long.
“You,” he said, his face now filled with defiant alarm.
“If you run, I’ll catch you for sure this time. And you won’t like what happens next.”
“You can’t do that,” he said, looking over my shoulder as if seriously considering a run anyway. I put my hand on his forearm like Sullivan did to calm down the rowdy fishermen at the Pequot. It seemed to have the same oddly terrifying, and consequently quieting, effect.
“There’s no reason to get emotional here,” I said, in barely audible tones. “I’m just trying to get some information.”
“Who are you?” he asked.
“I’m Sam Acquillo. I’m looking for Iku Kinjo. They say she’s your girlfriend.”
Without taking his eyes off me Dobson reached for his foamy light brown coffee and took a sip. Terror and confusion weren’t going to stand in the way of a hot jolt of caffeine. Not at those prices.
“Why are you looking for her?” he asked.
“Why aren’t you?”
“Who says I’m not?”
“You don’t seem concerned,” I said.
“I’m concerned. I’m very concerned.”
“I don’t think you are.”
“What’re you, a psychologist?” he asked.
“An engineer. It’s a type of psychology.”
“Look, I don’t know who you are.”
“Sam Acquillo. I told you that already.”
“But I don’t have to talk to you about anything if I don’t want to.”
I nodded. “That’s right. Though I wonder why you wouldn’t, if you’re concerned about Iku. We should be on the same team.”
“Concern for Iku and wanting to find her are two very different things,” he spat at me, proud to advance the proposition.
“Really?”
“Oh, come on. You think I don’t know what you’re trying to do? Even if I knew where she was, and I don’t, I wouldn’t tell you people.”
“You wouldn’t?”
Courage of conviction didn’t sit that comfortably with Robert Dobson, but as we talked, he warmed to the role.
“Yeah,” he said. “So let go of me and let me get back to my coffee or something’s going to happen that somebody’s not going to be too happy about.”
I realized I was still holding his arm. I let go and said, “What something?”
He obviously hadn’t thought that through.
“If you don’t mind,” he said, starting to rise.
I grabbed his shirt sleeve and shoved him back in his seat.
“What do you mean, ‘you people.’ What people?”
“If you don’t know, I’m not going to tell you.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“I’m not stupid. You can tell Angel and his overpaid, glorified goons to go jump in a lake. Or the East River, which is closer,” he said, making another attempt at escape, which this time I let him do. Almost.
I followed him out to the parking lot and met him at his Volvo, where he was fumbling with his keys and half-consumed liquid confection.
“I just need to know she’s all right,” I said to his back. “I don’t have to see her or know where she is. Take a picture or a videotape with a current newspaper. That kind of thing.”
He spun around.
“Like a kidnap victim?” he asked.
I moved in closer, forcing him to back up into his car’s side panel.
“Come on, Bobby, loosen up. Nothing bad can happen from this. Only good. I don’t give a shit about why she bugged out, or where she is or where she’s going from here. I just need to know she’s okay. Then I’m gone from her life forever. And yours.”
His face loosened up for a second, then suspicion crept back in again. “That’s all you want? Why?” he asked, the first sensible question of the day.
I told him the truth.
“Somebody’s paying me to find out. All I need is proof she’s alive and unharmed and I’m done.”
“If I did, hypothetically, know how to get her that message, what’s hypothetically in it for me?”
He went to take a sip of his coffee thing. I took the cup out of his hand before it reached his lips, tossed the coffee and shoved the crumpled cup into my pocket. He looked at me like I’d just pissed on his leg.
“You’re not so good at listening,” I told him. “Do this and I’m gone. Don’t and I’m so far up your ass we’ll be sharing sunglasses.”
I wanted to feel sorry for him, but I was having a hard time doing it. Maybe it was that whiny, overfunded, soft-palmed, self-reverential air of blase entitlement. Or maybe not. Maybe I was just in a bad mood.
“I don’t know where she is, I swear I don’t,” he said, an anxious quaver in his voice. “We sort of split up a while ago. Her idea. But I’m sure she’s okay. I’d know if she wasn’t.”
I moved in even closer. Close enough to see the pores on his cheeks and smell the fear on his breath. I gathered up the front of his pink oxford cloth shirt and half lifted him off the ground.
“What are you going to do to me?” he asked, like he thought he already knew.
I immediately felt like a piece of shit. I let go of his shirt, took a few steps back and inhaled a deep breath, shaking the dopey fury out of my head. I searched my memory for mantras designed to quell anger, but I was still too worked up to think of any.
“It’s not that important,” I said to him.
I pulled a pen out of my jacket pocket and searched around my jeans, eventually coming up with a gas receipt. I walked over and used the Volvo’s hood to write my name and phone number on the back. I handed it to him.
“I apologize,” I said to him. “I still want to find her, but if you don’t want to help me, okay. I don’t know for sure, but I think it would be better for Iku if she opened a channel of communication. Give her my number. She’ll remember me. She can trust me, though she might not believe that.”
Dobson flinched when I stuffed the receipt into his shirt pocket. I left him and went back to Amanda’s pickup. But before a half dozen paces I stopped and turned around. Dobson was still leaning against his Volvo, studying the piece of paper I’d given him.
“Who the hell is Angel?” I asked him.
Dobson looked up from the receipt.
“If you don’t know, who the hell are you?” he said, and then rolled to his right, catching the handle of the Volvo’s door and letting himself in, starting the car and racing off in a cloud of dust, overwhelmed by the moments in life that remind people like him of their own ineffectuality, their brittle love of self.
SEVEN
I SPENT THE REST OF THE DAY at Sonny’s beating on leather bags until my legs, wrists and lungs were equally sore. Then I poached myself in the hot tub, which almost put me to sleep. In that somnambulant stupor I was defenseless against visions of Iku Kinjo caught in a fervent embrace with George Donovan, lounging around afterward wrapped in desultory pillow talk.
I felt better after nullifying the hot tub with a long, cold shower. Better than I felt after leaving Robert Dobson.
It was late evening by then. I’d left Eddie’s secret entrance open so he could come and go as he pleased. By now, Amanda was likely home diversifying his diet with hors d’oeuvres selected to accompany her first glass of
