The Better Liar(57)

    Instead I went back to my car. The air was still smarting from the heat of the day, and a scent of ozone rolled in from the west, where the clouds occasionally flickered like a flashbulb going off. It would rain soon.

The Frontier was a restaurant across from UNM, open almost twenty-four/seven except for a few hours in the early morning, just long enough to clean everything and start again before dawn. Parking consisted of a vaguely L-shaped strip of pavement behind the restaurant, crowded with the protruding backs of pickup trucks and SUVs, that created a meandering path just large enough for one car to pass, going forward or shamefacedly backward when they reached the end without finding a space. Inside, it seemed to go on forever, one roomful of red vinyl booths giving way to another hung with patterned rugs, until you reached the main room, dominated at the far end by a long low counter whose upper wall disappeared under a row of at least ten signs containing the restaurant’s hundreds of menu items.

I got a carne adovada burrito and waited in one of the slatted wooden booths under a chandelier made out of a wagon wheel. It was crowded in the main room, the noise of the busboys and the diners occasionally interrupted by the order-up bell, like the triangle in a kindergarten orchestra. I amused myself by smiling at a boy waiting to order. He looked like a student at UNM, with curly black hair and thick glasses, and he was horrified at being caught staring. He pulled his hoodie up, then looked back at me a dozen times in several minutes. I met his eyes serenely each time. When he got to the front, I heard him stammer, having forgotten his order. Three people passed him in line as he studied the menu boards, cheeks burning.

Nancy walked in just then. Her hair was wet from a shower, pushed back from her forehead, and she was wearing gray sweats and a sleeveless jersey slung over a sports bra. Her arms were thick with muscle, unevenly tanned from her short-sleeved uniform, and her body was tense. She scanned the room for me, and I waved.

    “Robin,” she said, throwing herself into the booth across from me. “Hi.”

“Hi, baby,” I said, echoing her from earlier. “You look tired. Are you okay?”

She waved a hand in front of her face. “I’m fine. Just…”

I tilted my head.

Nancy checked her watch, abandoning her train of thought. “Sorry for asking you to meet me again right away, but I looked up the address you gave me.”

I didn’t want to appear too eager. “Do you want any food? I could get you a plate of something.” I pushed the remains of my burrito to the edge of the table.

A bit of warmth crept over her face. “I’m not hungry.”

I waited, but I couldn’t hold out long. “What did you find?”

Nancy sighed. “Look, I don’t want to scare you. It could be nothing.”

My pulse jumped. “What is it?”

She glanced at my hands, inches away from her own on the table, and her fingers twitched. “The place—it’s a gym now…It used to belong to a guy named Francis Clery. Frank Clery. It was a pawnshop for a while, but I guess they sold it after he went to jail.”

“He went to jail? For what?”

“Pretty recently. Aggravated assault against a household member, one of the DV laws. He hit his wife across the face with a gun, cracked her eye socket. She’s fine, but he’s doing eight months. That’s a third-degree felony.” She blew out a breath. “Assuming she doesn’t lose her nerve. It’s hard to make DV cases stick.”

I frowned. “I don’t…” I caught her eye and added quickly, “I mean, that’s awful. But what does it have to do with Leslie?”

Nancy laced her fingers together, gripping until the knuckles turned white. “We…keep track of this guy. Not officially. There’s been no cause to arrest him, and I think everyone thought he’d go down for tax evasion, but you live for moments of stupidity like this. She ran to the neighbors’ house and called us. We’d gotten complaints before about disturbances, but she’d always sworn he never hit her. This time, we took care of it before he could get to her. Had an officer on the corner already, got him booked for the assault practically as soon as she hung up.” She shook her head.

    “You guys keep someone on the corner at all times because he beats his wife?” I said, thinking it through. “Or…you keep a guy on the corner because…”

Nancy’s dark eyes met mine. “Because people hire him to kill other people sometimes.”

I didn’t say anything for a long time. “How do you know?” I said at last.

“We don’t.” She shrugged. “If we knew for sure, he’d be in jail for that instead of for assault. But there are guys you hear things about, even if you never have enough to arrest them. Look, maybe Leslie just went to the pawnshop.”

“But you don’t think so, do you.” I watched as Nancy cast her eyes down. “Why not?”

Nancy spoke to the table. “If it was just the address, sure. But you gave me his phone number. That’s not the store’s phone. That’s a personal cell. Maybe he bought it just to talk with customers. But why give them another avenue to bother him at all hours of the day and night?”

“Some businesses do that,” I said absently. “If he’s posting online and wants people to be able to text in offers.”