A toilet flushed, a tap ran, and then the door opened. Sarita stood in front of him, head down, and said, “I’m going to have to go home. I’m going to have to go back to Monclova.”
“No, you’re not going back to Mexico,” he said, taking her into his arms again. “You’ve got a life here. You’ve got me.”
“No, I have no life here. I go home, or I just disappear somewhere, get a job, start doing the whole thing all over again.” She sniffed. “I need to make a living. I have people counting on me. I can make more money here.”
“I can lend you some,” he said. “Shit, I can give you some money. I don’t have a lot, but I got two, three hundred I could give you.”
Sarita laughed. “Seriously? How long would that last me?”
“I know, I know. It’s not like I’m a fucking millionaire, you know? But now that you mention money, I was kind of thinking about something in the night.”
She pushed past him and found her underwear on the floor at the foot of the bed. She stepped into her panties, then slipped on her bra while Marshall stood and watched her.
“Whatever it is, I don’t want to know,” Sarita said.
“Come on, you have to at least hear me out. It could be the answer to your problems. For both of us, really. If you need to get away, that’s cool; I get that. But I could come with you.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t want to get you in trouble.”
“Come on,” he said. “We’re in this together.”
“No,” Sarita said. “We’re not. You haven’t done anything wrong. Except for hiding me. When they find out you’ve been keeping me here, you could be in all kinds of trouble, and not just because I’m not supposed to be here.”
She pulled on her jeans, then put on a blouse and began to button it up. Marshall glanced around, saw his boxers on the floor, and stepped into them. “I’m gonna call in sick,” he said. “We’ll figure out something.”
He picked up a cell phone on his side of the bed. “Yeah, hey, Manny, I’ve got some kind of bug, been puking my guts up all night. Can’t afford to give something like that to the geezers. Yeah, okay, thanks.”
He put the phone back down.
“That’s disrespectful,” Sarita said. “They’re nice old people.”
“I don’t mean anything by it,” he said. “Anyway, I don’t have to go in. So now we can talk about my idea.”
She shook her head. “My only idea is to get as far away from here as fast as I can. Maybe you could drive me to Albany or something? And then I can catch a train.”
“Where are you going to go?”
“New York? I got a cousin there. I just have to find her.”
“Sit down,” he said.
“I don’t—”
“Just sit down and hear me out, okay?”
She dropped onto the end of the bed and looked up at him. “What?”
“There’s stuff this Gaynor guy isn’t going to want to come out, right?”
“Maybe it’s already out there,” she said.
“Yeah, but maybe it isn’t. Maybe it’s not going to come out. Maybe they’ll pin his wife’s murder on someone right away and they won’t find out about the other stuff. You put in a call; you tell him you can keep that from ever happening. For, you know, a price.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Sarita said. “It’s all going to come out.”
“’Cause of what you did,” Marshall said. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
“I had to do it,” she said.
“But maybe it won’t matter. Maybe it won’t come out.”
“You’re crazy,” she said. “I have to get out of here. You think the police aren’t looking for me? I guarantee it.”
“You won’t be easy to find. How do they trace you? You got no phone, no license, no credit cards. You’ve bailed from your apartment. You’re, like, totally off the grid. It’s like you don’t even exist.” He smiled, tickled the underside of her chin with his index finger. She turned her head away. “Come on; it’s like you’re a spy or something.”
“I am no spy. I feed old people and babies and then clean up their piss and shit. That’s what I do.”
“Okay, okay,” he said. “Listen, you hide out here while I go empty out what I got at the ATM. You take it, get on a train to New York. But you have to promise you’ll get in touch when you get there. I need to know you’re okay. I love you. You know that, right? I love you more than anything in the whole world.”
Sarita was tearing up again. She put her hands over her face.
“I can’t get it out of my mind,” she said.
Marshall hugged her again. “I know, I know.”
“Seeing Ms. Gaynor like that. It was so awful, how she looked.”
“I’m tellin’ ya,” he said. “It’s an opportunity. He’s got money. Fancy house, nice car. Guy like that has to have money. I mean, shit, you worked for them. You ever see financial statements, that kind of thing?”
She brought her hands down, thought a moment. “Sometimes,” she said quietly. “But I never really looked at them. I didn’t bring in the mail or anything. I just helped with the house and the baby. Ms. Gaynor, she was so upset. She thought having a baby would make her happy, but it just made it worse.”
“Yeah, well, raising kids is no joke,” Marshall said. “I think I’d get pretty depressed if I had to look after a baby.”
Sarita shot him a look.
“Unless it was with you,” he said quickly.
“I think her husband knew all along what was going on, but when Ms. Gaynor found out...”
“You have to stop thinking about it,” Marshall said. “You just have to move on, you know?”
“It’s my fault,” Sarita said. “If it hadn’t been for me she never would have started putting it together.”
“Yeah, but it doesn’t mean it has anything to do with what happened to her,” Marshall said. “Unless you think it was him. The husband.”
She shook her head. “He loved her. I mean, he was away a lot, and he hardly ever talked to me, but I think he loved her.”
“Yeah, but sometimes, even people who were in love once, they do bad shit to each other. All the more reason to give him a call, tell him what you know. He’ll come across; I guarantee it. You’ll have enough money to get settled in someplace else, and have some left over to send to your folks.”
“No,” she said firmly. “No.”
He put up his hands. “Okay. You say no, then it’s no.”
“All I ever wanted to do,” she whispered, “was the right thing. I’m not a bad person, you know?”
“Of course not.”
“I’ve always tried to be good. But sometimes it doesn’t matter what you do, it’s wrong.”
Marshall gave her a kiss on the forehead. “You wait here while I get you some money. And I’ll pick up something to eat, too. Maybe an Egg McMuffin and some coffee.”
Sarita said nothing as Marshall finished getting dressed. Before he left, he double-checked that the slip of paper where he’d written Bill Gaynor’s phone number was still in his pocket.
Thirty-five
Barry Duckworth was up at six.
He hadn’t gotten in until nearly midnight. As he’d pulled into the drive he’d noticed a white van parked at the curb opposite his house, but didn’t give it much thought. He hadn’t noticed the writing on the side.
He struggled up the stairs, stripped down to his boxers, and collapsed into bed next to Maureen. She mumbled, “Hmmm,” and went back to sleep.