Wendell shrugged. 'We wasn't so close.'
'You enter into a plot to kill seven people with a guy you weren't close to.'
'Sure, it was like, you know, business partners,' Wendell said and laughed. 'Wasn't like we was gonna get married or something.'
'But you must have had reason to think you could trust him.'
Wendell shrugged.
'But you couldn't,' I said.
Wendell shrugged again.
'Make you mad?'
'Fuck him, man. I got it done without him.'
'Got what done?' I said.
'I took care of business,' he said.
'You shot those people without him?'
Taglio put a hand on Wendell's arm. Wendell looked at him. Taglio shook his head.
'I'm not talking about that,' Wendell said.
'You know who shot whom?' I said.
Wendell shook his head.
'Did you shoot more or did Jared?'
Wendell shook his head.
'There were fifteen people shot,' I said. 'One of you must have shot more than the other unless both of you shot at least one of the same people.'
Wendell shrugged.
'Maybe you both shot them all,' I said.
'Fuck you,' Wendell said. 'I ain't talking to you no more.'
'Everybody says that to me,' I said. 'Sooner or later.'
Chapter 15
WENDELL GRANT'S MOTHER's name was Wilma. She ran a little health-food store near the center of town, with four tables outside, where you could sit and consume sassafras tea and bean sprouts on whole-grain bread. She was a pale woman with big, dark eyes and dark, straight, shoulder-length hair, which was beginning to show some gray. The day I went to see her, she was wearing an ankle-length gray dress with blue flowers, and leather sandals. There was no sign of makeup.
It was three o'clock in the afternoon. The store was empty of customers, and Wilma Grunt sat with me at one of the small tables on the sidewalk outside the store. She drank some tea. I didn't.
'He just never . . .' she said.
I nodded.
'He never was what I wanted him to be,' she said.
Her nails were square and clean, and devoid of polish. Her hands looked as if she washed them often.
'And Wendell's father?' I said.
She shook her head.
'No father?' I said.
'Except in a biological sense,' she said. 'I'm a single mother. His father is an anonymous sperm donor.'
'And you've never been married?'
'No.'
'Are you a lesbian?' I said.
'Not being married doesn't mean you are homosexual,' she said.
'I know,' I said.
'Are you married?'
'No.'
She smiled slightly and nodded.
'I have had men in my life,' she said. 'But I never wished to marry them.'
'But you wanted a family.'
'I wanted,' she said, 'someone to share my life. I wanted to teach him and show him and talk with him and be with him. . . .' She stared down the long, still, tree-canopied, almost empty street. 'I wanted someone that belonged to me.'
