“They don’t like being questioned.”
“They trust you,” I said. “Get them to talk.”
“I don’t like exploiting them like that.”
I shook my head and rapped my knuckles on the window. “Leverage.”
“What?”
“Use what you have,” I said. “You have their trust. You aren’t exploiting them. Get off the high horse. You need information and they can probably give it to you. You aren’t using it to hurt them. You’re using it to help Marc. You need to realize that you need to focus when you’re looking for someone. If people’s feelings get hurt? Oh well. Is that worth making sure Marc is okay? I’d say yes.”
Isabel’s mouth set in a firm line and we drove back to the apartment in silence. I knew she was irritated with me—thought I didn’t understand. Her problem was that she didn’t get that I understood better than anyone she’d probably ever meet. I understood that people’s feelings got hurt. I understood that leveraging someone wasn’t always the most comfortable feeling in the world. But I also understood what it was like to not find answers.
I knew which was worse.
She pulled into the parking lot at the apartments and cut the engine. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“I’ll ask around tonight,” she said. “I’ll see what I can find out.”
“Good.”
“But you can’t be there,” she said. “They won’t talk if you’re there. Doesn’t matter that they’ve seen you with me. They’ll clam up and disappear.”
“Not a problem,” I said. “I wasn’t planning on being there with you anyway.”
“You weren’t?”
I shook my head.
“Where are you going to be?”
“Talking with our new friends,” I said. “I’ll need Stevie’s number.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
Stevie and Boyd showed up at the diner exactly at eight. The snow was falling again, but lighter than the previous night and it blew around on the streets like baby powder. I sat in a booth near the back and they both approached, tentatively.
Stevie lifted his chin and pulled off his knit cap, exposing thick curly brown hair. “Hey.”
I nodded. “Hey.” I motioned to the other side of the booth. “Sit.”
Stevie slid in first and shed his wool coat as he did so. Boyd piled into the booth after him, his ugly face frowning at me.
“First rule,” I said, pointing at Boyd. “You don’t speak unless I speak to you.”
“Hey, man, I don’t…” he said, his face screwing up with irritation.
“You’re already breaking the rule,” I said, cutting him off. “You wanna know how Codaselli described you today?”
He squinted at me.
“Expendable,” I said. “Which means that scary fucker Anchor will waste you in a heartbeat. You really wanna give me a reason to call him and tell him you’re being a pain in the ass?”
Boyd’s mouth closed and his shoulders sagged.
“That’s better,” I said.
“Am I expendable, too?” Stevie asked.
“You let me worry about that,” I said, choosing not to share the truth with him. I didn’t want him to relax.
He ran a hand through his thick hair, then nodded.
The waitress brought a pot of coffee, asked if we wanted food, and I declined for all of us.
I refilled my mug. “First thing you need to know is that if we find Marc, I think he’ll let you both walk clean. I honestly don’t think he gives a crap about either of you. I might be wrong, but it didn’t seem that way to me.”
They both exhaled.
“But we gotta find him to make that happen,” I said, looking at Stevie. “So, I wanna know everything. From the beginning.”
Stevie reached for the pot and filled his mug. “Alright. We work for a guy named Gino Miller. Used to, anyway. Marc borrowed money from him.”
“He’s a loan shark or something?”
Stevie shrugged. “Or something. He does a lot of crap, but yeah. He does a lot of that. Decent terms, but you gotta pay him back. On time.”
“Or?”
“Or shit happens.”
I sipped at the coffee, the steam rising into my nose.
“So, Marc borrowed and missed his payment,” Stevie said. “Gino went nuts, told us to go find him.”
“You guys are his muscle?”
Boyd shifted in the booth, folding his arms across his chest.
Stevie shrugged. “I guess. He tells us to do stuff, we do it. It’s a job.”
I remembered Isabel telling me that she’d helped them both, but that they were almost always up to no good. They were like a lot of runaways. They didn’t believe in themselves, didn’t believe they had any other skills than the ones they’d used to survive on the streets. Getting help didn’t necessarily mean getting out.
“So, you went looking and couldn’t find him,” I said.
Stevie nodded. “Right. Checked the usual spots, asked around. No luck. Then Boyd found out who he was.”
I looked at Boyd. “From who?”
Boyd squirmed. “Just some guy. I’d seen Marc with him a month or so ago. He told me his last name.”
“So, you guys didn’t know that before?”
They both shook their heads.
“Then what?” I asked.
“We were idiots,” Stevie said. “I didn’t even check with Gino, thought we’d pull it off, look like heroes. We went to see Mr. Codaselli.”
“You didn’t know who he was?”
Both shook their heads again.
“So, you go to shake him down, bribe him, whatever. What happened?”
Stevie took a long drink of the coffee, wiped at his mouth with his sleeve. “Anchor put a gun in Boyd’s mouth.”
Boyd flushed.
“Fun,” I said.
“Mr. Codaselli said I should tell him who we worked for,” Stevie said, biting on his upper lip for a moment. “If I didn’t, Anchor was gonna shoot Boyd, then put the gun in my mouth. Sorta realized we’d screwed up at that point.”
“I’ll bet.”
“I told him about Gino,” Stevie said. “Anchor pulls out a cellphone and calls Gino. Had him on speed dial. And he kept the gun in Boyd’s mouth the whole time.”
Boyd stared at the table.
“Anchor asks him if we work for him,” Stevie said. “Gino said yeah, I guess. Anchor hands the phone to Mr. Codaselli. Mr. Codaselli says something to Gino like he would consider it a favor if Gino wouldn’t mind transferring us to his employment and that he’d like to cover his son’s debt. Something like that. It was weird and I was scared.”
I was certain that he was. He probably had never run into anyone like Codaselli and might never again. Walking in blind might have been a wake-up call for both of them that they were out of their league.
“Mr. Codaselli hangs up, hands the phone back to Anchor,” Stevie said. “Tells us we work for him now. Anchor finally pulls the gun out of Boyd’s mouth.”
Boyd was still staring at the table, shaking his head.
“He tells us to tell him anything we know about Marc,” Stevie said. “And we did. Everything we could think of. I had no idea if he was gonna kill us or not.” He swallowed. “Then he told us to go find him and that we report to Anchor anything we find.”
All of that made sense and sounded right. Stevie sounded too frightened of Codaselli to lie to me.
“Then I got a call from Anchor tonight,” Stevie said. “Telling us to work with you. You called me. Here we are.”
“Okay,” I said, spinning the coffee mug on the table. “Now tell me what you know about Marc.”
“Can we get some food?” Stevie asked. “I’m starving.”
Boyd nodded, but didn’t say anything.
I signaled to the waitress and she came to the table. They both ordered hamburgers, fries and sodas. I forgot they were kids, probably still living on the street, without steady income or regular meals. Sitting in the diner was probably torture without being able to eat.
“Not a lot,” Stevie said after the server left the table. “About Marc. Other than he has a girlfriend.”
“Know her name?”