She used the back of her hand to push some hair out of her face. Her movements were ragged, nervous. She pointed to the moving truck behind her. “Is your stuff in there? Is he promising to make you rich, too?”
“I don’t care about money.”
Mallon had never exchanged so many words with Mrs. Branch. Part of him ached that this was how it had happened. None of this was his fault. He was doing his job. She was the one who had ruined everything.
“Mr. Branch wanted me to allow you inside to pack a bag. One bag. His lawyers will be in touch.”
“I don’t have enough cash to even . . .”
“I don’t care.” Mallon paused when he saw true fear enter her eyes, the kind of fear he usually stamped out with a fist or a knee. He took a breath and tried again, quieter. “You brought chaos into this house.”
“Wait, wait, no, I’m trying to get out of this chaos. You look around and think this is normal? Where is he dragging you? Do you even know?”
“Mr. Branch is leaving town while construction resumes. We’ll return soon.”
“He’s making you go on vacation with him? Oh, you’ll love holding his umbrella on the beach and refilling his daiquiris. Cody’s about to snap. He won’t be able to outrun it. You’ve seen it better than anyone, better than me.”
“It’s not my job to judge.”
“I was trying to get out and rebuild.”
“With his money.”
“Of course with his money. I’ve earned it.”
Mallon took a step forward. Olivia tensed but held her ground.
“Who’s in Española? You were there today.”
Olivia flinched. “We don’t need to talk about that.”
“How many lovers do you have? Should I go kick in that door?”
“That house doesn’t matter. What matters is that Cody thinks he can run our lives. Why should we suffer because he wants to build a casino and go to a beach by himself?”
Mallon broke eye contact. “He won’t be by himself. Ms. Chávez . . .”
Olivia squealed as the air was pulled out of her lungs. She smoothed her hair back and grabbed two fistfuls at the back of her skull. She hung her head back, exposing her throat to Mallon.
“Of course.”
“You didn’t know.”
“This is all my fault,” she said. “Trusted her.”
As she hung her head, Mallon kept quiet. Tears brimmed in her eyes, and she turned red, furious.
“When did all this start?” she asked. “These plans, the travel?”
“Yesterday evening.”
“Right after I talked to her. Oh, she’s clever. Everyone always thinks they’re the clever one. Not this time. Not me.”
Mallon wanted to hate her. He wanted to break her in half for bringing O’Connell down here and ruining everything. But he stepped aside. “You should pack your stuff and go. I’ll call you a cab. Get you a room for a few nights.”
Olivia laughed, dry and tinged with insane humor. “I’m not walking away with just a cab ride and a hotel for two nights.”
“What else?”
“What else is . . . you help me. You work for him. You protect his interests and you know what he’s doing is a bad idea. Deep down you can feel it. This plan, this casino is getting too big for him. He’s cracking up. How many times have you carried him to bed in the past six months?”
“What’s your point?”
“If you want to help him, then figure out how we can both get what we want.”
“You don’t know what I want.”
“I’m pretty sure you don’t want to see him crack and you don’t want to lose what you’ve built here.”
Mallon looked over her shoulder into the woods outside the compound. He had trouble holding her gaze.
“I’m not going to help you run off with O’Connell.”
Olivia laughed. “He’s the one who wants to stay here and get rich. I want my own life.”
“You brought him out here. You used him.”
Olivia looked at the ground. “O’Connell’s digging in. His wife is flying into town right now. She’s probably going to leave him, and he won’t have anything to go back to.”
“That may be my fault. I sent her some . . . compromising photographs. I hoped it would pull him back to DC.”
“Of course you did. How many trackers are on those cars?”
Mallon didn’t answer.
“I want money to start a new life,” she said. “You want your life to not fall apart. Let’s help each other.”
Mallon kept his gaze steady. He would let her talk.
“Look.” She lowered her voice. “He’s swept up in a lot of emotion right now. If we keep him here a few more days, dealing with . . . something, anything, then he’ll wake up.”
