Point Blank

after the explosion. He heard Dykes say to himself, “Those bastards. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, this wasn’t supposed to happen. I’m a dead man walking when Marlene finds out.”
    The final piece slid into place. Moses Grace had double-crossed Raymond Dykes. It was all a setup, to kill him and as many cops as they could manage.
    Dane walked up and stood behind Dykes. In a voice as nonthreatening as a nun’s at vespers, he said, “I can see how you’d be shocked that they blew up your motel, Mr. Dykes.”
    “I’ve lost my livelihood here, my whole life.”
    “They lied to you and showed you some money and you decided to believe them, right?”
    Dykes looked at the smoking bones of his motel. “Only information,” he said, “that’s all they wanted—
    information. They gave me five hundred dollars, that fast, all smiles—five hundred dollars for a phone call.” He snapped his fingers and moaned, now holding his belly. “Nothing about an explosion. I’m a dead man. You don’t know Marlene.”
    “Your wife?”
    “No, my sister.”
    “So they paid you to tell them if the cops showed up? That was all?”
    Dykes nodded, then as if suddenly realizing he was talking to an FBI agent, and saying things he shouldn’
    t, he gulped and shut his mouth.
    Dane said, a bit of threat in his voice, “Too late, Mr. Dykes. If you don’t tell me everything now, we’ll make it real hard for you. You phoned their room when we were getting into position outside?”
    Dykes began to rock, his arms collapsed over his chest. He nodded.
    “What else? What were you expecting to happen?”
    “Nothing. They said they’d go out the back,” Dykes said. “I’d let the phone ring three times, that’s all I had to do, just warn them. Nothing more. I heard them laughing later about firecrackers. When I asked them what they meant, the old guy, Mr. Grace, he laughed some more, said he’d like to scare the bejesus out of the cops, if he could, said the lot of you weren’t worth spit. If he only had one firecracker, that’s all he needed, he said. But he didn’t have one, did he?” He looked at the burnt heap of rubble that was, up until an hour before, his main support, then raised smoke-reddened eyes to Dane’s face. Dane wanted to smack him upside the head for being so greedy, so stupid. “He didn’t lie. He didn’t have a firecracker, what he had was a bomb.”
    Dykes whispered, “Why did they lie to me, Agent Carver? Why? I did what they asked, called their room when you showed up, let the phone ring three times. This was crazy, mean and crazy. They ruined me.”
    Savich said, “No, Mr. Dykes, you did this yourself.” He was still trying to get his brain around what this man had done, for five hundred dollars.
    “It was the girl with all that beautiful hair; she paid me to let them know if you guys showed up. But I wasn’t born yesterday, people are always trying to stiff me because they figure the rooms are cheap, the name of the hotel is a joke, but look, I believed them. And she was so pretty, and she liked me. Her stomach was so white and—I guess I didn’t call this one right at all, did I? I’m an idiot.”
    Dane said, “Yes, I’d say tonight you were.”
    Dykes, skinny as a nail, wrapped up in a coat two sizes too large for him, thick mousse glistening on the half dozen long gray hairs plastered down over the top of his skull, realized fully now that he was in deep trouble. “No, I—I—I’m not an idiot, and it isn’t nice of you to agree with me like that. I didn’t mean for anything bad to happen, Agent Carver, you’ve got to believe me. I didn’t have a clue what they were planning. Oh Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Marlene is going to kill me.”
    “You took five hundred dollars knowing that our lives were on the line.” There was no rage in Dane’s calm voice, but it was there, clear as could be, in his eyes, if Dykes had looked up at him. But he kept his eyes on his shoes, and shook his head.
    Savich asked him, “They requested room two-twelve?”
    Dykes nodded. “Yeah, that’s a prime room since it’s on the end and there’s a window in the bathroom.”
    Dane said, “You realize now that they either cut through that thin back bathroom wall or they went out the back window and were gone by the time we walked into your office. They meant to kill as many of us as they could. The bomb was powerful enough. Do you have a family, Mr. Dykes, or are you only at the mercy of your sister