I’m done with leaving.
“He isn’t my boyfriend! I’m not even allowed to talk to him. I said I was running straight into the house to get Gertie. Jack kept going, ‘No, Mendes is going to kill you! Don’t do it!’?”
Blankness and incredulity.
I say, “Gertie is my dog. I just wanted to get my dog back and not be killed. Why don’t you get it? Jack was there just in case. The gun was totally my afterthought.”
Even Good Cop isn’t buying this. “Um, that’s not what Mr. Manx says. Miss Holland, if you could walk us through it.”
“Of course that’s not what he says! Like he wants people to know he’s in jail over a cockapoo? He was trying to save me. I was going in to get Gertie, and then he was going to help me leave the country. He had the cash in his trunk.”
“That’s where you found the gun?”
“I told you! It was wrapped up in his fishing gear.” I look up. Three blank faces. I can’t tell which one of them snorted. “I mean, it was a gun. I wasn’t going to leave it lying there. Somebody could get hurt.”
My lawyer sighs.
“So I stuck it in my bag.”
Bad Cop mashes his pen into his notebook.
“Out of the country where?”
“I didn’t care where. It was some kind of a plantation. Somewhere like Costa Rica? Does that sound right? Argentina, maybe.”
The stupider I sound, the more they like it.
86
Jack
I’m bailed out, cleaned up, and living in a hotel in Cincinnati, a cop posted at my door. He makes a big show of frisking the room service waitress every time she brings a burger. We’re waiting on Don. Everybody knows he’s going to finger everyone in sight, after which he’ll get a deal and I can get out of here.
I’ve gone from being criminal conspirator to being the clean-cut dupe, according to everyone but Agent Birdwell. I’m back to being trusted with Wi-Fi, my phone, and sharp objects.
Calvin, who gets that the phone (which my lawyer says to use with caution) might not be entirely private, clears his throat. “My only question would be, who else is bankrolling your lawyer? Because obviously you’re not going to be giving him any more business.”
I’ve got the same lawyer who represented my dad the time he got indicted for selling something to someone in Angola. My mom gave Mr. Ferro to me and not to Don presumably because I’m the horse to bet on if you want one kid who’s not behind bars.
“Have you no respect for organized crime?”
Calvin says, “Don’t dick around. This isn’t funny.”
“Calm down. I’m on the bus straight back to Boy Scout camp as soon as Don testifies.”
There’s a long pause. “Nobody’s so stupid that they think you did anything, are they? They know you were just trying to warn her?”
It occurs to me that if this goes much further, I could be turning him into an accomplice. I say, “Have fun with your Mermaid Ninjas,” and hang up while he’s still groaning.
My attorney says, “Talk to your lawyer and only your lawyer,” but he acts pained when I do.
I say, “To be honest, there were times when I didn’t know what I was going to do. It was like being on autopilot, but you don’t know where you’re going to land.”
“You won’t be sharing that unless somebody asks you under oath.”
“Asks me what, specifically?”
“If trying to save your mother was like being on autopilot and not knowing where you were going to land. In those words,” Mr. Ferro says. “Then you can say yes.”
“Got it.”
Mr. Ferro paces around the hotel room, adjusting his tie. “I don’t think you’ve got it. You’re a lucky kid. Don’t screw it up.”
I’m the lucky kid whose brother wanted to become the Yeager clan’s right-hand man by doing Alex Yeager a favor: getting me to kill Nicolette. This would prove how useful Don could be to the Yeagers, a chip off the old block—except that Karl Yeager had no idea what his kid, Alex, was up to, and Alex Yeager wanted to keep it that way.
When they asked Don to explain how it was that his mother got threatened in three different ways, he whined that it was Alex Yeager’s fault so many times, he sounded like a parrot with a limited supply of sentences. And Alex Yeager was such a piece of work, even if he could tell his side of the story from the grave, it would be a case of dueling liars.
I’m left not knowing the magnitude of what Don put over on me or how much I get to hate him—if I hunted down America’s sweetheart to save my mom and Don and myself from Alex Yeager’s machinations, or if the whole thing was a Donald Manx production. It’s like having a scab you can never tear off completely.
Damn fucking Don.
What I do know is I shot down a man in cold blood.
Mr. Ferro says, “That man was charging a sixteen-year-old girl with a knife.”
“A bread knife.”