“Sir, may I see your ID?”
“Officer?” Donovan was calling from his front door. He was leaning heavily against the frame, favoring his left leg. “Officer?”
“Mr. Donovan,” the officer replied. I wondered if the cops knew everyone who lived in North Oaks by name or only the seriously wealthy.
“Officer”—I was sure that Donovan was going to burn me. He didn’t—“it’s all right, officer. Mr. McKenzie is a friend of mine. I should have told him about the rules. I’m sorry.”
“That’s fine, sir.” The officer nodded at me. “Mr. McKenzie, you’re free to go.”
I gave Donovan a nod. Apparently, Donovan got the message, which meant I could forget about him. And I so much wanted to forget about him, about all of them. I felt crummy about frightening him with the Beretta and wondered for a moment if I would have actually done what I had promised. In any case, he brought it on himself.
“Thank you, officer,” I said and climbed into the Audi.
“What happened to your car?” the officer asked as I fired it up. “There’s a lot of damage here.”
“I was sideswiped on the freeway by a snowplow.”
“That’s terrible.”
“I thought so, too.”
“It was such a nice car, too.”
Was?
“Sir?”
“Yeah.”
“Is that a bullet hole?”
“Don’t be silly,” I said before driving away. “Who would want to shoot at me?”
Just So You Know
On Saturday a few hundred people crowded into the St. Mark’s Elementary School gymnasium to support about a half dozen nonprofit groups. There was a turkey dinner with all the trimmings, a raffle, cakewalk, something called a “bottle blast,” various games of chance for the entire family, and, of course, sno-cones, popcorn, and mini-donuts. The corner where Girl Scout Troop 579 was ensconced had been hopping the entire day—we had to send Bobby Dunston out to get more paper bags for the mini-donuts, which gave me a great deal of pleasure.
“You scoffed when I bought the donut machine,” I reminded him and Shelby. “Now what do you say?”
They admitted that making a hundred dozen mini-donuts per hour just about met the demand. On the other hand Shelby asked, “Have you ever even come close to making this many donuts before?”
I told her, “Just knowing that I could was enough.”
On Sunday morning, I drove my Jeep Cherokee to Rickie’s and had brunch with the boss. There was a jazz trio playing soft and mellow and they were pretty good. They were also college kids and you could tell they were itching to cut loose, only Nina wouldn’t let them. Apparently she was concerned they would disturb the digestion of her older, after-church customers. She did promise them a Monday night gig to see what they could do and that seemed to encourage them.
While we ate, I told Nina everything that happened in Victoria, without pause or hesitation, starting with my meetings with Lindsey Barrett and the Brotherhood. The question Donovan had asked in Muehlenhaus’s conference room—“Can we rely on your discretion?”—flashed in my brain without leaving an impression. It hadn’t occurred to me to ask Nina the same question.
Nina seemed surprised that I had been so forthcoming.
“Usually you keep these things to yourself,” she said.
“I met two kids in Victoria. They were young and they were in love, and the girl, who reminded me a little of your daughter, she told me that she and her lover had no secrets between them and I thought that’s the way it should be.”
Nina hugged me and kissed my cheek and thanked me for including her in that part of my life and I should have been glad for it, except I wasn’t. Probably because I was holding out on her. I didn’t tell Nina about Jack Barrett and Grace Monteleone or the child that they conceived together, a crime for which I easily forgave myself.
I also didn’t tell her that I had slept with Danny Mallinger. Or that I had kissed her before I left Victoria and reminded her that we still had a standing dinner date. “Give me a week or two to heal and I’ll call you,” Danny said from her hospital bed.
No, I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that.
On Monday I went to see Muehlenhaus. I entered his lobby and walked past the receptionist, through the glass doors into the inner office area, found the long corridor and marched to the conference room at the end of it. I did it without stopping—not even to admire the Degas—for fear someone would ask who I was or where I was going. Walk purposefully and with confidence, I told myself. You’d be surprised how far you can get.
I entered the conference room without bothering to knock. I was in luck. Muehlenhaus was there, along with Donovan, Glen Gunhus, Carroll Mahoney, Prescott Coole, and a half dozen other men I didn’t recognize. If the room had been empty, I wasn’t sure what I would have done.