“Last night, this morning, he was happy. He doesn’t want to wake up.”
“I don’t care if he and Janice stay together, but Cody can’t disappear and expect it to work out. I’m not trying to break him. I want him to slow down, catch his breath and give me what I need. You deserve the same.”
“I will not do anything to help O’Connell.”
Olivia sighed and nodded. “He’s on his own.”
Mallon lifted a hand towards the guard shack. “Let’s go talk. It’s more secure in there.” Olivia turned, indicated he should walk in front of her.
“One thing,” Mallon said. “Tell me about Española.”
Olivia was quiet, the gravel skittered under her shoes. Finally, she said, “Okay.”
THIRTY-NINE
CHARLES HOPPED OFF the couch after hearing Addie’s car pull up. He looked around the house one last time before opening the door. Olivia’s fingerprints were all over him, pushed deep into the soft matter of his brain, and Addie would see it the second she looked at him.
He opened the door and walked to the edge of the front courtyard. Addie closed her trunk and took a second to look at the old houses and the thick ropes of stars.
“I told you it was beautiful,” he said.
Addie formed a weak, sad smile. “I can see why you like it out here.”
She lingered behind her car until a breeze made her shiver. Charles walked to the driveway, grabbed her suitcase in one hand and wrapped the other arm around her shoulders in a forced hug that caused her to stiffen. To hide his embarrassment, Charles turned and led her inside. He wanted to puke. He could not even muster the courage to hug and kiss his wife before she left him.
“Let me show you the rest of the place,” he said. “It’s amazing.”
Addie looked around the house. “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, it’s impressive.”
She sat down on the couch and pulled her large, boxy purse into her lap. Charles tried not to see in her red eyes that she had already walled herself off. He stood away from the couch and leaned against the top of an armchair across the living room.
“Can I get you some food? Water? They keep the place stocked with groceries and wine. I can open a bottle.”
“No, I’m fine. Maybe a water,” she said. Her voice caught and Addie brought a hand up to her face. “Sorry, it’s just, you’re really not happy to see me at all. I knew you wouldn’t be, but I thought . . .”
Charles sat down on the couch, but Addie stiffened and pulled away from him.
“No, no,” she said. “That’s why I came out here. I needed to see it in your eyes. Not over phone or video but actually face to face.”
This was it. Everything was happening right now, and Charles was not ready. He assumed they’d wait until morning or maybe a full day would go by before she called him out, demanded some sort of reckoning.
“Things aren’t that bad,” he said. “We can work on it. I’m making some amazing progress out here.”
“Don’t even try it.” Addie let out a disgusted, angry sigh. “You were never good at spinning people.”
She pulled her phone out, opened her email and pulled up a photo. She handed it to Charles and quickly br
ought her hands back.
The photo showed the outside of this house at night. A time stamp in the corner said 3:15 AM. Olivia, looking very comfortable with her hair pulled up and her clothes rumpled, was leaving the house, and Charles wore the stupid, shit-eating grin of an over-sexed teenager.
He looked at Addie. “Who . . .”
“I don’t know who sent it. I don’t care. Probably her husband. I’d like to thank whoever it was for speeding this up.”
Charles closed the photo and looked at the email address: driverXOXO. “This is bad,” he said.
Addie laughed, angry and disgusted. “You think?”
“No, no, this is . . .” Charles looked around the house, wondering if there were cameras. He went to the window and looked outside.
“Don’t try to make this a ‘privacy’ thing. You got caught.”
Charles turned around and leaned back on the front door. It was difficult to put everything in order. Addie was here. Addie deserved an answer, but now he was retracing his steps, wondering what he had been caught on the record saying. Wondering what he had been caught on the record promising.
He had attributed Olivia’s dire warnings to her paranoia. Thompson’s warnings he had attributed to his jealousy and greed. But a man sitting in front of his house with a camera was solid.
“Who is she?” Addie asked.
