“What does that mean?”
Rick took a mouthful of salmon. “Damn,” he said, chewing. “That is good.” He swallowed, then said, “Well, here’s how it works. When a prosecutor threatens a bad guy with a long prison sentence, the bad guy will try to bargain. Offer to testify against his cohorts, that kind of thing. In exchange for a reduced sentence. Defense attorneys and prosecutors dance these dance steps all the time. It’s a routine. The ugly truth is, prosecutors are almost always looking for a plea deal. It saves them time and energy and they’re all overloaded.”
Livia was horrified. “But that’s not fair.”
“No. It’s the system. And the system is never fair.”
He twisted the cap off a beer and poured it into a glass. Livia had juice in hers. “Anyway. So when a guy looking at a twenty-year stretch refuses to offer up anything at all, you know he has information. But he’s scared.”
“But how do you know . . . I mean, you said it’s possible, or not impossible, he didn’t know anything?”
He glanced at her salmon again. She ate a big mouthful, along with some bok choy and cabbage.
He smiled appreciatively and drank some of his beer. “Right, but here’s the thing. All bad guys know something. A street dealer who’s rumored to have killed someone. The scuttlebutt on who really raped that girl in the projects. Where the Brown Pride Sure?os are getting their guns. Something. And if they really don’t know anything, which never happens anyway, they make something up. Because hey, why not, right? Facing twenty years in the can, what have you got to lose?”
“So then why didn’t Weed offer anything? Or make something up?”
“There’s only one reason someone dummies up the way Weed did. What do you think it is?”
Livia remembered to eat while she considered. After a moment, she said, “Fear.”
“Bingo. Because when a defendant is scared, he doesn’t want anyone to think he’s talking about anything.”
“But scared of what?”
“Scared of getting killed. By anyone the bad guy might hurt testifying. So when you get someone who refuses to say even a word, that’s what you’re dealing with. Someone whose silence is a message to the people who could have him killed: ‘I’m not talking, so please don’t kill me.’”
“So what it does it mean that Weed was scared?”
Rick sipped his beer. “You tell me.”
She considered again. “It means he knows who hired him and his brother. And the third guy. And that whoever hired them is . . . dangerous.”
“Exactly. Now the thing is, Weed is part of a white supremacist gang, affiliated with a prison gang called the Aryan Brotherhood. That would give him automatic AB protection in prison.”
“Aryan Brotherhood?”
“Yeah. The US prison population is dominated by three gangs—black, Latino, and white. It’s a little more complex than that, but you get the idea. Anyway, the Aryan Brotherhood is the white gang. Numerically they’re the smallest, but they’re feared because they’re so ruthless. So Weed was either afraid that if he testified, he’d get no protection from AB, or that AB would turn on him, or—”
“Or that even if the Aryan Brotherhood wanted to protect him, they wouldn’t be able to.”
Rick nodded, clearly pleased with the way she was thinking it through. “And what would that mean?”
“It would mean . . . whoever Weed is afraid of, they’re stronger than the Aryan Brotherhood. Because they could kill him even if the Aryan Brotherhood tried to protect him.”
“Exactly. So it’s a reasonable inference that whoever hired Weed and his gang has a lot of juice. Unfortunately, that doesn’t dramatically narrow the list of possibilities.”
Livia hated it, but she had to admit that for the time being, Weed was . . . dormant. She would find another way to keep looking.
Rick did mention, though, that with time off for good behavior, Weed could be released before his twenty years were up. Livia decided she would keep track of that. And track Weed down when he got out of prison. Maybe at that point, he’d have a new reason to talk.
Or she could find him one.
42—THEN
She hadn’t expected Rick to be any kind of parent figure—she knew he was single, with a busy job, and besides, after what she’d been through, just a safe place to stay while she finished high school would have been more than enough. But he seemed to enjoy the kinds of things parents do. He was a really good cook—he knew how to make lots of dishes, including his special salmon, and chicken tandoori, and bouillabaisse, Livia’s favorite. He went to PTA meetings. He helped her research colleges. But she wasn’t sure college made sense for her, and one night, at the dinner table, she told him of her doubts.