As soon as we were in the elevator, Mr. Contreras tore into me.
Why didn’t you tell me that woman was letting some scumbag put his filthy hands on Peewee? Why didn’t she tell me herself? She shoulda known I’d help her out if she got in a jam.”
I put an arm around him.
“Darling, the only reason we didn’t tell you is because we love you. What good would it do either of us if you were in prison for murder, even if you killed a scumbag who wouldn’t be missed?”
He let himself be mollified at the suggestion that I thought he was tough enough to kill someone who bothered Petra. He drove me to the store, helped me push my shopping cart, didn’t fight me over the bill even though he’d put a few items of his own in the cart.
“Guess I can call that payment for chauffeuring you, doll.”
I needed to be in motion, but I was so exhausted by the outing that I had to lie down when we got home. I let Mr. Contreras put my chicken in the oven to roast, let him make me an ice pack to put on my sore stomach while he settled down in my living room with the dogs.
I tried to relax, but I kept replaying my conversation with Olympia. She was afraid of Anton, but who wouldn’t be? She seemed especially afraid that he would know that I’d been to see her. I felt a grudging sympathy. When I met Anton last night, I hadn’t been sure I’d be alive today. In fact, if Tim and Marty hadn’t come along, I might well not be.
The ice had melted through my Ace bandage, and my stomach was wet and cold. A counter-irritant to take my mind off the pain. I rolled to a sitting position and unwrapped the bandage.
Nadia had kept painting Allie’s face surrounded by the same design that was on Chad’s body armor. If Rodney and Anton had been using the Body Artist as a message board, maybe Nadia had been doing the same thing. She was writing about her sister, that was definite. But the rest of the message was obscure. There was a connection to Chad’s body armor, but was it to the secret object he might have brought back with him from Iraq? Or was it to Chad himself, or to his massacred squad?
I thought of the porn magazines I’d taken from under Mona Vishneski’s bed, the magazines Chad had tucked away so Mom wouldn’t see them. Maybe Allie had posed in one of them and Chad was blackmailing the Guaman family. The magazines were at my office.
I got to my feet, put on a dry shirt, pulled on a sweater over it—a big, loose one that didn’t require me to wriggle and struggle—and went to the living room. Mr. Contreras was dozing on the couch. I thought about slipping out without waking him on the theory that it was better to apologize than to explain, but we’d had too many skirmishes over the years about my secretive nature. And I was too weak and sore to fight my friends along with my enemies.
When I woke my neighbor, he didn’t want to go back out in the cold and snow, and who could blame him? He argued that the magazines could wait until morning, but when I said I’d call Petra, ask her to stop at the office and find what I needed, he grumped to his feet.
“You ain’t sticking Peewee’s head in another tiger trap.”
“There’s nothing dangerous about going to my office,” I objected.
“Trust me, if you send little Petra there to get a magazine for you, chances are someone’s put a bomb in it.”
“So you’d rather my head got blown off?” I was half teasing, half hurt.
“Don’t give me those puppy-dog eyes,” he growled. “All the years I been knowing you, I been begging you to keep yourself safe, and you ain’t paid one minute of heed to me. I’m just asking you to take better care of the kid than you do of yourself. Look at you—bruises on your hand, your stomach, would make your own mother faint—”
“You’re right.” Gabriella used to beg me the same as Mr. Contreras when my cousin Boom-Boom and I ran into danger. Cuore mio, spare me more grief than my life has already held.
I bit my lip. But I still wanted to look at those magazines. The old man nodded, grimly pleased that his words had hit home. He started the slow process of pulling on his boots and his coat while I set the oven timer for the chicken. We took the dogs for company—the walker wasn’t coming for another couple of hours.
At my office, Tessa was working on some immense steel thing. While I went into my files, Mr. Contreras pulled up a stool to watch her. Tessa doesn’t usually tolerate an audience, but Mr. Contreras was a machinist in his working life, and she respects his advice on tools.