Something about her answer raises the hairs on the back of my neck. A lawyer who doesn’t want to earn some easy cash from some hard-up people who are nearly out of options? It doesn’t add up.
“You’re sure that’s it?”
“Blaze, I’m sure.”
“How much did you tell him? How much does he know about the mess we’re in?”
She shifts. “Not much. We just talked about your mother’s problems. When it became apparent that he wasn’t interested, I left.”
“How did you find this shitty lawyer who doesn’t want to work?”
She flinches. Her eyes whipsaw side to side for a second, as if searching for a way out. Yeah, something definitely isn’t right. Is Saint Tiffany lying to me?
“He went to Stanford, too. When I first moved back here, I looked up what Stanford alums were in the area. I had this stupid idea of maybe reconnecting with some of them, maybe to get the spark back to return to Stanford and finish my studies there. Or maybe I was just hoping to find someone to talk to. I hurt for a long time, Blaze, and I kept it all inside, and eventually it turned me into this self-pitying person who just wanted to wallow in mediocrity while bitching about it.”
Though I’m sure she’s hiding something, the pain that’s in her voice draws my hands to her, and I brush a few wavy brown hairs out of her face. Even now, I can’t resist trying to comfort her.
“You had no one else to talk to? No family?”
She shrugs. “My dad isn’t the emotional support type; he’s the Torreon tax assessor, and he lives for his work. Even more than I do. I haven’t really spoken to him since I came back from Stanford because I knew he’d be disappointed in me. And seeing that disappointment — even if I thought he’d understand — would just be too much. I met him for coffee once, just to tell him the so-called good news when I got hired at Southwest Regional because it was the first actual job I’d had after years of temping. The look on his face when I told him I was going to be a loan advisor at some rinky-dinky little bank really hurt. It was like he was in actual pain. I ended up taking my coffee to go cause I just couldn’t stand being there. And my mom is off somewhere. She and my dad divorced almost ten years ago and, last I heard, she was living in San Francisco, but planning to move to Miami with some boyfriend of hers.”
“Your dad’s the tax assessor?”
She nods. “He is. Has been for a long time. He’s pretty well connected with a lot of banks and businesses around here. Are you asking because you want to see if he’ll help your mom?”
I wish he could. I wish you could talk to your dad without putting yourself at risk of getting hurt. But you’re just too honest to deal with your criminal father.
“That wouldn’t be a good idea. Do you really want to explain to your dad, after not seeing him for so long, what kind of mess we’re in?”
“No. He wouldn’t like to hear any of that. I got my work ethic from him. And regular ethics, too.”
I chew on our problem for a minute: we need more information, but the only resources we have are ourselves. There're no lawyers to call on, no daddy to talk to; it’s just us.
“There is another way to get that information.”
She leans in, eager to change the subject. “What’s that?”
“Anna is listed on my mom’s paperwork. I saw her at the meeting. Safe to say, she’s pulling plenty of strings in this scam. Also seems likely that, since she’s up to some illegal shit, she wouldn’t keep all this information at the bank. She’d keep it somewhere else, safe, away from any fucking intern or teller who might stumble on it. Right?”
She nods, but there’s a wary frown on her face. “I don’t like where you’re going with this, Blaze.”
“I don’t fucking like it, either. But I’m trying this new thing called ‘thinking’ that someone taught me, and it’s telling me that, since no legal professionals will help us out — no lawyers, and we sure as shit can’t go to the cops — it seems to me our only option is to bust into Anna’s house and find the shit we need there.”
She sits up. Shakes her head. “No, it’s out of the question.”
I sit up, too. Fold my arms and look her in the eye. She’s gone from reasonable to stick-up-her-ass stubborn in the blink of an eye. “Tell me what other options we have.”
“I’m sure if we sit and think, we can come up with a better plan than burglary.”
“We don’t have the fucking time,” I say, harsher than I mean to, but she has a determinedly uncooperative look on her face.
“Excuse me?”
“We can’t just sit around doing thought experiments or brainstorming or charts any of that other shit you learned up at Stanford. We have to act. Because, any day now, those fucking construction workers could come back and guess what happens then, Saint Tiffany? I’ll have to shoot every single one of them for threatening my mom.”
Her eyes flare. She stands up. Her hands fall open at her sides in exasperation. “So, you are telling me that my only choice here is between breaking into someone’s home or endorsing you in committing multiple homicides?”
I shake my head. Draw two intersecting circles in the air. “Wrong. You’ve got three options. Here, let me show you. This is a Venn diagram — yeah, I know that word, I paid attention in class sometimes — and there’s a point where the two intersect. So, your options are: burglary,
