Ash frowned. “Your ‘daddy’?”
“What, you think I don’t remember him?”
Dee Dee had been in foster homes from the age of six. Ash had entered his first when he was four. Over the next fourteen years he had been in over twenty. Dee had probably been in about the same. On three occasions, for a total of eight months, they had ended up in the same foster home.
“He bought it used, of course. Like, really used. The bottom was rusted out. But Daddy loved that car. He let me sit in the front seat with him. No seat belt. The leather in the seats? It was all cracked. It’d scrape my legs. Anyway, he’d play the radio loud and sometimes he’d sing along. That’s what I remember best. He had a good voice, my old man. He’d smile and start singing and then he’d sort of let go of the wheel and steer with his wrists, you know what I mean?”
Ash knew. He also knew Daddy steered with one hand while jamming his other between his young daughter’s legs, but now didn’t seem to be the time to bring that up.
“Daddy loved that damned car,” Dee Dee said with a pout. “Until...
Ash couldn’t help himself. “Until what?”
“Maybe that’s where it all went wrong. When Daddy found out the truth about that car.”
Ash cringed every time she used the word “Daddy.”
The target got out of the car. He was a burly guy in jeans, scuffed Timberland-knockoff boots, and a flannel shirt. He sported a beard and a camouflage-colored Boston Red Sox baseball cap too small for his pumpkin head.
Ash gestured with his chin. “That our guy?”
“Looks like it. What’s the plan?”
The target opened the car’s back door, and two young girls wearing bright-green school backpacks got out. His daughters, Ash knew. The taller, Kelsey, was ten. The younger, Kiera, was eight.
“We wait.”
Ash sat in the driver’s seat. Dee Dee was in the passenger’s. Ash hadn’t seen her in three years. He’d figured that she was dead until their recent reunion. He’d expected it to be awkward — too much time, too many bridges — but they quickly fell into their old patterns.
“So what happened?” Ash asked.
“What?”
“With your dad’s Eldorado. Where did it all go wrong? What was this truth he learned?”
The smile dropped off her face. Dee Dee shifted in her seat.
“You don’t have to tell me.”
“No,” she said. “I want to.”
They both stared out the front window at the target’s home. Ash put his hand on his hip, where his gun was holstered. He had his instructions. He couldn’t imagine what the burly guy had done — what any on the list had done — but sometimes the less you knew, the better.
“We went out to this fancy fish restaurant for dinner,” Dee Dee began. “This was right before my grandma died. So she paid. My dad, well, he was a steak guy. Always. He hated fish. I mean, really hated it.”
Ash had no idea where this was going.
“So the waiter comes over and starts reading off the daily specials. He has this blackboard with him and the specials, they’re all written out in chalk. Fancy, right?”
“Right.”
“So anyway, the waiter gets to the fish special and he has this weird accent and anyway, he says, ‘The chef strongly recommends the’ — then this waiter, he waves at the board like it’s a car on The Price Is Right — ‘Grilled Dorado with walnuts and parsley pesto.’”
Ash turned to look at her. You’d think the years wouldn’t have been kind to Dee Dee, all she’d been through, but she looked more beautiful than ever. Her golden-blonde hair was tied in a thick braid running down her back. Her lips were full, her skin flawless. Her green eyes were a bright emerald shade most assumed involved contact lenses or some kind of cosmetics.
“So Daddy asks the waiter to repeat that, the name of the fish, and the waiter does and Daddy—”
Man, Ash wished she’d stop calling him that.
“—and Daddy starts fuming. I mean, he just runs out of the restaurant. Knocks over his chair and everything. See, his car, his supercool car — it’s named for a fish! Daddy can’t handle that, you know?”
Ash just looked at her. “You’re serious?”
“Of course I’m serious.”
“It’s not named for a fish.”
“What, you never heard of a Dorado fish?”
“I’ve heard of it, but El Dorado is a mythical city of gold in South America.”
“But it’s also a fish, right?”
Ash said nothing.
“Ash?”
“Yeah.” He sighed. “Yeah, it’s also a fish.”
The target stepped back out of his house. He started toward his garage.
“They all have to be done differently?” Ash asked.
“I don’t know about differently, but they can’t be connected.”
Meaning it couldn’t be like Chicago. Still, that gave him plenty of flexibility on this one.
“Watch the house,” he said.
“I’m not coming with you this time?”
She sounded hurt by this.
“No. Take the wheel. Keep the car running. Watch the door. If anyone comes out, call me.”
He didn’t repeat the instructions. The target had gone into the garage. Ash started toward it.
Here is what he did know about the target. Name, Kevin Gano. Married twelve years to his high school sweetheart, Courtney. The four Ganos lived on the top floor of this two-family home on Devon Street in Revere, Massachusetts. Six months ago, Kevin had been laid off from Alston Meat Packing plant in Lynn, where he’d worked for the previous seven years. He’d been trying to find another job since, to no avail, so last month Courtney had been forced to go back to work as a receptionist at a travel agency on Constitution Avenue.
Kevin, trying to make himself useful, picked up the girls every day from school at two p.m. That was why he was home right now when the rest of this working-class neighborhood was quiet and still.
Kevin was standing by his workbench unscrewing a DVD or Blu-ray player — he earned a little money doing small repairs — when Ash approached. He looked up and gave Ash a friendly smile. Ash smiled back and then Ash pointed his gun at him.
“This will all be fine if you stay quiet.”
Ash stepped all the way into the garage and pulled the door down closed behind him. He kept the gun trained on Kevin, never taking his eyes off him. Kevin still had the screwdriver in his hand.
His right hand.
“What do you want?”
“Put down the screwdriver, Kevin. Cooperate and no one gets hurt.”
“Bullshit,” Kevin said.
“What?”
“You’re letting me see your face.”
Good point.
“I’m in disguise. Don’t worry about it.”
“Bullshit,” Kevin said again.
Kevin looked toward the side door, like he was going to make a run for it.
“Kelsey and Kiera,” Ash said.
Hearing his daughters’ names froze him.
“It can go one of two ways. If you make a run for it, I’ll shoot you dead. Then I’ll have to make it look like a bad home invasion. That means I go into your house. What are Kelsey and Kiera doing in there, Kevin? Homework? Watching TV? Having a nice snack? Whatever. I’ll go in, and I’ll do things so horrible you’ll be glad you’re dead.”
Kevin shook his head, tears coming to his eyes. “Please.”
“Or,” Ash said, “you can drop the screwdriver right now.”
Kevin did as he was asked. The screwdriver clanked on the concrete floor.
“I don’t understand. I never hurt anyone. Why are you doing this?”
Ash shrugged.
“Please don’t hurt my girls. I’ll do whatever you want. Just don’t...” He swallowed and stood a little taller. “So... so what now?”
Ash crossed the garage and placed the muzzle of the gun against the side of Kevin’s temple. Kevin closed his eyes right before Ash pulled the trigger.