The Hollow Ones(37)

Odessa shook her head. “We’re not here about the narcotics rap. Not really.”

“If this is about papers, I am a citizen, I was born here.”

“Again,” said Odessa, “we’re really not here to hassle you.”

Mauro chuckled. “Right. What is it then? And who’s Slender Man?”

Odessa answered, “I don’t actually know.”

Hugo Blackwood said, “We want to know about the grave you robbed.”

Mauro went white. He stammered. “Look, that was a mistake, I got snared up in something bad, and that was a while ago.”

“So it wasn’t your idea to dig up the dead girl’s coffin?” said Blackwood.

Mauro recoiled as though he had just been made to touch or taste something disgusting.

“I’m not talking about that. It was a mistake, okay? That’s not who I am.”

Odessa said, “You said you have a child yourself.”

Mauro nodded fast. “It’s the wrong thing to do, I know that. Right from wrong—I know.”

Blackwood stepped toward him. “But this was deeper than that.”

Mauro did not deny it. He looked at Blackwood with dread, preferring to direct his words to Odessa. “I’m sorry about that, and I did my time…and why you gotta hassle me about this at my job, yo?”

Odessa read in his reaction that this went beyond fear of the FBI. He was genuinely scared even to be speaking about this.

“We need to know why you did it,” she said. “Who you did it for. This conversation stays here.” She indicated the basement room.

Mauro shook his head, offering his wrists instead, as though for handcuffs. “Take me in, FBI. Let’s go. Arrest me.”

“You’d rather go back to jail than tell us about it?”

“Take me in!” he said, very agitated.

Odessa turned to Blackwood. She couldn’t take Mauro in, obviously. The point was to get him to talk anyway. But they had touched a deep nerve in him. It looked like a dead end.

Blackwood did not return her look. His eyes remained on Mauro—while Mauro worked hard not to return his gaze.

Then she heard some rustling and thought that the woman had come back into the room to get something. Odessa tracked the noise to a large canvas bin of hotel bedsheets waiting to be laundered. The wheeled bin was larger than the housekeeping carts, and easily held many, many dozens of sheet sets and comforters. Large enough for a person of any size to be underneath the laundry.

And that was what it sounded like. Someone—something—stirring beneath the sheets. She thought she detected movement.

Mauro heard it, too. He was staring at the bin, listening to the rustling of something buried deep within the sheets. He backed away a few steps, until he was standing almost next to Odessa.

But Hugo Blackwood never looked over at the laundry bin. His eyes never left Mauro’s face, Odessa realized. Blackwood acted as though he was completely unaware of any noise coming from the laundry.

“Shit, man…” Mauro swallowed and wiped his mouth. He was freaking out. “Okay, listen. I’ll tell you, but you need to protect me.”

Odessa looked at Blackwood. There was no change of expression on his face.

She turned back to Mauro, while also keeping her distance from the laundry bin. “Talk,” she said, going with the moment.

“I did what I did, I don’t make no excuses,” he said. “It wasn’t about anything but money. It was small-time, I don’t want to hurt no one. But then…then it became about hurting people. By then I was in too deep to bounce off. I was doomed, man. Doomed.” Odessa noticed that, despite his reluctance to talk, judging by the depth of his self-analysis, he had obviously been thinking about this for quite some time. “When you think you’re already damned, all bets are off, right? It’s just a matter of time. Some of the guys I knew, they were into Palo. It made sense. Like a protective aura. Worked out for me, ’cause I got out of jams I should never’ve gotten away from. It helped me get ahead. Then I…I met someone who said I could go even further. Supernatural powers. They wanted a grave dug up. They said the body was a saint’s. A little girl with magical healing powers. So I did the deed. Me and another dude, we got high and did it. And that was that—but it wasn’t. There was a ceremony using the bones and shit. It was too intense for me, you know? Too…what do you call it? When you play with religion, but you play too hard?”

“Sacrilegious?” she said. “Blasphemous?”

He nodded. “I took off. I just split. It all came crashing down on me. Since that night, it felt like someone put a curse on me, a mark. My good-luck run was over. I messed with the wrong stuff.”

“Who was it?” asked Odessa. “Who came to you with the idea for digging up Baby Mia’s grave?”

“Nah. See, I can’t do that, I won’t. I’m out now. I want to stay out. I got to stay out. You walk in here saying, We just want to know this and that. No, you don’t just want that. You want me to put my neck on the line…”

“We’ll protect you,” Odessa said. “I can vouch for that.”

“No one can,” Mauro said. “I talk, I’m dead.”

He shook his head firmly. The room lights went out.