I couldn't get out any words.
'Unless…' The big guy turned the other chair around and sat on it backwards. 'Unless you stop trying to upset your mother. You see, Frank was killed by a burglar. That's the story. And if he wasn't, then he was killed by you.' He slung a pistol, encased in a crime-scene evidence bag, over the chair back. Frank's Glock, still covered in blood. I hadn't seen him carrying the gun; it had appeared magically. 'Your prints.'
Slim was leaning against the far wall. 'Can you imagine? After all Frank did for you. Took you in. Treated you like his own.'
Tears ran down my face. Hot. My voice came out hoarse. 'I would never have.'
'Then I guess that burglar whacked him.'
Slim jerked his head. They both got up and walked out. Leaving me there.
I waited what seemed like a long time.
They came back in and led me out. Down a concrete corridor with sweating walls. We came up on a giant rolling door built of bars. Beyond, a general holding tank. Sinewy men with pale skin and tattoos doing pull-ups. Mexicans bickering over smokes. Bandannas tied over perspiring ebony skulls. I had never felt smaller. I had never felt younger.
The big guy put his hand on one of the door's bars. 'Want a night to think it over?'
I shook my head, wiped my nose.
They steered me through the concrete maze and down to the street. In the back of the sedan, I cried a bit but tried not to make noise. We weren't driving back to Glendale. We were driving to LAX. Slim pulled over at Terminal One. The big guy handed me a torn piece of paper, then dialed the car phone and stretched it back to me.
'Read,' he said.
My throat was closing up, but I fought it open. Callie's answering-machine greeting finished, and after the beep I read from the slip of paper, 'I know
I'm responsible for Frank's death. I can't figure out how to face you every day. I'm sorry. I hope you'll forgive me.'
The worst part was, they'd gotten it right.
The big guy flipped an envelope into my lap. Filled with thousands of dollars in traveler's checks. I felt my last ray of hope extinguish. I thought about the financial-aid package waiting for me at UCLA. I thought about the baseball team. The attention I might get. The opportunities.
He said, 'You don't talk about this to anyone. Ever. Or we'll know. And we'll know who you talked to also. We won't be nearly as accommodating next go-round. To you or her. Bear that in mind.'
I said, 'I will.'
'You stay gone. A good long time. Understand?'
I nodded.
'If they require guardian clearance for you to buy a ticket'-he pointed at a phone number that had been written on the envelope flap-'you're two days shy of your eighteenth birthday. Forty-eight hours.'
I had forgotten.
He knuckled his broad nose, and it made a faint popping sound. 'By the time they declare you a missing person, you'll be an adult. Able to uphold your commitments.'
So that's what I was now. A missing person.
My stomach roiling, I got out, clutching the envelope. Cars honked, cops ticketed, people hugged one another good-bye. In a stunned haze, I stepped into the terminal, and the glass doors whistled shut behind me.
Chapter 11
After my meeting with Caruthers, I went home to change out of the hospital-gift shop T-shirt. Then I headed over to the First Union Bank of Los Angeles, on Montana Avenue between a handmade-soap store and a juice place with little doormats of wheatgrass in the window.
I waited until I was in line to pull the brass key from my sneaker, and I hid it in my fist until I reached the teller's window. The security cameras were making me sweat. The emergency exit was just past the loan desk-if I hopped the rope, I could be in the alley in a few seconds. My paranoia had returned, so forcefully it seemed impossible there'd ever been the quiet life I'd been torn out of last night.
'My stepdad just died, and my mom found this key among his possessions. How can we figure out which bank it belongs to?'
The bank teller looked at me over her glasses, then took Charlie's key and examined it in the flat of her palm.
'Doesn't look like a safe-deposit key to me.' She took my disappointment for greed. 'Oh, honey, even if it was, I doubt the box would be filled with something your mom would want. You'd be amazed the things people keep locked up. Most of them sentimental.'
'Why don't you think it's a bank key?'
She tilted it. 'Well, at least ours don't have as many grooves. They're flatter, with square teeth and a cloverleaf head. Plus, this one says it belongs to the U.S. government, but we're privately owned. Banks generally are.' She handed it back. 'I'm sorry I couldn't be of more help, and I'm sorry to hear about your father. I just lost my mom, so I know how hard it can be sorting through the possessions, trying to figure out how to do right by a loved one.'
Her gentle smile made me feel like a heel. I thanked her and left.
The locksmith a few blocks down didn't even give me the chance to lie to him. He was a burly man with a bottlebrush mustache and an indistinct accent. 'I not can copy for you. Our blanks not are thick enough, bro.' He rolled the r in 'bro,' infusing it with an / sound.
'I don't actually need it copied.'
'Unlawful-to-duplicate key require seven-pin key blank. Illegal to have seven-pin key blank, bro.' A massive eyebrow contorted suspiciously, pinching his right eye. His name tag, which read ASK ME, MY NAME is: RAz! didn't match his apparent gravity. 'You are cop?'
'No, I'm not a cop.'
'You not can lie about, you know.'
'I know.'
'How do you know?'
'Because I'm a cop.'
Raz eyed me, then smirked. 'Listen, bro. Perhaps I get seven-pin key blank from Canada? Perhaps I copy, but it will cost extra, eh? The risk for illegal.'
'I actually don't need it copied. I was hoping you could just tell me what kind of key it is.'
He sighed, indignant, then knocked the key against the countertop. 'It is good key, pure brass, not cheap alloy.'
'I just found it. It was my stepfather's. What do you think it goes to?'
He screwed up his mouth, his mustache arching like a displeased caterpillar. 'I have to guess, I say post- office box.'
'Thank you.'
'You want to copy, you come back here.'
I shook his warm, oversize hand and came away with his business card. I said, 'I promise, bro.'
Crime-scene tape had been strung across the smashed-through garage door of the run-down little house in Culver City, and bullet holes pockmarked the soft wood of the facade. I'd parked a few blocks away and come over on foot, feeling safely anonymous in the thickening dusk.
I kept to the far side of the street and walked past the house, keeping my head down and my pace swift. In the footage I'd watched on the hospital room's TV, the reporter had positioned herself by the front walk where the yellow tape had come unmoored and was fluttering provocatively.
I went around the block and came back, pausing behind an empty van. The parked vehicles appeared to be
