The Odds (40 page)

“Good.”

She studies his face, wondering what they’re going to do with him. He’s so good looking, people are going to remember him. People are going to
like
him. “Nick, you remember we spoke before?”

“Oh yeah.” For the first time in the short space that she’s known him, he wears a cynical look. She thinks of cynicism in him as the punctuation or the accent, not the main part of him. “You know, I really am dumb,” he says. “I thought you were coming on to me. I actually believed it.”

“That’s not dumb. We were both next door to meaning it. But things have happened, I’m still police, and I have to ask you about what happened up at McCandor. I think I know. Evidence talks. So if you tell me simply, I think I can help you. I want to.”

“It would be hard to explain.”

She takes out a legal pad from her bag. “I expect it to be complicated. Start with McCandor. Tell me about the ten days since.”

He shakes his head slightly as if to say,
I don’t think I can
.

“We know about the kids, if that’s what you’re hesitant about. We know.”

Surprise is the first expression on his face, followed quickly by anger. “They called you?”

“No. We found them. They care about you—I can see you don’t believe me. They do. Desperately.”

“You found them?” he challenges. “How?”

She’s not supposed to tell him things, but who’s to know? “We were investigating McCandor. Some kids who deal drugs said Joel used to go up to the house. We knew there was a boy involved because of a 911 call, so …”

He doesn’t react or ask about when the call was made, just takes in the information.

“Take it as easy and slow as you want. Tell me what happened.”

“And then you’ll arrest me.”

“There’s a good chance not. But you have to talk now. That’s the bottom line.”

“A guy was trying to kill me,” he begins. “I don’t know how to back this up so you understand it. I never even saw him until that night. Earl. He wanted me to slice up a kid named Carl, and I let the kid escape.”

“Good, good. You’re doing fine. Just tell it as it comes to you,” she says easily.

It’s very hard work encouraging a person. She has to wonder, if she didn’t have counseling behind her, if she’d ever be able to stick to the task. She isn’t naturally patient, but this one, this guy—he’s a boy, really—taps something tender in her. As he talks, she studies him, puzzles over how they’re going to hide a fellow like this, a handsome innocent. He’s memorable. A perfect empty vessel, holder of all possibilities. Something for everyone.

An hour later, by the time he is answering questions about Markovic’s operation, and he seems to be speaking more easily, Mo Weaver pokes her head out. “Is everything all right? Is he okay?” she asks fiercely.

“I’m okay,” he calls up to her.

Colleen watches Mo Weaver retreat back into the kitchen. Now is the important part, the part she fought for. In a low voice, she asks, “Are you willing to become a witness? That’s the main thing I need to learn from you to know where we go next. If you say yes, and I can only hope you do, we erase the parole violation, we waive the inquest on the killing of Higgins. We keep you out of jail and out of court.”

He takes a moment to let her words sink in. “I’m a free man?”

“Well. That’s the thing about being a witness. You’re up against dangerous people. You’d have to stay hidden,” she says.

“Here?” he asks hopefully.

“No. No, it has to be someplace new. We’ll help you find a place where nobody has seen you before. We’ll get you a new name, a new identity.”

“If I don’t say yes?”

“You’d have to face some charges and … the people who are looking for you could find you … with more ease.” His face tightens. “It’s your best chance for a new life. Do you understand that?”

“I understand that you believe it.”

“I know I’m right. You’re running right now. If you’re running, you can’t think. You can’t be.” There. A moment. He glimpsed something. “And I need to get you to a hospital, have your leg looked at.”

“No. It’s healing.”

“It may be healing, but we have to be sure you are completely all right. You’re under our protection.”

“I’m your property.”

“In a way.”

“The Philips boy is like a doctor. I’m not kidding.”

“Believe me, I saw those kids are not the usual thing.”

“They
didn’t
call you?” he asks again.

“They didn’t betray you, if that’s what you’re asking. We went to them, Nick, that’s the truth. And they tried pretty hard not to tell us anything. Don’t be angry with them. They’re the reason I can be here to offer you immunity. The girl, Meg, fought like a champ for you. She wrote down everything you told her. She kept lots of pages on you. Meg was basically your defense attorney.”

