Down Here

“Want me to come with you?”

Fucking moron, you didn’t see that one coming? I thought. “I’d like to have you stay with me,” I said. “But not until I . . . do some stuff to my place.”

“You mean, like, rehab?”

“No. I mean, like, clean.”

She giggled. Then said, “You probably think I’m the world’s best housekeeper, looking around this place.”

“It does look immaculate.”

“It should. I’m hardly ever here. I have a girl come in twice a week, and I’ll bet all she does is watch TV.”

“You don’t let her touch your bottle tree, do you?”

“Never! I blow the dust off it with my own breath.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“When I put something together myself—even a deal, which is not really a thing you can touch—I get very protective of it. I don’t want anyone handling it but me.”

“I understand.”

“You’re the same way about your car, I bet.”

“I guess I am, now that you make me think about it,” I confessed, lying. The truth was, the Plymouth had been built as a multi-user appliance—power steering and an automatic transmission made it possible for anyone to drive the beast, if they didn’t get too crazy with the gas pedal. “How about this? I go and get some fresh clothes, and come back in time for dinner?”

“Do you want to go to—?”

“Let me surprise you,” I said.

A block away from Laura’s, I thumbed my cellular into life.

“Gardens.”

“It’s me, Mama. Can you get everyone over there?”

“Now, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Basement?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

Max was the only one there when I walked in. He was in my booth, trying to play a game of solitaire. Mama was seated across from him, tapping the table sharply every time she detected what she considered a major error in progress.

“Have soup at big table,” Mama said, confirming everyone was on their way. I never would have asked her. In my family, some things you know inside yourself. Other things—like “basement” meaning “weapons”—you learn.

The Prof strolled in the door just as the soup came up from the back. He snatched a cup from the tray and put it on the table in front of him as he sat down.

“I’m in,” he said, as if the cup were a poker chip.

“Where’s Clarence?” I asked.

“He’s with Terry, over at your place, cooking on those computers.”

“But that’s just around the—”

“You want the Mole on the set, letting him drive ain’t the bet, bro. They have to go and haul him over.”

“Fair enough,” I said, just as Michelle swept into the joint.

“This had better be important,” she said.

She didn’t bother to wait for anyone to pull out a chair for her—Clarence is the only one who ever does. And I didn’t bother to assure her the meet was important—she was just being herself.

“So? What’s up, pup?” the Prof asked.

“Let’s wait until everyone’s here,” I said. “I don’t want to tell it twice.”

“Righteous,” he said, lighting a smoke.

“You did get to be with that girl?” Michelle demanded.

“Yeah,” I said.

“And you are going to talk about that?”

“Yes, Michelle.”

“Not in front of my son, you’re not,” she said, in a tone of utter finality.

“Honey, he’s old enough to—”

“Don’t you say a word!” she warned me.

“Terry’s been teaching Clarence some boss stuff,” the Prof slipped in. “Boy’s talking about going to school, for real.”

“I’m sure,” Michelle said, not mollified. “And I’m glad, Prof,” she added, quickly. “But if you think I’m going to have Terry sit here and listen to the gory details of—”

“There won’t be any details, honey,” I promised.

“How can I know if my . . . expertise is needed without specifics?” she said, exasperated.

“I can tell you that part right now,” I said. “Before they get here. Fair enough?”

“Sold,” she said.

^“It was a Seimens,” I told the Mole, almost an hour later. “One of those jobs that work as a regular phone and as a cordless, too. The main one is in the kitchen. She’s got three of those pod-things in different rooms. You just lift the cordless unit out of them and talk. It’s a two-line job. Probably uses the second one for the fax. Or maybe the Internet.”

The Mole shook his head. “That is a difficult one to plant a device in,” he said. “You don’t have the . . . knowledge. It would be better at the junction. In the basement.”

“You see security cams?” the Prof asked.

“Not in the garage. I don’t know where they’d go to; I didn’t see a monitor in her apartment.”

“Just a voice system, like they got in regular apartment buildings?”

“I guess so,” I said. “I haven’t gone in the front door.”

“But you’re going back this evening, yes?” Michelle said. “So then we’ll know if—”

“No,” I told her, holding up the plastic card Laura had given to me. “She gave me hers, for the garage. Said she wouldn’t be using her car all day, so . . .”

The Mole took the card from my hand, studied it for a few seconds. He nodded, asked: “It doesn’t have to look the same?”

“As long as it works,” I told him.

“You can test it later,” the Mole said, pocketing the card.

“I don’t see a play except the phone,” I said. “We don’t have the personnel to shadow her—”

“Not in that neighborhood, for sure,” the Prof said, sourly.

“—but the house phone’s not enough,” I told them. “What if he contacts her on her cell? Or even at work? Hell, what if he drops her a goddamned postcard?”

“What makes you so sure they’re going to meet at all?” Michelle asked.

“They met once,” I said. “Or planned to meet, anyway. If the story we got is true, the sister shows up, he’s already down from the shots. Whatever he wanted to tell her, he couldn’t—or wouldn’t—do it on the phone. And he didn’t just want to meet her in a public place. He went to a lot of trouble to set the whole thing up.”

“You think he wanted to give her something, mahn?” Clarence asked.

“If he had it with him, whoever shot him got it,” I said. “But Wychek’s still running scared. Big scared. He’s got—still got—something good enough to convince the cops to keep him on ice. But, whatever it is, it has to be something . . . physical. Not just info he could carry around in his head. Otherwise, he would have already cut the deal he wanted. And there’d be no need to keep the charges running against Wolfe.”