She shook her head and pounded a fist on the dashboard. She didn’t look for trouble. Trouble found her. She never looked for it. Never.
Marty rejoined her, tossing her bags into the backseat and sliding in behind the wheel.
“Where to?” he asked. “There’s a couple nice places in Skaneateles, away from the mobs.”
“Skaneateles?” Casey said. “No. Just take me to the airport, Marty.”
Marty’s face dropped. “The-you’re not going to just run from this?”
“Why?”
Marty’s face colored. “They’ll keep saying things.”
“Who cares?” Casey said, weary from it all.
“Your reputation,” Marty said. “Your… image.”
“Image. Right,” Casey said, directing her eyes straight ahead. “Airport.”
Marty’s phone rang and he answered it with one hand still on the wheel. “Uncle Christopher? Yes. I am.”
Casey could hear the punctuated sounds of Marty’s uncle, yelling on the other end of the line. Marty rolled his lips inward and clamped down until the shouting ended.
“I’m going to the airport,” Marty said quietly, “then I’ll come get them.”
Shouting erupted again.
“I understand,” Marty said, his face pale. “No, don’t do that. I’ll come right now.”
Marty hung up the phone and glanced at Casey. “Can you give me ten minutes?”
Casey held up a finger and called her travel agent in Dallas to book the next flight out.
“My flight’s not until 8:40,” Casey said, hanging up. “We should be fine, right? To stop?”
“Yes,” Marty said, his face expressionless and staring straight ahead.
Casey rode for a minute, watching the faded landmarks as Marty made a series of turns that took them back toward the center of town.
“So you want to tell me?” Casey asked.
Marty took a deep breath and let it out slow. “That was my uncle.”
“I figured,” Casey said, “and he’s not happy that you’re helping me.”
“He told me I couldn’t,” Marty said. “Like he was pulling some lever.”
“He is your boss.”
“I’m a lawyer,” Marty said. “I can hang my own shingle just like anyone else.”
“You going to quit?”
“No,” Marty said. “He fired me. He gave me ten minutes to get my things or he said I’d find them in a box on the sidewalk.”
Casey paused, then said, “Sorry.”
Marty slowly nodded his head, swerved to the side of the road, and threw open the car door. He removed his glasses and began cleaning them furiously on his shirttail before he leaned out and retched, spilling a stream of vomit onto the edge of the road. When he leaned back into the car and replaced his glasses, he wiped the corner of his mouth on the back of a wrist and apologized to her.
“It’s okay,” she said as they pulled back out onto the road.
Casey sat in the car in front of the Barrone law offices while Marty ran in. When he came out, he carried two boxes, both of which he dumped into the trunk.
“That’s a lot of stuff,” Casey said.
“Yeah, well,” Marty said, starting the engine and pulling away from the curb fast enough to swerve into the oncoming lane and set off a series of horn blasts, “I was starting a novel.”
Despite Casey’s pleas, Marty insisted on staying with her as she worked her way though the check-in process at the airport, waiting patiently beside her while the TSA agents went through her luggage. Upstairs, security had only one line going, and it snaked through the terminal all the way to the mouth of the walk bridge that led to the parking garage. Casey looked at her watch, counted the people in front of her, and came up with an estimate of how long it would take to get through the line.
“Your ten minutes cost me,” she said. “They shut the doors, like, twenty minutes before the flight these days.”
“You’ll make it,” Marty said. “There’s only a couple gates. It’s not like Atlanta. It took me half an hour one time to get to my gate once I passed through security there.”
Casey nodded and moved slowly forward. Her phone vibrated and she saw another number she didn’t recognize. She powered it down and stuck it into her briefcase. Her voice mail had already been overloaded, some from concerned friends like Stacy and Sharon and José but mostly from reporters eager for a scoop. How they got Casey’s number she couldn’t imagine. She considered calling Stacy back, just to check in, but pushed the idea from her mind. She just needed to get home, to her own couch, with her own balcony overlooking the narrow Venetian canal. Maybe a longneck bottle of Budweiser in her hand.
She was next in line to have her ID checked when a stampede of travelers gushed through the double doors on the exit side of the glass partition. Marty finally said good-bye and that he’d call her as things progressed, but he remained standing off to the side, evidently intent on seeing her all the way in. Casey was loading her computer into a plastic tub when the profile of Jake Carlson’s face caught her eye.
“Jake,” she said, waving and patting the plastic divider. “Jake.”
60
JAKE POINTED at the cell phone he held, then at Casey, then waved for her to come back. She gathered her things, disrupting the flow of the line and apologizing as she worked her way against the flow and ducked under the elastic rail. Jake kissed her cheek and hugged her excitedly.
“Why didn’t you answer your phone?” Jake asked.
“Too much,” Casey said. “I shut it off.”
“Where were you going?”
“Home.”
“And leave this lovely little town?”
“I got your message,” she said. “I didn’t think you’d get back. I need to put some distance between me and that place. I can still smell the urine from the woman in my cell. I think it’s on my clothes.”
Jake sniffed. “No. Come on. You can’t go. See what I’ve got. It’s going to take some doing, but we’re going to tie Graham in so tight with these mafia thugs that he’ll be the front-page story. Believe it or not, the FBI has an active investigation going on the guy.”
“I’d believe anything,” she said.
“Hi,” Marty said, appearing from behind them and extending a hand to Jake.
“Marty got fired,” Casey said. “He’s been great.”
“Your own uncle?” Jake said.
Marty shrugged. “He was an asshole, anyway.”
“I bet,” Jake said. “I saw you on TV at the DC airport.”
“My luggage,” Casey said.
“The TSA won’t leave with it if you’re not on the plane,” Jake said. “Don’t worry. Come on.”
They got Casey’s luggage back at the TSA bag check, then took the walk bridge to the garage while Jake told them about a mobster named Niko Todora, John Napoli’s patron, and a man who’d gone from the underworld to legitimate businessman.
“So, where to?” Casey asked.
“Buffalo,” Jake said. “I’ve got a list of all the names and companies. We’ve got to find the link to Graham. We’ve got to prove he’s tied in with these guys and they’re all trying to sink Patricia Rivers because of those gas leases. Once we do that, his whole story about you falls apart.”
“No sweat,” Casey said. “What’s your plan?”
“People,” Jake said. “They can’t help talking. We get a disgruntled employee or someone who got screwed on a deal and we drill down. There’s got to be a money trail somewhere. There always is.”
“Follow the money,” Casey said. “Great. I never heard that before.”
“I can help,” Marty said.
“Of course,” Jake said, stopping in back of his rental Cadillac to open the trunk and load Casey’s bags.
“I mean, I can really help,” Marty said. “To follow the money. I think.”
“How?” Casey asked.
Marty said, “When you’ve got money, you’ve got taxes, right?”
“Taxes and death,” Jake said.