THURSDAY, MIDDAY, I OPTED for the scenic route north from Stormville and followed the Hudson River for seventy stop-and-go miles. I made it to Athens about an hour and a half later. Athens, with its run-down wood-framed buildings and sleepy sidewalks, was the sort of small town Fran might have described, once upon a time, as quaint. I, on the other hand, might have called it a dump.
One main artery ran through the center of the downtown-a road that paralleled the Hudson River, which ran wide and dark under the gray cloud cover. Judging by the proximity of the river, I guessed that Athens had been built inside the flood plain, which may have made it a constant source of anxiety for some of its residents, especially when you considered how many American towns had been wiped out by floods during the past few warm, wet winters. Whatever the case, the town was made up of dozens of two- and three-story asphalt-clad houses and buildings that occupied both sides of Main Street. An occasional coffee shop or hardware store was interspersed amongst the residences. Cars and pickup trucks parked on the diagonal against the curb, the hoods and bumpers pressed up against parking meters with red flags clearly flying, as if the police had simply given up collecting revenues from parking violations.
I took it slowly, driving through the town at ten to fifteen miles per hour, and kept a watchful eye out for Vasquez on the off chance that he might be reckless enough to be walking the streets, maybe taking in a little sightseeing, despite the fact that there were no sights to be seen. I knew that finding Vasquez on the street like a common citizen would have been next to impossible. But then, I had no other plan in mind but to cruise the streets and find what I could find until something turned up.
I took three separate trips up and down the main drag, doing my best to get a good look through the wide, square-shaped picture windows of the eating establishments. I gazed at the faces of the passersby. Sad looking people in blue jeans and T-shirts, mostly, who returned my stares with squinty-eyed suspicion.
After a while, I decided to turn off onto another side street that ran parallel to the Hudson River. But the effort was futile. That was when I decided to pull into the Sunoco station at the northern edge of town. When all else fails, my father used to say, stop at a gas station, ask for directions.
This wasn’t the new-style gas station with islands of computerized, self-service pumps, shiny aluminum paneling, and colorful neon. This was an old station, the kind I remembered as a kid, with revolving black-and-white numerical displays on the pump faces as opposed to computerized readouts with accompanying robotic voices that say thank you when you’ve finished feeding them your plastic money.
The station itself was something my father and grandfather might have built decades ago. Squat and square-shaped, the flat-roofed building had been constructed from cinder blocks covered with a coating of yellow plaster that, over the years, had faded to off-white from too many summer suns. Outside the picture window was an oversized tin placard shaped like a Coke bottle. The long thermometer embedded in the center of the bottle read eighty-seven degrees-a record, I guessed, for this early in May, although I could have been wrong.
The decor on the inside of the station was hardly an improvement. Fran would have called it a charming time capsule. A relic from an era gone by. I would have called it a dive and Fran would have said that I had little appreciation for what could easily pass as art deco. One thing was certain: the place smelled like gasoline and motor oil. Not a bad smell really. But then, it wasn’t a good smell either. Just a heavy industrial odor that tickled my sinuses.
A calendar was tacked to the wood paneling behind a metal desk and it featured a full-color photo of a bleach blonde in a red string bikini and high heels. In her right hand she held a torque wrench, in her left a long rubber hose, while a banner draped like a bandolier around her waist and shoulder read Snap-On-Tools.
On the desk sat a black rotary-style phone next to an adding machine and a mound of little yellow credit slips. A radio on a metal shelf gave the play-by-play of a noontime Yankees game.
Big Daddy, hero of the ‘96 World Series, was at bat.
The guy seated behind the metal desk was asleep, with his feet up on top of the credit slips. He wore a button-down shirt with a football-shaped emblem glued to the left chest pocket, the name Henry sewn into it in red curlicue letters against a white background. Henry had thick black hair that looked like it had been soaked in a grease pit.
I slammed the door closed.
It took little less than a split second for Henry to sit up straight, feet back on the floor. He began counting receipts, but then he got a hold of himself and raised his head to take a good, slow look at me. Once it registered that I wasn’t the big boss, he took a breath, tossed the yellow receipts back onto the counter, and sat far back in the swivel chair, looking more relieved than exhausted.
I gave him my best stranded-stranger smile.
But Henry’s expression never wavered.
“What?” he said.
Big Daddy took a swing and missed. Strike one. A hum from the crowd at Yankee Stadium.
“Hi there,” I said, raising my voice a full octave. “Jeez, I’m passing through on my way to Montreal and, jeez, I was wondering if you might recommend a hotel where a tired guy could spend the night.” I stretched my arms, let go with a fake yawn.
Henry squinted, sat up straight, and leaned up against his desk.
“Haven’t I seen you before?”
I imagined Big Daddy knocking the dirt out of his cleats with the heavy, wide bottom of his Louisville Slugger.
