“I can stay with my friend Michele—”
“I thought her name was Molly.”
Angie pressed her mouth into a line and narrowed her eyes.
“Don't even try to bullshit me,” Kate advised—for all the good it would do. “There is no friend, and you don't have a place to crash in the Phillips neighborhood. That was a nice touch, though, picking a rotten neighborhood. Who would claim they lived there if they didn't?”
“Are you calling me a liar?”
“I think you've got your own agenda,” Kate said calmly, her attention on a memo that read: Talked w/Sabin. Wit to Phoenix House—RM. Permission. Odd Rob hadn't mentioned this in the mayor's office. The note was in a receptionist's hand. No time notation. The decision had probably come just before the press conference. All that subterfuge on her part for nothing. Oh, well.
“An agenda that probably centers on staying out of jail or a juvenile facility,” she went on.
“I'm not a—”
“Save it.”
She hit the message button on her phone and listened to the voices of the impatient and the forlorn who had tried to reach her during the afternoon. Reporters hot on the trail of the government center shootout heroine. She hit fast forward through each of them. Mixed in with the news hounds was the usual assortment. David Willis, her current pain-in-the-butt client. A coordinator of a victims' rights group. The husband of a woman who had allegedly been assaulted, though Kate had the gut feeling it was a scam, that the couple was looking to score reparation money. The husband had a string of petty drug arrests on his record.
“Kate.” The gruff male voice coming from the machine made her flinch. “It's Quinn—um—John. I, ah, I'm staying at the Radisson.”
As if he expected her to call. Just like that.
“Who's that?” Angie asked. “Boyfriend?”
“No, um, no,” Kate said, scrambling to pull her composure together. “Let's get out of here. I'm starving.”
She drew in a long breath and released it as she pushed to her feet, feeling caught off guard, something she had always worked studiously to avoid. Another offense to add to the list against Quinn. She couldn't let him get to her. He'd be here and gone. A couple of days at most, she figured. The Bureau had sent him because Peter Bondurant had friends in high places. It was a show of good faith or ass kissing, depending on your point of view.
He didn't need to be here. He wouldn't be here long. She didn't have to have any contact with him while he was here. She wasn't with the Bureau anymore. She wasn't a part of this task force. He had no power over her.
God, Kate, you sound like you're afraid of him, she thought with disgust as she turned her Toyota 4Runner out of the parking ramp onto Fourth Avenue. Quinn was past history and she was a grown-up, not some adolescent girl who'd broken up with the class cool guy and couldn't bear to face him in homeroom.
“Where are we going?” Angie asked, dialing the radio to an alternative rock station. Alanis Morissette whining at an ex-boyfriend with bongos in the background.
“Uptown. What do you want to eat? You look like you could use some fat and cholesterol. Ribs? Pizza? Burgers? Pasta?”
The girl made the snotty shrug that had driven parents of teenagers from the time of Adam to consider the pros and cons of killing their young. “Whatever. Just as long as there's a bar. I need a drink.”
“Don't push it, kid.”
“What? I have a valid driver's license.” She flopped back against the seat and put her feet up against the dash. “Can I bum a smoke?”
“I don't have any. I quit.”
“Since when?”
“Since 1981. I fall off the wagon every once in a while. Get your feet off my dashboard.”
The big sigh as she rearranged herself sideways in the bucket seat. “Why are you taking me to dinner? You don't like me. Wouldn't you rather go home to your husband?”
“I'm divorced.”
“From the guy on the answering machine? Quinn?”
“No. Not that it's any of your business.”
“Got kids?”
A beat of silence before answering. Kate wondered if she would ever get over that hesitation or the guilt that inspired it. “I have a cat.”
“So do you live in Uptown?”
Kate cut her a sideways look, taking her eyes briefly off the heavy rush hour traffic. “Let's talk about you. Who's Rick?”
“Who?”
“Rick—the name on your jacket.”
“It came that way.”
Translation: name of the guy she stole it from.
“How long have you been in Minneapolis?”
“A while.”
“How old were you when your folks died?”
“Thirteen.”
“So you've been on your own how long?”
The girl glared at her for a beat. “Eight years. That was lame.”
Kate shrugged. “Worth a shot. So what happened to them? Accident?”
“Yeah,” Angie said softly, staring straight ahead. “An accident.”
There was a story in there somewhere, Kate thought as she negotiated the twisted transition from 94 to get to Hennepin Avenue. She could probably guess at some of the key plot ingredients—alcohol, abuse, a cycle of unhappy circumstances, and dysfunction. Virtually every kid on the street had lived a variation of that story. So had every man in prison. Family was a fertile breeding ground for the kind of psychological bacteria that warped minds and devoured hope. Conversely, she knew plenty of people in law enforcement and social work who came from that same set of circumstances, people who had come to that same fork in the road and turned one way instead of the other.
She thought again of Quinn, even though she didn't want to.
The rain had thickened to a misty, miserable fog. The sidewalks were deserted. Uptown, contrary to its name, was some distance south of downtown Minneapolis. A gentrified area of shops, restaurants, coffee bars, art house movie theaters, it centered on the intersection of Lake Street and Hennepin. Just a stone's throw—and a world—west of the tough Whittier neighborhood, which in recent years had become the territory of black gangs, driveby shootings, and drug raids.
Uptown was edged to the west by Lake Calhoun and Lake of the Isles, and was currently inhabited by yuppies and the terribly hip. The house Kate had grown up in and now owned was just two blocks off Lake Calhoun, her parents having purchased the solid prairie-style home decades before the area became trendy.
Kate chose La Loon as their destination, a pub away from the lively Calhoun Square area, parking in the nearly empty side lot. She wasn't in the mood for noise or a crowd, and knew both could be used as a shield by her dinner companion. Just being a teenager was enough of a barrier to overcome.
Inside, La Loon was dark and warm, all wood and brass with a long, old-fashioned bar and few patrons. Kate shunned a booth in favor of a corner table, where she took the corner chair, which gave her a view of the entire dining room. The paranoid seat. A habit Angie DiMarco had already picked up for herself. She didn't sit across from Kate with her back to the room; she took a side seat with her back to a wall so she could see anyone approaching the table.
The waitress brought menus and took drink orders. Kate longed for a stout glass of gin, but settled for chardonnay. Angie ordered rum and Coke.
The waitress looked at Kate, who shrugged. “She's got ID.”
A look of sly triumph stole across Angie's face as the waitress walked away. “I thought you didn't want me to drink.”
“Oh, what the hell,” Kate said, digging a bottle of Tylenol out of her purse. “It's not like it's going to corrupt you.”