“Twenty thousand.” Mike looked like someone had swung a bat into his stomach, then slapped him in the face while he was doubled over. “I ate dinner at their house last week. We went to the Sox a couple times last summer. Christ, two years ago, she’d just started for me? I gave her an extra thousand as a Christmas bonus because I knew they were about to get their car repo’d. I just…” He raised his hands above his head and brought them back down helplessly behind his skull. “I’m forty-four years old and I don’t understand anything about people. I just don’t get them.” He brought his hands back to the table. “I don’t understand,” he whispered.
I hated my job.
Chapter Seventeen
It had been a few hours since my encounter with Yefim and I still couldn’t shake it. Back in the day, I would have manned up with a drink or six, maybe called Oscar and Devin so we could meet at some dive to out-understate one another when it came to violent encounters.
Oscar and Devin had retired from the BPD several years ago, though, and bought a failing bar together in Greenwood, Mississippi, where Oscar’s people hailed from. The bar was just up the street from Robert Johnson’s purported grave site, so they’d turned it into a blues club. Last I heard, it was still failing, but Oscar and Devin were too drunk to care, and the Friday-afternoon barbecues they threw in their parking lot were already the stuff of local legend. They were never coming back.
So there went that outlet for me. Not that it was much of an outlet. What I really wanted was just to get back home. Hold my daughter, hold my wife. Shower off the smell of my fear. I was planning to do just that, taking the Arborway over toward Franklin Park so I could cut through to my side of town, when my cell rang and I saw Jeremy Dent’s name on the caller ID.
“Fuck me,” I said aloud. I had Sticky Fingers in my CD player, turned up loud, the way Sticky Fingers should always be played, and I was right at the point in “Dead Flowers” where I always sang along to Jagger getting goofy with the words “Kentucky Derby Day.”
I turned down the music and answered my phone.
“Merry Almost Christmas,” Jeremy Dent said.
“Merry Almost Festivus,” I said back.
“You got a minute to drop by the office?”
“Now?”
“Now. I got a yuletide present for you.”
“Really.”
“Yeah,” he said, “it’s called a permanent job. Like to discuss?”
Health insurance, I thought. Day care, I thought. Kindergarten. College fund. A new muffler.
“On my way.”
“See you soon.” He hung up.
I was halfway through Franklin Park. If I hit the lights on Columbia Road just right, I would reach home in about ten minutes. Instead, I banged a left onto Blue Hill Avenue and headed back downtown.
“Rita Bernardo took a job in Jakarta, of all places.” Jeremy Dent leaned back in his chair. “Booming security business there these days, all those wonderful jihadists-bad for the world but great for our bottom line.” He shrugged. “So, anyway, she’s off to keep Indonesian discos from blowing up and that opens up a slot we’d like to offer you.”
“What’s the catch?”
He poured himself a second scotch and tilted the bottle toward my glass. I waved it off. “No catch. Upon further evaluation, we came to the conclusion that your investigatory skills, not to mention your experience in the field, are assets too valuable to pass up. You can start right now.”
He pushed a folder across his desk and it cleared the edge and landed on my lap. I opened it. Clipped to the inside cover was a photo of a young guy, maybe thirty years old. He looked vaguely familiar. A slim guy with dark, tightly coiled hair, a nose that fell just a half-inch short of beakish, and a café-au-lait complexion. He wore a white shirt and a thin red tie and held a microphone.
“Ashraf Bitar,” Jeremy said. “Some call him Baby Barack.”
“Community organizer in Mattapan,” I said, recognizing him now. “Fought that stadium plan.”
“He’s fought a lot of things.”
“Loves the camera,” I said.
“He’s a politician,” Jeremy said. “By definition that makes him an Olympic-level narcissist. And don’t let the Mattapan roots and the Mattapan address fool you. He shops at Louis.”
“On what? Sixty K a year?”
Jeremy shrugged.
“So what do you need?”
“A microscope on his whole fucking life.”
“Who’s the client?”
He sipped his scotch. “Immaterial to your efforts.”
“Okay. When do you need me to start?”
“Now. Yesterday. But I told the client tomorrow.”
I took a sip from my own glass of scotch. “Can’t do it.”
“I just offered you a permanent position with this firm, and you’re already being difficult?”
“I had no idea this was in the wind. I had to take a case to put food on the table. I can’t walk away in the middle of it.”
He gave a slow, that-doesn’t-concern-me blink. “How long before you can divest yourself?”
“Couple more days.”
“That puts us at Christmas.”
“Yeah, it does.”
“So let’s say you free up by Christmas, can I tell our client you’ll close his case”-he pointed at the folder-“by New Year’s?”
“ If I’m done with my current case by Christmas, sure.”
He sighed. “How much they paying you, your current client?”
I lied. “A fair wage.”
I came home with flowers I couldn’t afford and Chinese takeout I couldn’t afford, either. I took the shower I’d been fantasizing about all afternoon and changed into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt from Pela’s one and only concert tour, then joined my family for dinner.
After we ate, we played with Gabby. Then I read to her and put her to bed. I came back into the living room and told my wife about my day.
Once I’d finished, Angie went straight to the porch for an American Spirit Light. “So the Russian mob has your driver’s license.”
“Yes.”
“Which means they know our home address.”
“Said information usually appears on a driver’s license, yes.”
“And if we tell the police they kidnapped a young girl…”
“They would be perturbed with me,” I agreed. “Did I mention the part where Duhamel offered me a permanent position?”
“A thousand times,” she said. “So you’re going to walk away. As in, right now.”
“No.”
“Uh, yes.”
“No. They kidnapped a seventeen-”
“-year-old girl. Yes. I heard you. I also heard the part where they shot the shit out of a car you were driving and took your license so they could come here if they felt like it and kidnap our child. So, I’m sorry about the seventeen-year-old girl, but I’ve got a four-year-old girl right here who I’m going to protect.”
“Even at the cost of another life.”
“You’re damn right.”
“This is bullshit.”
“This is not.”
“Yes, it is. You asked me to take this case.”
“Lower your voice. Okay, yes, I asked you to-”
“Knowing what it did to me the last time I searched for Amanda. What it did to us. But you were all about the greater good. And now that the greater good is biting us in the ass and another kid is in danger, you want me to pack it in.”
“We’re talking about our daughter’s safety.”
“But that’s not all we’re talking about. We’re in this now. You want to take Gabby and go see your mom, I think that’s a great idea. They’re dying to see each other. But I’m going to find Amanda and I’m going to get Sophie back, too.”