Corey bit his lip. “I don’t know.”
“Thanks a lot.” Todd rolled his eyes. “Christ, I know who not to call if I commit a hit and run.”
“Sorry, it’s not personal. I just don’t know.”
“Okay, if you want to talk about an actual situation, we could’ve been busted for playing poker way back when. That’s against the law in Georgia.”
“True.”
“You know I play in some pretty high stakes games these days, matter of fact.” Todd tented his long, manicured fingers and gave Corey a measured look.
Corey was well aware of Todd’s gambling habit. He hit Las Vegas or Atlantic City at least once a month, and he sure as hell didn’t go to play the slots. Last summer, he had returned from a Nevada trip driving a spanking new Mercedes-Benz coupe, and had hinted that he’d won the pink slip for the car in an especially high-stakes, underground poker game.
Personally, Corey had little interest in gambling. Years ago, when he’d played poker with Todd and some of their friends from work, it had been a social thing, something to pass the time: drink beer with your buddies, munch on a few pizzas, and if you were lucky, you’d walk out the door with an extra twenty bucks, or at least break even.
But Todd had soon grown bored with their “pissant pots” as he’d called them, and ratcheted up to much bigger games, where someone had to vouch for you before you were allowed to buy in and the pots rose into a stratosphere far beyond the resources of the average gambler. He traveled to the country’s gambling meccas for many of those games, but some of them took place right there in metro Atlanta, and there was rarely a weekend when Todd didn’t play cards somewhere. The guy was probably long overdue for a twelve-step program at Gamblers Anonymous. . but let he who is without sin cast the first stone.
“Listen, you’re a grown man,” Corey said. “At the end of the day, what you do with your money is your business.”
“But you haven’t snitched on me, even though you could.”
“That’s because I’m not a snitch.”
“Exactly.” Todd snapped his fingers and rose from the chair, but his eyes dwindled to fine points. “What’s this all about anyway, Corey? Have you done something?”
“No, it was only a hypothetical question.”
“Hypothetical, sure.” Todd chuckled. “Seriously, if you need to talk, you can trust me. I ever tell you about my Uncle Jim?”
“I don’t think you’ve ever mentioned him.”
“No? Okay, so the story goes like this. About thirty-some odd years ago, my Uncle Jim got in a bar fight one night, back when he was a truck driver running routes through east Texas. He choked some guy to death in the parking lot, then got in his rig, and drove off. Just drove off. He never turned himself in, and the cops never came after him. Our family knows about it, but do you think we’ve ever reported anything to the cops?”
Todd winked, and then he left, closing the door behind him. Corey sat there, hands knotted in his lap, pondering his friend’s words.
He pulled up Leon’s FBI profile again.
But he didn’t pick up the phone.
And loyalty had nothing to do with it.
6
Around one-thirty in the afternoon, Simone wrapped up an appointment and stepped out of the office for a quick lunch.
She ran her individual psychotherapy and relationship therapy practice out of one-half of a modest, one-story brick building on Roswell Road in Sandy Springs; a family physician leased the other half of the property. She’d opened her doors for business two years ago, and her calendar was consistently so booked that new clients had to wait three or four weeks for a session. If things continued along the present course, she’d soon have to look into bringing in another therapist to share the workload.
But she loved her job, and didn’t mind occasionally working late or on weekends. Counseling individuals, couples, and families through life’s crisis situations was not only a career to her-it was a calling. In addition to her office practice, one day a week she provided counseling at a community center in southwest Atlanta, working mostly with atrisk teenage girls and single mothers (they were often one and the same, unfortunately), and she offered her services to them gratis, happy merely to make a meaningful difference in someone’s life-just as someone had once made a difference in hers.
When she was fourteen, her parents had divorced. Struggling to make ends meet on her own, her mom had uprooted her and her older brother, Eugene, from their home in Mobile, Alabama, and brought them to Atlanta, where her mother had a close girlfriend who hooked her up with a job. Although it had happened twenty years ago, it remained the most painful transition period of Simone’s life. She’d vacillated between blaming her mother for the divorce, to blaming herself. She struggled to make friends in the new school; her class work suffered; she gained weight. And her mom had been too caught up in her own adjustment issues to deal with her.
A high school counselor, Mrs. Fletcher, had been the first one to listen to Simone with empathy, and without judgment. The genteel, soft-spoken woman had made such a profound impact on Simone that she’d decided by her senior year of high school that she wanted to become a psychologist herself. The day she graduated from Georgia State University with her PhD, with Mrs. Fletcher watching on in the commencement audience, was one of the shining moments of her life.
Waving good-bye to her office manager, Simone slid on her sunglasses and strolled to her silver BMW X5 parked in the corner of the small, elm-shaded parking lot. The hazy air was a stew, a smog alert in full effect. Although she was dressed for the weather in a white, single-breasted notch-collar pantsuit, a black cable-knit shirt, and black pumps, after only ten short strides she had a dew of perspiration on her brow.
As she opened the driver’s door, she had the distinct sense that someone was watching her, a sensation like fingers pressing on the nape of her neck. She looked over her shoulder.
There was nothing but lunchtime traffic shuttling back and forth on busy Roswell Road. She was the only person standing in the parking lot; a blue Ford pickup, a Honda, and a compact Kia were the only other vehicles parked nearby.
Must’ve been her imagination. She climbed behind the wheel.
She drove to a Chipotle Mexican Grill down the street, a favorite lunchtime spot of hers. The chain restaurant specialized in gourmet burritos and tacos served in a fast-casual environment.
When the stocky Latino gentleman working behind the counter saw her in line, he started preparing a burrito bowl, her favorite. She gave him a thumbs-up and smiled.
He grinned and indicated his cheek. “Muy hermosa, senorita.”
He was talking about her dimples, which men often complimented. Men with tact, anyway. Those lacking tact reserved their crude praise for other parts of her anatomy. Over the years, she’d grown so accustomed to hearing certain catcalls-“Can I get fries with that shake?” “Damn, your onion’s got me wantin’ to cry,” “Shake that money-maker for a playa, mami”-that she’d learned to tune them out like so much white noise.
“Gracias,” she said, and paid the cashier.
She carried her tray to a booth near the window and took off her sunglasses. She dug a recent issue of Psychology Today out of her purse and placed it on the table beside her tray, intending to skim it while she lunched. Although the magazine contained mostly pop-psychology geared toward nonprofessionals, she liked to stay abreast of the articles because many of her clients read them, usually in an earnest but misguided attempt to diagnose themselves or others.
Suddenly, she had that sense of being watched again. She looked around.
The man watching her stood just inside the doorway, hands buried in his pockets. He wore wraparound mirror shades and paint-soiled denim overalls. He had a lion’s mane of a black beard streaked with gray, and his hair was woven into dreadlocks that swept down to his shoulders.