When Penny went to place the order, Mo popped a bite of cake into his mouth, sipped from his mug, then put it down and raised his eyebrows. A question.
But now that the time had come, Al found his resolve weakening. He smiled to cover the sudden embarrassment-that’s what it was-then put his own mug down, twirled it a couple of times. “You’re great to come down.”
Rae, thin and buxom, gave him a kind smile that animated her face and made it a thing of beauty. “It didn’t exactly wear us out, Al.” Then, in a more serious vein, “What’s troublin’ you, brother? This thing with Dominic?”
“At least that.”
“What else?”
“Well, the Neshek woman too.”
“I don’t know her,” his brother said.
“One of Dominic’s colleagues. Got herself killed, too, this past Monday night.”
“Good Lord,” Rae said. “Two of ’em now?”
“Two of ’em,” Carter said.
Mo came forward over his coffee and cake, put his elbows on the table and his hands on both sides of his face. The ridge over his brows was pronounced, almost hooded. “They got you involved?”
Carter blew out a long sigh. “Not yet, Bro-Mo, not yet.”
“But you’re worried?” Rae asked.
Carter bobbed his head down and up. “It seems to be my constant state lately.”
“So what do they got on you?” Mo asked.
“Nothing. There’s nothing to get.” He met their eyes, one at a time. “I swear to both of you. There’s nothing to get.”
Rae reached a hand over the table and touched Carter’s. “Well, then, sugar, what you worried about?”
His throat rumbled as though he were chuckling, but there wasn’t anything funny in his eyes. “You got to ask?”
She looked down, picked at her cake with her long fingernails. “No, I guess not, I think about it. You think they do that again?”
“They did it last time,” Carter said. “Three and a half years for a crime I didn’t commit.”
His brother spoke up through his natural reluctance. “Hey, Al. Not that you hadn’t done some shit.”
“Okay, grant that,” Carter said. “I was a dumb kid. I wasn’t an angel. Maybe I’m still not, but I keep my nose clean. And I damn sure didn’t kill Mr. Como or anybody else. Whatever I’ve done before, I’ve paid for it now. And that’s not how it’s supposed to work. You know that. They’re supposed to send you up for something you actually did. Last time, they missed that little detail. I never went near that liquor store and-”
“Yeah, well,” his brother cut in, “the problem was you shoulda remembered back then how we all look the same.”
“Problem is,” Carter said, “I’m remembering now. And there is no way I’m going back in on this.”
“So what-?” Rae stopped and started again. “Why did you need to talk to us? How we gonna help you?”
“I’m not sure you can, but-”
He stopped speaking as Penny showed up back at the booth with their orders. After she’d put the food down, she asked, “What’s a fish say when it swims into a wall?”
They all looked up at her.
“You tell us, darlin’,” Mo said.
“Dam!” And with a delighted giggle, she was gone back to the counter.
Al Carter couldn’t help himself. The absurdity of the ridiculous joke while his life was in such turmoil had him chuckling. “Damn,” he said, shaking his head. “Damn damn damn. That woman’s been reading my mail.” And suddenly the chuckling turned into real laughter. Extended laughter. Finally, wiping his eyes, Carter faced his relatives across the table. “Sorry. I don’t know why that hit me.”
“Me neither,” his brother said.
Rae put a hand on her husband’s arm. “Man’s got to be under some stress.” Then she looked across at Carter with sympathy in her eyes. “You got to get out more, sugar.” She forked a bite of lettuce. “So how we gonna help you?” she asked. “But you not sure we can.”
“What’s it going to depend on, Al?” Mo asked.
“It’s going to first depend on whether you two spent either Tuesday a week ago or Monday this week alone together.”
Mo stopped his mac-and-cheese on the way to his mouth. “Either or both?”
“Either would be good enough.”
“Monday was what?” Rae asked. “Two days ago?”
“That’s it.”
Rae was already reaching for her purse, from which she extracted a small spiral calendar. She flipped the pages, stopped, flipped another one, went back to her first stop. “Last Tuesday, no. I had my book group. Went on till midnight.” She turned the page. “Monday, I got nothin’.”
“That’s ’cause Monday is Monday Night Football,” Mo said. “Raiders and Baltimore. You didn’t see that game, Al?”
“Matter of fact, I did, Bro-Mo. Home alone.” He pointed. “So you two watched it together, just the two of you? You’re sure?”
“Romantic fools that we are,” Rae answered. “So now what?”
Carter let out a breath of relief. He seemed to see his hamburger for the first time. Picking it up, he took a huge bite, sipped some milk shake, chewed some more, and swallowed. “Okay,” he said, “this next part’s where it gets tricky.”
“We’re here,” Mo said.
“I know you are.” Carter paused. “Here’s my worry. It’s all about these alibis. Last time, when they sent me down, you remember, here I was minding my own business by my lonesome, sleeping at my place-hell, it’s two in the morning, how unusual is that? And that’s what I told them. But, as we know, they didn’t choose to believe me. How could I be home sleeping at the same time I’m robbing that damn store? See? So the alibi, even though it was the truth, wound up hanging me anyway.”
Mo put his fork down. “All right. So?”
