“How’d you find me?”
“You really want to know?”
“Yes.”
“Lee’s been sending you marked bills,” she said. “He sent me a spreadsheet. It was either here or the Rancho Swap Meet. Where are you living?”
“Nope,” Matthew said. “That you don’t get.”
“I understand.” She looked over her shoulder. “There’s a whole city beneath Las Vegas,” Kristy said, her voice low. “Six hundred miles of storm drains. After 9/11, we walked every inch, because we got a tip there were bombers living in there, getting ready to take down the Strip.”
“Find anything?”
“Five hundred, maybe seven hundred locals,” she said. “A whole community. Got a mayor and everything.” Kristy reached into her purse, came out with another manilla envelope. She slid it over to him. Inside was a band of twenty-five crisp hundred-dollar bills and a cell phone.
“These marked, too?”
“Of course,” she said. “If something goes sideways, there’s an entrance on Spring Mountain and Rainbow. The Desert Inn Detention Basin. On a sunny day, there’s easy access. You find Cupertine, go there, call me.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Lee believes you,” she said. “So I believe you.”
“I didn’t kill Ronnie Cupertine’s family,” Matthew said.
“It’s enough for me,” she said. “Pray that Ronnie Cupertine doesn’t die between now and then, though,” Kristy said. She pushed her plate away, started to gather up her stuff. “You ever been to Russia?” she asked, as if the first part of the conversation had never happened.
“No,” he said.
Kristy took one last sip of her coffee. “I always wanted to go. My family, they all escaped in something like 1910. Fiddler on the Roof era. Whenever that was. But I think I missed my window.”
“Because of Putin?”
“No, no,” she said. “Fuck him. He’ll be taken out by one of his own sometime. That’s how they do czars.” She pointed at her head. “Got a ticking time bomb set to go off anytime now. I’m not going to die in Russia, all by myself, where no one knows me. End up in an unmarked grave, my kidneys sold for profit.” That made Matthew laugh. Maybe for the first time in a year. “You’ve got a nice smile, Agent,” Kristy said. “Good teeth. Strong prenatal care; that’s what my mom would have said.”
“I’m not an agent anymore,” Matthew said.
“You don’t happen to know where Sal Cupertine is, do you?”
“Is this you asking or Agent Poremba?”
“He killed four FBI agents and a CI,” Kristy said. “So consider it Abe Lincoln asking.”
“My guess?” Matthew said. “We’ll never find him.”
“Then what are you doing in Las Vegas?”
“I like it here,” he said.
Kristy Levine downed her screwdriver and then stood up. She was a tiny thing. Matthew suspected she was unpredictable and fast. “You’re a shit liar, Agent,” she said. “I don’t think you murdered anyone. I want you to know that. And personally? I don’t really care if you did put Ronnie Cupertine into a coma. But murder is murder. I believe that.”
“I meant to kill him,” Matthew said. “Chance came along again, I’d cut his fucking throat.”
“Lee cares about you,” she said.
“I don’t know why,” Matthew said.
“Don’t make him regret it,” she said.
She was halfway out the restaurant when something occurred to Matthew, so he caught up with her just as she was pushing open Odessa’s doors into the harsh light of the Las Vegas morning. “That guy who came to the bar. The owner’s son. He knew you.”
“He does indeed.”
“But you said you’d never been here before.”
“I know how to lie, too,” she said and then she smiled. “If you find Sal Cupertine,” she continued, “the FBI upped the reward to a million dollars. Announcement is coming end of the month, for the anniversary. Come buy me a drink at Pour Decisions. I’m there on Tuesday nights.”
THREE
APRIL 2002
LOON LAKE, WA
“BLOW OUT YOUR CANDLES, WILLIAM,” MARYANN SAID. SHE WASN’T JENNIFER Cupertine’s mother, nor William’s grandmother, but for the last nine months, she’d pretended to be. It was the first warm day of April on Loon Lake, twenty-six miles outside of Spokane. Since William shot a security guard inside Carson’s department store in Chicago last August, Loon Lake had been home.
Jennifer could still see it all unfolding.
The security guard tackling her, William reaching into her purse, taking out her gun, and then, very calmly, putting one in the back of the man’s head.
