She didn’t finish the thought. She didn’t need to.
“Just a couple of hours,” I said. “I’l cal you tonight.”
She looked at Major Cooper, two tables away. She shook her head.
“You didn’t see what Gerry Far looked like when we pul ed him out of the river, Tres.” She slid out from the booth, pul ed on her raincoat. “For Erainya’s sake, don’t wait too long.”
When I got home to 90 Queen Anne, the two-story craftsman was dark except for my little in-law apartment on the side. Rainwater streamed down the driveway, carrying away petals from my landlord’s purple sages and blue plumbagos.
Sam Barrera waited on my stoop in the glow of the porch light. He was catching moths and shaking them like dice.
“We need to talk,” he said.
“It’l cost you.”
Sam studied me.
I tried to remember if I’d ever seen him with a five-o’clock shadow before, or with his tie loosened.
He said, “Cost me?”
“Yes, sir, yes, sir. Two bags ful .”
He released his moth, watched it flutter up the side of the screen door. “So you know.”
In my younger days, I would’ve hauled off and decked him, but I’d mel owed over the years. Now I was perfectly wil ing to breathe deep, thinking rational y, and invest the few extra minutes it would take to invite him inside, find a gun, load it, and shoot him.
“Mi casa es tu casa,” I told him.
I unlocked the front door, just missed stepping on the dead mouse Robert Johnson had left for me on the carpet.
The offending feline sat smugly on the kitchen counter. He had one paw in the middle of his empty food dish. A subtle hint.
“Nice to see you, too,” I said.
I cleaned up the present and fil ed Robert Johnson’s dish with tortil a chips and flaked tuna.
Sam Barrera made the grand tour of my apartment. That takes about thirty seconds. Once you’ve seen the futon and the built-in ironing board and the tai chi sword rack above the toilet, you’ve pretty much seen it al .
“Talk,” I told Barrera. “If I have to ask, the bathroom sword is coming unsheathed.”
Barrera sat down on the futon. He opened that annoying notepad of his.
“Sam, it’s not a lecture,” I said. “Put away the notes.”
“Fourteen mil ion dol ars,” he said, quietly.
I set down the tuna can. “Fourteen mil ion.”
“How much we stole. Yeah.”
My fingers felt numb. I wanted to say that was a hel of a lot of money. Large change. A truckload of kitty nachos. Two big goddamn duffel bags. Al I could say was “Damn.”
“Stirman cal ed an hour ago,” Barrera said. “He wants an exchange for Erainya. Tomorrow night. Any police involvement, she dies.”
“Great,” I said. “That’s fucking great, Sam. So we just hop over to Stop-N-Go with our ATM cards, and we’ve got it covered.”
“I don’t have any money. I used my half to build up I-Tech a long time ago. I don’t know what Erainya did with Fred’s share. She sure as hel didn’t put it into the agency.”
“Erainya’s been scraping for money ever since I’ve known her. She’s got no hidden cash.”
“She had to know.”
I thought about the note to Erainya from H., tel ing her the package from Fred was safe.
“She would’ve turned it in,” I said, trying to believe it. “You should’ve turned it in.”
“We had to take it,” Sam said. “Stirman would’ve paid for the best defense. That kind of cash . . . we didn’t even trust the cops. Stirman had friends in the department, in the state attorney’s office. We didn’t want any chance he’d get off the hook. There was no choice.”
“Doing your civic duty,” I said. “A real self-sacrifice. What about Stirman’s baby, Sam? Was there no choice on that, too?”
His eyes took on the kind of deadness I was used to seeing in victims of violence, or col ared criminals.
“We didn’t mean to,” he said.
Rain rattled at the window screens.
Robert Johnson pushed his food dish around.
I tried to think of something to say—some condemnation strong enough.
The phone rang. I pul ed the ironing board away from the wal .
Sam said, “You’ve got a phone behind your ironing board.”
“You must be a detective.” I reached into the alcove, which had been constructed by some day-tripping carpenter in the sixties, and picked up the receiver. “Tres Navarre.”
Silence.
Then Wil Stirman’s voice said: “Shitty little apartment, Navarre. Can’t she afford to pay you better?”
I snapped my fingers to get Barrera’s attention, but I’d lost him. He was stil staring at the ironing board, trying to come to terms with the phone’s unorthodox location.
“Put Erainya on, Stirman,” I said. “Let me hear she’s okay.”
He ignored my request. “Instructions: I’l cal Barrera’s mobile number tomorrow evening, around midnight.
I’l tel you where to bring the money. You, Sam and Erainya’s boy. Nobody else.”
“You think I’m going to bring Jem anywhere near you, you’ve been locked up in the wrong kind of institution.”
There was a pause I didn’t like at al . “We’l al be better behaved with the kid around. A lot less anxious for the guns to come out.”
There was something about his tone I couldn’t quite nail down. What the hel did he want with Jem?
“Nothing that happened to you was Erainya’s fault,” I said. “It damn sure wasn’t her son’s.”
I looked out the dark windows. Stirman could be on the street right now. Or in the al ey. He could’ve cased my place days ago.
“Mr. Navarre,” he said, “eight years ago there was another mother and child. They hadn’t done anything, either. I won’t hurt the Manoses, as long as you and Mr. Barrow don’t disappoint me.”