Hodges considers. “I don’t know, Jerome. One guy—a golden oldie like me—might not upset young Mr. Saubers too much. Two guys, though, especially when one of them’s a badass black dude who stands six-four—”
“Fifteen rounds and I’m still pretty!” Jerome proclaims, waving clasped hands over his head. Odell lays back his ears. “Still pretty! That bad ole bear Sonny Liston never touched me! I float like a butterfly, I sting like a . . .” He assesses Hodges’s patient expression. “Okay, sorry, sometimes I get carried away. Where are you going to wait for him?”
“Out front was the plan. You know, where the kids actually exit the building?”
“Not all of them come out that way, and he might not, especially if Tina lets on she talked to you.” He sees Hodges about to speak and raises a hand. “She says she won’t, but big brothers know little sisters, you can take that from a guy who’s got one. If he knows somebody wants to ask him questions, he’s apt to go out the back and cut across the football field to Westfield Street. I could park there, give you a call if I see him.”
“Do you know what he looks like?”
“Uh-huh, Tina had a picture in her wallet. Let me be a part of this, Bill. Barbie likes that chick. I liked her too. And it took guts for her to come to you, even with my sister snapping the whip.”
“I know.”
“Also, I’m curious as hell. Tina says the money started coming when her bro was only thirteen. A kid that young with access to that much money . . .” Jerome shakes his head. “I’m not surprised he’s in trouble.”
“Me either. I guess if you want to be in, you’re in.”
“My man!”
This cry necessitates another fist-bump.
“You went to Northfield, Jerome. Is there any other way he could go out, besides the front and Westfield Street?”
Jerome thinks it over. “If he went down to the basement, there’s a door that takes you out to one side, where the smoking area used to be, back in the day. I guess he could go across that, then cut through the auditorium and come out on Garner Street.”
“I could put Holly there,” Hodges says thoughtfully.
“Excellent idea!” Jerome cries. “Gettin the band back together! What I said!”
“But no approach if you see him,” Hodges says. “Just call. I get to approach. I’ll tell Holly the same thing. Not that she’d be likely to.”
“As long as we get to hear the story.”
“If I get it, you’ll get it,” Hodges says, hoping he has not just made a rash promise. “Come by my office in the Turner Building around two, and we’ll move out around two fifteen. Be in position by two forty-five.”
“You’re sure Holly will be okay with this?”
“Yes. She’s fine with watching. It’s confrontation that gives her problems.”
“Not always.”
“No,” Hodges says, “not always.”
They are both thinking of one confrontation—at the MAC, with Brady Hartsfield—that Holly handled just fine.
Jerome glances at his watch. “I have to go. Promised I’d take the Barbster to the mall. She wants a Swatch.” He rolls his eyes.
Hodges grins. “I love your sis, Jerome.”
Jerome grins back. “Actually, so do I. Come on, Odell. Let’s shuffle.”
Odell rises and heads for the door. Jerome grasps the knob, then turns back. His grin is gone. “Have you been where I think you’ve been?”
“Probably.”
“Does Holly know you visit him?”
“No. And you’re not to tell her. She’d find it vastly upsetting.”
“Yes. She would. How is he?”
“The same. Although . . .” Hodges is thinking of how the picture fell over. That clack sound.
“Although what?”
“Nothing. He’s the same. Do me one favor, okay? Tell Barbara to get in touch if Tina calls and says her brother found out the girls talked to me on Friday.”
“Will do. See you tomorrow.”
Jerome leaves. Hodges turns on the TV, and is delighted to see the Indians are still on. They’ve tied it up. The game is going into extra innings.
11
Holly spends Sunday evening in her apartment, trying to watch The Godfather Part II on her computer. Usually this would be a very pleasant occupation, because she considers it one of the two or three best movies ever made, right up there with Citizen Kane and Paths of Glory, but tonight she keeps pausing it so she can pace worry-circles around the living room of her apartment. There’s a lot of room to pace. This apartment isn’t as glitzy as the lakeside condo she lived in for awhile when she first moved to the city, but it’s in a good neighborhood and plenty big. She can afford the rent; under the terms of her cousin Janey’s will, Holly inherited half a million dollars. Less after taxes, of course, but still a very nice nest egg. And, thanks to her job with Bill Hodges, she can afford to let the nest egg grow.
As she paces, she mutters some of her favorite lines from the movie.
“I don’t have to wipe everyone out, just my enemies.
“How do you say banana daiquiri?
“Your country ain’t your blood, remember that.”
And, of course, the one everyone remembers: “I know it was you, Fredo. You broke my heart.”
If she was watching another movie, she would be incanting a different set of quotes. It is a form of self-hypnosis that she has practiced ever since she saw The Sound of Music at the age of seven. (Favorite line from that one: “I wonder what grass tastes like.”)
She’s really thinking about the Moleskine notebook Tina’s brother was so quick to hide under his pillow. Bill believes it has nothing to do with the money Pete was sending his parents, but Holly isn’t so sure.
She has kept journals for most of her life, listing all the movies she’s seen, all the books she’s read, the people she’s talked to, the times she gets up, the times she goes to bed. Also her bowel movements, which are coded (after all, someone may see her journals after she’s dead) as WP, which stands for Went Potty. She knows this is OCD behavior—she and her therapist have discussed how obsessive listing is really just another form of magical thinking—but it doesn’t hurt anyone, and if she prefers to keep her lists in Moleskine notebooks, whose business is that besides her own? The point is, she knows from Moleskines, and therefore knows they’re not cheap. Two-fifty will get you a spiral-bound notebook in Walgreens, but a Moleskine with the same number of pages goes for ten bucks. Why would a kid want such an expensive notebook, especially when he came from a cash-strapped family?
“Doesn’t make sense,” Holly says. Then, as if just following this train of thought: “Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.” That’s from the original Godfather, but it’s still a good line. One of the best.
Send the money. Keep the notebook.
An expensive notebook that got shoved under the pillow when the little sister appeared unexpectedly in the room. The more Holly thinks about it, the more she thinks there might be something there.
She restarts the movie but can’t follow its well-worn and well-loved path with this notebook stuff rolling around in her head, so Holly does something almost unheard of, at least before bedtime: she turns her computer off. Then she resumes pacing, hands locked together at the small of her back.