I tapped the right side of my head to show him where I’d heard it, but I could tell he wasn’t sure he believed me.
Our waiter brought the sashimi, fresh, delicate, thinsliced, and served with raw vegetables and citrus-flavored ponzu sauce. I added a lot of wasabi to my ponzu, and Paco shuddered.
I said, “I like things hot.”
“That’s because you don’t have any sex. It’s compensation.”
It was a familiar refrain. For the last year, Michael and Paco had been on a dedicated campaign to get me to find a man. They had loved Todd like a brother, but they both thought it was time for me to live like a normal woman. They didn’t seem to understand that I didn’t have a button I could push that would make me stop imagining Todd by my side.
I pointed a chopstick at him. “Never antagonize a woman with a sharp pointy thing in her hand.”
Paco grinned and popped a slice of amberjack in his mouth, then followed it with a dab of shredded daikon, tossing it back as deftly as an Egyptian eating a rice ball without letting it touch his lips. Paco uses chopsticks the way he does everything else, gracefully and surely. When I eat with chopsticks, I’m slow and careful because I’m mortally afraid I’ll accidentally miss my mouth and poke myself in the eye. I’d get a lot more eaten if I used a fork. I personally believe that’s why Asian women are so dainty and petite. They’re malnourished, poor things, because women’s hands aren’t made for handling chopsticks. If Asian women ate with forks, they’d be as big and gawky as Caucasian women.
The waiter brought our sushi, and I put my chopsticks down and ate a cucumber roll with my fingers.
I said, “The guy in the truck is still out there.”
Paco used his chopsticks to pinch a tuna roll and dip it in soy sauce.
He said, “People are looking for him. There aren’t that many jacked-up trucks around here. They’ll find him.”
“Paco, I can’t identify anybody. I can’t identify the driver of the car I saw after Conrad Ferrelli was killed, and I can’t identify the driver of that truck.”
He grunted and concentrated on the sashimi and sushi.
After the noodles arrived, he said, “You think they were the same people?”
“Who?”
“The car and the truck, doofus.”
“Oh. Yes. I don’t know. Maybe.”
“As long as you’re sure.”
He leaned back to let the waiter put down chilled vinegared cucumber in thin green strips.
I said, “Paco, Guidry said that Denton Ferrelli was playing golf with Leo Brossi and two other guys at the time Conrad was killed. A state senator named Wayne Black and a banker named Quenton Dyer. You ever hear of Brossi or the other men?”
Paco’s jaw tightened and he leaned across the table and looked fiercely at me.
“Dixie, I want you to listen to me very clearly: Keep. Out. Of. This. There are things about this killing that are a lot bigger than just a murder. A lot bigger. If you go around asking questions, you will be hurt. I don’t mean you might be hurt, I mean you will be hurt. Let the cops handle it. You understand?”
He looked so vicious that I shrank back in my chair. This was a side of Paco I rarely saw, the undercover cop side that knew things and went places and did things I couldn’t even imagine.
I said, “I’m not going around asking questions.”
“Did you or did you not go to see Virgil Stephenson today asking questions about the truck?”
Birdlegs is Virgil?
“How do you know about that?”
He sighed. “Once again, Dixie. This is a lot bigger than a murder. Please, please, please listen to me. Keep your mouth shut, don’t talk to anybody, don’t ask any questions. Got it?”
Sloppily, I used my chopsticks to pluck up some sweet-tart cucumber salad. I felt like a mother bird gathering worms to feed her nestlings. The salad was cool, delicious, creamy. When I put my chopsticks down, my hand was trembling.
Paco reached across the table and covered my hand. “Dixie, I love you. I don’t want to see you hurt. Okay?”
I blinked a couple of times to get rid of stupid tears before I raised my head and looked at him. His dark eyes were intent and determined and kind. I looked away toward the sushi counter, where several women thought Paco and I were having a lovers’ quarrel. They were watching us with hope on their faces, each one poised to grab Paco if he dumped me. Paco realized what they thought at the same moment, and we both burst out laughing.
When we got home, I said good night and started up the stairs to my apartment, but Paco followed me.
I said, “What’re you doing?”
“I’m spending the night with you.”
I turned and looked down at him, for a hysterical second thinking maybe I’d accomplished every woman’s fantasy and converted a gay guy.
“Guidry told you to stay with me, didn’t he?”
“Who?”
I slammed my hand on the railing. “Damn it, Paco, I don’t need a babysitter!”
He passed me, leaving me glaring at his beautiful buns as he continued to climb the stairs.
“Didn’t say you did, babe. Like I told you, this is bigger than a murder, so I’m spending the night here. Anyway, Michael would crunch my balls with a lug wrench if I let anything happen to his little sister.”
I looked around, at the silver sea and pale shore behind me and the towering dark trees on either side. I didn’t have anything to fear from the sea, but the trees could shelter more than birds and squirrels. For the second time that day, I heard Todd’s voice. This isn’t about you, Dixie.
Okay, maybe it wasn’t Todd’s voice. Maybe it was the memory of his voice and my grandfather’s voice and Michael’s voice and Sergeant Owens’s voice and every other male voice that had caught me up when I was beginning to think the world revolved around my concerns and reminded me that it didn’t. Paco knew things I didn’t know. Guidry knew things I didn’t know. Conrad Ferrelli’s murder was somehow involved in something even darker and more sinister than murder. I just happened to be a tiny little grain of grit in a large dirt ball.
I followed Paco up the stairs and got the door keys from under the gun in my purse.
I said, “Do you want me to unfold the sofa bed?”
“Nah, just give me a pillow.”
I went to find him a pillow and sheet, and when I came back he was in the kitchen looking at the iron bell thing hanging in front of my window.
He said, “Bitchin’ alarm, babe.”
“You’re not going to take off your clothes and walk around my apartment naked, are you?”
“Wouldn’t think of it.”
“Damn.”
“When we catch the guy, maybe you can see him naked.”
I wondered if he had said “when we catch him” on purpose, or if I wasn’t supposed to guess that the SIB was involved in a murder investigation. In either case, I intended to play dumb. Not that I would have to pretend very hard, but I wasn’t quite as dumb as I seemed.
I also wasn’t as obedient as I seemed. While I appreciated that law-enforcement officers were the only ones who could or should be doing the investigating, they weren’t the ones who had faced a homicidal truck bearing down on them like a nightmare from hell. Furthermore, they weren’t the ones who had only recently clawed their way from victimized weakness to a semblance of self-respect. If I slunk away in meek silence, all the gains I’d made in the last year would be lost, and I would once again be at the mercy of forces larger and more powerful than myself.
I would be careful. I would not tread on the law’s toes. But I would not wait for the sheriff’s department to find the person who had killed Conrad and wanted to kill me.
16
I slept hard until four o’clock, when the alarm went off, and woke knowing I’d felt safer with Paco in the living room. I hit the alarm and stumbled down the hall to the bathroom, trying to be quiet so Paco could sleep. But when I had brushed teeth and hair, pulled on clean shorts and a T, and laced up fresh white Keds, Paco was up and at the door waiting for me.