she said, grinning. “You keep one, too?”
“I always keep a log when I’m on a story. Only shitty and lazy reporters go on memory.” I paused. “What happened to yours?”
Amanda blinked, looked down. “I left it at home.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Amanda nodded remorsefully. I raised my hand and signaled Joyce. “Excuse me, but could we borrow a pen?” Joyce looked at me like I’d asked for her firstborn child, then took a pen from behind her ear and handed it over. I looked at the pen, took a napkin and wiped it down. Who knew where her ears had been?
Flipping open the notebook, I uncapped the pen and prepared to write. “Okay,” Amanda said. “Who?”
“Kind of a multipart question. The Guzmans. Luis and Christine. Christine knew what Fredrickson was talking about, so he went there for a reason. Fredrickson, of course. The man in black. The cops.”
“Hold off on the cops,” Amanda said.
“Why?”
“Think about their motivations. Right now, they’re in it for you and you alone. We’re trying to figure out what was going on before they got involved. What were the Guzmans hiding? What was Fredrickson looking for? And this guy in my house, how exactly is he involved?”
“I’m not sure, but he’s definitely not a cop. Maybe he knew Fredrickson somehow or knew about the missing package. Then he somehow connected me to you, and found us in St. Louis.”
Amanda was chewing her nail.
“Everything okay?”
“I’ll let you answer that. But you know what’s scary? That this guy found us. I didn’t tell anyone about you, and I’m pretty sure you weren’t stupid enough to tell anyone about me.”
“Pretty scary,” I said. She nodded.
I wrote these names down, drew an arrow connecting Fredrickson to the Guzmans. Another one connecting the man in black to both of them. Looking up from the paper, I caught Amanda staring at me.
“What?”
“Nothing,” she said. “But I’ve seen better handwriting from animals without opposable thumbs.”
“Lay off. As long as I can read it.”
“Suit yourself.” She leaned back, folded her hands above her head and yawned. “So is that it for the ‘who’?”
I fiddled with the pen, tried to think of who else might be involved. Then it hit me. I flipped through my notebook, and found the name I’d written down two days ago. The Guzmans’ landlord. Grady Larkin.
Amanda looked surprised. “Why do you think he’s involved?”
“Grady Larkin was quoted in the newspaper article as saying he heard a strange noise, then saw me fleeing the scene. Something just seems a bit off. Like he preferred to give an ex-convict the benefit of the doubt.” I put Larkin’s name down with a question mark next to it, drew a dotted line from him to the Guzmans.
“Anyone else?”
“I think that’s it. For now.”
“Okay, now the ‘what.’”
“Big question,” I said. “Drugs, maybe, but doubtful. Something valuable. That man at your house was ready to kill us both for it. You don’t attempt murder for a package of Twinkies.”
“Now that depends how old the Twinkies are. Maybe if they’re antiques you could get a good price on eBay.”
“Point taken. But the ‘what’ is pure speculation. All we know is that to the right person, the package is worth killing for.” My statement sunk in like a hypodermic needle. Worth killing for. We stared at each other for a moment, the gravity of the situation hitting home. Amanda broke the silence, thankfully, because I was ready to break down and cry.
“Okay, where?”
“New York,” I said. “Harlem, specifically. The apartment building at 2937 Broadway. Fredrickson was a New York cop, so it’s probably New York specific.”
“You don’t think St. Louis is involved?” I shook my head.
“St. Louis was circumstantial. The cops and the other man somehow tracked me there. It was blind luck that we ended up at your house.”
“Okay, another question,” Amanda said. “How exactly did they track you? How’d they figure out you were with me?”
“I really don’t know. Maybe someone saw me at NYU and reported it. The receptionist saw me checking out the student shuttles, she could have done something, said something. Maybe there was a camera set up at a tollbooth. There are a hundred possibilities.” Amanda hardly seemed satisfied by my response.
Joyce returned with our toast. Amanda’s looked crisp, light. Mine was burnt. Amanda sighed and handed me a slice of hers. I thanked her and spread a generous dollop of strawberry jam on it.
“Okay, when?” she said.
“My involvement began the day before yesterday, but the meeting between the Guzmans and John Fredrickson was likely set up earlier.”
“Why do you think so?” Amanda asked.
“When I arrived for the interview, Luis was decked out like he was going on a date with Hillary Clinton. But my question is this-if the Guzmans didn’t have this package, why did Luis bother getting dressed up?” Amanda thought about this, took a sip of coffee.
“Sympathy,” she said matter-of-factly.
“Come again?”
“Obviously Luis knew Fredrickson wanted something he didn’t have.” She took a bite of toast, smeared the rest with butter. “You ever get called to the principal’s office in high school?”
“Why?”
“Just humor me.”
I laughed. “Yeah, once or twice.”
“Well, what’d you wear?”
“I don’t know. Khakis, a sweater.”
“But you showered and shaved right? You looked presentable, didn’t you?”
“Of course.”
“The same reasoning applies. When you know you’re in trouble, you want to look like you’re really sorry, dress your best, yada yada yada. Luis knew Fredrickson would be pissed, and he wanted to soften the blow.”
“Lot of good it did him. Which means they were probably protecting themselves by lying to the newspapers. They figured it was better to pin the package’s disappearance on me.” We both nodded, a joint sense of satisfaction that brought levity to the situation. This was what we were both born to do.
“Now the big one,” Amanda said. “Why?”
“Why,” I said, then repeated it softly, looked at Amanda, ran my palm over my two days of beard stubble, and said, “I have no idea. But those three men after me, I don’t think they’re going to just stop. If I can’t figure it out, in the next few days I’ll either be in prison or dead.”
23
Mauser took two Advil and popped them in his mouth. Then he thought twice and popped two more. He thanked the young kid who stood over him with the medicine bottle, grinning like a dog who’d just won first prize. Joe’s head throbbed, blood pounding in the knot over his left temple. The Advil couldn’t work fast enough. The kid in the light brown St. Louis County Police Department uniform looked thrilled just to be at the scene. Mauser thanked him again, slowly pushing off the bed where he’d been sitting for the last half hour, trying to shake away the cobwebs.
Denton was out in the hallway. The head of the Bureau of Fugitive Affairs, some guy named Wendell whose
