Danny turned left, heading for the office, past hot dog joints and pawnshops with signs that glowed against the dying sky. For what had to be the ten thousandth time, he asked himself the question.
What if he went home and told her the truth?
Would she understand?
Would she leave?
There was no way of knowing, not really. As much as she loved him, he knew her terror of that old world was strong. Maybe stronger. Telling her could go either way.
Only suckers played even money. Even money meant you won as often as you lost. With stakes this high, the smart play was to lie low.
In the passenger seat of his imagination, his father snorted with disgust and looked away.
And suddenly Danny realized that the question wasn’t what she would do if he told her. It was whether he could live with himself if he didn’t. Whether he wanted to be the kind of person who could live with that.
Was he content to be just a thief with a better address?
“Okay,” he said. “You win. I’m going to drop these papers off, and then I’m going to drive home and bet everything that matters on your principles. Happy?”
His father was as silent in death as he had been in life. But as Danny pulled into the firm’s parking lot, he felt something in him loosen, like his chest had been wrapped with bands of steel that suddenly gave. He took a deep breath that filled him to the soles of his shoes.
Screw the smart play. He’d tell her the truth.
Danny stepped out of the car, grabbed his bag, and started for the back door. Overhead, the sky glowed an imperial violet, the city light stretching to bounce off the clouds. Dry leaves crunched under his shoes, and the air smelled clean, crisp with autumn and its promise of winter. Five minutes here, and he’d be on his way home, toward whatever followed the truth.
“Danny?”
The voice from behind him was female and scared, and the moment he heard it he knew something was terribly wrong.
32
He’d been thinking of Karen, and so some part of him was surprised, when he spun around, to see Debbie. She looked lousy, her back slumped, eyes raw, cheeks a slapped red. There was little trace of the rock diva pose she usually affected. His first instinct was primal, a male urge to comfort a female, to put his coat around her cold shoulders and make everything okay.
His second was to wonder what she was doing in the parking lot of the man whose kidnapped child she was supposed to be babysitting.
“Debbie.” He glanced in both directions. No one in sight, but there were still a dozen cars in the lot. Including, he noticed, her beat-to-crap Tempo. Why hadn’t he spotted that coming in? “What are you doing here?”
“We need to talk.” Her voice came out with a hint of sniffle.
Was she losing her nerve? Just what he needed, something else to shake the fragile structure he was holding together with will and prayer. “You shouldn’t be here.” His voice came out harsh, and she shrank back a half step.
“I know. I’m sorry. I just, I need to talk to you.”
He shook his head. “I’ll come by the site in the morning, we can talk then.” He took her arm and steered her toward the Tempo. He had to get her out of here before somebody came out the back door and saw them together. Even her car was a problem – it was a small company, people noticed things, and half the car’s back window was covered with punk band stickers, not exactly par for the construction business. She let him hustle her along, but kept talking.
“No, look, it’s important. Danny, I’m serious. It’s important!” She yanked her arm out of his. “It’s Evan.”
His stomach dropped, and he felt the bands on his chest cinching back up. He looked at her, and saw how wide her eyes were. This wasn’t her touchy-feely side freaking out. Something was actually wrong.
“Okay.” He looked around again. “Only not here. Okay?”
She nodded, and he gestured to her car as he started for his own. “Follow me.”
They got out of the parking lot without anyone spotting them, and part of him relaxed, until he looked in his rearview mirror and saw the intent expression on Debbie’s face, her lips pressed thin and pale.
It’s Evan, she’d said. What could that mean? Nothing good had ever followed those words, and there wasn’t much reason to hope this time would be different.
He drove half a mile to the Sunshine Plaza, a strip mall boasting a Jewel-Osco, a tanning salon, one nail place with signs in English and another with signs in Spanish. The parking lot was only half full, but he steered past empty aisles, turned left at the side of the building, and pulled around back. The mall’s Caribbean-fantasy facade was replaced by gritty reality: generators and air conditioners, graffitied brick walls, rows of delivery bays. He backed in beside a Dumpster as she pulled up. Sour milk and old exhaust filled his nostrils when he stepped out of the truck.
“Okay. What is it?”
She looked at him, looked away. “You have a cigarette?”
“I don’t smoke.”
She nodded. “I quit a couple of years now.”
He waited.
“I’m sorry for jumping you like that. I was trying to find you, and I remembered that we’d followed you there, and the only other place I could think of was your house. But I thought that would be a bad idea. I figured you wouldn’t want your girlfriend to see you talking to me.” Her voice sounded sad, like it was a line she had too much experience delivering.
He nodded, trying to keep his voice reassuring. “Just don’t do it again, okay? I know it seems like a little thing, but-”
“-It’s the little things that get you caught.” She smiled. “Evan told me you used to say that all the time.” Her face suddenly darkened at the name.
“What is it?”
She looked away from him, staring out toward the road, watching traffic pass. “I didn’t know he was going to do it. I should have known, I guess, but I didn’t. Really.”
“Do what?” Silence. “Debbie, do what?”
She looked back at him, her eyes shot through with red, tears rolling down her cheeks. “I didn’t know Evan was going to kill him.”
He felt the ground roll, and reached out a hand to lean against the SUV. Kill him? What did that mean? Kill who?
“We were out to lunch, I didn’t want to go, but he convinced me that Tommy would be okay. When we finished eating, he said he had a call to make. He got out a matchbook with a number on it, and I tried to stop him from calling, but it was too late, he was already talking to Richard.” Her words came fast, piling on one another, her eyes wide like a child’s. “He said if he didn’t get the money he was going to shoot Tommy in the head, and just then some guy walked out of the bathroom, and I don’t know if he heard or not, but Evan followed him to the parking lot, and, and…” Her voice choked in a sob, and she turned away, then bent over, her hands knit across her stomach.
A bead of sweat ran down his side. Overhead, he could hear the faint buzzing of a plane. Evan had killed someone.
Oh, sweet Jesus.
“Debbie.” He waited for her to straighten up, to take a breath. “Where is Evan now?”
“He put the guy in the trunk of his car and made me follow him to O’Hare long-term parking. He said he’d deal with the body later.” She shivered. “Then we went back to the trailer, and I told him I needed to get out for a couple of hours. That I had to shower.”
“Good. You go home now.” He pitched his voice level and even, as if talking to a teenager. “Forget any of this ever happened.”