out this guy Dominic’s set you up with. He’s a goofy bird and the work’ll bore you stupid, but I don’t think he’s gonna mess with you. No kickbacks, no weird threats because you scare him. My guess is, it’s the best gig you could expect right now involving photography. Stick with it for a year, who knows? You could be doing your own stuff, showing it around town maybe. There are still a lot of little galleries here. That’s what you want, right?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
Eddy snorted. “It’s what you want, trust me. As for women, this is an easy town to get laid in. All the nice guys are boning all the other nice guys. Polly’s got friends who’ll jump you in a frenzy, I’m serious. You’re red meat compared to the preening yuppie fluff they’re used to. Don’t get me wrong, Shel’s a great old lady, or she was once. She chumped you off, though, remember? Don’t obsess. It’s not going to get you anywhere, except back in the tank.”
Oscar cleared their salads as the entrees arrived, then returned with a bumbling flourish to shower their plates with Parmesan. Abatangelo found himself staring at his food.
“It won’t bite back,” Eddy said, watching him.
Abatangelo speared a serving of sausage with his fork. He felt an excruciating reluctance. When he finally managed to put the serving on his tongue, what he feared would happen, happened. He put his fork back down and covered his face with his hand.
“It’s all right,” Eddy said gently. “Same thing happened to me.”
Oscar popped up tableside. Eddy assured him all was fine and gently urged him to vanish. In time, Abatangelo looked up from his hand, wearing a vacant smile, eyes red.
“Stupid,” he said. “Sorry.”
“No more sorry,” Eddy replied. “You’re home.”
Abatangelo picked up his fork. Memories came at him again and again as he ate, memories of a childhood spent in this same neighborhood. A childhood consumed with defying his father’s shame, nursing his mother’s fear, tormenting his sister, playing pranks on the phonies.
“Can I ask you something?” Eddy said.
Abatangelo looked up.
“This Shel thing. Twenty-five words or less: How far you willing to go?”
Abatangelo stared across the table. He figured it was best not to tell Eddy what he didn’t want to know. “She said she could stand to see me,” he said. “I could stand to see her. I’ll be careful. After that, what happens, happens.”
Eddy shook his head. The effect of the wine was beginning to show. “That’s no good.”
“Ed, what- ”
“I can assure you, man, Shel’s in a spot. Her eyes tell you that. But that doesn’t mean she’s suffering
Abatangelo put his fork down. “You’ve made your point.”
Eddy leaned close, eyes aglow. “Don’t… obsess…”
Abatangelo regarded the face before him with a sudden intense discomfort. He said, “What do you suggest, Ed? Sit and reflect? I’ve had ten years of rolling things around in my head. Time for a little exercise.”
“Look, Dan, I know how you feel.”
Abatangelo cackled. “Do you, now? What was it, forty-two months you did? Why was that, Ed?”
Eddy shrank back a little. “Look, I owe you. Big-time. I realize that.”
Abatangelo waved him off. “To obsess or not obsess is not my problem, Ed. My problem is making sure I don’t fall back into the bad habit that sneaks up on you inside the walls, the habit of thinking everything over ten different ways because that’s all you’ve got the chance to do. Lots of time on your hands. Remember? Well, that’s over. At least everybody keeps telling me it is. What’s your take on that, Ed? Is it over?”
“No, not yet,” Eddy said. “Not really.”
“Aha.”
“Which is why it’s important to stay smart.”
Abatangelo wiped his hands on his napkin, felt in his pocket to be sure he had the printout with Shel’s address, and rose from the table. “There’s someplace I’ve gotta be,” he said.
“No, Dan, come on. Don’t. It’s a chump move.”
Abatangelo stiffened. “Chump move. Stay smart. You got something you want to tell me, Ed?”
Eddy looked off, trying to puzzle out where things had gone so wrong. Abatangelo said, “I’ll see you tomorrow morning, fill you in on how it all turns out. Thanks for dinner.”
“Danny, please. Sit down.”
“And the cake,” He started moving away. “You outdid yourself. I mean that.”
Chapter 6
Frank surveyed the three vehicles deposited beneath a pole lamp in the Lucky Market parking lot in East Antioch.
“You said three trucks,” Frank said. “These ain’t trucks.”
Two of the vehicles were construction vans. One had the shocks gone in back. The other had bald tires and trails of scaly black rust rimming each wheel well. The third vehicle was a makeshift tool wagon, fashioned from a twenty-foot flatbed with a plywood aftershed bolted down in back. As though all this weren’t bad enough, every one of them was smaller than what Frank had had in mind.
“Lonesome George must’ve seen you fuckers coming,” he said.
Mooch hiked up his collar. “Like a little cheese with that whine, Frank?” A winter drizzle began to fall. “Not like we’re driving to Jupiter.”
“There’s plenty of room, Frank,” Chewy said. He sounded as though he was trying to convince himself. “I mean, how much stuff is there?”
Frank started back for his truck. “Ever try to shove ten pounds of shit into a two-pound bag? That’s how much stuff there is.”
There was something else bothering him. He couldn’t quite figure out what it was. He stood there a moment studying the trucks in the rain, then it came to him. The tool wagon’s aftershed, it was painted a pale blue. Robin’s egg, he believed the color was called. The color was faded, chipped, stained, but even so, it brought to mind the shade of blue found on children’s blankets, painted on the walls of nurseries. He thought of Jesse, and all of sudden it was hard to swallow. The air felt colder than the weather justified.
Not now, he told himself. He reached inside the cabin of his truck, behind the seat, to remove the boltcutter. As he reached for it he spotted the neoprene case in which he kept a loaded Ruger 9 mm. With the seat obscuring him from view, he considered the matter. Like a little cheese with that whine? It was a pretty gun, a good gun. He opened the case, removed the clip from the Ruger, pocketed the clip and shoved the pistol in his waistband, pulling out his shirttail to hide the protruding grip. There was an eight ball of cocaine in the case as well; he stowed it in his pocket. Then he pulled the seat back into place, locked the door and headed for the lead van.
“Stay in a tight line behind me, don’t let anybody cut in,” Frank instructed. “If anything goes wrong with your truck, or whatever the hell you call these things, flash your brights.”
He led them out onto the Delta Highway and they followed it southeast in a chill, misting rain. Beyond Bethany they veered due south on Mountain House Road and shortly pulled up before a sprawling, shabby facility called Easy Access Storage. A hurricane fence surrounded the premises, sagging halfway to the ground in places. Inside, the storage sheds defiled like deserted barracks in the misty darkness, tin-roofed stucco sheds stained with oil and patched here and there with mismatched spackling. Hellhole Estates, Frank thought. But that was the genius of it. Hiding stolen goods worth $150,000 beneath a trash pile in the middle of nowhere.
The storage facility was but one more enterprise operated by Felix Randall. He’d bought it from a local family who’d packed up and moved to Idaho, part of the mass white flight increasingly common to the region, given the growing Mexican influx. Felix used the place intermittently to house his speed labs and store contraband. He left it unguarded on the principle he’d rather lose whatever he decided to leave there than risk handing some ill-paid
