“Will you or won’t you?” I needed confirmation. I needed it nailed to the wall so I could stare at it and make sure it was real.
“I’ll try. I’ll make the calls. I’ll throw my weight around. What little I have left. Just… she overheard them? What did she overhear? I can’t send them without a reason.”
“Sbudellarlo,” I said. The phone clicked. I didn’t know why. I’d used a payphone twice in my life.
“Ah, I heard of that when I prosecuted the Taorminas. I’m sorry. I kind of liked him after the other day.”
“Don’t you ever speak about him in the past tense,” I growled, but he said nothing. “Daniel? Daniel?”
The phone was dead. My money had run out.
forty-five.
theresa
need your car keys,” I said.
I had to get somewhere quickly in Los Angeles, and I had no car.
Margie wasn’t taking the urgency seriously, arms folded, sensible shoe tapping the hospital linoleum. “Why?”
“Because.”
“That car is registered to me. If it’s going to be used in the commission of a crime, I could get disbarred.”
“Give me the keys and report it stolen. But give me half an hour to get across town.”
“You just admitted you’re committing a crime.”
“I did not. I was trying to make you feel better. I’m going home. I’m going to bed. I’ll be back in the morning to visit Jonathan.”
She twisted her bag around so she could reach inside and yanked out a string of keys. She popped off a black key fob and put it in my outstretched hand.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Leave me some gas.”
I walked away.
“Theresa,” she called, and I turned. “Your jacket. In the back.”
I reached behind me and felt cold metal. My jacket had slipped behind the gun, exposing it. I didn’t thank her. I just got into the elevator.
She got in front of the doors. “Theresa.”
“It’s all right. I’m just tired.”
“Be good. As good as you can be. Okay?”
I was about to promise her I’d be good, but the doors closed before I could lie.
forty-six.
theresa
alentina had been waiting in the lobby like a lost puppy I couldn’t get rid of. She’d gotten in step behind me and followed me to Margie’s car.
I thought of shaking her but decided against it. She was a grown woman, and I didn’t have time. She got in the car as if I’d said it was all right, her sense of entitlement as unshakeable as a holy sacrament.
“He could be already dead,” she said from the passenger seat.
I got hot everywhere. My hands. My back. My face must have been a searing shade of purple. I’d never felt so angry in the face of the sheer emptiness of the world.
I was supposed to do something when I felt like that. Breathe. Respira. Touch the St. Christopher medal.
Of course, touching the medal did nothing. It did not fix the situation. It did not change the danger Antonio was in or transmit his whereabouts into my head. It only reminded me that I was capable of anything, and that even in my savagery, I was a child of the universe and loved by God.
That’s all.
I tapped the GPS on the dash, getting a satellite picture of the slice of wilderness between Whittier and Hacienda Heights. Take the 10 east to the 605 South. Off on Beverly. Left. Right. Left onto a dirt road, along a drive into a nondescript house with no address. That had to be the one. It was the only structure in the area large enough to be a house and small enough to be hidden.
“What will you do if he is?” she asked. “Dead, that is.”
“Kill all of them.” I didn’t check for her reaction. If she got to ask off-the-cuff questions about what I’d do with my life, then I got to answer in the immediate.
The 10 was empty, but I stayed a little over the speed limit. Getting pulled over wouldn’t get me there any quicker, and I had a loaded gun in the glove compartment.