"Don't be upset. Besides, I'm coming home."

"You are?" Her whole tone changed.

"Yeah. Today, I think. I've done everything I can do here, the only thing left is...you know."

"I don't want to miss that. You don't know how long I've been waiting for this."

"If I get out of here soon," he said, "I guess I'll be home pretty late tonight. It's already after lunch, and sometimes I get kind of tired, so I might stop awhile around Utica or something, but I'll still make it in one day."

"That'll give me time to make you a carrot cake," she said brightly. "I'll make it this afternoon."

"Okay."

"You drive safely. I don't want you falling asleep at the wheel. You've never had the same kind of driving stamina your father had."

"How is he?"

"I think, if we get things done this week, he'll last at least that long. I'll be glad when this is finally over. You know what it costs to take a taxi down to see him?"

"It won't matter soon, Mom."

"It's about more than the money, you know," she said. "I've been thinking about how it'll be done. We're going to need some rope, you know. Or some of that tape. And I guess it makes sense to do the mother first. The little one'll be no trouble after that. I can help you with her. I'm not completely useless, you know."

38.

Vince and I finished our beer, then snuck out through the backyard and returned to his truck. He was going to drive me back to get my car, still parked near his body shop.

"So you know Jane has been having a bit of trouble at school," he said.

"Yeah," I said.

"I was thinking, my helping you out and all, maybe you could put in a word for her with the princ.i.p.al," he said.

"I have already, but I don't mind doing it again," I said.

"She's a good kid, but she has a bit of a temper at times," Vince said. "She doesn't take s.h.i.t from anyone. Certainly not me. So when she gets in trouble, basically, she's just defending herself."

"She needs to get a handle on that," I said. "You can't solve every problem by beating the s.h.i.t out of someone."

He chuckled softly to himself.

"Do you want her to have a life like yours?" I asked. "No offense intended."

He slowed for a red light. "No," he said. "But the odds are kind of stacked against her. I'm not the best role model. And her mother, she's bounced Jane around to so many homes, the kid's never had any stability. That's what I've been trying to do for her, you know? Give her something to hold on to for a while. Kids need that. But it takes a long time to build up any kind of trust. She's been burned so many times before."

"Sure," I said. "You could send her to a good school. When she finishes high school, maybe send her to some place for journalism, or an English program, something where she could develop her talents."

"Her marks aren't too good," he said. "Be hard for her to get in somewhere."

"But you could afford to send her someplace, right?"

Vince nodded.

"Maybe help her set some goals. Help her look past where she is now, tell her if she can get some half-decent marks, you're prepared to cover some tuition costs, so she can reach her potential."

"You help me with that?" He glanced at me from the corner of his eye.

"Yeah," I said. "The thing is, will she listen?"

Vince shook his head tiredly. "Yeah, well, that's the question."

"I have one," I said.

"Shoot."

"Why do you care?"

"Huh?"

"Why do you care? She's just some kid, daughter of a woman you've met. A lot of guys, they wouldn't take an interest."

"Oh, I get it, you think maybe I'm some sort of perv? I want to get into her pants, right?"

"I didn't say that."

"But you're thinking it."

"No," I said. "I think, if that's what you were up to, there'd be some clue in Jane's writing, in how she behaves toward you. I think she wants to trust you. So the question still is, why do you care?"

The light turned green, Vince tromped on the gas. "I had a daughter," he said. "Of my own."

"Oh," I said.

"I was pretty young at the time. Twenty. Knocked up this girl from Torrington. Agnes. No s.h.i.t, Agnes. My dad, he just about beat the s.h.i.t out of me, asking how I could be so f.u.c.king dumb. Hadn't I ever heard of a rubber, he wanted to know. Yeah, well, you know how it is sometimes, right? Tried to talk Agnes into, you know, getting rid of it, but she didn't want to do that, she had the kid, and it was a girl, and she named her Collette."

"Pretty name," I said.

"And when I saw this kid, I just f.u.c.king loved her, you know? And my old man, he doesn't want to see me stuck with this Agnes just because I couldn't keep it in my pants, but the thing was, she wasn't that bad, this Agnes, and the baby, Collette, she really was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. You'd think, twenty years old, it'd be easy to f.u.c.k off, not be responsible, but there was something about her.

"So I started thinking maybe I'd marry her, right? And be this kid's father. And I was working up my nerve, to ask her, to tell my old man what I was planning to do, and Agnes, she's pushing Collette in this stroller and they're crossing Naugatuck Avenue and this f.u.c.king drunk in a Caddy runs the light and takes them both out."

Vince's grip on the steering wheel seemed to grow tighter, as if he was trying to strangle it. "I'm sorry," I said.