I brought my right hand to my face, rubbed the stubble of my day-old beard.
“I can’t see how,” I said. But then I glanced over Hank’s shoulder into a corner of the room that contained a newspaper vending machine nestled between a glass-topped peanut dispenser on one side and candy dispenser on the other. Like everything else in the gas station, the dispensers were relics. You had to slip a quarter into the slot and turn the silver-plated knob 360 degrees to release a handful of junk that had probably been stored for more than a decade in the clear glass containers. As for the newspaper vending machine it housed the Poughkeepsie Standard.
“Warden Indicted!” read the headline, and just a for a split second I felt like I was reading about a total stranger. But the headline was accompanied by a photograph taken a decade ago. I had lost some hair since then. So recognition for Henry may not have been that instantaneous. But just to be safe, I looked to the floor and turned the collar up on my charcoal-colored blazer.
Big Daddy swung and missed. Two down.
“Yeah,” Henry said, bringing his right hand up and rubbing his chin so that a few of the yellow credit receipts floated down to the floor. “You look real familiar to me.”
Big Daddy set up one last time to the commotion in the stadium.
I took a quick glance through an open interior door that led into the garage. The far wall inside the garage was covered with dozens of mufflers that hung from an overhead ceiling-mounted rack. I turned back to the attendant. “You ever hear of Midas Muffler, Henry?”
When he nodded, a thick strand of greasy hair fell down onto his forehead.
“The commercial where the customer looks into the camera like this.” I made a stern, tight face. “And then he says, ‘I’m not going to pay a lot for this muffler!’ “
Henry beamed with an ear-to-ear grin. “Yeah, yeah,” he said, “I know it.”
“That’s me,” I said.
Henry took his hands away from his face, set them in his lap.
“I’ll be damned,” he said. “Never seen a film star up close before.”
“Now,” I said, “how about that hotel?”
“The only place around is the Stevens House Bed-and-Breakfast over on the corner of Livingstone and North Water Streets.”
“Expensive?” I said, making that same tight, stern face. “I don’t want to pay a lot for that hotel.” Maybe I was pushing it too far.
“Cheap,” Henry said, “for a man of your means.” He sat back once more in that swivel chair, ignorant of the credit slips that continued to float down to the grease-and-gasoline-smeared floor. “Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep filmed some of Ironweed over there on the second floor.”
“Jeez,” I said. “Jack and Meryl.”
“You know them?”
I crossed the finger on my right hand.
“Jack and me are like this,” I lied.
“No kidding,” Hank said.
“Who should I see at the Stevens House?”
“Just tell them Henry Snow sent you.”
I glanced at my picture and my headline.
“What did you say your name was?” said Henry, his eyes squinty and curious.
I hesitated for a second or two-maybe longer than I should have.
Big Daddy swung and missed again. Three strikes and a loud buzz of disappointment from the New York fans. I remembered seeing Mickey Mantle make a rare strikeout when I was a boy, having made it to the ball game with my father on the bus trip the Italian American Benevolence Society of Albany sponsored once a year.
I took a quick look at the bowling trophies and plaques displayed on the same shelf as the radio broadcasting the game. Some of the plaques had been service awards issued by the Sun Oil Company. The most recent award had the year 1972 embossed in fake silver plate attached to a fake marble base.
Nineteen seventy-two, the year Wash Pelton, Mike Norman, and I might never have seen had we not survived Attica.
“Sonny Rivers,” I said. “My stage name.”
“Can’t say I know the name,” Henry Snow said. “But it sounds like it could be famous.”
I put my hand on the door, took one last look at the newspaper headline and photo. But then Henry turned and looked at the headline, too.
Time for Sonny Rivers to make his exit, stage right.
“Hey thanks,” I said, turning the knob on the old glass-and-wood door.
“Don’t mention it, Sonny,” Henry said.
And then I left.
But as I climbed back into the 4-Runner, I could see that my newest buddy, Henry Snow, had already picked up the phone. I turned over the four-by-four and glared at him through the plate-glass window that took up a whole quarter of the station’s facade. For a second or two, our eyes locked. But Henry kept right on talking into the receiver as if convinced that he could see me, but that I had no way of seeing him. Glass tends to fool some people that way, as if transparency works only one way. Maybe it was just a hunch, or maybe just a bad feeling. Maybe my nerves were getting the best of me. But as I turned out onto Main Street, I felt certain that gullible Henry Snow hadn’t been snowed at all. He was calling the cops.
THE STEVENS HOUSE WAS an old townhouse that took up an entire street corner. It had a high Victorian-style roof with gables atop all four corners. The gables were visible from where I parked the Toyota on the opposite side of North Water Street. With its tall shutters and dark, heavy oak doors, the place looked more like a haunted house than a bed-and-breakfast.
