‘Everybody’s screwing Marcus.’ Kip said this like it was gospel.
‘Look.’ Angie leaned up on the couch. She talked to Kip, because this was his decision. ‘You told me to handle LaDonna, but handling LaDonna means handling all the wives.’ She opened the folder as if she needed to remind herself of something, but the truth was, she was grasping at straws. ‘The way you keep the wives happy is you don’t cause waves. Sending . . .’ she pretended to look for the girl’s name, ‘Josephine to rehab is a big wave. It’s a media thing. It’ll get her a lot of attention. There will be interviews and paparazzi. You know what happens when cameras are around. The wives go nuts trying to put themselves in the picture. And then there’s the question of whether or not Jo is even using drugs.’ She looked at Harding for the answer. He shrugged. She said, ‘Walk it out. You plant the drugs, you call the cops, she gets in front of a judge, who puts her in rehab. What happens when they figure out she’s not using? Blood tests will show she’s clean. She won’t go through withdrawal. What if that’s the story she tells—that she was framed?’
‘Is there a race angle?’ Laslo asked. ‘I can’t tell what she is. Black? White? Latina?’
‘She’s beautiful,’ Kip said. ‘That’s all that matters. Nobody gives a shit when an ugly bitch complains.’
Harding suggested, ‘Jo’s mother.’
Kip asked, ‘What about her?’
‘She was moved up here after the father died. Got some kind of heart condition, so they wanted her to be near a good hospital. The mother’s on Fig’s dime.’
‘Easy,’ Laslo said. ‘We threaten Jo with the mother. Tell her Mommy is going to end up eating cat food if she doesn’t cut it out with Marcus.’
Angie spitballed, ‘If Jo’s got a line on Marcus, the mother could be looking at an even bigger jackpot. He’s got a hell of a lot more money than Reuben does. He could put the mother up in a penthouse on top of the Ritz. Buy her a new heart. Whatever she wants.’
Harding said, ‘She’s not wrong.’
Angie shot him a look. He hadn’t said she was right, either.
Kip said, ‘Okay. What’s the solution, assholes?’
Angie rushed to answer before anybody else could. ‘I’ll shadow Jo and see what comes up.’ She thought about something else. ‘If she’s not screwing Marcus, then what’s going on between the two of them?’
Kip bounced the ball. ‘What else could she want from him if she’s not looking to move up the food chain?’
‘Could be she’s slipping him pills. Could be she’s blackmailing him about something from his past. Could be a lot of things.’ Angie had to stop to swallow. She couldn’t let this get away from her. ‘We can’t find a solution without knowing what the problem really is.’
Harding said, ‘I’m leaning back toward my idea. Jo’s the problem. Jo goes away, the problem goes away.’
Angie tried, ‘What if Jo isn’t the only one who’s the problem? What if she’s talking to somebody? What if she’s working with somebody?’
Harding shrugged, but she could see his mind was swinging back around.
‘Don’t be stupid about this.’ Angie stood up. She knew that Kip responded best to aggression. ‘I’ll find out what’s going on. All I need is time.’
‘Time is exactly what we don’t have,’ Kip countered. ‘Training is ramping up. We’ve got the All-Star ground-breaking in two weeks. I had to cut off my own right nut and hand it to Ditmar to keep Marcus in. This has to be taken care of fast.’
They all went silent again.
Angie stacked the pages in the folder. She had to get out of here before Harding swung back the other way. ‘Let me dig a little deeper before we bring down the ax.’
Kip said, ‘You’ve got two days.’
‘It’ll take that long just to catch myself up to speed.’ Angie listed the things she had already done. ‘I’ll need to follow her around, check her digital footprint, scope out where she spends her time.’
‘Clone her phone, read her texts, pull the emails off her computer.’ Harding winked at Angie. He was finally on board. ‘She’s right, Kip. I can get my electronics guy on this pronto, but to drill down what’s the what will take at least two weeks.’
‘We don’t have that kind of time.’ Kip tossed the ball in the air. ‘You’ve got one week, Polaski. You know how this works. Either the problem goes away or the wife does.’
WEDNESDAY, 7:35 AM
‘You’ll have to move along,’ an insistent woman in Lululemon warned Angie. She had a fluorescent baton in one hand and a plastic cup of green slush in the other. ‘This is the drop-off lane.’
Angie looked up at the elementary school. She had parked at the curb. There was no sign indicating that this was the drop-off lane.
The woman repeated, ‘Move along, please.’
A car horn beeped behind Angie. She checked the mirror. Black Mercedes SUV, the boxy, six-bills kind. Just the thing every mother needed to take her kid to school.
‘?Habla Inglés?’
Angie swallowed the knives that wanted to shoot from her mouth. Just because she was in a shitty car with a leaking transmission didn’t mean she was the fucking maid.
‘Habla fuck off,’ she muttered, jerking the car away from the curb. The coffee cup between her legs sloshed onto her jeans. ‘Dammit.’ Angie jerked the wheel again, turning out of the school parking lot. She took an illegal left. More car horns blared. She was doing a fantastic job staying undercover.
Peachtree Battle Avenue split in two, a grassy divide separating the north and south lanes. Angie couldn’t figure out how to turn back around. She drove over the grass, then parked in the wide mouth of a brick-paved driveway that led to a mansion. Not exactly the best place to hide in plain sight, but better than her vantage point yesterday, which put her too far down from the school to watch Jo drop off her kid.
Kip was getting impatient. Two nights ago he had given Angie a week to figure out what Jo was up to. After a full day of surveillance with no revelations, he was making noises about Dale taking over.
There was no way in hell that Angie would let Dale take over.
She studied the line of traffic on the other side of the street. More black SUVs, some BMWs and the occasional Lexus. E. Rivers Elementary was the Taj Mahal compared to the public school shitholes Angie had attended. The kids were so shiny white that they practically glowed.
Angie had been to the school many times before, but never this early. Usually she parked in the strip mall across the main road and stood on the sidewalk watching the kids on the fenced-in playground. She had wanted to check out Jo’s kid. She knew who to look for because there were tons of photos on Reuben Figaroa’s Facebook page. Jo wasn’t in any of them, but that wasn’t why Angie was unhappy about the pictures. No matter how studiously Reuben avoided fame, he was still a public figure. He shouldn’t be showing everybody his kid’s face. There were nuts out there. Any one of them could figure out where the boy went to school, what time he would be on the playground, just like Angie had.
This was her grandkid, she guessed. Technically, not for real. Angie sure as hell wasn’t old enough to be a grandmother. Especially to a kid like Anthony Figaroa.
The name was cumbersome for a six-year-old, but it seemed to fit. Anthony was like a little adult. His brow was permanently furrowed, shoulders rounded, head down as if he wanted to fold into himself. Instead of playing with the other kids at recess, he sat with his back to the wall of the school and stared mournfully out at the playground. He reminded Angie of Will. The lonely aura, the longing mixed with the thing that always held him back.