Junior ignored the kid’s antics. He gestured for him to unhook the fish and throw it back. “My father comes here about once a week. It’s the only place you can fish in the city, outside of Lake Mead, which isn’t a real lake either. They stock this pond with about thirty thousand trout a year. Catfish, too, and bass.”
Junior eyed the shimmering waters. He said, seemingly to himself, “I have never eaten a single fish I’ve caught here.”
The kid finally managed to unhook the fish, and it jumped out of his hands and flopped on the ground before tumbling back into the pond. He stared at the rippling water and wiped his hands on his jeans with an infantile smirk.
Junior sat back down and placed the rod on the ground. Beside his chair was a small blue cooler. He reached into it and pulled out a small but bulging manila envelope. He handed it to me and flicked his cigarette into the pond, which drew some glares from fishermen nearby.
I was struck by how openly he was doing all of this, as if no one would find this scene curious, the two brothers in their FBI shades and him in his stylish fishing gear, pulling envelopes out of a cooler like beers. Why, I wondered, were we not having this conversation at his restaurant or some dusty office with the curtains drawn?
“Inside the envelope,” he said, “you will find a cell phone and five hundred dollars in cash for the room and any expenses you might have. Stay alert. Check Miss Hong’s room as often as you can. Stand guard outside if you have to. And keep the phone on you at all times in case I call. The boys here will escort you to the hotel. You will find your car parked on the fourth level of the garage, in lot 4B. I will give you back your keys after this is all over. Just know that it’s there, and that despite everything, we do want you to drive home on your own.”
“And if she doesn’t come?”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there. For now, start with the hotel room.”
The brothers approached me, my cue to embark on the job I’d been given.
When I stood, Junior gestured at me with yet another unlit cigarette between his fingers. “My father would not want me telling you this, but you should know that it was Miss Hong who pleaded for you. In fact, she promised him that if he left you alone, she would never leave him. She swore her life on it. For you. That is the only reason my father’s men didn’t come to your doorstep months ago.”
He lit the cigarette, turned from me, and expelled a profound cloud of smoke into the morning air.
He had spent our first meeting convincing me that I had no business being with Suzy. This time I was the only person who could save her.
That feeling rose in me again, though now I understood what it was, why it distressed me so. The job I’d been given was to be my punishment.
5
THE ENTRANCE TO THE CORONADO HOTEL was canopied by a blanket of lights so brilliant, even at noon, that I imagined it singeing my hair. Two valet attendants, bow ties choking their necks, stood glumly below the raised lance of a giant bronze conquistador who welcomed guests. Like the other casinos downtown, the Coronado revealed its age during the day, with its big-bulbed signs flashing sixties glamour, its flat crusty walls a world away from the mirrored splendor on the Strip.
When the brothers dropped me off, the kid handed me my duffel bag of clothes through the car window along with my credit card and my badge, which he pulled out of his own pocket. “Don’t lose yourself, Mr. Officer,” he said. “We’ll find you.” He winked at me as the tinted window swallowed up his face. Slowly, their hearse of a Lexus rolled down the street.
I walked at once to the parking garage where my Chrysler, as promised, stood pristinely in lot 4B. I checked the undercarriage and could find nothing suspicious. To my surprise, the door was unlocked. Inside, my Glock lay where I’d left it in the glove compartment, and my backup five-shot was still nestled comfortably in its holster beneath the driver’s seat. Except for the seat having been adjusted for its recent driver, everything else seemed normal. I pocketed the Glock after checking the clip.
At the registration desk, I waited in line behind an overweight family besieged by luggage and cigarette smoke, the two parents puffing away as their three snickering sons took turns punching each other in the arm. Twenty minutes later I reached the desk, which stood before a mural of the two resident shows, some white-haired comedian I vaguely knew and a magic act involving a python and exotic birds. The girl gave me my room, reserved under my full name, and the credit card the brothers had returned to me matched their records. When I asked whether a Hong Thi Pham or a Suzy Ruen had checked in, she claimed she couldn’t divulge that information, so I asked for directions to their gift shop. It took me another fifteen minutes to find the shop, the clerk’s directions as helpful as a compass in a maze. For about thirty bucks, I bought an obscenely expensive pack of cigarettes, a razor and shaving cream, and some ibuprofen.
“Don’t be taking that with alcohol, baby,” the small black lady behind the counter said with an admonishing smile. “Bad for the tummy.”
I must have looked as worn-out as I felt.
My room was on the twelfth floor and looked clean and inoffensive: a queen bed, a private desk and loveseat, framed prints of Old World maps and Spanish galleons, maroon velvet drapes that covered an entire wall like a theater curtain. There were other stabs at luxury, like the gilt mirror above the bed and the glass doorknobs, but flop down on the stiff mattress and sniff the vague odor of bleach and cigarettes and you knew how many stars the hotel was.
A door connected my room to Suzy’s. It seemed fantastical to me, a portal into another world. I tried the knob. It was locked. I knocked several times and heard nothing but the heater blowing in my room.
Next thing I did was place the Glock in the drawer of the nightstand, right on top of the Bible. I went to the notepad on the desk. Suzy, I wrote, I’m next door in room 1213. I’m here to help you. Please let me. Robert.
I stepped out into the hallway and slid the paper under her door. For a moment, I wondered if it was possible she had forgotten my handwriting.
In the bathroom, the harsh fluorescent lights emitted heat. I shaved, showered, and changed into a pair of jeans and a white button-down shirt that I’d only ever worn to church with Suzy.
I brewed myself a pot of coffee and popped three ibuprofen before sitting down with a cigarette and everything Junior had given me.
The cash in the manila envelope was all new hundred-dollar bills, which I pocketed. The cell phone looked brand-new too, a disposable. I checked the outgoing and incoming calls and saw that the phone had not yet been used.
I looked again at the surveillance image Junior had given me. Seeing it this time, with only myself as judge, reminded me of how enraged and terrified I was that night. How entwined those two emotions could be.
I thought of Junior’s story about Suzy and the episodes she used to have with me. Sonny and I, it seemed, shared an affliction. We were in love with Suzy and afraid of her at the same time, and though I’d like to think he and I went to different places once our marriages went bad, I couldn’t help wondering where I would have gone had Suzy stayed with me a little longer. I’d arrested plenty of people over the years who had violated restraining orders, who’d hunted down ex-lovers and begged for love with threats, their fists, a gun. At that point there’s no difference between a plea and a threat, between loving someone and hurting them. At that point, love doesn’t matter.