When everything was reduced to paper and turned over to Assistant DA Carnahan, Chunk and I walked across the Scar's parking lot in silence to our cars. We could have said something about what was obviously going on, but we didn't. We could have talked about the injustice of it all, of the thousands, even millions of lives that Laurent's pride was putting under the hatchet's blade, but we didn't.
As I drove home, my fingers wrapped so tight around the steering wheel you'd have thought I was hanging from it, Chunk's headlights bobbing like corks in a stream in my rearview mirror, I thought about that quote by Edmund Burke, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
I read it in one of my back issues of Vogue, though in Vogue they'd added and women after good men.
I left the crowded buildings of the city and entered the rolling, unlit blackness of the foothills north of town, all the while asking myself if I was doing the right thing. I had knowledge, after all, knowledge of evil things in the making, and isn't knowledge supposed to be power? Was I doing the right thing by turning my back on millions of lives, just so my family and I could go free?
I thought about that hard enough and long enough to give myself a migraine. It worried me that maybe I was on some kind of slippery slope. I used to pride myself on staying away from the black market, and then I bought from it. I had never lied, either expressly or by omission, on any police report I'd ever written, yet I intentionally neglected to mention Isaac Hernandez’ involvement in Dr. Bradley's murder. And now I was planning the ultimate betrayal of my official trust. I was about to turn my back on my oath to maintain the peace and dignity of the City of San Antonio in much the same way as I would snub an ex-boyfriend I'd caught cheating on me. There were good reasons to back me up on all those little sins I'd committed, but I wouldn't be me if I didn't stop to really beat the issue to death.
I had to ask, was I really doing the right thing?
When I pulled into the driveway of my house and turned off my car, I was still torturing myself, wondering about right and wrong.
Chunk pulled in behind me. He got out of his car and popped his trunk. He took out a small black duffle bag and two heavy, stiff blankets that he'd lifted from the SWAT office.
I was still gripping the steering wheel when he walked by my door.
“You okay?”
I nodded, but didn't let go of the wheel.
A sharp square of buttery light appeared at the front door, and then Chunk and Billy were shaking hands.
“Lily?” Billy said.
The car door was open, though I don't remember opening it, or if maybe Billy had opened it.
He held out his hand to me.
“Lily?”
I took it and stepped out of the car.
“Connie?”
“She's asleep,” he said. “She doesn't know anything yet.”
“Good,” I said. That was as we'd planned it. We didn't want her to get any more scared than she needed to be.
At least I could save her from that.
Billy and I already had our bags packed. Connie's too. We'd kept them under our bed since the day Billy had found out about the hole under the wall. Now, as I looked at the three small duffle bags and realized that they contained everything with which we were to start a new life, I balked.
Carmenita's words came back to me. I had made a huge decision with unprecedented ease, and the smallness of the bags, and the scope of the job they were to perform, made me question the sense of what we were about to do.
And then it hit me. It wasn't the moral quagmire of oaths and betrayals and black markets that was bothering me. It was the prospect of starting all over again that scared me. When I looked deep inside, that was the skeletal fear that stared back up at me.
I went to the kitchen and met up with Billy and Chunk. The three of us spoke in hushed tones, like burglars in the night.
“We need to go soon,” Billy said. “We need to use as much of the night as we can.”
“We're ready, aren't we?” I said. I looked from Billy to Chunk and back to Billy, my eyes questioning theirs.
“Everything's set,” Billy said.
“But?”
“But I was telling Billy I need to do something first,” Chunk said.
“What?”
I looked back and forth between them again. Billy looked at his feet. Chunk stammered.
“What is it?” I said.
“Gram,” Chunk said, suddenly looking much smaller than his six-four, two hundred and sixty pounds. “I want to see her again.”
“Oh,” I said. “Hmmm. Okay. Okay. We've got time for that.”
“Thanks,” Chunk said, unnecessarily, and then went out the backdoor and out across the lower end of the property where his grandmother was buried. It was a clear night with a thick sliver of yellow moon high in the sky, and I could see his large form in silhouette clearly until he entered the shadows of the trees.
When he disappeared into the shadows, Billy took my hand and squeezed it gently. His hand felt so warm, so comfortable.
“What are you thinking?” he said.
“I'm scared,” I said. “Really terrified.”
He nodded.
“You know, it's not even the getting out of the city part that scares me. Not the helicopters or the troops on the ground. It's the starting over part that scares me. We're going to have to make a whole new life.”
He was quiet for a while, quiet enough I could hear him breathing.
“No,” he said finally. “It's not a whole new life.”
I turned to look him in the eye, a question hanging there between us.
He reached up with one hand and pulled my mask down. I started to protest, to hold it in place, but then stopped and let him do it.
He pulled the mask down under my chin and stared at my face.
I reached up and pulled down his mask. The two of us stood there, lost in each other's faces, seen whole for the first time in a long time. A very long time.
“It's not a whole new life,” he said. “It's new circumstances, a new place. But you and I are still here together, and we still have Connie. We're whole. Only the place names change.”
He touched his fingertips to my cheek and brushed away a tear.
“I love you,” he said. “I'm with you every step of the way, and that won't ever change.”
Billy and I stood on the back porch, watching Chunk trudge back to us, head bent down, heart heavy. I knew something was wrong even before he stopped on the bottom step and looked up at us.
“What is it?” I said.
He had been crying, his face still wet. It was something I hadn't seen since his grandmother died.
“I'm not going,” he said.
I felt Billy's body stiffen against my arm.
“No,” I said.
But he wouldn't let me finish. He held up his hands and stared at us with eyes so full of sorrow that everything I would have said just evaporated away.
“Please don't,” he said. “You need to go. You have a reason. I don't. Everything I've ever had is here. Everything I'm ever going to have is here. Let's not talk it to death. You guys need to go. Just you guys.”
I swallowed hard, then nodded.
Billy squeezed me close. He said, “Go wake up Connie. It's time.”