“Possible,” Ma replied. “But I play the odds, so I’m not thinking physicist. With me off to Memphis on Amtrak tomorrow morning, I don’t want to see you in the news by the time I get there, which won’t be for two and a half days.”
“Check your cell phone on the way, Ma. Maybe you won’t have to wait that long.”
Holiday laughed, then she slid off the barstool and took my hand. “I wonder if we could make an exception to . . . to Tuesday.”
“An exception?”
“Yes. Like . . . tonight. Call it a Special.”
“Well, I don’t know. It’s only Saturday. I’ll have to check my appointment calendar, see what I’ve got going.”
“Uh-huh. Lots of things to do between now and tomorrow morning. Maybe you could cancel something.”
“Life is a whirlwind of responsibilities and obligations.”
“I’m glad you understand that. Which means we should go.”
“Yeah? Where to, and do what?”
Her eyes sparkled. “I want to . . . show you something.”
Ma laughed. “You two. Just don’t forget you’re gonna drive me to the station tomorrow, Mort. Train leaves at seven fifty, so you better come by the house by seven, if you can get on your feet that early.”
Ma was headed to Memphis to visit her kid, Taryn Curtis, thirty-six years old, married, two kids about to become teenagers. Taryn was in real estate, working on her second million dollars. Ma was going to be gone for two weeks.
“I’ll be there,” I said.
“Make sure he’s up and on time,” Ma said to Holiday.
“I’ll get him up, Ma. Give me half an hour.”
Ma waved us away.
We went to Holiday’s apartment, which was a ten-minute walk from the university. In April, I’d sold the Ralston Street house and bought Jeri’s place on Washington Street between First and Second, half a mile west of downtown Reno. Her brother, Ron DiFrazzia, sold it to me. Giving up the house on Ralston Street felt weird. I’d lived there all my life except for a seven-year period when I’d rented it out after Dallas and I had been married for three years and moved into something bigger. After the divorce, I moved back in.
But things were different now. It was taking me a while to adjust to it, all my stuff in the large, well-maintained, two-story house Jeri had owned. The house on Ralston now belonged to a couple in their twenties with a year-old baby. Now I had a house with elbow room—and a home gym, which I used frequently, religiously, in fact. I could do twice as many chin-ups as I could in college. After digging post holes when I was recovering in Borroloola, Australia—recovering from Jeri’s murder—I was in better shape than I’d ever been. No point in letting it go to seed. I’d done roughly ten million foot-pounds of work digging those holes in tough red earth. According to Holiday, I had a Thunder Down Under look. Who was I to argue with that?
She opened the door to her apartment and we went in. “How about a shower?” she said, unbuttoning her blouse.
Again—who was I to argue with that?
At the Amtrak station at seven twenty the next morning, Maude Clary and I sat in the waiting room downstairs. The tracks were thirty-three feet below ground level in “The Trench,” a 265-million-dollar rectangle of ugly concrete that ran east–west through the heart of Reno’s gambling district and was still causing untold financial trouble for the city. Even paying the interest on the loan was a headache. The Trench was an enduring monument to the hubris of elected officials who’d rammed the project through, even though sixty-five percent of the voters had opposed it. And, of course the voters were right, and the officials were wrong, but since when was that a surprise? And since when did voters—your basic know-nothing citizens—have the right to tell brilliant, infallible elected officials what they wanted or what made sense?
At seven thirty-five, the train pulled in. Minutes later, Ma and I went aboard, and I helped her get her luggage settled in a sleeper car.
“That Danya girl,” Ma began, then stopped.
“Yup,” I prompted.
She stared at me for a moment, then sighed, as women often do around me. “Lemme know what she says. We’ll see if it’s anything we want to get involved in.”
“Will do.”
“She was one god-awful beautiful girl, boyo.”
“She was? I don’t notice stuff like that.”
Ma punched my chest. “Don’t let that spin you around.”
“Me? Spun around by a dame? You kiddin’?”
Ma shook her head. “Jesus.”
“I’ve got Sarah,” I said. Sarah, Holiday—Ma and I called her either or both.
“Right. She’s god-awful gorgeous, too.” Ma patted the bed she would be sleeping on the next two nights. “This thing’s kinda hard. Hope I sleep okay.” She turned and faced me. “What we do, Mort, is we investigate stuff. So, see what this Danya girl wants, but don’t do nothing ’til I give you the go-ahead.”
“You’re the boss, boss.”
“Damn right.” She gave me a look. “You’ve got my number. Keep me in the loop all the way. If this girl’s gonna be trouble, we don’t touch it.”
“In the loop. Got it.”
About then a guy came by and told me to get off the train or buy a ticket, they were leaving in five minutes. I kissed Ma on the cheek before I left, then watched and waved to her from beside the tracks as the train pulled away.
Right on time at ten a.m., sitting in my Toyota Tercel in the parking lot of an IHOP after breakfast, I phoned the number Danya had given me. The Toyota was a vintage piece of shit twenty-some years old that I couldn’t get rid of—not after selling the Ralston house. I get attached to the past in strange ways. Maybe it was that the side mirror of the Tercel howls when the car reaches sixty miles an hour. If I got a new
