“So what makes them think it’s Wilton?”
“It’s just a guess right now. That’s why you’re still walking.”
“How long before it’s not just a guess?”
“Who knows? Depends what they find.”
“Any chance you can get them off of us?”
He shakes his head. “They’re looking for payback, I can’t call them off.”
“What are they doing now?”
“They’re checking you out.”
“Any prediction about what their conclusion will be?”
“Again,” he says, “it depends.”
“On what?”
He stares at me. “On what you’ve done.”
“What’s your instinct?”
“These guys are pros. They’ll put this together in their sleep. They’ll take just enough time to be certain.” He takes a breath. “Then, Kelly goes for sure. I tried to tell them that you couldn’t have been involved. They’ll spend a little while thinking about that.”
“And then?”
“And then I figure you go too.”
“Unless?”
He shrugs. “Unless you’re gone to somewhere they can’t find you.”
“Or they aren’t good enough,” Kelly says.
“They’re good enough,” Dexter tells him.
“Wilton wasn’t.”
We are silent for a while.
Dexter says, “I’ll try to warn you.”
“Why would you do that?” Kelly says.
Dexter jerks his head at me. “He’s my friend. It isn’t fair for him to get burned just because of the company he keeps.”
“You’re so sure it was me?”
“Sure enough.”
Kelly smiles. “Then how do you know I won’t do you too?”
“Because I’m your early-warning system.”
“How can you warn us when you don’t know where they are?”
“They still check in.” He frowns. “That reminds me — how’d you get past the alarm?”
Kelly’s smile widens. “I think you may need a new one,” he says.
Heather comes out of the dressing room wearing blue jeans made from some kind of stretch material. She lifts the bottom of her sweater, showing a narrow strip of belly. The jeans ride low on her hips.
“What do you think?” she says.
“Great,” I say.
“That’s what you always say.”
“I always mean it.”
She examines herself in a long mirror on the wall.
“I like them,” she says. “You can wear them with a blouse. You can wear them with a halter.”
“You’re sexy,” I tell her.
She turns her head toward me and smiles. “You’re sweet.”
The walls of the store are lined with light brown shelves. Most of the shelves hold scented candles and kitchenware and lamps with rice-paper shades. The shelves in back hold thirty-dollar T-shirts.
Heather walks to the narrow doorframe of the dressing room and leans her head inside. She pulls her head out and says, “Still empty.”
She takes my hand and leads me into a pine-smelling corridor lined with stalls. The door of one of the stalls is hanging open and Heather pulls me inside. She closes the door behind us and throws the bolt. Her jacket is lying on the gray bench in the corner. Her shoes are on the floor under the bench. Each wall, including the back of the door, is completely covered by a mirror. The mirrors reflect each other’s reflections. We are surrounded by infinite versions of ourselves that extend as far as we can see in every direction. We can see ourselves from every angle.
Heather runs her tongue along the edge of my car. She puts her palm between my legs. I feel myself stirring against the zipper of my pants. I grip her shoulders and gently push her away. She frowns at me.
I say, “I’m sorry if my behavior has been strange lately.”
“I hadn’t noticed.”
“I’ve been under a lot of pressure.”
“Work?”
“Not really. I’ve been dealing with some personal issues.”
She presses me down onto the gray bench and sits across my knees with her arms around my neck. “Like what?” she says.
“Oh, I don’t know. I’ve been working on my development.”
“As a person?”
“Sort of.”
She strokes my hair. “I want to get married.”
“I know. You told me after our third date.”
“I mean I want to get married soon. I want to take care of you. I want you to take care of me.”
“I don’t have anything,” I tell her. “At least let’s wait and see what happens with the company.”
“I don’t like waiting. Besides, my father is practically made of money.”
“I don’t want your father to take care of us.”
“No,” she says, “neither do I.”
Kelly’s sketch has wide eyes and too much nose. Mine is a cross between Errol Flynn without the mustache and Paul Bunyan without the beard. The sketches are superimposed side by side on the blue-sky background behind the pretty blond anchorwoman with the stock ticker flowing beneath her.
We are sitting on the sofa in our living room.
Kelly says, “I don’t like her as much on the HDTV. She wears too much makeup.”
“Everyone wears makeup on television.”
“She has bumps on her face. She looks like a pickle.”
The anchor is talking to a brunette with thin lips who is standing in front of the Ritz in the rain, looking concerned. The anchor also looks concerned.
I say, “Aren’t you a little bit worried?”
“About the sketches? You can’t tell it’s us unless you know what you’re looking for. Even then, they’re kind of a stretch. They made me look like Groucho, for Chrissake.”
“Maybe we ought to lay low. Get out of the apartment. Something.”
“Forget it. Those pictures could be almost anybody. The cops aren’t gonna find us with these descriptions unless they’re already onto us.”
“And what about Dexter’s boys?”
“The Jamaicans?”
“How do you know they’re Jamaicans?”
He shrugs. “Wilton was.”
“Fine, then,” I say. “What about the Jamaicans?”
He sighs. “The important thing is for us to stay on mission.”
“On mission?”
“Heather’s old man.”
“Are you serious?”
“We have to finish what we started.”
The back of my neck is hot. “I’m not sure about that.”
“You don’t have to be sure. I’m telling you it’s going to be done.”
“I think I may have made some kind of mistake.”
“Trust me,” Kelly says. “This is best for everybody. This is what you said you wanted.”
“I think I’ve changed my mind.”
Kelly nods.
The sketches are gone. The anchorwoman is smiling now.
Kelly stands up from the couch and walks to the door.
“Where are you going?” I say.
He opens the door and walks into the hallway. I listen to the door click shut behind him. I turn back to the television.
When the phone rings an hour later, I pick it up immediately. “Kel?” I say.
There is no answer.
“Where are you?” I say.
I hear the ticking of the open line.
I say, “Just come back and we can talk about it.”
I hold the receiver against my ear and listen to buzzing static and then Dexter’s voice says, “They’re coming.”
Part Three: Climax
“You don’t look good,” my boss says.
“I had to get a hotel room last night.”
He half-smiles. “You have a fight with your boyfriend?”
“We’re having some work done,” I say.
We are looking out the big window of the Credit Suisse luxury box at the Fleet Center, squinting at tiny players on a tiny floor hundreds of feet below us. It is almost impossible to tell what they are doing. When we want to see the game, we watch wide-screen televisions in the corners of the room.
My boss says, “I was trying to reach you. I called the cell phone.”