His mind spun. “My boss’ wife, but no, no it’s not what it looks . . .”
“Don’t you dare say that.”
Charles shook his head. “Wait, give me a second here.” He covered his face with his hands and dug his fingertips into his eyes until he saw stars. After he removed his hands, Addie was blurry but incandescent with rage.
“I messed up. But listen to me, listen to me, they’re not building an airport out here. It’s a casino, and there’s going to be lots of money and I was trying to get involved.”
“By fucking your way in?” Addie got to her feet and hooked her purse over her shoulder. “I can’t be here.”
“She wanted help leaving her husband.”
“You’re involved with something crazy. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know who she is. But you’ve been trying to worm your way into something crazy and you never even told me.”
“Everything has happened very fast.”
Addie caught her breath and shook her head. “You’re not coming back with me. You’re not coming back to the house.”
“I was going to get us out of debt.”
Addie grabbed her suitcase and moved towards the door with such purpose Charles had to step out of the way. She looked over her shoulder and said, “Why on earth would they want to bring you in?”
Then she was gone, and Charles was alone with that question, the same one Olivia had asked, ringing in his ears.
WEDNESDAY
FORTY
GABE SPENT TWENTY MINUTES reassembling Micah’s room. Helen had relented. She said he could pick Micah up that afternoon. Two nights. Two nights with his son.
He used a rubber mallet to straighten out the bent table leg, threw out the lamp he had broken and did his best with everything else. Most of the pages he wrote were wrinkled but still readable.
He spread his work and the info about his mother out on the card table. He had barely slept, and now the sun was up and the light through the window made everything he knew about her look even thinner. Micah needed to know this.
Rey had brought over two newspaper clippings, each only a few paragraphs long, and a copy of a page from a book. No pictures or anything personal. It was like reading an encyclopedia entry about someone who died two hundred years ago.
Gabe used the eraser end of a pencil to move the documents. A local, unheralded civil rights leader passed away on Thursday. . . . Celsa Chávez, sixty-seven years old, passed away at her home in Pecos. . . . Many of her neighbors did not know about Chávez’s work in the mid-1970s . . . Chávez never married and never had children. Friends recalled that she valued her privacy.
Gabe had spent the night reading the articles and then falling back into bed until an ache in his chest led him back into Micah’s room, where he read the articles again. This was not a mother. At best, it was a collection of shadows and fragments that had broken off of her life to be spat out by a stranger. This woman was a pile of words, and Gabe did not know how to reconstruct her into a mom who had left him, found a cause to believe in and then chose to die alone.
Gabe would be different. He would not die alone. He would not leave Micah with these questions. Maybe Micah would dislike the answers, but he would know exactly who his father was. He went downstairs and counted the money. The $1,300 was boosted by an extra $200 Rey gave him when he brought over his truck and the clippings. Pity cash.
Tight, but with some luck Gabe could swing it. He left the cash in the bowl and wrote Helen a check for a grand. The bank was already closed, so he would deposit the cash the next day. Gabe chewed his lip, an old habit he had outgrown years ago. This was good. He had raised enough money. He had won. Gabe looked around the house. It did not feel like winning.
Every time Gabe pulled into Helen’s driveway, one of her gray-haired neighbors was out watering the lawn. They always gave him a dirty look.
Helen was waiting, looking ready to be disappointed.
“I swear that truck’s the only thing louder than your bike,” she said.
Gabe hopped out holding the check. “Yeah, but it’s not my bike.”
Helen took the check. When she was skeptical, her eyebrows dived towards each other. “Thank you,” she said. “I don’t have to worry about depositing this, right? I can do that on my phone right now, you know.”
Gabe opened his mouth in protest but then snapped it shut. “I’m depositing the cash in the morning.”
Helen bit her tongue when Micah came out of the house carrying two big duffle bags. It looked like he had packed for a week.
“Hey, man, that’s a lot of bags. Going to leave some stuff with me?”
