“You’re a patronizing jerk,” I said loudly as they disappeared into a patient’s room. “Was that quiet enough for you?”
“You call me a lot of names. I’m going to eventually take offense.” He tested a door to his left and pulled me into a linen closet, an insulated cocoon, every shelf stuffed to the top with white-gray sheets, pillowcases, blankets, and towels. Plenty of stuff to suffocate me.
“More than thirty years ago, your mother entered witness protection, along with a young boy,” he said, as soon as the door clicked shut. “Your brother. And a baby. Labeled ‘unspecified.’ ”
His words made no sense. My mother was in witness protection? Tuck? Was I “unspecified”?
“And you know this how?”
“Sources. I laid my hands on some FBI and witness protection files.”
A rapid knock startled us, and the door cracked open. A gray-haired nurse peered in.
“Mrs. McCloud?”
“No, no, I’m not married,” I replied automatically, realizing how inane that sounded as soon as it came out.
“Your sister told us to update you. She needed to run out and pick up her daughter. Your mother is now sedated and her vitals are improving. She’s stable. Why don’t you go get some rest?”
“I haven’t even seen her yet.”
“It’s really best not to disturb her right now.” She hesitated. “Regardless, you need to get out of the closet. We don’t allow this kind of thing in here. It’s not sanitary.”
“No,” I said, horrified. “There is nothing going on. With him. He’d be the last person…”
“We all say that, honey,” she said serenely, piling a stack of sheets and pillowcases into her arms and holding the door wide open for us with her considerably sized right foot.
“Perfect,” Jack said cheerfully. “We can finish the conversation that we started in the hotel.”
I glanced toward Mama’s room and decided to take the nurse’s advice. I moved toward the elevator. Jack followed. We rode down six floors in silence.
“How about this,” he said, as it jerked to a stop on the lobby level. “I’ll buy you lunch.”
“I want to see those files,” I demanded.
Jack held the door while an elderly man wheeled in a teenage girl sporting a signed Texas Rangers baseball cap and the white pallor of chemo treatments.
Another of life’s cosmic mistakes.
I needed to stop my whining.
Find the way out of this maze.
Even if it meant sucking up to this bastard to do it.
“You’re a cheap date. That’s nice.” Jack bit into his third pork taquito, which he’d slathered with about a half cup of Conchita’s extra-hot sauce.
A red river dripped unattractively down his chin, leaving an unfortunate, bloody-looking spot on his sling. I knew his mouth must be in some category of hell, but he showed no signs of it. More braggadocio. He reminded me of a goat roper I once dated who ordered his steak “so rare it’s still alive.”
Conchita’s Taqueria consisted of an outhouse-sized shack with an aluminum roof that barely contained the plus-plus-sized Conchita, much less the giant metal canister of sweet tea, a grill, a small refrigerator, a metal cash box, and three Igloo coolers stocked with ice and Coke, the real kind, bottled in Mexico with so much Imperial Sugar it made your teeth hurt. It was the only soft drink she served.
Conchita was famous for telling new customers: “If you want a diet drink, you are sheet out of luck. Go to Taco Bell.”
Last year, Conchita had sprung for a purple polka-dotted umbrella for one of the three metal tables that sat outside the shack on a blistering patch of concrete. It was the best seat in the house. Today she’d cleared it off for us, yelling out her window at the two startled power suits finishing up their lunch, “Vamos! It eez time for you to go!”
Conchita didn’t hand out this preferential treatment for me, even though I’d been a loyal customer for years. Conchita liked men, preferably tall ones who looked capable of throwing a punch. She’d been robbed in broad daylight more than a few times. Conchita never exactly smiled, but she served Jack with her most charming grimace and threw in an extra-spicy taquito for free.
“So,” Jack said, wiping his mouth. It was clear he hadn’t wanted to talk until his stomach churned happily. I wondered how happy it was going to be around two in the morning.
“So… why did my mother enter witness protection?”
“Tommie, we’re kind of exposed here.”
He gestured to a nearby table of four: a small boy punching at an iPhone, a toddler sucking his pacifier like it was a chocolate milkshake, a tired mother with a pink zebra-striped diaper bag that could hold enough to feed and entertain a small nation, and an irritated-looking Texas grandma.
“I can’t get Wi-Fi here,” the boy whined, shaking the iPhone like an Etch A Sketch.
“Eat your taco, Evan,” his mother said, while the grandmother opened and then shut her mouth, thinking better of it. “Put my phone down.”
“It has little white and green things in it,” he complained, pushing away the foil wrapper. “I want to go to On the Border.”
“Evan…”
“Take them out!” the little Nazi ordered, stabbing his tiny forefinger imperiously at the offending items in his taco.
“Jack, I really don’t think these people are paying attention to us,” I said, watching the mom get to work obediently with a toothpick. “I’m going to make a guess that the little boss over there isn’t mob-connected. So what is my mother’s link to Anthony Marchetti? And why are you so interested?”
Jack peeled the wrinkled Saran Wrap off a half-melted homemade praline the size of a hockey puck. “I’m interested in anything to do with Anthony Marchetti. The trail leads where it leads.” He stuffed his mouth and chewed in an exaggerated fashion. “Sticky,” he said, pointing to his mouth, “but tasty.”
“What did you mean in the hotel when you said that part of the story my mother told me about her past was true?”
“Both her parents died in a fire.”
“Do you know if there was anything… suspicious about it?”
“No. Meaning, no, I don’t think so.”
“For the record, I feel like calling you a name right now, but there are children nearby. How did you know that Rosalina Marchetti contacted me?”
He shrugged. “I told you, I have a source. The FBI is wiretapping her. She’s the wife of a mob boss who’s running games from prison. The Feds have been trying to get at him and his wad of cash for years.”
“You have a source in the FBI?”
“Yep. I’m terrific with sources. Most people find me charming. Smart, even. Phi Beta Kappa. Princeton. Lots of connections.” He grinned. “Don’t look so shocked.”
“Do you really believe Rosalina Marchetti is my mother? That Marchetti is my father? That I was kidnapped? Do you know who Tuck’s father was? He was my brother, wasn’t he? And who’s the dead girl with my Social Security number?” The last question rolled out of my mouth in an unexpected screech.
The boy looked up from thumbing the phone, ticked off.
“Mommy,” he said, pointing at me, “that lady made me lose my place in Doodle Jump. I died.”
“Shut up, kid,” Jack said to him.
The mother had the grace to look embarrassed. The grandmother smothered a smile.
To me, Jack said, “I don’t know who Tuck’s father was. That’s your brother, the one who died, right?” He paused, sounding… sympathetic. “I had a brother who died. Something else we have in common.”
Before I could respond, the toddler spit out the pacifier with enough velocity that it ricocheted off Jack’s cheek. It took only seconds for the pacifier addict to recognize his terrible mistake in judgment. His wail resounded like a tornado siren.