"She won't do it."
"Yes, she will."
"Why?"
"Because if she doesn't, then they will injure her friend."
"Who?" asked Rick.
"You."
"Me?" Rick laughed. "They don't have me."
"Of course they have you."
"They don't know where I am now."
"Are you sure?"
He thought about it. "No."
"They put you into play," said Paul. "Or Peck put you into play. Who does Peck work for?"
"Himself? Or at least not Tony."
"Is Peck your friend? Your old pal? You know him?"
"No."
"Fact, he never liked you."
"But Peck told me the D.A.'s Office did this against his will. He was all pissed off about it. He said his work was being ruined."
"You can forget that. Bunch of bird food."
"He's pretending?"
"Yes, because he wants you to jump in."
"Why?"
"I'll get to that," Paul said. "I got some stuff on that."
"So you're saying that if I get involved he doesn't mind."
"Peck comes to you, says she's getting out, so go do the right thing. Go be a hero. And you can't resist."
He nodded. "Okay, that's true."
"They fucking put you into play, Rick. It's a game with a lot of different balls-some move fast, some slow, some you can barely even see. They tell you enough so that you got to go find Christina. They don't shove you together, they make it appear natural, they make you work a little for it. That gets you involved with her. Then they grab you and tell her. Then she will do what they say."
"Only if she cares what they do to me."
"She cares."
"You can't be sure. I hope she cares, but you never know."
"She cares. They'll find a way to be sure she cares."
"There's a problem with this plan. They don't know where she is."
"Are you sure?" asked Paul.
"I don't know where she is and I'm looking for her."
"That part I don't know about. Maybe they expect you to be the hound dog, to find her. Maybe they have been following her and nobody knows. Maybe they were following her when she got out of prison but lost her. I'm just trying out possibilities here. Maybe they expect Peck to find her."
"If I walked out right now, then she wouldn't have to cooperate," Rick suggested.
"Who is she going to go to, the police?"
"No."
"There's another problem. You walk out of the game, they'll come and find you."
"I could go to South America, I could go-"
"You have a current passport?"
"No."
"You think you could really abandon her at this point?"
"No," Rick said. "I can't do that."
"Right." Paul tapped his head. "These guys are smart, you got to understand that."
"If I can tell Christina, and we both disappear, then I've made it."
Paul nodded. "That might be true. If the two of you leave at the same time, and then Tony's deal still goes through, gets done some other way, maybe it's better after. The problem, of course, is that she may not want to see you. Be with you."
"She needs me."
"She doesn't know that. She might not agree with that. You need her, actually." Paul raised his eyebrows. "The only way you get out of this thing is if you take her with you or if she just gives them what they want."
Paul pulled the car into the driveway, past high spruce trees that hid the house completely. Five fat men in Santa Claus suits could get out of a fire engine and walk into the house and someone watching from the street would never know. Paul had these things worked out in advance.
"You got the drive refinished?"
"The oil stains bugged Mary."
"What do you think?" Rick asked.
"About how it will go? Not good."
"Bad?"
"Probably."
"Why?"
"You were an asshole, Rick. A complete asshole. You walked and she went to prison. I don't think it was much fun. I heard there was some incident with a guard up there, some kind of forced-sex thing."
Anger kicked at his chest. "With Christina?"
Paul nodded. They sat in the car outside the garage.
"You're doing everything they expect of you. Everything is a pattern."
"What do you mean?"
"The money in Aunt Eva's place."
He hadn't mentioned this to Paul. "That was only-"
"The bar situation the other night."
"You knew before I called you?" Rick asked.
Paul nodded. "I hear things. People tell me, you know, and I can see a pattern. I got a brother living in a shack out near the fishing boats, goes to the city, gets his old money back, starts drinking and fucking around in Tony Verducci's bar, that's easy. That's a pattern. The pattern is, he's going to keep thrashing around. He's looking for action."
Rick felt a sick sense of truth in these words.
"All right," Paul said.
"That's it?"
"Yes, for now."
"You got any more?"
"Not now, the meal is going to be ready. I'll tell you Mary's point, though. Just a little common sense. I was talking with her about your situation and she pointed some things out."
"Like what?"
"Christina is a pretty girl."
"Sexy. Not pretty exactly. Not a cheerleader."
"Hey," argued Paul, "I don't remember you complaining about how she looked. We still have those shots of you guys on our boat that first time."
"I was catching tuna, right." But what he remembered best was the way Christina showed Paul how she could play with numbers in her head. Perched on one of the boat's fishing chairs in a tiny black bikini, and oblivious to the Long Island shoreline whipping past, Christina had asked Paul about the speed, size, and shape of the school of tuna the boat was intersecting. Hard to say, he'd answered. Give me estimates, she'd said, and after he did, she told him that if he shifted the angle at which he cut across the school's path by twenty degrees, the bait would be in front of the fish "about one third longer in time." Paul, trained as an accountant, stared at Christina for a moment, then told Rick to take the wheel. After sitting with a paper and pencil for a few minutes below the deck, he'd come up with a grin on his face. I was off a little, Christina said. Not by much, Paul had answered, eyes thoughtful, not by much.
Now Paul pulled the car up against the garage and touched a button on the dash, and the wide door slowly opened, revealing a well-lit space, rakes and shovels and lawn tools hung neatly along the walls, sports equipment for the boys on another, the tractor-mower parked to one side.
"So what's the commonsense part?"
"Oh, I was saying she's good-looking."
"Right."
"So other guys will think that, too."
"I guess."
"Then there's one more question. I think I know the answer, but for the purposes of the argument I have to ask it."
"All right."
"Christina like to, whatever, spend time in bed?" Paul opened his hands. "This is just my wife, another woman thinking out loud. So just answer the question."
"Yeah, she likes to fuck," Rick said. "She likes it a lot and she's good at it, and she's picky about who it is, but she gets a lot of guys to pick from."
Paul nodded at this, too. All his nodding was starting to bug Rick. "This means someone else."
"Another guy?"
"Just a matter of time before she finds a guy. Or a guy finds her. They'll hook up somehow, somewhere. It's human nature. You don't know who. You have no idea. He could be a nobody or he could be a problem. But he definitely complicates your situation, Rick, he fucking complicates your situation. I mean, he could have money, he could be a cop, he could be somebody with big friends, he could be anybody. Soon as she's involved with him, it's harder for her to care about you, it's harder for her to do things for Tony so easily, lot of things get messed up there."
His brother opened his car door. Inside the house was a meal, a wife, two boys with their hair brushed. Civilization. The conversation had stayed outside the house. "So," Rick summarized, hoping for an indication of compassion from Paul, "I'm racing against Tony and I'm racing against Christina finding a guy she likes."