Free The Specialists by Lawrence Block Page B

don’t know.”
    “Don’t know where redneck comes from, for that matter. My neck ain’t red unless I stand in the sun, which I don’t.”
    “As far as that goes, I haven’t nigged in years.”
    “Huh?”
    “I say I haven’t nigged in years, so why do they call me a nigger?”
    “If that don’t beat all.” Murdock laughed, slapped the steering wheel. “Now, that’s funny.”
    “Old joke.”
    “Never heard it. ‘I haven’t nigged in years.’ There’s a drugstore. You want to call Old Rugged or should I?”
    “I might as well. I have to call my wife, anyway.”
    “What for?”
    “I call her every night. You know, just to see how she is and let her know I’m all right.”
    “Yeah,” Murdock said.
    He parked the truck and waited while Simmons went inside. He looked at his cigarette for a moment, then pitched it out the window. Aloud he said, “Ain’t nobody in this world I’d call.”
    Nobody at all, he thought. Just to call up and talk to, well, there wasn’t anybody. Not that he felt the lack. But still.
    But, he wondered, why did Simmons make a point of saying it? If he was going to call, well, fine, and go ahead and do it, but why say? Or was he just trying to make me feel bad?
    Oh shit, he thought. Think on things too hard and you just went and made yourself crazy. And he looked down on the floor at the two paper bags, each with two guns in it, and thought where they all came from, and the too-hard thoughts went away and he just put his head back and started laughing.
    It was like gambling in one respect. The important quality, the absolute essential, was patience. Hurry up and wait—that was how the Army put it. You had to be able to move fast. You also had to be able to go without moving at all.
    Manso was stretched flat on his back underneath Albert Platt’s black Lincoln. He had remained in that position for well over an hour. First he had crouched beside the fence until the lot attendant delivered the car. Then, with the kid in the car and the engine going and the kid down at the far end of the lot and facing out toward the street, Manso took three running steps and slapped his hands onto the bunched-up tee shirt and vaulted the fence. He landed soft, landed on the balls of his feet, and in seconds he was out of sight behind a car, the tee shirt tucked under his belt.
    Another few minutes and he had found Platt’s car. He knew the model and license number—the colonel’s sister was aces in the research department. The doors were unlocked, the key in the ignition. He considered and quickly rejected the idea of hiding in the back seat. Instead he picked another good moment and let himself into the car long enough to pop the hood latch. He slipped out of sight then, waiting, and when the kid took a moment to duck out of sight around the front of the restaurant, Manso raised the hood and loosened a wire coming out of the distributor.
    Then he crawled under the car.
    He was still there now, forcing himself to remain alert and prepared without getting jumpy in the process. He played the exercise through his mind and couldn’t find anything wildly wrong with the plan. The only drawback was his relative immobility. It was not particularly easy to get out from under a car in a hurry. Still, he didn’t think that would matter too much.
    He tensed himself at the sound of approaching footsteps. It was the attendant, he knew the kid’s walk by now. And this time the footsteps did not turn away. The kid opened the door on the driver’s side of the big Lincoln, and Manso watched the frame of the car settle as the kid got behind the wheel. The kid turned the key and the starter ground. Where Manso lay, the noise of the starter was particularly loud. He thought, for the first time, what an utter snafu it would be if he’d yanked an unimportant wire and the fucking car started after all. The car would probably run right over him, and he would damn well deserve it.
    But the engine did not catch. The