Dead and Gone - Andrew Vachss [120]
They walked with us all the way to where Levi had stashed the Land Rover. The Latina gave Gem a deep hug while Heidi shook hands with me and said, “Good luck, Burke.” Then she turned to hug Gem herself. The Latina turned her back and started walking away.
Levi drove us down through the mountains, his Canary dog on the front seat next to him. He didn’t say a word until we got into Albuquerque.
“Lune gave you a way to reach us,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
“He did,” I acknowledged.
“There are always two tasks. One is to find the path; the other is to walk the path. Yes?”
“Yes.”
“There is no rule about walking the path alone,” he said.
“I won’t be,” I promised him.
“I would walk it with you, if you wish.”
I was too stunned at the Indian’s dealing himself in to say anything. Gem didn’t have that problem. “We would be honored,” she said.
On the trip back, I stayed inside myself, thinking through that last exchange. Gem didn’t press me, letting me have my silence. Finally, on the last leg of the flight into PDX, I told her where we stood: “What you said to the Indian … There’s no more ‘we’ in this, little girl. Understand?”
“It is not your choice,” she said, her lips drawn tight.
“You know what I have to do now?”
“Yes. I am not stupid.”
“I have to go back to New York,” I said, ignoring her tart answer. “To my family. I need a plan. This is a bad guy. With bad people backing him up. When it’s over, I’ll—”
“I will come to New York with you,” she announced, like it was something she planned to serve for dinner.
“You don’t understand, Gem. I got no place to go to there. I’m supposed to be dead. I don’t know who’s looking … or even if anyone is. But I have to stay very low. You’d just be in the way.”
“I will not. I have places I could stay there myself.”
“No.”
“No? You are my husband, not my master. I am going to New York. I will give you a phone number where you can find me there. I will be close, if you need me.”
“Gem …”
“In the meantime, it is better if we travel together. As I said before, that is not what people would expect of you.”
Two weeks later, I watched Wolfe’s tango-dancer legs flash in the sunlight as she climbed out of her battered old Audi. Her Rottweiler stayed in the car. I was glad of that, and not just because I was afraid of the beast. Seeing people with their dogs …
“I heard you were dead,” she said, sarcastically.
“Sure. Are you telling me nobody’s buying?”
“Oh, I think they are. Word is you got blown away by some drug dealers you’d ripped off a long time ago. Remember that?”
Remember it? I’d done time for it when the wheels came off. And I’d done it the right way, too. Alone.
I didn’t bother to answer her.
“So what do you want?” she asked, gray eyes glacial.
I told her everything. Well, not everything. Nothing about Lune. Or how I got the information. But all the facts.
“So this dirtbag has graduated to international, is that what you’re telling me?” she finally asked.
“What I’m telling you is that he tried to take me out. Spent a lot of money doing it. If it’s revenge for what we did to him years ago, you could be on his list, too.”
“Fine. Now he’s on mine,” is all I got out of her.
“You never heard of this Darcadia thing before?”
“Sure. It’s no real secret, especially with the kind of money they’ve been raking in. But I didn’t know this freak was the big player.”
“Aren’t the federales interested?”
“Maybe IRS. Or the money-laundering guys. Might even be a candidate for RICO-fraud, I don’t know. But it’s not lighting up anybody’s screen, I can tell you that.”
“Good.”
“I don’t under—Oh. It’s like that, huh?”
“I’ve got no choice.”
“You had choices once,” Wolfe said. Then she turned and walked away.
The building directory was all in Chinese. I followed Max up the stairs. On the second floor, he made a gesture like pulling a tooth, telling me the office we wanted belonged to a dentist. The mute Mongol turned the handle of the