moment. “You know what happens if I help you?”
“Yeah. I get to meet with Costilla.”
“Yeah, and when you don’t come back and they find your arms in TJ and your legs in Rosarito and your head in El Centro, then you know what?” He stared at me. “Then I’m responsible.”
“He’s not gonna kill me,” I said, trying to sound like I meant it.
A barking laugh burst out from Ernie’s mouth. “Right. ’Cause Alejandro Costilla always makes friends. That’s what the dude’s all about, right? Probably just wanted to scare you guys, sending those bangers to catch you on the freeway.”
I didn’t know what to say because I knew Ernie was right. He knew the world I was trying to get into much better than I did. That’s why I’d come to him. And I didn’t see a way to figure out the whole mess without seeing Costilla.
“Ernie, I don’t have a choice,” I said. “He’s got answers that I need. And he’s gonna come after me anyway. Hell, he already has. I’ve got nothing to lose.”
“Except your life,” he said quietly.
We let that hang in the air between us for a couple of minutes. Ernie was being a friend, trying to protect me from myself, which I appreciated. The problem, though, was that I didn’t need a friend. I needed a drug dealer.
“Call me tomorrow,” he said finally. “Here. Eight in the morning. I can’t promise anything.”
I stood up. “Thanks.”
Ernie stood. “Don’t thank me. You may think I’m doing you a favor, but I’m not.”
We shook hands.
“I know,” I said.
“I don’t think you do, Noah,” he said. “I don’t think you do.”
33
I left Chula Vista in a bad mood. And hungry.
I stopped at Roberto’s in Ocean Beach, above Sunset Cliffs, and grabbed a burrito and some rolled tacos. As I sat at the streetside table and watched the tourists and locals mingle along Antique Row, the hunger went away, but the bad mood didn’t.
I didn’t feel good about putting Ernie in the position I’d left him in, but I knew it was the most direct route to Costilla. I tried to tell myself that if Ernie really hadn’t wanted to help me, he wouldn’t have. I knew that was a lie, though. Friends, at least my friends, helped each other out. Loyalty was high on the list for me and the people I let into my life. It was loyalty to Kate that was driving me. Not her parents’ money, not anger, not even Carter getting hurt. Just loyalty. Ernie knew that if he ever came to me with something, I’d help him. A few questions asked, maybe, but I’d do it.
I just hoped I’d be around for the next time he needed me.
I drove up to UCSD and found Carter back in his hospital bed, more color in his face than when I’d left him yesterday. The frown he sported, though, was new. It seemed to be directed at what looked like fresh medical tape covering the upper part of his chest near his right arm.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey,” he said, still scowling. “Feels like someone ate a piece of my shoulder.”
“They give you any pain meds?”
He shook his head. “Tried to but I didn’t want them.”
I grabbed the chair by the window and slid it closer to the bed. “Well, that’s dumb.”
“My body is a temple.”
I spun the chair around and straddled it backward. “Your body is more like an all-night rave.”
“Whatever. I don’t want to be doped up.” He shifted slightly on the bed. “So, where you been?”
“Went to see Ernie.”
He fiddled with the IV tube that tucked into the back of his left hand. “I hope you mean the
“No, that Bert fella can be a real pain in the ass.”
The frown returned. “If you went to see Ernie, that means you are going to do something pretty stupid.”
I shrugged.
“Do I want to know?” he asked.
“No.”
He shifted again in the bed, and all of the tubes running out of his body shivered. “If you’re doing what I think you’re doing, at least let me know when. That way I’ll know what to tell the cops when you disappear.”
I didn’t want to talk about Costilla, even with Carter. Too much was going on in my head, and I didn’t want to share it until I had organized it.
“Saw Emily last night,” I said, switching to a subject I knew he’d be interested in.
“Saw Emily last night or saw Emily last night and this morning?” he asked, a tired smile forcing its way onto his mouth.
“The first one.”
He tugged at the tubes entering his nose, adjusting them. “Glad to know my hospitalization hasn’t hindered your love life.”
“It’s not a love life.”
“Sex life?”
“Nothing happened, and I don’t know what it is.”
“Does she?”
“Does she what?” I asked.
“Does she have an idea of what it is?” Carter said. “Or what she wants it to be?”
I shook my head. “We haven’t talked about it.”
“Are you going to?”
I shrugged because I didn’t know the answer. Half of me felt like Emily and I were gravitating toward one another out of grief. That would be understandable. But the other half of me wondered if maybe there was more to it. Maybe in a twisted sense, I was getting a second chance. And I wasn’t sure if I wanted it.
“You’ll figure it out,” Carter said.
“Probably,” I said.
The door to the room opened and a nurse hurried in with a green tray. The food was covered. She set it across his lap and disappeared out the door.
“It’s covered because that way I can’t tell her it sucks when she drops it off,” he said.
I laughed. “I’ll see if I can’t get you some decent dinner in here tonight.”
He lifted the various covers, unveiling some sort of chicken and jello combination. “Yeah, be a pal.” He poked at the food with the fork. “I was thinking about what you told me. About Kate and Randall.”
“Oh yeah?”
“His alleged affairs. You think whoever he was messing with was into the drugs, too?”
I hadn’t connected those two avenues. “I don’t know.”
“Might be interesting to find out where that heroin Kate had in the car with her came from,” he said.
Randall had said it was his, but hadn’t told me where it had come from. In my anger, I had neglected to ask some important questions.
“Yeah, it might,” I said.
Carter forked some of the dark red jello. “I’m just thinking that if he was sleeping with somebody else who shared their habit, Kate might’ve known her, too.”
“And if there was some friction there, we may have somebody else who had a reason to kill Kate,” I said.
He sucked the jello off the fork and aimed the empty utensil at me. “Bingo.”
