“And now he showed up again.”
“Again,” Trev confirmed. “But this time it’s different.”
“How so?”
“This time Mouse has friends on her side. Us, plus everyone in her old tranche, plus all the local Taus we’ve ever networked with.”
“Strength in numbers.”
“Yeah, and more than numbers: experience, skills, connections.”
“Even so, you really think it’s a good idea to get up in the face of a guy with Mafia connections?”
“Well, that’s the interesting part. Like I said, Mouse has friends in two Tau tranches, and the Tau network in this city is pretty big. For instance, there’s a woman, a Tau, lives out in Scarborough, who works for a cleaning service called Daily Maid. And ever since he split up with Mouse, Botero has been a Daily Maid customer. The upshot is that we managed to acquire copies of the contents of the backup drives of Botero’s home computers. Including some very ineptly encrypted financial records, which indicate that Botero has been inflating expenses and skimming some of the cash he launders for his mob friends. He puts this down as ‘transaction expenses,’ but it’s a blatant skim. That’s our leverage.”
“You’re still talking about confronting somebody with money and dangerous friends and an obviously unstable, uh, personality—”
“I’m not talking about it, I’m doing it. Or I will be in about sixty seconds. Get on out here, Adam.”
* * *
We can’t live in fear of this guy forever, Trevor said at some point in our conversation, and I thought, We? But he was right. Mouse was a Tau, and one intimidated Tau was one too many.
The street was slick with snow and the Accord chunked into anti-lock mode as I left the driveway. Botero’s car was still parked where I had seen it. Probably he was waiting for Mouse to come home, either for reconnaissance or to frighten her by advertising his presence. When I pulled in behind him, almost kissing his bumper with the grille of the Accord, he gave me a sour look in his rearview mirror. His brake lights lit up as he started the Venza’s engine and put it in gear.
But Trev came up fast in his Subaru, cutting off Botero and making it impossible for him to move. The Venza’s brake lights went dark. A moment later, Botero opened the driver-side door.
He was tall, lean guy. He got out of the car like a flick knife unfolding. He wore a Canada Goose jacket over a logger shirt and faded jeans, a blue-collar-guy-made-good look. His jaw was thrust forward, his mouth bent into a perfect bell curve.
Trevor left his car at the same time. Not as tall as Botero, but broader across the chest, big arms, sure of himself.
“You need to get out of my way,” Botero said.
“I’d be happy to do that,” Trevor said. “Soon as we have a talk about Mouse.”
“I don’t know anybody named Mouse.”
“I think you do. I think you know a lot of people. Like Jimmy Bianchi? Carl Giordano?”
The names meant nothing to me, but they could only have been Botero’s mob connections. Botero’s breath hissed into the cold air like steam from a defective radiator. “If you know those names, you know you’re playing out of your league.”
“If you continue to harass Mouse, there will be consequences.”
“And if you continue to harass me, there will sure as fuck be consequences. You’re a member of that club she joined, right? The League of Losers or whatever. Do you really think that entitles you to stand between a man and his wife?”
“I don’t want to have to go to Mr. Giordano about this.”
“Oh, that’s your threat? You’re going to tell on me? As if Bianchi or Giordano gives a flying fuck about what I do regarding my family?”
“They might give a flying fuck about the five grand you siphon out of their pockets every six months.”
Botero did a pretty good job of concealing his shock. But there was no ignoring the gulp of air that hitched in his throat.
Meanwhile, neither Trevor nor Botero saw what I saw: a police cruiser had turned onto the street and was moving toward us with a slow deliberation.
Botero said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about. And if you go to Giordano or anybody else with this bullshit story, you will be fucked beyond belief.”
“All you need to do is stay away from Mouse. Just forget she ever existed. Do that, and Giordano won’t hear a word from me. He especially won’t see a copy of that Excel spreadsheet you have on your Mac, the one with all the notations you made. Ten grand a year for, what, seven years now? Eight?”
The police car pulled abreast of the Venza. A bored-looking cop rolled down the side window. “Is there a problem here?”
Botero was still working on recovering his composure. “No,” Trevor said, “no problem.”
“You know, you can’t park here—not at that angle.”
“Just getting ready to leave.” Trev headed back to his car.
“And you,” the cop said. “You’re blocking a hydrant. Move along, Mr. Botero.”
Botero went wide-eyed again. “What, do I know you?”
“No, sir, not personally. Move along, please. And if you’re talking to Carl Giordano, tell him hello.”
* * *
Tipped off by Lisa about Botero’s presence, Mouse had bought herself dinner at a downtown restaurant while she waited for the all-clear.
Trev and I were in the living room when she got home. She didn’t say thank you. She didn’t have to. She stood on her toes and gave each of us a solemn peck on the cheek.
I met the cop again a few days later, at a multi-tranche Christmas party. His name was Dave Santos, and he belonged to a North York tranche. It was Lisa who had called him to the scene to back up Trevor. We shook hands and smiled. He didn’t need my thanks, any more than I needed Mouse’s. It was a Tau thing.
CHAPTER 5
At the end of February, not unexpectedly and after a long decline, Grammy Fisk died.
Aaron called and told me the news. (I hadn’t spoken to Jenny Symanski since the week after Christmas, when I had told her as delicately as possible that I would be moving in with Amanda Mehta.) “Funeral’s Wednesday,” my brother said. “If you want to come.”
“Of course I’ll come. We can be there by Tuesday afternoon.”
“We?”
“Amanda and I.”
“You want to bring your girlfriend?”
“Is there a reason I shouldn’t?”
He sighed. “Do what you want, Adam. You always have.”
* * *
So we drove to Schuyler and rented a room at the Motel 6. We could have stayed at the family house, but Mama Laura wouldn’t have approved of us sharing a room, and I didn’t want to expose Amanda to more of my father’s attention that was strictly necessary. But there was no way to dodge the family dinner the night before the memorial ceremony.
The family was polite and Amanda was studiously gracious. “I’m so sorry for your loss” was the first thing she said when we came into the house, shedding our winter coats. Mama Laura hugged her; Aaron shook her hand; Geddy was awkward in the presence of strangers but gave her a forced smile and a “Hello, pleased to meet you” that sounded unrehearsed. My father nodded curtly from across the room, our first hint that trouble might be brewing.
We sat down to dinner. Mama Laura had baked a ham the size of a dinosaur thigh, plus peas and candied yams, food to ward off the sound of a cold wind scratching willow branches against the mullions of the dining room window. We made careful conversation. Aaron talked about the work he was doing for the county Republican Party. I talked about my job at Kohler Media, the job that had rescued me from Schuyler, though I didn’t describe it that way. We all talked about the story that had dominated the news for two days: the explosions in Riyadh and Jeddah, the mine or missile that had sunk a gushing Sinopec tanker in the Straits of Hormuz. Gas prices were already spiking, and there were lines at some stations: would I be okay for the drive back? (I said I’d manage.)