“Have you thought about just asking him who his buddies are? I mean, you guys do do interrogations, right?”
“We do, and it may come to that. But the more effective methods of extracting information tend to be time-consuming, and we don’t believe we have much time. So we’ve decided instead to keep a close watch on Dexter and see what he does. Your job will be to help with the surveillance and perform any other tasks that may come up; and if it looks as though Dexter is about to complete his mission, you’ll see to it that he doesn’t succeed.”
“Cool,” I said. “Where’s my gun?”
“It’ll be delivered to you shortly. For now, go with Annie and do as she says; she’s been fully briefed on the details of the operation.”
“With Annie, right…Listen, True, can I talk to you privately for a second?”
“Later,” True said, getting up. “We’re on a tight schedule, and I have other things to attend to.”
Right. I knew a brush-off when I heard it—and Annie, for her part, knew a vote of no confidence when she heard it. When we got back outside, the first thing she said was: “You’re frightened of me.”
“‘Frightened’ is kind of strong,” I lied. “You do freak me out a little, yeah, but—”
“You don’t need to be frightened.” She flashed me this brittle smile. “I know how I seem, but I’m really very dependable. God keeps me focused.”
“Oh-kay, well that’s good to hear…So what does God want us to do first?”
“How much money do you have?”
“Not a lot. Maybe twenty bucks and change.”
“Give me the twenty.”
Two doors down from the deli was a corner grocery that sold scratch lottery tickets. “Which kind do you like?” Annie asked me. There were fifteen varieties to choose from, most with some type of gambling theme: Lucky Poker, Scratch Roulette, Twenty-One, Three-Card Monte…Then I noticed this one kind called Jungle Cash that had pictures of animals on it, including a baboon that was being stalked by a pair of tigers. “That one,” I said, and Annie nodded approvingly.
Jungle Cash tickets were two bucks each. Annie bought ten, and when we scratched them all off, nine were winners. We left the store with over three hundred dollars.
“Does that always work?” I asked.
“‘There will be water if God wills it,’” Annie replied, and flagged down a taxi.
The cab took us to an address in the Richmond, a Pentecostal church called the Chapel of the Redeemer. It reminded me of the Diazes’ church in Siesta Corta, and, already keyed up by Annie’s God-talk, I got worried that my training curriculum was going to include speaking in tongues. But then I noticed the chains on the front doors, and the sign that said PROPERTY FOR LEASE.
“What is this place?” I asked, thinking maybe Arlo Dexter was using it for a bomb factory.
“Home,” said Annie.
“You live here? You and God?”
“Not inside,” she said. “Around back.”
Around back was a small cemetery. Like the church doors, the cemetery gate was chained and padlocked, but Annie had a key.
Her home was a refrigerator box covered with a waterproof tarp. The open end of the box faced a grave marked WILLIAM DANE. The grave plot had been neatly outlined with stones, and Annie was careful to step around it.
“I’ll just be a minute,” she said, and crawled into the box.