“Sitting here doesn’t make you any less of an asshole,” he said.
“No it doesn’t. But I’m not fucking with you, Robert. And I need you to take me seriously.”
“I oughta arrest you right now.”
“For what?”
We stared at each other. I couldn’t read him. If he made a move, I would too, and things had the potential to get real ugly, real fast. My Glock was tucked into the back of my pants. I wouldn’t shoot him—the whole point was not to get him killed—but I damn sure wasn’t leaving in handcuffs.
He blinked first. Rapped the table with his knuckles twice and shoved his finger in my face. I let him. “Stay away from my family,” he said. Then he left.
I was glad I didn’t order the scrapple omelet.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“Went that well, huh?” Joey said.
“About what I expected,” I said into the phone. I was sitting in The Colonial’s parking lot, watching the traffic light change from green to yellow to red and back again. “He knew the names of two agents on the hit list, so he’s involved in the task force. I just don’t know how or why. Or what the fuck the damn task force was even investigating, for that matter, other than that it scared the shit out of Trish. And she doesn’t strike me as someone who scares easily.”
“So what now?” Joey asked.
“Now we wait. And we watch. I’ll follow Robert to work tomorrow—”
“You mean to a police precinct crawling with cops.”
“Yeah, it’ll be fun,” I said, wondering exactly how the hell I planned to pull that off. “You guys will need to split up. Rent another car for Erica, but use a different branch this time.”
“We should have asked if Enterprise has a reward card. At this rate, we’re two rentals away from getting a freebie.”
“Get another boring one,” I said, ignoring his joke. “Nothing flashy. A four-door sedan or an SUV. Have Erica tail Denise and Mags to the high school, and follow Ethan to the middle school. Unless you’re too busy talking to your girlfriend.”
“What?” The question came out too high-pitched and stretched out, like a teenager who’s been caught in a lie and is stalling to think up an excuse.
“Erica said you stepped out of the car earlier to take a call from some girl. Do me a favor and manage your little black book on your own time. I didn’t pay you a hundred grand to take booty calls while you’re on the clock.”
What started out as a ball-busting one liner had quickly escalated into genuine anger on my end. It caught me by surprise, but I was powerless to stop it. I felt my blood pressure rising with each word. To his credit, Joey didn’t punch back.
“Rick, look, I’m sorry man,” he said, in the most pacifistic tone I’d ever heard him use. “She’s just some crazy bitch I met at a bar a few nights before we left Brussels. We hooked up, and she hasn’t left me alone since. I only took the call because she was blowing up my phone and I wanted to express to her in no uncertain terms that I couldn’t deal with her bullshit right now. I wasn’t neglecting your family, I promise.”
“I know,” I said, rubbing my eyes. The pounding in my ears subsided and I could feel the color drain from my cheeks. “Erica said she gave you the okay anyway, that she had it covered. I didn’t mean to snap, it’s just . . .”
“Hey, we’ve got them,” he said, filling the silence after I trailed off. I nodded, even though I knew he couldn’t see me.
“Where will you be tonight?” he asked.
“There’s a motel a few miles down the road,” I said, composing myself. “I’ll crash there. I’d invite you guys to join me, but . . .”
“No worries, man, we get it. Won’t be my first overnight stakeout. Erica and I will take shifts, we’ll be cool.”
“Thanks.”
I sat for a few more minutes after we hung up, watching the light go through its cycles. Then I started the car and was in the motel’s parking lot within ten minutes. They were only at about half capacity and had plenty of rooms available. Part of that was the time of year—early March in a small South Jersey town is far from prime tourist season—but the other part, most likely the biggest part, was that the motel looked like the kind of place you stayed at if you wanted to get raped and murdered in your sleep.
There were fifteen rooms in an L-shaped row. No second floor. The sign out front alternated between spelling out MOTEL and MOT L as the pink, neon E blinked in and out of its death throes. I was in the room closest to the rental office, debating whether or not the risk of contracting an STD was higher if I slept on top of the bed sheets or beneath them, when Erica sent me a text.
It was a picture of my old house. The house where I carried Denise across the threshold, through a door that still displayed a knocker with the previous owners’ name engraved on it. In all the years we’d lived there, we never took it down. My parents bought us a new one with our name on it as a housewarming gift, but it was smaller and the screw holes from the other one were visible no matter where we tried to hang it.
Rather than spackle over them and repaint the door, we just decided it was easier to be the Whiteheads. At least to anyone who actually read the engraving on door knockers.
It was the house we paid about $50,000 too much for because we bought it before the real estate bubble burst. By the time I left, it still hadn’t recouped its original value.
It was the house where both of my children were born.
The house where Denise and I made love on the floor one Christmas Eve night while the kids slept upstairs.
The house where Denise and I adopted a shepherd-Lab mix named Sandy that was like a third child to us. She was twelve years old when I left, and likely long gone by now. Just like Joey’s Tinkerbell.
The large evergreen against the front corner by our bedroom window was also gone, replaced by the wraparound porch Denise always wanted but I never gave her.
We didn’t need it and it’s too expensive, I’d said. It wouldn’t have surprised me at all to learn Robert built it himself, with his rough, masculine hands, whereas I needed an hour to fix a leaky toilet tank and would still screw it up somehow.
The lawn looked good—I was always able to take care of that—but the roof was new and there was an addition over the garage that probably pushed the overall value to what we paid for it in 2002.
Parked at the curb, in front of our black, plastic mailbox that also looked the same as the one I remembered, was a police car with a Pennsylvania license plate. It was getting dark, but you could still discern the outlines of two figures through the back window.
Looks like Robert took you seriously enough to call for protection, read the accompanying message.
Good, I wrote back. Not that I thought a couple of beat cops fresh from the academy would stand a chance should Ghost or The Persian come calling, but at least it meant Robert didn’t brush me off. There was always the chance Trish had in fact gotten to people in Robert’s precinct, but that’s why I had Joey and Erica there. When did they arrive?