Blout gave out a quick breathy laugh. “I’ll take my chances. And to be on the safe side, I won’t look inside until I meet you back at the drainage pipe.”

“They are not going to let you walk out of the bank with the whole safe deposit box.” I started laughing, knowing full-well what was coming next.

He turned to me. A big toothy grin was spread across his face. “Wanna bet?”

17

Blout screeched up to the curb in front of the bank. He got out with the car running, keys dangling in the ignition. I scooted across the seat and pulled the door shut. Instead of charging into the bank as I’d hoped, Blout stood there shuffling his feet. It didn’t take a brain surgeon to see he was nervous with me behind the wheel of his butt-ugly car.

“Are you okay? For driving, I mean. What did they give you back at the hospital?”

I let my head bob out of control. “I’m phhhhine! Don’t worry about a phhhhing!” I fell against the wheel, sounding the horn for a good thirty seconds. Fun, but we were losing time. “Seriously. We’ve got work to do. I’m fine and I’m late.”

I floored it, leaving Blout breathing exhaust. When I glanced back, he was flipping me off, both hands raised above the smoke. I laughed, but the seriousness of the situation began to sink in. I was through joking for the moment.

I glanced down at the dashboard and saw one of those cheap plastic stick-on digital clocks just above the ashtray. If the clock was right, I was over half an hour late. Mo’Lock would wait, that much I could rely on. He had the patience of a dead man.

I drove carefully, taking the back streets past Dupont Circle straight up Connecticut Avenue until I was near Embassy Row. Once I was clear of the major urban areas I pulled over and parked in front of a liquor store. Not only was I shaky, but a headache had begun creeping up on me, moving around like a probing flashlight beam. In the liquor store, I purchased two pints of rotgut—one for me and one for Blout.

In the car I popped a couple of pills from the hospital and washed them down with the booze. It occurred to me it might not be safe to mix the two, but I figured the results would become apparent soon enough.

It took about ten minutes to arrive at the old reservoir off Wisconsin Avenue. From the street it looked like a small lake, but when you got close you could see a cement bottom and surrounding fence. Problem was, it took eight minutes for the mystery of mixing drugs and alcohol to be solved. It wasn’t good. I was dizzy, my head was reeling, and I couldn’t feel my teeth.

I steered the car around the chain-link fence and cruised along the elevated access road, raising roostertails worthy of a Dukes of Hazzard episode. The drainage pipe was far from the main road and more or less hidden from public view. In my drugged haze, I’d let the car drift to where the shoulder dropped away from the road surface. I took a sharp right to bring the car back parallel with the pipe while jamming on the brakes, but it was too little too late.