“Of course not. And by the way, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you and Rico were in love, or I would’ve been more sensitive when I told you the news the other day.”
Britta nodded.
“What I care about,” I said, leaning in, “is finding Rico. This is why I ask personal questions. Forgive me. It must be painful to talk about. I won’t tell the police anything.”
“This is your job? To find Rico?”
“I just met with his mother, only an hour ago.”
Her sullenness dissipated. “Anyway,” she said, “we didn’t do this since one week ago. The police, they are concerned with Saturday night only. Saturday I am here.”
There was no hesitation, no interest in whether I believed her or not. She was, I believed, telling the truth. She was not the blonde Rico had dated the night he’d disappeared.
Oh.
I thought of the names on Rico’s wall, the girls he knew, the possibilities. It was exhausting to think about. And then I remembered something else on the wall. The. “Britta,” I said, “I guess you didn’t tell them about the-other thing.”
Her head snapped around. “What?”
“The drugs Rico was involved in. It’s common knowledge.”
She didn’t bat an eye at the mention of drugs. “What means that, common knowledge?”
“That means a lot of people know about it.”
She looked young now, like the monkey boys. “Really? I-I didn’t-”
“You’re right not to tell the police. You could get deported.”
Her eyes went wide. “But I did nothing. I told him no.”
No to what? “Then why didn’t you tell the police?” I asked.
She glanced at the boys, racing barefoot around the pool, armed with plastic machine guns. Their swim trunks were baggy and their ribs stuck out and they were happily blowing each other away. I could mention the agency, Glenda, Marty Otis, the secretary of state-
“The host family,” she said abruptly, “do not like the police to come, and park in the street where the neighbors see. But this is not my fault. Jeremy, what do you have there?” She stood. Across the lawn, the brothers had stopped shooting and were huddled over something.
“A frog!”
“You are not to murder it. Your mother says.” She settled back in her chair.
I stood. “They wouldn’t really murder it, would they?” Why couldn’t it be a snake or a fly? Why a frog?
“No murder!” Britta called out.
“It’s already dead, stupid!” one of the boys yelled.
Forget the frog, Ruta’s voice said. Talk to this girl like you are someone clever.
I sat. “Well, it all sounds horrible. But since you didn’t do it, why not just tell them he asked you to sell drugs?” I held my breath.
“Not to sell, only to carry in the luggage. How am I to say this? Then they will return and park in the street again and the neighbors will see.”
There it was: confirmation. How much further would she go? “What went through your mind when Rico asked you this?” I said.
“I said, Rico, I cannot. What if they will search my luggage, for example? At LAX. They search so many people. And also, Rico says it is not a problem to find a visa to come back once I am in Germany but it is not such an easy thing. Also, I am not living in Munich or Berlin, with university. In Wandlitz there is nothing and if I say to my father, ‘Now I am to move to Berlin’ just like that, what will he think?”
Not, apparently, that it was a good idea, his daughter moving to the city to enter the drug trade. Rico’s judgment must have been seriously impaired. Britta as a partner in crime? It would be like doing business with Winnie-the-Pooh. “When did you and Rico discuss this?”
“You know, last week. I asked him if he asked Annika also this, and he said we should not think about Annika.”
“That must have been hard for you, since she was your friend.”
“Yes, it was so hard. This is what no one will understand.” She sighed deeply.
“And it’s not fair. What exactly-is it the Euphoria he asked you to take to Germany?”
“Yes, because U4 is to be very popular, he says.”
We sat in silence, watching the boys.
“Did you ever… try it?” I said softly.
She chewed her lip, looking troubled. “I am frightened to. I have the asthma. But he thinks I take it, so I pretend and then he has his trip so he does not know because he is high.”
“Did Rico take it often?” I asked.
“Oh, no. He was not like that. For recreational purposes only. For example, to have sex. Never during class or doing business, he said. That was his rule.”
“I hear that U4 is really good. Better than Ecstasy.”
“Yes, Rico says it is more mellow. So the teeth do not clench and things like this.”
“Did you meet any of the others he worked with? His boss?”
“This is not a boss. Rico is to be full partner, he is to arrange it on the weekend and then we are to be rich. Only now he is disappeared.”
A partner? Did this mean Rico was Little Fish? Or a partner of Little Fish? “Did he tell you who the partner is?” I asked.
“No, he does not talk in real names. It is always pretend name, I forget how you call this.”
Something occurred to me. “Britta, when you didn’t take the U4, when he thought you did-do you still have it?”
“Yes, in my room.”
“Can I see it?”
“Why?”
“It’s something detectives do. You never know what’s important until you see it.”
She looked unconvinced. I imagined it was the only thing he’d ever given her. “It could help find Rico,” I said, then mentally crossed my fingers behind my back. “I’ll return it. And I won’t mention it to the police.”
She turned to the pool. “Joshua! Jeremy! Time to come in. If you hurry, I will give you M &M’s. But you must come right now. And leave the frog.” She looked at me. “To help Rico, of course I will do anything.”
Part of me wanted to tell her how misguided that was, how misplaced her devotion. But she’d learn that soon enough without me.
And anyway, I wanted that Euphoria.
33
I drove through the Valley with the Euphoria in a Tylenol bottle.
It was a twin of the pill Maizie had found under Annika’s bed. Bigger than an aspirin, round, and with a logo that was both strange and strangely familiar. Stopped at a red light just before the entrance ramp to the 210, I took it out of the plastic bottle and held it between my thumb and forefinger, gazing at it. A squiggle set into its surface, a piece of calligraphy.
This was the third time I’d come across it, and it gnawed at me like a song lyric gone astray: where had I seen it before? But it didn’t matter. What I’d just learned connected Rico to Little Fish. Rico had asked Annika to transport drugs. According to Simon, Little Fish had also tried to recruit her. It had to be the same operation. How many drug dealers were out there signing up au pairs? And this connection might not be news to the FBI, but it might be to the police, who were on a high-profile search for Rico. If I showed them this pill, pointed out Rico’s wall, and told them what Britta had told me, wouldn’t they expand their search to include Annika?
Should I tell Simon I was doing this? Wouldn’t he tell me to leave it to him? Yes.
My cell phone rang, startling me. I felt around on the passenger seat for it while making a left turn onto the freeway entrance ramp. In the process I dropped the pill. Damn.
Statistics on cell-phone use and traffic accidents jumped into my head. Ring! The car behind me honked. The entrance-ramp traffic was slow, which made people testy. I inched forward, closing the three-foot gap between me and the car in front of me. Ring! My hand located the phone in the Bermuda Triangle of my backpack; I found the answer button and said hello. When no one responded, I yelled, “Hello!”