'There are surgeries,' I said to her. 'Squares knows people. We can help.'
'No, thank you.'
'You can't live on vengeance forever.'
She tried a smile. 'You think that's what this is about?' She pointed to her mutilated face. 'You think I keep him here because of this?'
I was confused again.
Tanya shook her head. 'He told you how he recruited Sheila?'
I nodded.
'He gives himself all the credit. He talks about his natty clothes and smooth lines. But most of the girls, even the ones fresh off the bus, they're afraid to go with a guy alone. So you see, what really made the difference was that Louis had a partner. A woman. To help close the sale. To lull the girls into feeling safe.'
She waited. Her eyes were dry. A tremor began deep inside me and spread out. Tanya moved to the door. She opened it for me. I left and never went back.
43
There were two phone messages on my voice mail. The first was from Sheila's mother, Edna Rogers. Her tone was stiff and impersonal. The funeral would be in two days, she stated, at a chapel in Mason, Idaho. Mrs. Rogers gave me times and addresses and directions from Boise. I saved the message.
The second was from Yvonne Sterno. She said it was urgent that I call her right away. Her tone was one of barely restrained excitement. That made me uneasy. I wondered if she'd learned the true identity of Owen Enfield and if she had, would that be a positive or negative thing?
Yvonne answered on the first ring.
'What's up?' I asked.
'Got something big here, Will.'
'I'm listening.'
'We should have realized it earlier.'
'What's that?'
'Put the pieces together. A guy with a pseudonym. The FBI's strong interest. All the secrecy. A small community in a quiet area. You with me?'
'Not really, no.'
'Cripco was the key,' she went on. 'As I said, it's a dummy corporation. So I checked with a few sources. Truth is, they don't try to hide them that hard. The cover isn't that deep. The way they figure it, if someone spots the guy, they know or they don't know. They aren't going to do a big background check.'
'Yvonne?' I said.
'What?'
'I don't have a clue what you're talking about.'
'Cripco, the company who leased the house and the car, traces back to the United States marshal's office.'
Once again I felt my head teeter and spin. I let it go and a bright hope surfaced in the dark, murky blur. 'Wait a second,' I said. 'Are you saying that Owen Enfield is an undercover agent?'
'No, I don't think so. I mean, what would he be investigating at Stonepointe someone cheating at gin rummy?'
'What then?'
'The U.S. marshal not the FBI runs the witness protection program.'
More confusion. 'So you're saying that Owen Enfield…?'
'That the government was hiding him here, yeah. They gave him a new identity. The key, like I said before, is that they don't take the background that deep. A lot of people don't know that. Hell, sometimes they're even dumb about it. My source at the paper was telling me about this black drug dealer from Baltimore who they stuck in a lily-white suburb outside Chicago. A total screw up. That wasn't the case here, but if, say, Gotti were searching for Sammy the Bull, they'd either recognize him or not. They wouldn't bother checking his background to make sure. You know what I mean?'
'I think so.'
'So the way I figure it, this Owen Enfield was bad news. Most of the guys in witness protection are. So he's in the program and for some reason he murders these two guys and runs off. The FBI doesn't want that out. Think how embarrassing it would be the government cuts a deal with a guy and then he goes on a murder spree? Bad press all the way around, you know what I mean?'
I didn't say anything.
'Will?'
'Yeah.'
There was a pause. 'You're holding out on me, aren't you?'
I thought about what to do.
'Come on,' she said. 'Back and forth, remember? I give, you give.'
I don't know what I would have said if I would have told her that my brother and Owen Enfield were one and the same, if I would have concluded that publicizing this was better than keeping it in the dark but the decision was taken from me. I heard a click and then the phone went dead.
There was a sharp knock on the door.
'Federal officers. Open up now.'
I recognized the voice. It belonged to Claudia Fisher. I reached for the knob, twisted it, and was nearly knocked over. Fisher burst in with a gun drawn. She told me to put my hands up. Her partner, Darryl Wilcox, was with her. They both looked pale, weary, and maybe even frightened.
'What the hell is this?' I said.
'Hands up now!'
I did as she asked. She took out her cuffs, and then, as though thinking better of it, she stopped. Her voice was suddenly soft. 'You'll come without a hassle?' she asked.
I nodded.
'Then come on, let's go.'
44
I did not argue. I did not call their bluff or demand a phone call or any of that. I did not even ask them where we were going. Such protestations at this delicate juncture would, I knew, be either superfluous or harmful.
Pistillo had warned me to stay away. He had gone so far as to have me arrested for a crime I did not commit. He'd promised to frame me if need be. And still I had not backed down. I wondered where I'd unearthed this new-found bravery and I realized that it was simply a matter of having nothing more to lose. Maybe that was what bravery always is being past the point of giving a rat's ass. Sheila and my mother were dead. My brother had been lost to me. You corner a man, even one as weak as this one, and you see the animal emerge.
We pulled up to a row of houses in Fair Lawn, New Jersey. Everywhere I looked I saw the same thing: tidy lawns, overdone flower beds, rusted once-white furniture, hoses snaking through the grass attached to sprinklers that vacillated in a lazy haze. We approached a house no different from any other. Fisher tried the knob. It was unlocked. They led me through a room with a pink sofa and console TV. Photographs of two boys ran along the top of the console. The photos were in age order, starting with two infants. In the last one, the boys, both teenagers now, were formally dressed, each bussing a cheek of a woman I assumed was their mother.
The kitchen had a swing door. Pistillo sat at the Formica table with an iced tea. The woman in the photograph, the probable mother, stood by the sink. Fisher and