“So I’m not comfortable telling the man this time that I was home alone.”
“Haven’t you already told him that?” Rae asked.
“I did.”
“Well, then…”
“Well, no. That’s not going to do it.”
“What do you mean?” Mo asked.
“I mean, I need something else. Something stronger.”
“So you’re thinking you’re going to change what you told them?” Mo’s brows had come together in a frown. “That is no kind of a good idea. They know you lied, they all over you.”
“Right,” Carter said. “Which is why I don’t go to them and tell them anything. Everything just stays the same. Except if they come back on to me.”
Mo’s expression was pure confusion. “And then what happen?”
“Then I tell them I lied.”
The couple exchanged a glance.
“I tell them, Rae”-Carter took a tentative breath-“that I was with you. That’s why I couldn’t tell them the truth the first time when they asked. I didn’t want it to get out to Mo. I couldn’t have it get back to Mo.”
Rae’s frown matched her husband’s. “So then they ask me? Then what?”
“Then they probably won’t even ask, but if they do, you tell them, yeah, you were with me. Mo was home, having some beers and watching the game, you told him you were out with your girlfriends, your book club, whatever it was. But really you came to my place and stayed on till late.” He took another sip of his milk shake. “You think you could go along with that, both of you? Make sure your brother doesn’t have to go back to the joint?”
24
Tamara had handled the preliminary meeting to okay the staffing earlier in the day, but now at three-thirty, Hunt was still in the middle of his follow-up meeting with the Willard White people-Will, Gloria, and three of their staff-running down the tasks he’d need to have them perform for his law firm clients over the next week or two. They were all jammed into his small back office, with straight- back wooden chairs for the principals, the others sitting on the file cabinets. Though he had told Tamara to hold his calls while the meeting was
in progress, suddenly the phone on his desk chimed and he glared at it, then excused himself and picked it up.
Mickey was propped up in a bed in a double room at San Francisco General Hospital. His ribs were bandaged. His left arm was in a soft cast. The area around his left eye was swollen and discolored. Groggy from the painkillers, he was otherwise reasonably coherent, managing a feeble smile when he saw his sister and then Hunt behind her. “You should see the other guy,” he said, then grimaced.
He told them that because of the head injury, they wanted to keep him overnight for observation, but he was sure he’d be back to relatively normal in no time. He was, he said, actually very lucky-first, that he wasn’t killed, and second, some cops had come by and told him that the woman who’d hit him and who’d been completely and unarguably at fault was insured to the hilt. He’d probably get a good used car out of his totaled wreck of a Camaro, and at least some, if not all, of his hospital bill would be paid. They might not even have to make a claim on the insurance he carried through Hunt’s business. If all went well, they would let him out tomorrow-Tamara could pick him up in the old Volkswagen she hadn’t driven in six months-and he might even be in at work by the afternoon.
“Don’t push it,” Hunt told him. “Whenever you’re feeling better.”
Then Mickey wanted to tell Hunt about what he’d learned at his visit to Sanctuary House that morning, and did Hunt know that many of the reward participants, including Nancy Neshek, had actually been to a Communities of Opportunity meeting together on Monday night at City Hall?
“That became clear at the memorial,” Hunt said. “Although they all put on a good act that they’d barely heard about Neshek’s death.”
“You think that was bogus?” Mickey asked.
Hunt shrugged. “Hard to say.” He gave them both a pretty much word-by-word account of everyone’s reactions to Neshek’s murder-Turner, Hess, Carter, Jaime and Lola Sanchez, it didn’t take long-and then took a deep breath and came out with what he’d been avoiding. “But aside from them, there actually have been a few new developments.”
“Which you’re not going to like too much,” Tamara added.
“What?”
Hunt filled him in on the latest news about Alicia, and Mickey brought up the same objections that Tamara had earlier.
“Well, I know how both of you feel,” Hunt replied. “But I’d have to say at this point that Devin and Sarah consider her the prime suspect. And you both ought to know that. We’d be smart to think of her the same way. At least until we get something that positively clears her.” Hunt’s eyes went from Mickey around to his sister. “You think we can do that?”
“We can try,” Tamara said at last, folding under the pressure of Hunt’s gaze.
Hunt turned back around and leaned in toward the bed. “How ’bout you, Mick? Mick?”
But Mickey’s eyes were closed, his breathing regular. For all the world as though the pain drugs had kicked in again and he had faded off to sleep.
At a few minutes after six, Tamara said good- bye to Hunt, got out of the car he’d driven her home in, opened her building’s front door, checked her mail-mostly throwaway stuff except for the PG amp; E bill and the latest Gourmet-and climbed the stairs up to her apartment. Letting herself in with her key, she sang out a greeting, but not too loud, as her grandfather was known to take the occasional nap. “Hey, Jim. I’m home.”
When he didn’t respond, she walked over a few steps. His bedroom door was ajar. She pushed it open enough to see inside. His bed was still made and he wasn’t in it. Well, he was probably hanging out with his friends, she thought. Usually he made it a point to get home by dinnertime, which tended to be around seven. She didn’t give his absence a lot of thought.
