“Anything we should know?” Jeff asked. He didn’t recognize either man, which meant they probably didn’t recognize him, either. Better all around.
“Been pretty quiet,” the one in the driver’s seat said.
“How long?”
He looked at his watch. “I don’t know, maybe ninety days. Coop, that sound right?”
Coop, the agent in the passenger seat, had a row of playing cards spread out on the dashboard and was too busy playing solitaire to even look at Jeff. “Yeah,” he said. “Give or take a month.” He flopped down a nine of hearts but didn’t seem to know where to put it.
“Okay,” Jeff said. “When was the last time anyone from the Family stopped by?”
“Never,” the driver said. “It’s all wives and girlfriends. Ronnie Cupertine’s wife came by with two little ones about a week ago. Stayed about ten minutes and left in tears. That was a fun day.”
“Yeah?” Jeff said.
“Yeah,” the driver said. “The next hour, Jennifer stood out on the front lawn with a hammer and beat the shit out of that big tree next to the driveway. When she got tired of that, she came out into the street with a picnic basket filled with food and spent the next, I dunno, twenty minutes throwing fruits and vegetables at us.”
“She has a pretty good arm,” Coop said.
That explained why they were parked so far down the street.
“Okay,” Jeff said. “We’ve got some questions for her, so if Al Capone shows up, call me on my cell.”
Jeff handed the driver his card, and when the agent looked at the name, it was clear he recognized it. “Yeah,” the driver said, “I’ll do that,” and then he crumpled the card up and dropped it onto the pavement between the two cars.
Matthew didn’t give Jeff an opportunity to say anything, hitting the gas fast enough to make it clear he was polite enough not to say a word. He drove their same black Chrysler down the block and then pulled onto the Cupertine’s driveway, just as the manual suggests. Let the suspect know that you’re comfortable enough to park on their property. . while also, obviously, blocking their ability to drive away. Matthew took off his seat belt, but Jeff put a hand on his chest. “Hold up,” he said to him.
“What are we doing?” Matthew asked.
“Waiting for Mrs. Cupertine to come outside,” Jeff said.
“What if she never comes?”
“She’ll come,” Jeff said. “And when she does, feel free to ask questions.”
“I don’t feel comfortable doing that,” Matthew said. “I’m not familiar with all the particulars of the case.”
“You know that this lady’s husband killed three agents and a CI,” Jeff said. “Isn’t that enough?”
“I guess so,” he said. “Should I turn off the engine?”
“No, let it run,” Jeff said.
Matthew sat there quietly for ten minutes, didn’t even turn on the radio, didn’t roll down the window. Jeff was impressed. It wasn’t like an FBI agent, even a new one, to sit quietly by. But the kid did fidget in his seat a few times. Then he cracked his knuckles.
“You play a sport? In college?”
“Lacrosse,” Matthew said.
“Some place with a bunch of ivy around it?”
“Tufts,” Matthew said.
“That a good school?” Jeff messing with him now.
“Better than some,” Matthew said. “More expensive than most.” He cocked his head and then did roll down his window. “I think the venetian blinds are moving.”
“Yeah,” Jeff said, “Mrs. Cupertine has taken a couple looks.”
“You know,” Matthew said, “it’s not like she killed the agents.”
“I know that,” Jeff said.
“Then why are we sweating her to come out? Why not just go to the door?”
“I want her to get a good look at us,” Jeff said. “That way she won’t be scared to come outside and talk. We go knock on the door and badge her, maybe her kid gets all flustered and starts screaming and crying and throwing a tantrum. Then the dog starts barking and it’s all gone to shit. I don’t want that. When she’s ready, she’ll come outside and ask us questions.”
“That standard procedure?”
“No,” Jeff said. “Standard procedure would be that we just go about our business and pretend that body in the dump was Sal Cupertine.”
“Those guys back there,” Matthew said. “Did that bother you?”
“A little bit,” Jeff said.
“Here’s what I don’t get,” Matthew said. “And I mean no offense in this. But how do you still have a job?”
“Because I haven’t quit,” Jeff said.
Matthew rapped his fingers on the steering wheel. Jeff liked that the kid wasn’t scared to ask a question. Didn’t seem worried that he might say the wrong thing, or if he was, had determined that Jeff wasn’t the kind of guy to pull rank on him. Truth was, six months ago, he was that guy. He was that guy going all the way back to Walla Walla. Maybe all the way back to his crib in Seattle. Raised like that by his father, a man he despised until he died. Then just as soon as his dad was six feet deep, their relationship improved markedly.
“Here we go,” Matthew said. The front door opened, and a young boy ran out, followed in short order by his mother. William was just a small child, Jeff could see, no more than four or five. He had Jennifer’s blonde hair but his father’s olive complexion and deep-set eyes. If William was lucky, Jeff thought, his mother would get rid of all remnants of his father and let him start fresh. Move to Nebraska or something and live his entire life thinking his father had never been a part of his life. Could you do that to a four-year-old? Probably. At three, for sure. But by five, they’d retain too much. The kid still had a chance not to be infected by the Family.
Jennifer stood on the front porch and watched her boy. He ran around the side of the house and came back riding a Big Wheel. He pedaled past the car and out into the street and then turned back around and cut up the passenger side and down the long driveway, before banking left and disappearing. A few moments later, he came shooting back around the house. Jennifer stepped off the porch then, sidestepped what looked to be several dinosaurs engaged in battle with each other on the front lawn, and came over to the Chrysler. She was tall — maybe five feet nine — and her long blonde hair spilled into the car. She had green eyes, though they were mostly red on this day, and the deep, dark circles around them weren’t doing her any favors, either.
“Please get off my property,” Jennifer said. Polite. Nice. Like it was just another inconvenience in her life, like having Jehovah’s Witnesses showing up when you’re watching television.
“I just have some questions for you,” Jeff said.
“Who are you? FBI or cops? Not the press, that’s clear enough by your nice ties.”
“FBI,” Jeff said. Jennifer gnawed at the skin surrounding her right pinkie nail. It looked raw, and Jeff wanted to reach across Matthew and pull it from her mouth, as if she were a child. Jeff couldn’t remember everything they had on her in their files, but what he did recall indicated to him that she wasn’t the average Family wife: the former Jennifer Frangello was in art classes at Olive-Harvey, getting good grades, parents were both dead — cancer and heart disease — and neither were related to any known crime families. She was just a person who happened to fall in love with a sociopath. Happens every day, and if he could figure out why, well, he’d retire and get his own afternoon talk show. “If this is a bad time for you, we can come back.”
“This is a good time,” she said. “Most of my neighbors are still at work, so they won’t come outside to watch the freak show.” She stopped to examine her finger. It had begun to bleed, so she gathered up the hem of her T-shirt and squeezed it around her hand. “I’m sorry about whatever you think my husband did,” she said. “I mean, I’m sorry about your friends. Were they your friends?”