What did he say he wanted?”
    “‘Nothing,’ is what he said. He told me he just wanted me to leave him alone. He didn’t do the robbery, so he should be allowed to do whatever he wanted.”
    “Then what were you shooting at him for?”
    “You don’t think I was going to let him go just because he said that? Maybe he didn’t do the robbery. Whoever put the gun to my head got twenty-three thousand bucks. Joe Carver wrecked a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of cars, did God knows what to five of my employees, and brought me face to face with the kind of police lieutenant who isn’t going to leave me alone until one of us dies. He also broke into my house and sprayed my nuts with pulverized glass.”
    “He did that? It looked like you shot the window out.”
    “It’s like capital murder. If a thief forces the cops to shoot at him and one of them hits the other, he’s the one they charge with murder, not the cop. This is just like that.”
    “I see,” said Spence.
    “You should.”
    Kapak’s cell phone rang. He put it to his ear. “Yeah?” He listened for a few seconds. “Is anybody dead?” He listened again. “Let me tell you something. I got dragged out of bed, practically at dawn, to go down to police headquarters to explain why two Hummers of mine were in a construction site, wrecked, with the keys in them. And did any one of you think to call me and say, ‘Hey, Joe Carver is alive, and he’s probably on his way to your house to kill you.’ Yeah, that happened. He didn’t kill me, but that’s no thanks to you. Where are you? We’ll be there in a minute.” Kapak hung up.
    Spence drove the last few