CHAPTER 26

AT ALMOST THE SAME precise time as Grady and Whitney were stopped at the light, Grady’s motel room was being visited by two swarthy individuals with suspicious bulges under the sport jackets.

Unknown to either of them, who were under instructions from their boss to kill whoever they found inside, the person inside at that moment wasn’t Grady Fogarty, but his new friend Sally Graziano. Sally was on an errand for Grady, delivering a neighborhood parking sticker. He’d gotten a key for the room by flashing his badge at the clerk.

Also unknown to the pair as they entered the room, was that Sally’s wife Veronica was sitting out in the parking lot, working on a particularly bad hangnail that had been pestering her all morning.

Veronica wasn’t so engrossed in her sore finger that she failed to see the two men slip inside the same room her husband had just gone into. She reached beside her to the sawed-off 12 gauge she always kept under the front seat and eased the car door open. With a swiftness that belied her massive bulk, she quickly walked to the motel door.

Not bothering to knock, she simply hauled off and kicked the door in.

It was lucky that both men were standing together or else some of the pellets might have struck her own husband. That he was kneeling beside the bed also helped.

“What took you so long?” was all he said, standing up and brushing his knees.

“I ain’t as young as I used to be,” was her retort. “You wanna call or you want me to?”

“I will,” he said. “You’ve done your share, I guess.” Sally looked at the two dead men. “I never saw anybody get two shots off that quick, sugar. I doubt they even knew what hit ‘em, do you?”

When the cops arrived a few minutes later, they had their story straight. Luckily, the chief officer on the scene was an old friend, a guy they’d both served with.

“I understand,” he said, clicking his tongue in appreciation. “We’ll take care of this. Like you said, looks to me like these guys just came after the wrong cops. An old grudge, you say? They been following you for weeks? Some guys you had a run-in with at the bar?” He winked. “And the guy who’s staying here? You were just coming to visit him? I get all this right?”

At the car, a few minutes later, Veronica handed the keys to her husband.

“Here. You drive.”

Sally noticed her fingers were trembling.

“Sure,” he said, his voice tender. “How ‘bout you take the rest of the day off? Go see that movie you been wanting to see? I’ll take care of the bar.”

It sounded like a good idea to Veronica. In the car, she leaned over and kissed him full on the lips.

“Or maybe,” he said, putting the key in the ignition. “We can go home for a while. Fuck the bar. Call Andy, see if he can stay a little bit longer.”

That, too, sounded like a good idea to her. An even better idea.