"Yeah, well, so was that f.u.c.king drunk," Vince said. "Waited six months, didn't want to do anything too soon, you know? This was after they threw out the charges, lawyer was able to make the jury think Agnes went out against the light, that even if he'd been sober, he'd still have hit them. So, funny thing happens, a few months later, one night, he's coming out of a bar in Bridgeport, it's pretty late, he's drunk again, the b.a.s.t.a.r.d hadn't learned a thing. He was going down this alley, and someone shoots him right in the f.u.c.king head."

"Wow," I said. "I guess you didn't shed a tear over that when you heard."

Vince shot me a quick glance.

"The last thing he heard before he died was, 'This is for Collette.' And the son of a b.i.t.c.h, you know what he said just before the bullet went into his brain?"

I swallowed. "No."

"He said, 'Collette who?'"

"His wallet got stolen, cops figured it was some kind of robbery." He glanced over at me again. "You should close your mouth, a bug'll fly in," he said.

I closed it.

"There ya go," Vince said. "So anyway, to answer your question, maybe that's why I f.u.c.king care. Is there anything else you'd like to know?" I shook my head. He looked ahead. "That your car?"

I nodded.

As he pulled up behind it, his cell rang. "Yeah?" he said. He listened a moment, then said, "Wait for me."

He put the phone away, said, "They found him. He's registered at the HoJo's."

"s.h.i.t," I said, about to open my door. "I'll follow you."

"Forget your car," Vince said, hitting the gas again, whipping out around my car. He headed up to I-95. It wasn't the most direct route, but probably the fastest, given that the Howard Johnson hotel was the other side of town, at the end of an I-95 off-ramp. He barreled up the on-ramp and was doing eighty-five by the time he was merging with traffic.

Traffic on the interstate was light, and we were to the other side of town in just a few minutes. Vince had to lay on the brakes pretty hard coming down the ramp. He was still doing seventy when I saw the traffic light ahead of us.

He hung a right, then took another right into the HoJo parking lot. The SUV I'd ridden in earlier was parked just beyond the doors to the lobby, and when Blondie saw us he ran over to Vince's window. Vince powered it down.

Blondie gave his boss a room number, said if you drove up the hill and around back, it was one of the ones you could pull right up to. Vince backed up, stopped, threw it into drive, and headed up a long, winding driveway that went behind the complex. The road swung hard left and leveled out behind a row of rooms with doors that opened onto the curb.

"Here it is," Vince said, pulling the truck into a spot.

"I want to talk to him," I said. "Don't do anything crazy to him."

Vince, already out of truck, gave me a dismissive wave without looking back at me. He went up to a door, paused a moment, noticed that it was already open, and rapped on it.

"Mr. Sloan?" he said.

A few doors down, a cleaning lady who'd just wheeled her cart up to a door looked in our direction.

"Mr. Sloan!" Vince shouted, opening the door wider. "It's the manager. We have a bit of a problem. We need to talk to you."

I stood away from the door and the window, so if he looked out he wouldn't see me. It was possible, if he was the man who'd been standing in front of our house that night, that he knew what I looked like.

"He gone," the maid said, loud enough for us to hear.

"What?" Vince said.

"He just check out, a few minute ago," she said. "I clean it next."

"He's gone?" I said. "For good?"

The woman nodded.

Vince opened the door wide, strode into the room. "You cannot go in there," the maid called down to us. But even I was inclined to ignore her, and followed Vince in.

The bed was unmade, the bathroom a mess of damp towels, but there were no signs that anyone was still staying in the unit. Toiletries gone, no suitcase.

One of Vince's henchmen, Baldy, appeared in the doorway. "Is he here?"

Vince whirled around, walked up to Baldy and threw him up against the wall. "How long ago did you guys find out he was here?"

"We called you soon as we knew."

"Yeah? Then what? You sat in the f.u.c.king car and waited for me when you should have been keeping your eyes open? The guy's left."

"We didn't know what he looked like! What were we supposed to do?"

Vince tossed Baldy aside, walked out of the room and nearly ran into the maid.

"You not supposed-" she started to say.

"How long ago?" Vince asked, taking a twenty out of his wallet and handing it to her.

She slipped it into the pocket of her uniform. "Ten minute?"

"What kind of car did he have?" I asked.

She shrugged. "I don't know. Just a car. Brown. Dark window."

"Did he say anything to you, say if he was heading home, anything like that?" I asked.

"He didn't say anything to me."

"Thanks," Vince said to her. He tipped his head in the direction of his pickup, and we both got back in.

"s.h.i.t," Vince said. "s.h.i.t."

"What now?" I said. I had no idea.

Vince sat there a moment. "You need to pack?" he asked.

"Pack?"

"I think you're going to Youngstown. You can't get there and back in a day."