“Can I help you?” Myron asked.
“Yes please,” the woman said. “Can we speak alone in your office?”
“Do I know you?”
She gave him a smile so big that he almost took a step back. “Call me Ellen.”
“That’s my mother’s name.”
“My stars, what a coincidence,” she said with a little too much enthusiasm. Then she lowered her voice and said, “I just need a moment. It’s important. It’s about my grandson. He was recently drafted by the Dodgers, but...” She looked past Myron and up at Big Cyndi. “Please,” she implored. “It won’t take long.”
Myron nodded and led her into his office. The old woman moved slowly toward the big picture window overlooking the city. “This view is magnificent,” she said.
“Yes, I’m lucky.”
“Views don’t make you lucky,” she said. “You get used to them. That’s the problem with views. They are nice when you first have them, but we get used to them and take them for granted. That’s true of most things, of course. When I was young, my parents had the most exquisite home. It was a Queen Anne built in the early 1900s. We lived in Florala, Alabama. You ever heard of it?”
“No, I’m sorry.”
“Anyway, I remember when we first drove up to it. I was eight years old, and you’d never seen any home as grand as this one. Sixteen rooms. Curly-pine wainscoting. The most gorgeous wraparound porch. Second-story balconies, one off my own bedroom. I loved it for, oh I don’t know, a month. Perhaps two. But then I got used to it. So did my family. It just becomes the place you live. It was why Father liked having company. He loved to see the expressions on a newcomer’s face, not because he wanted to impress them. Well, maybe that was it a little. All humans like to show their feathers, don’t they? But mostly, when we saw someone else’s reaction to the house, it brought us back to our own. We all need that now and again, don’t you think?”
“I guess so, Ms....”
“I told you. Call me Ellen.”
Myron took the seat behind his desk. Ellen sat in front of it. She put her purse on her lap, both hands still on it.
“You said your grandson had been drafted by the Dodgers.”
“I did say that, yes, but it isn’t true. I just said that for the sake of your receptionist.”
Myron wasn’t sure what to make of this. “So what can I do for you, Ellen?”
She gave him a smile, a big smile, the kind of smile that — Myron was trying not to be ageist — gave him the creeps. Then she said, “Where is Bo Storm?”
Myron said nothing.
“My name isn’t really Ellen. I work for some people who have close ties with a man named Joseph Turant. Do you know who that is?”
Joey the Toe. Myron still said nothing.
“I understand you had an encounter with Mr. Turant’s colleagues recently in Las Vegas. In exchange for your safe passage out of that sinful place, you were supposed to provide the current location of Bo Storm, a young man who did Mr. Turant great harm. I’m here to collect that information for him.”
Myron just stared at her.
“Before you reply,” the old woman continued, “may I make a suggestion?”
“What’s that?”
“You’re eventually going to tell me what I need to know.” Her eyes bored into his. “It will be much easier on all of us if you just do it now.”
“I don’t know where he is,” Myron said.
She gave him an exaggerated faux pout. “You don’t?”
“I’m still looking for Bo.”
“Mr. Bolitar?”
Myron almost said, “Mr. Bolitar? What am I, your father?” but it didn’t seem the time.
“Yes.”
“You’re lying to me.”
“No, I’m not. If there’s nothing else—”
“Private aircraft routes can be easily tracked, as I’m sure you and Mr. Lockwood are aware. We know you flew from Las Vegas to Montana on his aircraft. Why the stop at Havre Airport?”
Myron opened his mouth to answer, but Ellen raised a silencing finger.
“I asked you to make this easier,” she said in the voice of an elementary school teacher who has been disappointed by a favorite student. “That’s all. Just one small thing.” She sighed theatrically. “I suspected you wouldn’t listen. But I did ask you, didn’t I?”
Myron figured the question was rhetorical, so he said nothing. She kept her eyes on his. Finally, Myron broke the stalemate.
“Look, whatever your name is, I don’t know what you want from me.”
“Haven’t I made myself clear?”
“I don’t know where Bo Storm is.”
“Pity then.” She shook her head and opened her purse. Myron half expected her to pull out a gun — it was that kind of day — but instead she took out a smartphone and said, “Allen, did you hear all that?”
A newly familiar voice came from the phone speaker: “Every word, Ellen.”
Myron felt his blood freeze.
The old woman turned the screen toward him, so Myron could see. There, on FaceTime or whatever video app she was using, was Dad’s new pickleball/trivia pal, Allen Castner.
“Hey, Myron!”
Myron just sat there. He felt a rushing in his ears.
Allen Castner moved his face very close to the screen. He had AirPods in his ears. “Your father invited me over after our pickleball outing for a little pinochle. He’s just in the bathroom, taking a piss. Something’s up with his prostate. It’s like the fourth time he’s been in there.”
Myron swallowed. “What the hell is going on?”
“Oh, I think you know, Myron.”
The screen jerked as though Allen Castner had dropped the phone. When it came back into view again, he was holding a Beretta M9A3 with a silencer screwed on the end of the barrel.
“Talk to us, Myron.”
It was Ellen who said that. He understood, of course, that it wasn’t her real name. And that this guy’s name wasn’t really Allen. They’d used his parents’ names to mess with his head. Like he needed that.
“By the way,” the old woman said, “Allen is wearing headphones.”
“Ear pods,” Allen said, correcting her.
“I stand corrected, ear pods, thank you. The point is, Allen can hear you. Your father won’t be able to.”
And then Myron heard his father’s voice. “Who are you talking to?”
Allen Castner said, “Sit down here, Al.”
“What the hell? Is that a gun?”
“Dad!”
“Don’t shout,” Ellen said. “Your receptionist will hear and that will be a problem. Where is Bo Storm?”
Myron’s eyes were glued to the screen, to his father. “I told you. I don’t—”
And then, on the screen, Myron saw Allen Castner whip his father in the face with the gun. His father grunted in pain and fell back.
“Dad!”
“I told you,” the old woman said in a calm, almost soothing voice. “He can’t hear you.”
Myron’s father crumpled to the floor, his hands covering his face. Blood seeped through his fingers. Myron looked across at the old woman. She just smiled.
“I asked you, didn’t I? I asked you nicely.”
Myron almost jumped across the desk — almost throttled her right then and there. Forget that she was an old woman. Damn the consequences.
But she just gave him a simple shake of her head.
“That would be Daddy’s death warrant.”
On the screen, Myron heard his father moan.
“Tell us where Bo Storm is,” the old woman said.
“He’s in Montana.”
Myron could hear the panic in his own voice.