“Having dinner with Roger,” she said. “Want to come?”
“I’ll pass. But I need to meet him soon.”
She seemed to find that statement odd, probably the lack of a sarcastic jab. We were becoming more formal, and it felt weird.
“Nice coat,” I said. She was wearing a white winter coat that I hadn’t seen before. I was losing track of this lady.
“Roger,” she said.
“Ah, okay,” I said, teasing. “And was there an occasion for such an extravagant gesture?”
“Oh. . ” She seemed reluctant to answer. For a moment I thought she was going to tell me they’d gotten engaged or something. And then it hit me.
“Oh, shit,” I said, smacking my palm against my head. “Oh, Shauna-”
“No worries.”
Her birthday. Two days ago. I’d forgotten Shauna’s birthday. Now I felt like a complete putz.
“You’ve been busy,” she said. “And gone. We had to sweep your office for cobwebs.”
I put my hand on her shoulder. “Jesus, Shauna, am I an asshole.” “I won’t argue. But I forgive you.”
“I’ll make it up to you.”
“I’ll make sure of that.” She winked at me and we walked through the doors, into the cool evening air. She stopped and appraised me. “You okay in there?” she asked.
“Just grand.”
She still had those probing eyes that could see through whatever roadblocks I threw up. But she wasn’t going to challenge me. She kissed my cheek and was off.
I suddenly felt hollow. I felt alone. I’d more or less completely lost touch with Shauna. It was excusable. Hell, it was necessary, I thought. I needed to keep her as far away from what I was doing as possible. And it was reparable, at least in theory-I’d make it up to her when this undercover gig was over. Problem was, this guy Roger was filling the void in the interim.
The other problem was, Shauna didn’t appear to be as bothered about it as I was. She seemed to be moving on, with Roger’s hand in hers.
Essie Ramirez was waiting for me at the bar, nursing a glass of wine and studying the yuppie dinner crowd. I watched her for a moment before I made my approach. She looked the part of a young professional in the city-hair pulled back, blue suit, simple jewelry-but it occurred to me that Essie was out of her element. She’d been raising two kids and hadn’t worked outside of the home for probably a decade. This could have been intimidating for her, but I got the sense that it was more exciting than anything.
She told me about her new job as a paralegal at my old firm, Paul Riley’s shop. She told me about her kids. I thought she was rebounding, now with a reliable paycheck and some time passed since Ernesto’s death. Then again, we were keeping it on fairly safe topics. She didn’t talk about how much she missed her husband. I didn’t talk about what I’d been up to.
She took the check from the waiter after we’d finished our coffee.
“You notice,” she said, “that I didn’t ask you about your search for the truth.”
“I noticed.” I smiled. “I’m going to figure it out. I’m getting close.”
She nodded, appraising me with those dark, shiny eyes. “I want you to. I do. I might have sounded like I didn’t before. I just don’t want you to get hurt doing so. That’s all.”
“I understand.”
“If I can ask,” she said. “What do you plan to do when you figure it out?”
I told her the truth. “I don’t know.”
She accepted that. She was willingly staying in the dark, not asking for details. She probably assumed, correctly, that if I’d wanted to share, I’d have done so by now.
“Another question, if you don’t mind,” she said.
“Shoot.”
“Why have you never told me that you lost your wife and daughter recently?”
It was true. I hadn’t. And I’d forgotten that Essie was now working at my former law firm, where the first mention of my name would have elicited that information.
“Well, anyway, I’m very sorry,” she said. “You’ve suffered. I had no idea. When you were standing outside my house on Christmas Day-”
“It’s not a problem, Essie.”
“This happened-near the time I lost Ernesto?” she asked.
“The same day, actually,” I said. “The reason I didn’t drive my wife and daughter to my in-laws’ house is because I was waiting for Ernesto to call me. So she drove without me.”
“Ah.” I hate pity, and I was seeing it all over Essie’s face. “So you put the two things together, don’t you?”
I didn’t answer.
“You blame yourself for-”
“Why don’t we just drop it, Essie,” I said, dropping my hands down on the table to indicate finality.
She placed a hand over her heart. “I have a knack for being direct.”
I blew out a breath. “It’s okay. I like that about you.”
“Oh, Jason. Jason, you can’t do that to yourself.”
I didn’t answer. An awkward span of time passed. Essie counted out cash and placed it with the check. She couldn’t have very much money to her name, but she’d be insulted if I offered to pay. This was how she wanted it.
“Thanks for dinner,” I said. “But you didn’t owe me.”
Her eyes flashed up at me. A strand of hair slipped out of her clip and curled around her cheek. She was debating whether to say something. She was searching me for a reaction, for a sign. I knew what I was thinking, but not what I was conveying. Something powerful was moving within me, a connection to Essie. Maybe it was just this joint tragedy we shared, like families who bond after losing their loved ones in a plane crash or something. I didn’t know. All I knew for certain was that she was looking into my eyes, and I was looking back, and neither of us seemed inclined to retreat.
“Do you think I asked you to dinner because I thought I owed you?”
That sounded like a dangerous question for me to answer, so I didn’t. There must have been a thousand love songs, and even more romantic comedies, built around this premise. Two people recovering from the loss of their spouses who find each other and rebuild their lives. Look, I couldn’t deny an attraction to Essie, and it appeared that the feeling was mutual. And I felt like I’d crossed a bridge recently. I could swallow the idea of another woman in my life, at least in some fashion. But not this. I couldn’t separate Essie from her husband, from guilt and anger. And I couldn’t think of her in a casual way, a one-nighter or anything even close to that.
“Thanks for dinner,” I said. “I have to go now.”
She watched me a moment, still with those studious eyes. “Will you keep in touch with me?”
“I’ll let you know when I figure this out,” I said.
Her expression told me that I’d wounded her, that she’d had more in mind than merely the imparting of information. But I couldn’t do anything about that. My thoughts and emotions were tangled up and I defaulted to the classic Kolarich option, retreat.
“It was fun seeing you again,” I said, a comment which widely missed the mark in all directions. It seemed like an appropriately awkward note on which to exit.
77
I called Hector’s cell to find out where to meet up. Then I hooked up with Lee Tucker for the hand-off of the F-Bird before taking a cab to a union rally over in Hector’s district. When I pulled up there were about a half-dozen people picketing the place. They’d managed to gain the attention of at least one camera. They were protesting over Antwain Otis, the death-row inmate scheduled to be executed tomorrow night. I was still a little rattled from my dinner with Essie, thoughts of lust and passion and guilt and bitterness forming one hell of a knot in my chest. I never thought performing an undercover role for the federal government and hearing about death-row inmates would serve as a welcome diversion from my thoughts.
I walked in through a side door protected by the governor’s security detail, one of these somber robots who had my name and even recognized me now. I stepped into an anteroom much like the one at the last rally. Madison Koehler was pacing while she barked into her earpiece at some poor subordinate. Brady MacAleer was eating chicken wings with some people I didn’t know. I peeked into the main room and saw Hector Almundo warming up the crowd, mostly speaking Spanish to a group of blue-collar Latino workers, two hundred strong.