was no escape for any of us.
This club was a gang just like any other gang I’d ever seen, either as a young blood or inside. And just like any other gang I’d ever encountered, once I got in the car with them I wouldn’t belong to myself anymore. I’d belong to them.
This wasn’t where Angela would have wanted me to wear that fancy suit anyway – and Sam would despise me all the way if I ever called this place my own while the Driver was still at large.
“We’ll be talking again later,” I said.
“You are a stubborn stiff-necked fool,” Tubbs said, realizing he’d muffed the sale even if he didn’t know exactly how. “You’ll never really step through this door all the way with me.”
I’d been about to leave but the paternal disappointment oozing from his voice irked me no end. So this withered son of a whore wanted to use Sam to work me? He wanted to keep playing like some sort of surrogate daddy to me?
“I suppose you’ve talked to whoever switched Kendra and Reese’s tours, right?” I asked, keeping my own voice as low as Tubbs was keeping his.
“What do you mean?” he asked, cocking his head.
“Answering a question with a question – go on playing dumb why don’t you? Kendra wasn’t on her normal patrol when she died, I’m sure you know that at least. In case you didn’t know though, about the guys who killed your daughter? A little birdie told me the guns and grenades they murdered Kendra with came from the SBPD evidence locker – the drugs they were high on too. They made a grand old party out of your daughter’s homicide, huh? And it all came from you and yours.”
For the first time that poker face cracked – he went pale. He tried and failed to be impassive, cranking down on his facial muscles hard enough his features twitched.
Still, I leaned in closer, spoke even softer and quieter so he’d have to listen hard and focus exclusively on my words over the hum of the Club. “Kendra was set up. It was a hit. And you know who murdered her.”
Tubbs trembled as both Meshbacks robotically approached, awaiting their master’s command.
“You will tell me who told you that. Now,” Tubbs gasped, his voice harsh and low.
He still didn’t want anyone else in the club to know we were having a border dispute over here; he had something to lose if they figured out I wasn’t as deep in his pocket as he had maybe been implying I was.
I kept anything even resembling a smile off my face, not wanting to push him any further than I already was – I wasn’t stupid enough to think I knew his limits. “Like I said, a little birdie. Tweety tweet, Mr. Tubbs.”
I turned on my heel and strolled down the hall, out the door, and across the street toward Sam’s Lincoln, my back crawling the whole way. I had no real faith that having all his business buddies around as eye witnesses would slow Tubbs down.
Sam had started the Continental, but the passenger door was locked and the window was up. I rapped on the closed glass with my knuckle but he just gave me the stink eye.
“What?” he mouthed.
“Open sesame, kid,” I said. Sam unlocked my door and I climbed in. Across the street Tubbs’ Bronco roared out the Club parking lot like it was in a hurry.
Sam wiped his face with the back of his hand. “You know we got nothing to offer to match what they’re putting on the table, and I know you’re looking out for number one like always. So what’s changed? How is now any different from an hour ago?”
I grinned at him. “Quit fishing. All you need to know is I want to go back to the Gardens.”
Chapter 42
Sam started to pull away from the curb.
“Wait,” I said, looking over at the library, where Chief Jansen had busted the under-age hooker a few minutes before. “Let’s go to the library really quick, I need to check on something.”
Sam drove over there, managing to take up two spaces when he parked at an uncaring angle.
“Wanna come in with me?” I asked, but he only laughed.
I left him and entered the cool quiet hush of my church. When I’d been inhaling the prison library whole I’d just about memorized the Dewey Decimal System. Now I wended my way through the rows and shelves, running my fingertips along the exposed book spines as I searched for those familiar catalog numbers.
Here was 818.3, and I nodded patriotic respect to the Transcendentalists as I passed: Thoreau with his bleak ironies – his attack disguised so well by the beauty of his words that his victim was unaware of the damage before it was too late. And Emerson, the King – his unapologetic world view was such a lonely one, I was surprised more of Ralph’s readers didn’t try to hack their wrists up with a dull butter knife. A little ways down at 811.3 Whitman held court, aloof as always: Walt, with his suicidal compassion dripping crimson from his poems like a squeezed triage room sponge.
From there a straight leap back to the ancients and my buddies the Stoics: 187 and Lucretius, with his flat gaze and incisive mind, attacking the world as if it were an enemy deliberately trying to pull the wool over his eyes. 188, and my almost-namesake, Marcus Aurelius – reading his Meditations was like chewing on tin foil sometimes; but Marcus freely gave all the tools necessary for courage and honor in a universe so obviously not constructed with our benefit in mind.
What should I do now, Lucretius? I asked silently. How would you go about things here, Marcus? But of course all I got from my boys was static.
Which of my mentors did I want to hold in my hand? What book would be worth the effort of carting it away from here?
I smiled as I realized who it had to be. I walked to 844, grabbed a copy of Montaigne’s Essays and headed to the checkout counter. “I don’t have a card,” I admitted to the librarian, a pretty young brunette.
“Do you have proof of residency?” she asked.
“Sara,” an older librarian called from behind her.
“Excuse me,” Sara said, going back to join her coworker. The two huddled together whispering, both of them turning to look at me occasionally. I was getting ready to leave when they both marched up to me and Sara took her seat again.
“We know who you are, Markus,” the older librarian told me, while Sara pressed all the necessary keys on her computer. I nodded, blinking a little.
I was happy as a kid at Christmas when I left the library with Montaigne, no longer fully alone. Sam just smirked when he saw the book in my hands, and we commenced to driving.
Chapter 43
“Just so you know,” Sam said, “the family’s name is the Vangs; the girl’s name was Mai. The mom you saw crying? She told me once she had seven other children back in Laos that didn’t even make it here to the Land of the Big PX – she still has two left, even with Mai gone. Maybe the Vangs ain’t gonna make you guest of honor at their next Moon Festival, but they know who killed Mai. And they know damn well it wasn’t you.”
“Thanks Sam,” I said.
“For what?”
“Just ‘thanks,’ and let’s leave it at that.” I glanced at the floor but our Kodachrome was gone. I looked around at Sam’s belongings scattered around the car and almost asked him why he didn’t stop pretending he wasn’t with Elaine; why he didn’t just move in with her.
No, I thought, studying his stony profile as he chauffeured me home to the Gardens. Sam’s love life was none of my affair.
