Later(49)

“Think about it, kiddo. If you called and said you were fine but taking a little ride with your old friend Lizzy Dutton, do you think she’d just say ‘Okay, Jamie, that’s fine, make her buy you dinner?’ ”

I said nothing.

“She’d call the cops. But that isn’t the biggest thing. I should have gotten rid of your cell right away, because she can track it.”

My eyes widened. “Bullshit she can!”

Liz nodded, smiling again, eyes on the road again as we pulled past a double-box semi. “She put a locater app on the first phone she gave you, when you were ten. I was the one who told her how to hide it, so you wouldn’t find it and get all pissy about it.”

“I got a new phone two years ago,” I muttered. There were tears prickling the corners of my eyes, I don’t know why. I felt…I don’t know the word. Wait a minute, maybe I do. Whipsawed. That’s how I felt, whipsawed.

“You think she didn’t put that app on the new one?” Liz gave a harsh laugh. “Are you kidding? You’re her one and only, kiddo, her little princeling. She’ll still be tracking you ten years from now, when you’re married and changing your first kid’s diapers.”

“Fucking liar,” I said, but I was talking to my own lap.

She snorted some more of her special blend once we were clear of the city, the movements just as agile and practiced, but this time the car did swerve a little, and we got another disapproving honk. I thought of some cop lighting us up, and at first I thought that would be good, that it would end this nightmare, but maybe it wouldn’t be good. In her current wired-up state, Liz might try to outrun a cop, and manage to kill us both. I thought of the Central Park man. His face and upper body had been covered with somebody’s jacket so the bystanders couldn’t see the worst of it, but I had seen.

Liz brightened up again. “You’d make a hell of a detective, Jamie. With your particular skill, you’d be a star. No murderer would escape you, because you could talk to the vics.”

This idea had actually occurred to me once or twice. James Conklin, Detective of the Dead. Or maybe to the Dead. I’d never figured out which sounded better.

“Not the NYPD, though,” she continued. “Fuck those ass-holes. Go private. I could see your name on the door.” She briefly raised both hands from the wheel, as if framing it.

Another honk.

“Drive the fucking car,” I said, trying not to sound alarmed. It probably didn’t work, because I was alarmed.

“Don’t worry about me, Champ. I’ve forgotten more about driving than you’ll ever learn.”

“Your nose is bleeding again,” I said.

She wiped it with the heel of her palm, then wiped it on her sweatshirt. Not for the first time, by the look of it. “Septum’s gone,” she said. “I’m going to fix it. Once I’m clean.”

After that we were quiet for awhile.





56


After we got on the Thruway, Liz helped herself to another bump of her special blend. I’d say she was starting to scare me, but we were well past that point.

“Do you want to know how we got here? Me and you, Holmes and Watson off on another adventure?”

Adventure wasn’t the word I would have picked, but I didn’t say so.

“I can see by your face that you don’t. That’s okay. Long story, not very interesting, but I’ll tell you this much—no kid ever said they wanted to grow up to be a bum, a college dean, or a dirty cop. Or to pick up garbage in Westchester county, which is what my brother-in-law does these days.”

She laughed, although I didn’t know then what was funny about being a garbageman.

“Here’s something that might interest you. I’ve moved a lot of dope from Point A to Point B and got paid for it, but the blow your mother found in my coat pocket that time was a freebie for a friend. Ironic, when you think about it. By then IAD already had their eye on me. They weren’t sure, but they were getting there. I was scared to death that Tee would spill the beans. That would have been the time to get out, but by then I couldn’t.” She paused, considering this. “Or wouldn’t. Looking back it’s hard to tell which. But it makes me think of something Chet Atkins said once. You ever heard of Chet Atkins?”

I shook my head.

“How soon the great are forgotten. Google him when you get back. Excellent guitarist, up there with Clapton and Knopfler. He was talking about how shitty he was at tuning his instrument. ‘By the time I realized I was no good at this part of the job, I was too rich to quit.’ Same with me and my career as a transporter. Tell you one other thing, since we’re just passing the time on the good old New York Thruway. You think your mother was the only one who got hurt when the economy went tits-up in ’08? Not true. I had a stock portfolio—teeny-weenie, but it was mine—and that went poof.”

She passed another double box, being careful to use her blinker before swinging out and then tucking back in. Considering how much dope she’d ingested, I was amazed. Also grateful. I didn’t want to be with her, but even more than that I didn’t want to die with her.

“But the main thing was my sister Bess. She married this guy who worked for one of the big investment companies. Probably haven’t heard of Bear Stearns any more than you’ve heard of Chet Atkins, right?”