Hard News

him and he’d lain in bed, thinking that now he was going to kill Randy Boggs he needed to find something to resent about him. There wasn’t much. He wasn’t a nigger, a fag, a spic. He didn’t insult you. He didn’t go after your woman.
    Nestor’s hand went to his stomach and he squeezed the glossy scar. The imaginary itching crawled around in his belly somewhere. Then he decided that Boggs’s sin was that he was a Loser, capital L. Nestor smiled. That was plenty of reason to hunt the shit down and kill him.
    Good. That was taken care of.
    It was a mild April night and the sky was lit by this eerie glow you couldn’t tell where it came from. All the streetlights, probably. And headlights from cars and taxis and office buildings and stores … This made him think about all the buildings in the city, which of course included restaurants. Which reminded him that he was starving.
    And then, just as he was about to go get a burger, there was the girl! She was walking slowly up the dock to the houseboat, looking at the smoldering mess. She was dressed in those weird clothes of hers—black miniskirt, boots, a couple of T-shirts, one bright red, the other yellow. Over her shoulder was a large bag but she was nice enough to set that down and stand with her hands on her hips, looking at the boat. She walked forward to look at some of the burnt junk on the pier and kicked it absently. She walked to the yellow police
Do Not Cross
tape and stood with her hands on it, looking down as if she was praying.
    Nestor took the gun from his jacket pocket and looked around. Cars zipped past and there were people strolling along the riverfront but no one was near him. The sun was going down fast, a huge wad of orange fire, sinking directly in front of him. He could see it disappearing, inch by inch into Hoboken behind the charred skeleton of the houseboat.
    Nestor aimed. He kept both eyes open; he didn’t squint. It was a seventy-five-yard shot and he wished he had a stock and butt piece but he didn’t so he leaned hard into the brick wall for support, crooked his arm and set the pistol in the V between his biceps and forearm. He aligned the sights and lifted it a millimeter to compensate for the distance. There was no wind.
    He held his breath.
    Complete stillness.
    Then: The last streak of sun slipped under the horizon.
    A car sped past and honked.
    The girl turned.
    Jack Nestor fired two fast shots, whose sharp cracks spread across the water, echoed briefly then faded.
    He’d aimed for her back first then her head. Both slugs hit her. The first one struck her shoulder high. The second caught her in motion as she spun around. He saw a puff of blood, like smoke, on her cheek.
    She dropped to the ground like a puppet with cut strings.
    Nestor walked quickly back to the car. On the way he changed his mind. A burger would no longer do the trick. He decided to go looking for the biggest steak he could find in this goddamn town.

    chapter 29    
     
    AT FIRST, RANDY BOGGS THOUGHT HE’D BEEN CHEATED by the bank.
    He’d never had a good relationship with financial institutions. Although he’d never robbed any, several Georgia and Florida savings and loans (with the word “Trust” in their names, no less) had foreclosed on his family’s houses after his father had missed various numbers of mortgage payments.
    He was therefore predisposed to be suspicious.
    So now, when the pretty girl behind the window handed him eleven tiny piles of cash so thin that they looked like a kid’s building blocks, he thought in panic they’d kept most of the money for a fee or something.
    She looked at his expression and asked, “Is everything all right?”
    “That’s one hundred ten thousand?”
    “Yessir. They just look small ‘cause they’re new bills. I counted ‘em once and our machine there counted ‘em twice—you want me to do it again?”
    “No, ma’am.” Looked right at Ben Franklin, who stared back at him with that weird smile as if it was as natural for Boggs as for anyone else to be holding a fortune. A hundred ten thousand and some change—the extra being thanks to the interest Jack Nestor had mentioned.
    “Kind of thought a hundred thousand’d be a bigger pile.”
    “You got it in nickels and dahms, it’d be pretty sizable then.”
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    “Y’all want an escort? Lahk a guahd or anything?”
    “No, ma’am.”
    Boggs loaded the money in his paper bag and left. Then he wandered around