to stay put. Like a collie, she obeyed. Ambling toward the garage, hands in his pockets, he waited for Lattimore. Overhead, a turkey vulture sailed toward the strait.
Pitcavage crossed his arms and made sure none of the local cops was within earshot. “Anything new on where Mr. Orantes might be?”
Lattimore shook his head and tried to straighten up, assume full height, if only to reassert that crucial inch over the lawyer. “You mean from what I’ve found out here?”
“I mean from what you’ve found out, period.”
“His cell phone tracks to somewhere out in the wetlands, little north of here.”
Pitcavage cocked an eyebrow. “We couldn’t be so lucky he’s lying right there beside it, could we.” It wasn’t a question.
“I suppose we could get the locals to dredge around, look for a weighted body.” He found himself ambivalent on the merits of finding Happy dead.
“Ask,” Pitcavage said, pulling a stick of gum from his pocket, peeling away the foil.
“Sure.”
“If he’s alive-and halfway smart-he’s in Mexico already, maybe El Salvador.” He balled up the foil wrapper, dropped it discreetly, chewing noisily. “He’s got connections down there, or am I wrong?”
“Of a sort, yeah.”
“You see him running somewhere else?”
“No. El Salvador, because it’s familiar. Mexico, because it’s Mexico.”
“He gets caught, tries to use his CI status to buy his way out? The lid comes off this thing and there won’t be any putting it back on.” Pitcavage crossed his arms, the unhappy prince. “We become the idiots who green-lighted a comical case with a bent snitch. That’s something I can live without. Which reminds me: You’ve shut the thing down. Or Orpilla has?”
“Of course.”
“But you’ve still got two of the relatives, the CI’s father, his cousin or something, wandering around Central America somewhere.”
“Along with the interpreter, the Iraqi, Palestinian, whatever. Samir Khalid Sadiq.”
Pitcavage winced. “Fuck me.”
“They were in Guatemala last time we knew for certain. The cell phone we had a bead on went dead about a week ago.”
“A
“Jon-”
“And your CI had what to say about that?”
“Said his cousin turned the phone off, save the battery. It’s not like they’re staying in Sheratons down there, 220 wall sockets everywhere they stop.”
“And you believed him?”
Lattimore felt a sagging weight, pulling him down, losing the crucial inch. “At that point, I had no reason not to.”
“A week. Jesus.”
“Not a whole week. Four days. Maybe five.”
Pitcavage pinched the bridge of his nose. Posturing. “Give me your sense of the locals.”
Toeing a clump of dead grass rooted in a crack in the driveway, Lattimore said, “I haven’t caught wind of any axes to grind, if that’s what you mean.”
“They’re not going to ass-fuck us in the press?”
There’s a picture, Lattimore thought. “Not yet.”
“Until they can’t close the thing. Then they’ll start pointing fingers, say one of the two still at large was a federal informant. Oh how lovely that will be.”
“Like I said, I’m not sensing any agendas.”
“Make sure it stays that way. Let them know, as far as cooperation’s concerned, anything and everything’s on the table. It’s not going to be the usual one-way street. They want you to sharpen pencils, you do it. They want you to blow every drunk in the holding tank-”
Another picture. “There any chance we can get a wiretap on the aunt’s phone? She may be the only point of contact between our CI and the three guys heading north for the border. That’s likely our best bet for getting a bead on everybody.”
“Under Title III? Not a chance.” Pitcavage went to spit out his gum, caught himself; it was a crime scene, after all. He glanced down at the foil wrapper but didn’t pick it up. “Prove to me her phone’s being used to advance criminal activity, show me there’s no other way to advance the investigation, maybe. But not if we’re fishing. Locals might have better luck under state law, which returns us to the subject of making nice. Keep them happy. For your own sake if no one else’s.”
He clapped Lattimore on the back with staged camaraderie, then turned and strode back toward the street, signaling the ample blonde in the prim gray suit to come along. Lattimore wondered how long they’d been lovers.
He went back in, saw Dunn wrapping up with Lourdes, gestured him into the living room. He worked up a good-buddy smile. “I know somebody you’re going to want to talk to.”
TWO NIGHTS NOW, GODO STILL HADN’T COME HOME, NO CALL, NO MESSAGE on the machine. Lucha decided to remake his bed as though that might conjure him back. The sheet felt papery crisp beneath her hands as she spread it flat, tucked it tight, that bracing smell. For a moment at least she felt something like hope, even happiness, opening a window to let in some air. What a stench that boy could have, so much worse since he came back from the war. Not just the wounds. He didn’t take care of himself. She grabbed the trash basket and went around the room, collecting balled-up tissues, shredded bits of newspaper-he did this as he watched TV, like a hamster lining its cage-candy wrappers, beer cans. Next she gathered his dirty clothes into a pile, shrinking from the smell. Finding one particularly rank tennis shoe, she hunted for its mate, got down on her knees, checked beneath the bed. The shotgun and pistol were gone. She checked the nightstand, rifling open the drawer. That gun wasn’t there, either, nor the pills.
Don’t get worked up over nothing, she told herself, sitting on the bed. He’d talked the past few weeks about going out with a group of friends, target practice, the shooting range, showing them a proper respect for their weapons. He said it helped him get over his nerves, so noises didn’t make him jump quite so much. And he had, she thought, seemed more relaxed, more focused, stronger. Then, like that-poof, gone, no word. It was like him in some sense, so thoughtless, so unpredictable. And yet she couldn’t shake a bad feeling. Her dreams had been strange and violent but that had been true since they’d sent Faustino away and it had only grown worse after Roque went down to bring him back. She spent all day trying not to think of what might happen to them, only to have it float up without warning in her sleep.
Then there was Happy. He came and went, sometimes the crack of dawn, sometimes the dead of night, careful to the point of paranoia. Still, his visits were a comfort. He’d changed, grown more respectful. More like his father. He too had vanished, not a glimpse of him for days.
Her loneliness seemed heavier, harder to bear. She felt afraid.
A moment later-was it longer?-the phone rang and she tripped over her own feet, banging into the doorway, running to answer it. Gripping the receiver with both hands, she shouted into the mouthpiece,
“Tia Lucha?”
It was Roque. He sounded odd. Different.
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Why would he want to speak to Pablito?-
