Angie struggled with the shifter, trying to force the gear into reverse. The clutch tensed. She heard the gears grinding. Her stomach was still cramping.
‘Fuck!’ she screamed again. ‘Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!’ She banged her fists on the steering wheel until the pain shot into her back and shoulders.
She stopped. This was crazy. She had lost it over a stupid missed turn.
Finger by finger, she wrapped her hands around the wheel. She took a deep breath and held it for as long as she could.
Carefully Angie forced the gear into first. She drove to the end of the street, then did a wide U-turn. She had the gear in third by the time she coasted into an abandoned parking lot. She flipped into reverse just to prove that she could and backed into one of the lined parking spaces.
Angie flexed her hand. Banging the steering wheel hadn’t been her smartest move. The side of her fist already felt bruised.
Nothing she could do about that now.
Angie looked up at the massive concrete block that was Marcus Rippy’s nightclub. The building resembled a mummified robot’s head. A cleaning crew was supposed to spiff it up next week, but Angie wasn’t sure how they were going to manage it. Weeds shot up from the broken asphalt. Graffiti was everywhere. She had no idea why Dale always wanted to meet here. He must have been a terrible cop. All he wanted was routine. Maybe that’s what happened when you got older. Or maybe it was because it didn’t matter if Dale kept showing up in the same place over and over again. He’d stopped dialysis a week ago. If what Angie had read on the internet was true, he had a week, maybe two at the most, which meant he’d be dead before anyone figured out the pattern.
Could be he was already dead. Angie looked at the time on her phone. Dale was fifteen minutes late. Sam Vera, his electronics guy, wasn’t here either. Why was it that she was the only person who ran on time anymore?
She flipped down her visor and checked her make-up in the mirror. Her eyeliner was melting. Her lips could use a touch-up. She found Sara’s lipstick in her purse. Angie twisted the gold case. There was a scratch down the side. You’d think for sixty bucks the thing would be plated in real gold.
Angie looked at the flattened lipstick. She had cut off the tip. She might be a dangerous stalker, but she wasn’t unhygienic.
Was she really dangerous?
A few notes left on a car window never hurt anybody. Going through Sara’s shit was weird, but that hadn’t been on purpose. Or not by design, anyway. Angie had gone to Will’s house because she wanted to see him. Not talk to him, but just see him. As usual, he was at Sara’s. This had happened many times before. She had used the key Will left on the ledge over the back door. The first thing Angie had seen was his stupid little dog. Betty wouldn’t stop yapping. Angie had used her foot to slide her into the spare bedroom and shut the door. She was passing the bathroom when she saw Sara’s make-up strewn across the sink.
Angie’s first thought was: Will’s not going to like that.
Her second thought was: What the hell is Sara Linton doing leaving her shit here?
Here.
Will’s bathroom. Will’s bedroom. Will’s house.
Angie’s husband.
Angie flipped the sun visor closed. She didn’t need a mirror to apply lipstick. She’d been wearing it since she was twelve years old. Her hand knew the motion by heart. Still, she leaned up and checked herself in the rear-view mirror. She had to admit that the stuff was worth it. The color didn’t bleed. It lasted all day. Rose cashmere didn’t exactly suit her, but then again it didn’t exactly suit Sara, either.
Angie sat back in the seat. She smoothed her lips. She thought about the other things Sara had left at Will’s house. Real Manolo Blahniks. They were too big for Angie’s feet, a size more suitable for a drag queen. Black lacy underwear, which was a waste because Will could get turned on by a paper sack. Hair clips, which Angie could use, but she had thrown them away because fuck Sara Linton. Perfume. Another waste. Will couldn’t tell the difference between Chanel No. 5 and Dial hand soap.
Then there were the things in the bedside drawer.
Angie’s bedside drawer.
She reached into her bag and found a tissue. She wiped off the lipstick. She rolled down the window and threw the tissue on the ground. She could afford to buy her own Sisley now. She could afford to get her car fixed. She could buy her own Manolos, her own perfume.
Why was it that she only ever wanted the things that she couldn’t have?
There was a glint of white in her rear-view mirror. Dale Harding’s Kia came from around the side of the building. The car slowed to a stop four spaces away. Dale was eating a McDonald’s hamburger. The door opened. He shoved the rest of the burger into his mouth and tossed the wrapper onto the ground. His meaty hand clamped onto the roof. The car shook as he wedged himself out.
He asked Angie, ‘Where is he?’
Angie was offering an exaggerated shrug when Dale turned toward the street.
Sam Vera circled his van through the parking lot in a lazy figure eight. The idiot probably thought he was doing surveillance, but he was actually drawing more attention to himself. His van was painted a dull gray with a FEEL THE BERN bumper sticker on the back. The gray was a primer coat, broken up by patches of yellowing Bondo. Which Angie only knew about because of Will.
She got out of her car.
Dale asked, ‘You find anything out?’
‘Fig is beating his wife.’
‘No shit.’ He obviously already knew. ‘I talked to the team fixer in Chicago. They had to make a couple of nine-one-ones go away.’
‘You didn’t think to share this with me?’
‘No big deal. He doesn’t strangle her.’
‘What a gentleman.’ Cops were taught that an abuser who strangled a woman was statistically more likely to kill her. Angie asked, ‘Anything else you’re hiding?’
‘Maybe. How about you?’
Angie dug around in her purse so he couldn’t see her expression. Dale had obviously done a good job vetting Jo Figaroa, but her birth certificate would’ve been a dead end. Angie had given them an alias at the hospital.
The van finally came to a stop. The brakes squealed. She could smell pot. The radio was blaring Josh Groban.
Dale banged his fist on the side of the van. ‘Open up, dipshit.’
There was a loud pop as Sam Vera threw back the bolt on the van door. His large round eyeglasses caught the sun. He was twenty years old, tops, with a goatee that looked like mange from a squirrel. His eyes squinted behind his glasses. ‘Hurry. I hate the sun.’
Angie climbed into the back of the van. The air conditioning was working overtime, but the van was still a giant metal box baking in the sun. Sam’s acrid sweat mixed with the sweet odor of pot. She felt like she was in a frat house.
Angie sat on an overturned plastic crate. She kept her purse in her lap because there was greasy-looking shit all over the floor. Dale settled into the front passenger seat, turned sideways so he could see them both. He handed Sam an envelope of cash. Sam started counting the bills.
Angie looked around the cramped space. The van was a mobile RadioShack. Wires and metal boxes and various crap she didn’t understand spilled out of the Dewey decimal system he had going on in the back. He specialized in remote surveillance, but not the legal kind. There was a Sam Vera in every major American city. He was paranoid as hell. He had no qualms about breaking the law. He talked a tough game, but he would narc out his own mother if the cops ever leaned on him. Angie used to have her own Sam Vera, but he got picked up by the NSA for breaking into something you weren’t supposed to break into.
‘M’lady.’ Sam offered Angie a bright green phone with black electrical tape holding it together. ‘This is a clone of Jo Figaroa’s iPhone.’
‘That was fast.’