The kid talked out of the side of his mouth, like he had a secret. “Your friend’s looking for you,” he said. “She said to wait and tell you when you were alone.”
The kid had a new piercing on the top of his ear, in the cartilage. It was just a tiny silver stud, lost under his hair and so small the restaurant management probably hadn’t noticed it. Archie wouldn’t have noticed it either except for the thin tear of blood that ran down the outer fold of the kid’s left ear.
Those sorts of piercings took a long time to heal.
“Where is she?” Archie asked.
“In her car in the alley.” The kid gestured behind them, toward a swinging steel door, as if it were nothing, as if he were giving directions to the mall. “Back there. Through the kitchen.”
Archie realized then from the sly spark in the kid’s eye that the kid thought that Gretchen was his mistress.
“You’re bleeding,” Archie said.
The kid’s eyebrows shot together and then he reached up with his left hand and touched the ear, wincing as he did. He lowered his hand and looked at it, the streak of blood evident on his fingertips. “Gross,” he said.
“Do you have any plans tonight?” Archie asked the kid, imagining the hours of interrogation the kid faced at Henry’s hands.
“No,” the kid said.
Archie walked away, toward the door that led to the kitchen, away from Henry, away from Debbie, away from everything. “Good.”
CHAPTER
41
The last person Archie expected to find on the other side of the door to the alley was Susan Ward. She glanced up from where she was standing, next to a green Dumpster, snapped the cigarette from between her lips, and said hello, as if she weren’t surprised to see him at all. For a long second Archie was confused. Then he saw past her, farther up the alley, where the brake lights of a silver Jaguar hovered in the dusk, like sleepy, sinister eyes.
“Are you okay?” Archie asked Susan.
Susan ashed her cigarette in a large restaurant-sized can that had once held stewed tomatoes, but now held the ashes of a thousand smoke breaks. “Yeah. This is the only fucking place I can smoke.” She gestured to the side of the Dumpster, which reeked of spoiled food. “Watch the urine.”
The fact that Susan was there was a coincidence. Dizzy from relief, Archie stumbled, and had to reach out and grab on to the Dumpster to catch himself.
“Yikes, drink much?” said Susan. She smiled, red lipstick on her teeth, and sucked in another lungful of tobacco smoke. Cigarette butts lay everywhere on the concrete below, like matchsticks dropped in a children’s game. Cigarette butts were excellent sources of DNA.
“Give me one,” Archie said.
Susan hesitated. “Seriously?”
Archie held out a hand. It was shaking slightly, but not enough for anyone but him to notice. Susan pulled a cigarette out of her yellow pack and handed it to him.
“Have you ever been a smoker?” she asked.
Archie took her black plastic lighter and lit the cigarette and inhaled. The smoke burned his lungs, but he didn’t cough. He glanced over to where the Jaguar still idled up ahead, its engine almost silent. It was the only good car the British had ever built. “Nope,” he said. “Tried a few times. Never took. I remember the first one, though. That’s always the one you remember. First cigarette. First kiss. First corpse in a park.”
Susan raised her eyebrows. “O-kay.” She was wearing black leggings, brown boots, a T-shirt advertising a band that Archie didn’t recognize, and a hooded sweatshirt, and her turquoise hair was up in pigtails. “Hey,” she said. “I know I just gave it to you, but I need that box of notes from the Castle story back.”
Her request barely registered. Archie had other things on his mind. “I’ve got to go,” Archie said.
Susan glanced back at the scratched fire door that led into the kitchen. “Where’s Henry?”
“They’ll be fine,” Archie said more to himself than to Susan. He took a few steps toward the car and then turned around and looked at Susan and smiled and dropped the cigarette.
“Archie?” he heard Susan call, her voice rising a pitch.
He kept walking toward the car. When he reached it, he turned back again. He opened the passenger side door. Susan stood with her hands on her hips, head cocked to one side. Between them, the cigarette he had dropped glowed orange on the pavement. He hadn’t stepped on it, hadn’t ground it out. He hadn’t wanted to risk ruining their chance of getting his DNA off it.
He didn’t wave goodbye to Susan. It seemed too ghoulish. Instead he just turned away from her, and moving steadily, gently, climbed into the car.
The nausea had lifted now and he was almost relieved, certain that this was the best plan. Besides, the cigarette would help them later.
If they had to identify a body.
The car moved instantly.