Micah slid past his mom and tossed the bags into the back of the truck. “No, it’s just, I don’t know, Mom thought I should bring some things.” He disappeared back inside.
“You were supposed to have this taken care of,” she said.
“I do. I do.”
“‘Depositing the cash in the morning is not taking care of it. Why didn’t you just bring the cash?”
“I was afraid of losing it.”
Helen looked confused. “You don’t even know how to be an adult, do you?”
“I’m trying.”
Micah came out with a small suitcase. His eyes kept flicking between Gabe and his mom. “Man, you’re loading up the wagon train, aren’t you?” Gabe said.
“Sheets,” Helen said. “Some soap, towels, a few groceries.”
Gabe shook his head. “No, no, that’s okay. I bought all that stuff. Everything. Dish soap. New sponges. Little air freshener things you plug into the wall. Got it.”
“I’m sure you did, I’m sure the house looks just great, but he’s already packed. And his video games are in there. That’s really all he needs.”
Micah tossed the suitcase into the back. “Nice truck,” Micah said. “When’d you get it?” He meant, Thank God, it’s not the bike, but Gabe smiled anyway.
“Thanks for not bringing the Harley,” Helen whispered. Gabe felt something give down deep inside.
“Did you see the video I’m in? Online? It’s being watched a lot. I’m making T-shirts, figured I’d cash in.”
Helen yelled over her shoulder. “Go ahead and get in the truck, sweetie.” She waited until Micah climbed inside before turning back to Gabe. “Look, I’m letting him go with you because he wants to, but you need to be real sharp. Don’t do anything dumb.”
“I’m going to make this work.”
“That’s easy to say.”
“I mean it.”
“It’s easy to mean.”
“Things are changing. I found my mom,” Gabe said. “Well,
Rey found her for me.”
It took Helen a second to react. “Oh. Oh, wow. Where is she?”
“Nowhere now. But she was living in Pecos. No family, nothing, all by herself.”
“She sounds like you.”
“I’m not like that. She avoided me. I’ve been trying with Micah.”
“I know you think you’re trying, but it’s not enough. You have to actually be in his life.”
“Look,” Gabe put his hands on his hips and dropped his eyes to the ground, “you were right. Years ago, I could have changed. Should’ve done it, absolutely. But I decided not to and spent years feeling like it was too late. Now it almost is.”
“I didn’t want you to change. I wanted you to focus.”
“I’m giving this one more shot with Micah. It’ll work this time.”
Helen folded her arms and looked worried. “Gabe, I have no idea what you’re talking about, but you’re putting way too much pressure on this visit. It’s a long weekend, that’s all. He’s already scared this isn’t going to go well. He’s worried you’ll flake on him.”
“But I didn’t. I’m here.”
“That’s my point, getting this far isn’t enough.”
Gabe looked back. Micah was in the truck watching them. Gabe waved. His son lifted his hand and undid his seatbelt. Gabe realized Micah thought the visit was over. He was ready to give up. Gabe turned to Helen.
“I don’t know how to do any of this, and I’m an idiot,” he said. “But I got to start somewhere.”
FORTY-ONE
THE AQUARIUM WAS EMPTY. Even the iron-jawed receptionist was gone and all the side offices were dark except for Jordan’s and Salazar’s. Charles turned on the light in his office. A handful of pens and a coffee mug borrowed from Lou sat in the center of the desk. Everything else had been tossed out; even the computer was gone. Charles dropped his bag on the desk, grabbed the mug and headed across the bullpen. Olivia’s and Addie’s twin warnings had been echoing all night. Why him? Between those alarm bells and wondering if he would see Addie again, sleep became a fantasy he accidentally stumbled into around four in the morning.
Somewhere in the night, a plan developed. Actually, it was less of a plan, maybe a desperate hope. Talk to Salazar, tell her the truth about the Apaches and Christine Morales, negotiate some kind of payout. Three months’ salary. Six? Something to keep him floating until something else came along. His constant companion: something better on the horizon.
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