get out of here, but it’s like my feet are stuck to the ground. I’m just rooted there, afraid I’m going to make some noise if I move. I mean, I really don’t want to be there, but.. .” Another shrug, followed by another sigh.
“So she hit him?”
Now Linda nodded. “And then there’s this silence, and finally I hear him plain as day. ‘Look,’ he says, ‘I’m sorry, but it’s over. I can’t do anything about it.’
“And she goes, ‘You can. You can if you still love me.’
“And he goes, ‘Aren’t you listening to me? That’s the problem. I don’t love you anymore.’
“And then I hear her say, ‘No, no, no, that can’t be,’ and then there’s this kind of sickening sound, like a… I don’t really know what it was like exactly. I mean, she kind of groaned with exertion or something and then there was this, this kind of dull sound-I even thought at the time it could have been somebody getting hit with something. I know I should have maybe gone and looked then. I mean, it sounded bad enough, but by then I was scared. I mean really scared. And then suddenly I start to actually feel sick and light-headed myself and I turn back and start walking away as fast and as quietly as I can. I really should have done something about it then, I think. I mean, called the police or told somebody. But when there was nothing about it on the news, not until Friday when they found the body, and even then I didn’t immediately put it together. Although I guess I should have, shouldn’t I?”
“You’re here now,” Tamara told her, “when a lot of other people wouldn’t be. So I wouldn’t beat myself up over it too much.”
“I don’t like to think I’m such a coward,” Linda said, “or that I only came forward now because of the reward.”
“I don’t think that,” Tamara said, “and I’m the only one listening.”
20
Being thorough, Mickey stayed on at the Sanctuary House offices and spoke for a time with each one of the five other women who worked there to see if any of them had seen or heard anything from Nancy Neshek on the Monday afternoon of the reward announcement that might bear on the question she had meant to put to the Hunt Club. None of them was particularly helpful; all were shaken and tearful.
It was after noon when Mickey finally finished and left the admin office. From the hospital lobby, he called Hunt on his cell phone and left a message, thinking, What’s the goddamn point of having a cell phone if you don’t take it with you or keep it turned on? Hunt was supposed to be at the Como memorial. So was nearly the entire cast of characters from which he needed to find alibis for the past Monday night. So it was doubly frustrating that Mickey had just learned that the Communities of Opportunity people had held a meeting on that night. Presumably- in fact, almost certainly-Nancy Neshek had been there along with many others of the nonprofit executive directors, associates, and certainly even Len Turner.
And Hunt, at this very moment, was in all probability with these people and didn’t have that one rather critical bit of information. But then, getting to his car, Mickey realized that if Hunt spoke to even one of these people, he’d find out about the Monday-night meeting right away anyway.
Still, Mickey liked being the bearer of good news, especially when he thought it was good stuff and he’d discovered it himself. So he placed another call to the office to brag a bit to Tamara, but she didn’t pick up there either. And what was that about? he wondered.
For just a brief moment, he found that his stomach had gone a little hollow. Where was his sister? Had he and Hunt been too cavalier about bringing her back to work, in assuming that’s what she wanted, in giving her more responsibility? Or might Mickey hope against hope that she had actually, of her own volition, gone out for something to eat? It was, after all, lunchtime.
His phone still in his hand, without much forethought, he went to his favorites list and hit Jim’s number, heard it ring four times, got his answering machine. “Give me a fucking break,” he said aloud, and leaving no message, he threw his phone onto the seat next to him.
He knew who he wanted to call next. But really, what was he going to say to Alicia except that he had just loved her company the night before and wanted to see her again? Wanted to see her all the time, in fact. What she had called her nerd moment from the night before had struck Mickey as incredibly poignant, echoing as it did his own feelings. It had humanized her to an extent that had taken him by surprise. He really didn’t need anything to help make her more compelling, but there it had been, unpracticed and sincere, a glimpse of the person under the package.
Beautiful there as well.
Still, he would have to wait. She was mourning Dominic Como. In fact, now that he thought of it, she was almost certainly at the memorial herself.
This was just swell, he was thinking. Here he was, all dressed up and no place to go. In the future, he would really have to try to remember to get more and/or clearer assignments from Hunt before he left the office for the day, which now stretched long and empty before him.
He turned the key in the ignition, the car started right up, and he pulled out of his space. When he got to Potrero, the traffic was heavy and unbroken going south to his left, but there was an opening turning right if he moved quickly, and so he jammed down on the accelerator.
That was the extent of the thought he gave to turning back uptown. It could have easily gone either way, since he didn’t have a destination in mind.
Such a small, random decision. Such huge consequences.
The windows that overlooked the booth tables at Lou the Greek’s were set high in the west-facing wall, their bases perhaps six feet from the floor. This unusual design feature wasn’t due to some architect’s skewed or artistic vision; from outside the building, all six of the windows sat level to the asphalt that paved a debris- and Dumpster- strewn alley. Lou’s had been built about halfway underground. Patrons entering the building’s front double doors could either go up the stairs to the first floor-Acme Bail Bonds, Florence Ward/Notary Public, and Presto Dispatch (a document delivery service)-or down eight ammonia- or possibly urine-tinged steps, through a red- leather one-sided swinging door, and into the bustling netherworld of Lou’s-“Open Six to Two Seven Days a Week/Full Bar/Daily Special.”
When you walk in, the bar is to your right. If it’s lunchtime, the bar is jammed, with all the stools taken, and behind them a couple of rows of standing room. If it’s your first time here, you notice the high windows, under them the six old-fashioned four-person wooden booths, the low-slung acoustic tile ceiling, the faint odor of cooking oil, soy sauce, maybe spilled beer. The place squeezes twenty four-tops onto the floor, and six two-tops around the walls, and every weekday it serves over two hundred lunches, all the more remarkable because its menu every day, save the occasional bonanza of fortune cookies, is comprised of only one dish: the Special.
Lou the Greek’s wife, Chiu, was Chinese, and for twenty-five or more years, she’d been honoring her and her husband’s union by creating a new dish nearly every single day, always based on their two nationalities. Today’s Special, for example, General Lou’s Pork, was at once typical and unique: pita bread pockets stuffed with bright red Chinese barbecued pork, scallions, garlic, hoisin sauce, yogurt, and hot pepper flakes. A lot of hot pepper flakes.
Juhle and Russo sat sucking their iced teas through straws across from each other in one of the booths.
Russo set her glass down, swallowed, and blew in and out noisily a couple of times. “Holy shit,” she said. “Lou calls this ‘some spicy’? I’d like to see a lot spicy if this is some. This stuff is fire.”
Juhle slid over the little jar of pure hot pepper seeds in oil. “You want to get serious, add some of this. Then it gets spicy.”
“I pass.” Russo sipped again, rubbed at her lips. “I mean it. Holy shit.”
“You already said that.”
“It’s a two ‘holy-shit’ pita pocket.”
Juhle took another bite, chewed contentedly, switched to another subject without preamble. “So how can it hurt? We’re just talking to her.”
“We don’t know it’s her scarf, Devin.”
