I get to my car. There's already a text from Turner.
Plans tonight? I figure we celebrate with a few pints.
I stare at the word celebrate until it stops looking like a real word.
No thanks, still have to get my notes together and I'm exhausted after today. Great job though!
The exclamation point costs me something. I send it anyway.
Let me know if you change your mind ;)
My skin prickles. The winky face sits there on the screen, obscene in its cheerfulness, while Mario Pistocco is somewherein this city trying to figure out how to drive home and explain this to a six-year-old and a four-year-old.
I will not be changing my mind. Not tonight. Not ever.
I pull out of the parking lot and point the car toward home, and I pray, in the specific and fervent way my grandmother taught me, that Clark Turner and every person who signed off on that warning label gets exactly what is coming to them.
CHAPTER 7
DIEGO
My ringer jolts me awake. I grab my phone without looking at it.
"Hello?" My voice comes out rough, barely functional.
"We have a job if you want it." Raul, wide awake, which already tells me something.
"What kind of job. And it couldn't wait until the sun was up?"
"Not something I can get into over the phone. I need a yes or no before we move forward with these people."
"How much?"
"Seven fifty."
I think he means seven hundred and fifty dollars. "Raul?—"
"Seven fifty K."
I sit straight up.
"Seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars." I say it out loud to make it real. "Who or what the hell is worth that kind of money?"
He doesn't answer. Just waits.
I don't need long.
"I'm in."
"Come over in the morning. I'll lay it out then. Night, cousin."
"Fuck you," I say, and hang up laughing.
The laugh fades fast. I lie back in the dark and stare at the ceiling while the number settles over me. Seven fifty. What that kind of money means for Ma, for her care, for the mounting prescriptions and the cut hours and the tremor in her hands she tries to hide. I have a hard time falling back to sleep. When I finally do, it doesn't last long enough.
My alarm goes off at eight. Friday. I make Ma a coffee, kiss her forehead, grab my keys.
The drive to Ernie's trailer is ten minutes I spend trying to keep my mind neutral, not speculating, not building scenarios. Wait for the facts.