He says gruffly, “She was good at that stuff. Words.”

“Very good. And passionate about helping you.”

She’s almost got him… . Almost. “One more thing now. I want to be absolutely clear. Usually, the way this works, you get to keep your first name and your initials. But I don’t know what they’ll come up with in your case. For sure you have to give up the name Banks. Also Kissel. They’ll make you agree to that. They’ll choose you a name.”

“I have a new name. It suits me. Charles Philips.”

“I guessed it, though. The kids didn’t tell me, and I figured— You probably have a couple of cards? Things to make an ID with? See, if I could guess it—”

“It’s a good-luck name.”

“I’ll ask. I wouldn’t count on it. But I’ll try.”

He leans forward, starting in on something new. “Maybe we could work something out with the kids. They need someone and—”

“They do. For sure. We have agencies involved and … anyway, the stepmother is back.”

“They don’t like her. They don’t like her at all.”

“I know.” She starts to put her pen and legal pad away. She needs to take over, capture him physically for his own good, while she plucks stubborn fantasies from him, one after another. If she reads his mind correctly, and she’s pretty sure she does, he won’t want to give up the Styrofoam splint either. He knows reality. He just doesn’t want to know it. “We’ll get you to a hospital. We’ll take care of everything. You do your part, we’ll do ours.”

When her phone rings, she moves away from him to talk. She even leaves him alone while she goes to the back door of the kitchen to apologize to Dmitri and Mo about having to take him away. She lets him watch her trusting him.

Finally she puts him in the backseat of her car and starts toward Pittsburgh. She says, gesturing out the car window, “Where I found you, Dmitri’s diner, is close to my hometown and kind of on the way to your hometown. We came from the same neck of the woods. I felt it.”

She drives the rest of the way, mostly silent, letting him get used to the idea of what he’s in for.

   POTOCKI IS SITTING ON HER doorstep when she returns home Wednesday night.

“What’s this?” she asks, coming up the sidewalk.

“Brought you something.” He hands over a worn-looking copy of
The Mathematician’s Apology
, the book Carl had, but a different edition.

She sits beside him. Collapses, really. “Where’d you find it?”

“Used-book store. I thought you might like it. I ended up sitting here reading it.”

“What did you think?”

“It’s kind of like reading the Bible. You feel like you’re tapping into something abstract and important.”

“Exactly.”

He takes it from her and opens it up. “Here we go. ‘In great mathematics there is a very high degree of unexpectedness, combined with inevitability and economy.’ ”

“Ha. Pretty, isn’t it?”

“What does it mean?”

“I don’t know. I’d need a context.”

Potocki turns pages randomly. “ ‘A chess player may offer the sacrifice of a pawn or even a piece, but a mathematician offers the game.’ Hmm, that’s probably something about seeming to lose, but really winning.”

“Probably. Carl’s a smartie, all right. Hey, thanks for the book.”

“You’re welcome. Look, I have to leave in about five minutes. So. Tell me,” he says.

“I brought Nick to Pittsburgh; the others, including Boss and Dolan, questioned him in a motel room off-site for four hours before getting him to a hospital. It seemed like torture, but the idea was that with medications, he might not be as lucid. He … opted for staying local.” Eighty percent of witnesses did. She shrugged. “This way police can get to him on a regular basis to take him supplies, to get him to physical therapy.”

“For you—it was bad?”

“Just … No, not bad. Tiring. You know, saving-a-swimmer kind of tiring. Dolan took over tonight, getting Nick protection at the motel until we can get him into a house or apartment. That’s tomorrow, hopefully. There’s a line on a house on Allegheny River Boulevard. Nick cried at the hospital when they told him his leg was healing beautifully. That was kind of rough on me, if you want the yucky truth.”

“What was he like, after all the running? Not angry?”

“More … brokenhearted.”

“Huh.”

“He wants a job. Wants to work. We haven’t figured out yet if it’s going to be possible once he’s off crutches, but maybe it will be eventually if he grows a beard. It’s dangerous. He’s not out of danger, no matter what. Well, you know. The usual worries.” Witness protection works only if the witness can stick to rules. Most of them can’t. They go somewhere they shouldn’t go, make a phone call they shouldn’t make. “I’m worried he’s going to walk down the street one day finally feeling good and someone will drive by and— After all this, after all he’s been through. He never did know how to protect himself.”

