“I know,” she said. “I know. But it was more than that with Mo.”
“What do you mean?”
“He stayed in bed a whole day. He just lay there in the dark, looking up at the ceiling. He wouldn’t talk to me.”
“He wouldn’t eat or anything?”
“When he went for water, he didn’t turn off the faucet, he didn’t even flush the toilet. And then I was in the kitchen, and I heard his car start in the driveway. When I got to the front door he was already going down the street. I called for him, but he didn’t hear me.” The desolation in Gella’s voice reminded me of her lost European family.
“Was he that close to your aunt?”
“He liked her, but she didn’t have much use for him. Uncle Sol and Aunt Fanny liked people with more of a sense of humor. But Morris always wanted to do things for them. When Sol was in prison, he would go over and take care of things. If something broke, he fixed it, and if there was some problem with the bills, he took care of it.” She paused and then said, “Do you think Fearless might come over and help me look for him after he sees to Uncle Sol?”
The thought of Fearless holding that awkward girl and then Morris stumbling in was like a train wreck in my mind.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe I could come by if he’s too busy. Maybe, yeah, I could come over.”
“Okay,” she said, accepting second best.
“But first I got to look into a couple’a things. First that, and then I’ll come by.”
“Okay. But please hurry.”
“If Morris comes back, you go up and sit with him when you can, okay?” I said. “I know it doesn’t seem like he notices you, but he does. He knows you’re there, but he’s just too sad to say it.”
“Thank you,” Gella said, sighing. “Thank you for that.”
We hung up on that high note, but I knew that she was still scared.
“Is she okay?” Loretta asked.
“Oh yeah. She just needed to talk to somebody.”
MILO HAD AGREED to take Fearless to retrieve Layla’s car from the street in front of the Las Palmas, where we’d left it when we took off after Latham and Grove were shot. Fearless had called Layla to apologize for keeping the car for so long. She was mad at first, but after a few minutes of Fearless saying he was sorry, she let him keep it a while longer. I left Milo’s place in my own car. That felt pretty good, me sitting behind the wheel, not on anybody’s tail and nobody on mine. That was fine. I drove over to the burnt-out lot that had been my bookstore only a few days before. Fontanelle was right. The few standing timbers of the frame had been torn down and dragged off. The lot had been raked so clean that it almost looked as if it had been swept.
I went inside expecting to see Theodore Wally in his blue T-shirt and green apron standing behind the candy- crowded counter. But instead, an older white man stood there. It was Antonio, the owner. Antonio had a bulbous face with a pencil-thin mustache that didn’t fit at all. You got the idea that he grew the lip hair when he was a younger, thinner man.
“Can I help you?” he asked in a tone that was anything but helpful. Antonio had seen me a few dozen times since I had been his neighbor. He took my money, gave me change. But he never recognized me, never learned my name.
“Where’s Theodore?”
“He doesn’t work here anymore.”
“Say what?”
He looked away from me instead of answering.
“Excuse me,” I said.
“What?”
“I’m lookin’ for Wally.”
“I told you —”
“Listen, man. Theodore has been workin’ in this store for more than ten years. He worked here four days ago. Now I know he didn’t just disappear.”
“He does not work here anymore,” the store owner said as if he were talking to an idiot. “He quit his job this morning. Just wrote a note and locked the door behind him. He didn’t even call. So now I have to come here every day because there is nobody else. If you know him so well, then you must know where he lives, so why don’t you go there and leave me in peace?”
