“That does seem like a shame.”
“You’re telling me!”
She closed her eyes, like she was picturing it: picturing herself in Chicago. I pictured myself there, too, eating a hot dog. I pictured Castle. I opened my eyes again.
“I don’t know,” Martha was saying. “I never got hold of the right weekend, I guess. And then the kid happened, and-well. You don’t have kids, huh?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Well, they’re great.” She leaned into me, gave me a big stage whisper. “But they fuck everything up.”
Martha laughed, and her eyes found her boy, goofing around with these white kids, trying to dunk one under, his sleek body spangled with droplets. Another woman had come in, meanwhile, a middle-aged white lady in a black bathing suit, freckle-specked cleavage and sandy hair and big midwestern arms, with a towel wrapped around her waist. She took a look at us, at me and Martha sitting there talking. Then she looked at the pool.
“Watch this,” Martha said. “Just watch.”
“What?”
“Just watch.”
But I knew; I knew what Martha knew. The woman put her hands on her hips. We knew what was coming. Even Jim Dirkson knew.
“Marcus? Dylan? Jamie?” The woman waved her kids in, like a lifeguard when there was a shark. “Time for lunch.”
“What?” squealed one of the white children.
“We just got here,” said another.
The boys treaded water, their freckled faces twisted at the injustice. Lionel bobbed beside them. The teen, sitting on the pool steps, wrinkled her nose. “I thought we were gonna swim first.”
“Nope,” said the mom. “After. Come on. Now.”
The family climbed out, and the woman toweled them off and hustled them out. Lionel was left alone, treading water, a solitary buoy. Martha raised both middle fingers and pointed them at the lady like guns. We heard the children, their complaining voices growing dimmer as they disappeared down the corridor.
Lionel went under and then came up, crested the blue surface with a harvest of sparkling droplets across his curls, his mouth a small disappointed line, watching the other kids trudge away.
“Do we have to go, too?” he said softly.
“No, sweetness. We’re good. You’re good. I’m just chatting with Mr.-God, I forgot it.”
“Dirkson,” I said quietly.
“Right, right. It’s a nice name.”
“Thanks.” I muttered it. Murmured it. I didn’t know where the name Dirkson came from. It came from Bridge, or from Bridge’s people. It probably came from a Gaithersburg phone book. Martha was still talking, small talk, talking about the Batlisch hearings. “Have you been watching my girl Donatella, by the way? Squaring off up there? She is my hero.”
“Well, anyway,” I said suddenly and stood up. “Anyway.”
I was walking fast. Behind me I heard Martha saying “Jim…” and the boy, too, I heard him calling after me from the water’s edge, giving me back the word I gave him-“Controversy!”-but I was gone.
13.
Day three of the investigation, and possibilities were fanned out in front of me like playing cards. At some point, Cook would make contact with me again, or maybe I with him. I had his car number, after all, and his badge number. I had his face emblazoned in my mind, a row of white teeth and a wink and a smirk. I had an appointment for tomorrow morning, the first available slot, with the famous Dr. V. And there was Mr. Maris, freedom fighter, soldier, a blip on my screen, a man on the move. I drove with my laptop open on the shotgun seat, so as I cruised the city I could watch him cruising it, too. At some point he’d stop his car, and maybe that would just be that. Maybe Maris was the body man, the baggage handler, and I would go where he was and there would be the boy.
Get this done. Get out of here. On to some other northern city.
Whole Wide World Logistics was in an office park off Binford Boulevard in an industrial section of the northeastern part of the city; one in a row of identically unimpressive gray storefronts lined up like prisoners, with smudged plate-glass windows and doors of streaky glass. Across the parking lot, casting its vast shadow over this dingy arrangement, was a massive converted warehouse painted with bright jungle murals and a cheerful cartoon sign: COME AND PLAY IN INDY’S BIGGEST INDOOR TRAMPOLINE PARK.
I got out of the Altima already working, crossing the lot in a hustle with my face anxious and my body tense. A rush of noise washed over me from behind my back, a laugh and a delighted squeal and the celebratory ding-ding-ding of an arcade game. Someone had opened the door of the trampoline park, let its noise filter out across the parking lot, from a universe away.
I pushed into Whole Wide World and got right to work, thinking, Here we go, breathing hard, saying “Hey, I’m sorry, hey,” as the door made its little bing-bong noise and eased closed behind me.
The woman behind the long counter was looking at me, already skeptical. She checked me out, and I checked out the room, the tottering stacks of papers and file folders all along the counter, the window letting in smudged sallow light, the tile floor in need of a sweep and a mop. High on the wall was a row of clocks, Manila and Mumbai, San Francisco and Paris. Distant cities, foreign lands. Under the clocks was the globe logo I’d seen in the picture, purple and green and radiating lines of speed. Closest to the door was a giant dry-erase board cluttered with handwriting, different colors, a crosshatch of numbers, dates, account numbers, and order numbers-and in the lower left-hand corner, a little purple heart and the words DEAR DAY SHIFT: HAVE A GREAT DAY! LOVE, NIGHT SHIFT.
“Yes?” The day shift was a middle-aged round-cheeked black woman, a glossy magazine open on the counter in front of her.
“Yeah, hey,” I said, talking quickly, slightly out of breath. “Winston around?”
“Nope,” she said. “He’s sick.”
“Sick?”
“Yeah. He called in.”
Sick. Could that just be a coincidence-just bad luck? Or had my man Winston smelled something coming?
This woman, meanwhile, was looking at me, fingering the pages of her magazine, waiting for me to split. I could appreciate that. I was back in Albie’s rumpled gardener’s outfit, stained grass-green at the knees, bits of soil clinging to the cuffs. I was putting on a full show here, huffing and puffing, wiping sweat off my brow, drumming my fingers on the counter. “Just my luck, boy. Sick! Boy.”
“Yes.” She shrugged. Obviously she was supposed to say Can I help you with something, but it was equally obvious that she did not want to help me. “Do you want to leave him a message?”
“Naw,” I said. “No, thanks.”
Still I didn’t leave. She cast a longing glance at her magazine. Thin white celebrities in swimsuits, lying like famine victims on a scorched beach. Winston Bibb’s colleague was dark-eyed and plumpish, her hair elaborately woven, her forehead high and gleaming under the fluorescents. Her skin was coffee, light-toned, in the number 120 range. I did this evaluation by reflex, then found that just doing that quick calculation, for some reason, made me sick. My stomach rolled. This here was a free woman, after all, a northern woman, a vested citizen. What right had I to look at her that way, to size her up, mark her down for a Gaithersburg file?
“Well…” she said. Poor girclass="underline" I had given her no choice. “Maybe I can help.”
“Oh, I don’t know; I hope so. I don’t know. I really don’t know.”
At last she closed her magazine and looked straight on at my face, and her expression softened. I saw it happen, and I doubled down. I tilted my head a certain way I had, and I grinned a soft grin of mine, narrowed my eyes in a way that I knew put light in them and crinkles at their corners.
“My name’s Angie, by the way.” She slipped the magazine under the counter. “Tell me what you need.”