“How do you know?”

“I just know.”

Potocki’s arm goes around her. “Who are you seeing, huh? Your father?”

“Brother,” she answers.

He squeezes. His kiss lands on her eye. She laughs.

   THE HOUSE, A-FRAME WITH siding, is a little battered, but mainly clean. There are no neighbors, nobody to tap on the door bearing an apple pie.

They let him look around.

In the small living room is a fairly good-looking beige sofa and a few tables of glass and chrome. Otherwise there is only a rocking chair in the room. Ahead, in the next room, the dining room table is a real wooden table from the ’50s perhaps, about as traditional as you can get. The kitchen is not up to date. The sink needs to be replaced. The wooden cabinets have been painted over a couple of times. Some tenants must have scrubbed the stove so hard, they made scratches from the work of cleaning it. Something in the rounded shape of the refrigerator reminds him of an old car. The place is okay, though; the best part of it is that it has a backyard of sorts that looks out on the river. He stands at the kitchen window and looks at the rectangle of crabgrass that leads to the drop-off that leads to the water. There is a basketball hoop attached to a pole, no net.

He opens the refrigerator, closes it, opens the cupboards, closes them. Some dishes. A little of everything. Peeler, can opener.

Food provided.

Upstairs—they wait a few steps behind while he climbs the stairs on crutches—are three small bedrooms. A double bed, a single bed, and two single beds. The bureaus are basic, but all the drawers work.

No job. Not for a while, they say.

Markovic’s face was in the paper. Old Marko is in prison now. Along with certain relatives of his. But according to the police, that’s no guarantee of safety.

There are footsteps coming up the stairs. Detective Greer and Detective Dolan want to know if he needs anything else.

He thanks them and tells them no.

They leave him be. He can hear their car start up, leave.

He lies down on top of the double bed and stares at the ceiling. There’s a subtle crack in the plaster that he traces for hours that afternoon, forever it seems, making it a river, then a drawing, every damn thing. So this is it, huh? Alive. No people. No work. No drink.

   MEG SITS DOWN ACROSS FROM Alison. She says, “You look nice.”

“Oh, well.”

“You seem a bit different,” she says.

“Well, I was the one who left this time. Maybe that was it.”

“What was wrong with the guy?”

“He drank. I guess I like a drinker.”

“Why?”

“Charm. Something. Charm, I guess.”

“Do you think most drinkers have that?”

“Lord, no. Some are plain monsters. But your father had it, for sure.”

Meg thinks how Alison would have fallen in love with Nick, but not vice versa. Nick needs to be amazed by someone. He needs to be won with kindness.

“Are you going to try to get your job back at the Park House?”

“I’ll ask. Tomorrow, maybe.”

“Do you want a cup of tea?”

“All right.”

“I don’t mean to bug you, but could you call the landlady, promise her we’re coming along with the rent money?”

Alison hesitates. “I’m not sure what to say.”

Meg writes out a little schedule on a paper napkin. “If you get your job back, we’re okay. Tell her we can do two hundred each week. We can pay on Fridays. We’ll be paid up for last month by the twenty-second of this month, and we’ll be ready to pay in full next month.”

Alison studies the piece of paper.

“If we get the other money we’re supposed to get, we’re
way
in the clear. We have to try. There are things we want, you know,” she says, swallowing hard, “if we get in the clear.”

“What?”

“Music players, clothes, books, a computer. Mostly a computer. Detective Potocki told us to make a list.”

“Oh.”

Meg doesn’t want to overwhelm Alison with demands. She brings two cups of tea to the table. Teabags in the house, the kids calm and watching TV in the next room—it’s all she wants, really. The wish list has made her nervous. She doesn’t want to lose the feeling of wonder at having little things.

   FRIDAY EVENING AND COLLEEN is alone, sitting on her front porch, making notes. It’s funny, come to think of it, because she’s not likely to forget any of the items she’s just jotted down:
check on Nick, check on Carl, check on Philips kids, check on Commander, write reports
. Tomorrow or Sunday, she’ll catch them all, the people she’s pulling for.