“We’ll worry about that when it happens. And we’ll find you some good hardware, something to work with. Okay?”
“Sure,” Angel said, though she didn’t sound convinced. “Chapel — did I do the right thing?”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Running away. Maybe — maybe I should have just turned myself in. Then you wouldn’t be in trouble like this. And then I ran to Julia’s place, and now she’s in it, too.”
“You’re innocent, Angel. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“But if I did turn myself in, if I let them question me, then — then they’d see I wasn’t guilty, right?”
He thought about Angel being shoved in some fetid cell. Being interrogated by men shouting questions at her while they made her walk in circles until she couldn’t stand up anymore. He imagined her being waterboarded.
He knew what happened to people who were accused of being terrorists. Whether they were innocent or not.
“No, Angel. The right place for you is here in this car. With me.”
“You never even asked me if I did it. If I hijacked that drone. The thought didn’t cross your mind, did it?”
“Not for a second,” he told her.
The sun had yet to rise, but streetlamps illuminated the suburban lane well enough. It was a long street lined with big houses set well back on spacious yards — the kind of street Chapel thought had disappeared after the housing boom. The lawns were all mowed down to stubble and bordered by privacy fences so that each house stood on its own discreet lot, each with its own stand of trees, a paved driveway, and a quaint brick or stone walkway to its porch. Each house had its own tasteful mailbox with flags pinned back like the ears of a faithful hound. Each house had wooden siding painted a different shade of off-white and a door painted dark red or dark green, to give the house character. It was probably the tidiest little neighborhood Chapel had ever seen. It looked like the people who owned those houses periodically came out and dusted their own curbs.
Only one thing spoiled the effect. An old man in a green cloth jacket was crawling along the gutter, his straggly beard touching the pavement.
Chapel switched off the car and jumped out. That green jacket spoke to him. He rushed over and squatted down next to the crawling man. “Excuse me,” he said. “You look like you could use a hand.”
“No, no,” the man said. His eyes were bright red as if he’d been weeping, but he smiled for Chapel. He lay down in the road and propped himself up on his elbows. “I’ll admit, my method of locomotion may appear unorthodox. But I assure you I’m making excellent progress, good sir.”
The man stank of cheap liquor — not the juniper smell of gin or the sweet stink of rum but more like the acrid bite of pure rubbing alcohol.
Julia came and knelt down next to the crawling man. She checked his pulse — he did not resist — and frowned. “He’s not in good shape,” she said, “though maybe that was kind of obvious.”
“Sir,” Chapel said, “you’re wearing an army jacket. Are you a veteran?”
“I have that honor,” the man said. “Though my coat is but a loaner. First Battalion, Third Marines. A pleasure to make your acquaintance, young man. And you, my dear — simply a pleasure to be in your pulchritudinous presence.”
Chapel tried to remember the last time anyone had called him “young man.” He shook his head and told the man, “I really think we should help you here.”
“Third Marines,” Julia said. “Why does that sound familiar? Wait a minute. Rudy? Is your name Rudy?” She looked up at Chapel. “Do you remember Atlanta? When that CIA guy tried to kill me?”
“You’re kidding me,” Chapel said. But now she mentioned it — yeah, it was definitely the same guy. Rudy had been wandering around an underground mall in Atlanta and he’d asked them for money. He’d ended up helping to save Julia’s life.
In way of thanks, Chapel had given him a phone number to call, a way to reach out to somebody who might help him get his life back on track. Help him stop drinking. Judging by what street he was currently crawling across, it looked like he had called that number — but it hadn’t been enough.
“I will never forget that lovely red hair,” Rudy said. “Though I can’t quite make out your face. I seem to have misplaced my glasses, dear. Do you see them anywhere?”
Julia glanced around. “No, sorry.”
“Ah, well. Perhaps you’ll give me a kiss, then.”
She laughed. “It’s definitely Rudy,” she said.
Chapel tried to get hold of the drunk vet’s arm, to help him sit up, but Rudy shrugged him off with surprising strength. He tried again, but stopped this time because the door of the nearest house banged open and a woman came storming out to scowl at them.
“You leave him alone,” she said. She was a hair under five feet tall and might weigh a hundred pounds if she put on heavy work boots. Her hair was tucked up inside a satin cap but despite the hour she was already dressed in a conservative pantsuit. “He’s gonna drink like that, hey? He’s gonna crawl his way back to bed. Maybe you think you’re doing him a favor. You think you’re doing him a favor?”
“Dolores, hi, I—”
“Did I just ask you a question? Did you answer it?”
“No, I — no,” Chapel stammered.
“No, I, no, exactly,” she mimicked. “I know you, don’t I? But don’t ask me to remember where from.”
“Your wedding,” Chapel said.
She snorted in derision. “Like there weren’t two hundred people there. I made the guest list, so I ought to know. You a friend of Top?”
“I’m one of his boys, actually,” Chapel said.
Dolores’s face didn’t change, but she shifted her weight from one foot to the other. It was clear that Chapel had produced the right password or given the right sign. She glanced at Julia and then over at the stolen car, where Angel still waited. She made a gesture for Angel to come over. “You’d better come inside. I’ll make you some breakfast — don’t expect croissants, though. Pancakes are easier.”
“Thank you,” Chapel said.
Dolores shrugged and headed back into the house. Chapel followed her. Julia waited for Angel to catch up before she went in.
“Do you understand what’s going on here?” she asked.
“Maybe twenty-five percent,” Angel said. Then she looked back at Rudy, who had managed to crawl his way into the driveway. “Maybe fifteen.”
The inside of the house was not exactly what Chapel had expected. The furniture was cheap, mostly pressboard covered in chipped veneer. The upholstery had split in places and was held together with duct tape. There was a television in the living room, but it was an old-fashioned box type, not a flat-screen. The walls were bare of decoration.
As run-down as it looked, the room was spotless. The duct tape on the cushions looked like it had just been applied. The carpet showed the tracks of recent vacuuming.
He found it all strangely comforting. This is the kind of place a soldier might live, he thought. The neatness, the lack of ornament or pretension—
“It’s a shithole,” Dolores said, “but it’s paid for.”
Chapel kept his mouth shut. He’d only met Dolores once before, but he knew better than to try to make pleasantries or — far worse — disagree with her.
She headed through the house, toward the kitchen, but Chapel stopped in the living room and looked up the stairs. He could hear people moving around up there, and now some of them appeared — two men and a woman, all dressed in T-shirts and jeans. They all had the same crew cut — including the woman. And all of them were wounded.