She dropped the mail onto its spot at the top of the living room bookshelf, then turned and hung up her coat in the closet by the front door. On her way into the kitchen to check the refrigerator for something to drink, she passed the phone, saw the number “1” flashing, and pushed the button for playback.
“Hi. This is Alicia Thorpe and I’m trying to get ahold of Mickey. Mickey, your cell phone’s not picking up. I think it must be not turned on or something, so I’m trying the other number you gave me. Could you give me a call as soon as you get this? Or Jim or Tamara, maybe you could get in touch with him and have him call me. I really need to see Mickey as soon as I can. The police came by again today and… well, I can tell Mickey all this when he calls.” She left her number and continued. “I should be able to answer all day. I called in sick at work, so really, anytime. But sooner would be better. Thanks. Talk to you soon, I hope.”
Tamara, her face now clouded over by concern and indecision, stood by the phone and pushed the button to hear the message again. This wasn’t any social call. Clearly, Alicia understood that her situation had changed. Her voice was charged not just with tension, but with an undertone of desperation.
Conflicted by the recent and unequivocal instructions from her boss, Tamara remained standing by the telephone for another minute or so. After that, she continued on into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, found some orange juice, and poured herself a glass. Bringing it with her, she went back to the living room and plopped herself down on the one stuffed chair they had by the back windows. She took a good drink and put the orange juice glass on the small table next to the chair. Then she came forward and clasped her hands.
She started to get up once, then-hamstrung by her indecisiveness-all but fell back into the chair. On her second try, she was more successful-she got all the way up and over to the telephone. It took her another minute before she played the message a third time. Then at last she picked up the receiver and punched in the numbers.
“Alicia, this is Tamara… I got your message here at the apartment… I have to tell you that Mr. Hunt doesn’t really want us to talk to you, either me or Mickey… I know… I think I agree, but the bottom line is he’s the boss… but you should at least know that Mickey was in a car accident today… no, he’s okay, they think, I hope. They’re holding him for observation overnight…”
Tamara had been planning to come back down to visit Mickey again with her grandfather when Jim got home, but by eight-thirty, a very long two and a half hours later, he had not arrived back at the apartment. Frustrated now and starting to get worried, she tried to call Mickey at the hospital, but San Francisco General Hospital did not provide telephones for individual patients in their rooms. In fact, the afternoon call to the Hunt Club that had informed her of Mickey’s condition had not come from Mickey directly, but from a nurse in the emergency room, who placed the call on her cell phone as a favor to her brother.
On her first try, she got cut off when she pressed pound according to the instructions. On her second, she punched seven different numbers in the automated menu over a five-minute period. Each option provided a suitable wait before suggesting the next one. (The hospital, by the way, had chosen the mellifluous and relaxing tones of Eminem as background while you waited.) When she finally reached a human being at the nurse’s station on Mickey’s floor, she could tell immediately from the woman’s sublimely indifferent bureaucrat’s tone that it was going to be a trying few more minutes.
“I’m sorry,” the woman said. “We don’t deliver messages from the nurse’s station. You can come and visit the patient and deliver your message in person until ten o’clock.”
“How about if the message, though, is that I can’t get down to visit him?”
“Well, then, there’s a message center option in the menu that you can access by simply hitting the pound key.”
“I tried that before and it didn’t work. This time it’s taken me about half an hour to get to talk to you.” This was an exaggeration, of course, but it was what it felt like. “Aren’t you near to his room? Mickey Dade. Number three twenty-seven. Couldn’t you just go and tell him his sister can’t make it down tonight and will pick him up in the morning?”
“I’m sorry. I can
’t leave the nursing station unmanned.”
“Look.” Trying to sound reasonable. “Aren’t you only like twenty or thirty feet from his room? Can’t you just walk across-?”
“I’m sorry, but I’m not allowed to leave the nurse’s station. You can just press pound and leave a message. I’m sure he’ll get it.”
“I pressed pound the last time and it got me disconnected.”
“That’s not really very likely. If you’ll hold, I can just transfer you myself.”
With great reluctance, Tamara found herself saying, “All right. We can try that. Thank you.”
A click, then an ominous emptiness sounded at her ear for about five seconds before Tamara heard a chirpy three-toned, high-pitched ring, and then a metallic, disembodied voice: “If you’d like to make a call, please hang up and-”
“God damn it!” She slammed the phone back onto the receiver. Swearing a blue streak, she walked into the kitchen, made an about-face, came back to the telephone, picked it up about a foot, and slammed it down again. Then she turned and stared at the door to her apartment.
“And while we’re at it,” she said aloud to no one, “where the fuck are you, Jim?”
25
The drugs were beginning to wear off, but when Mickey opened his eyes, for a minute he thought he might be hallucinating. “Alicia? What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be at work?”
“Your sister told me what happened.” She sat in a chair near the head of his bed. Beyond her, he caught a glimpse of the wall clock-eight forty-five. “You look really beat up.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“Are you okay?”
“They say I’m going to live. But she really nailed me. The other driver, I mean.” He closed his eyes briefly, opened them again. Yep, Alicia was still there. “You didn’t have to come down here,” he said. “I’m glad you did, but-”
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