The west bank of the Hudson River cut across the flat landscape directly to my right. A jetty made up of black boulders reached out to the center of the river. At the farthest point of the jetty was a lighthouse, the base and tower of which had also been constructed of heavy stone blocks. The lighthouse beacon cast a bright yellow light against the cloud cover.
I turned back to the Stevens House and decided to wait and watch out for a dark, wiry-looking man who fit Eduard Vasquez’s description. A man with his ID number tattooed to his knuckles and a mouth with a hole in it where a molar had been extracted. I waited for a woman with brown hair and a small, heart-shaped tattoo on her neck. I would have waited and watched until dark, had I not heard the unmistakable wail of police sirens.
NOT EVERYTHING ABOUT THE Attica riot was fear and loathing and silent desperation. There were moments of real heroics. I don’t mean Arnold Schwarzenegger-style Hollywood heroics where I singlehandedly take out each and every one of the rebel inmates with my bare feet and knuckles. What I’m trying to get across is this: Just staying alive constituted honest-to-God heroics.
For example, I still see myself dragging Mike Norman by his feet back to the wall of D-Block, keeping him between me and the stone foundation. Wash Pelton follows, sets himself right beside me. Two rebel inmates-one black, one white-watch over us. Other inmates stare at us, the guards who have become the prisoners. From here I can see the sudden reflection of the sun in the scopes of the sharpshooters during the occasional breaks in the clouds.
The rebel inmates lift their shivs and spears and assume a sort of attack formation. When they begin to close in, I can see the whites of their eyes. I can see their jagged, broken blood vessels. I can almost smell their sour breath.
It’s then that something strange happens to me. All fear leaves my body. It just seems to drain out through my bare feet like water from a sieve. It’s as if, along with the realization that I’m already dead, a great burden has been lifted from my shoulders.
I KEPT THE TOYOTA at an even thirty-five per until safely outside of town. Then I shot up Route 9 to Highway 87, fast lane. When I came to the first available rest stop about fifteen minutes later, I pulled around back of the wood-and-stone building and parked between two green dumpsters.
The rest stop resembled a ski lodge more than a tourist trap for wayward and exhausted motorists. Bolted to the exposed fieldstone interior, a colorful neon sign advertised a Burger King and a Santo Pizza Parlor. Another smaller, much less conspicuous neon sign advertised an ATM like an afterthought.
Since I hadn’t eaten all day, I chose the lesser of the two evils and ordered two giant slices with sausage from the pizza joint. I covered the slices with Parmesan and ate them while standing at a green Formica counter that wrapped around a seating area with identical pea-green tables and chairs. The tables were filled to capacity with families mostly, eating now, tasting later. Middle-class travelers, I imagined, en route to early vacations upstate at a time of year when the cost of lodging was still cheap. And there were others. Men and women eating alone. One slice of pizza cost four dollars, which meant I’d blown a ten-spot on two lukewarm slices of sausage-covered. My mother would have called the cardboard-thin pizza a disgrace. But then, when it came to my mother, any pizza other than her own was less than edible.
I glanced at a family of four seated in the far corner. Mother and father in their mid-to-late thirties with two young children-a boy and a girl. The cherubic faces of the children barely cleared the table as their little hands awkwardly maneuvered the oversized slices of pizza to their undersized mouths. Throughout the meal, the mother and father never once looked at each other, never once spoke a single word. It made me sad to look at them. I also knew that if I thought about it hard and long enough, I would begin to feel a certain desperation for them.
But then, I knew I had to clear my head, stay focused.
I finished the pizza and wondered about the California return address handwritten on the envelope. Had Athens been a deception or merely a temporary stop-an out-of-the-way place for Vasquez and Wolf to regroup before making their escape to California? Connections and possibilities; possibilities and connections. Maybe Vasquez had simply planted the envelope. Like everything else I’d found along the way (the orgy stills, the.38, the key to Logan’s cuffs, etcetera, etcetera), maybe all of it had been a plant from the start, designed to manipulate me and the cops. Maybe Cassandra Wolf and Eduard Vasquez were hiding out in Athens for a few days until things died down, the road blocks taken up, the fugitives given up as missing. Or maybe, as a last possibility, they had attempted to deceive everyone, to make us believe that they were headed back out to California when in fact they had no other plan but to hole up in a small town located not far from Green Haven Prison.
As the young mother tried to maintain her composure while placing a stack of napkins on the orange soda her little daughter had spilled, I recalled the first rule about going after the location of an escaped convict: Check on his significant other, first thing. Nine out of ten times, an escaped convict could be found in bed with his girlfriend or wife or lover, making up for whatever time together they had lost. It would amaze some people to know just how many escapees could foul up a foolproof escape plan for a romp in the hay. It happened more than John Q. Public knew. It just wasn’t publicized.
As the young family got up and left their table, I wiped the last of the overpriced pizza from my mouth, pulled the envelope from my jeans pocket, took one more look at the California address and the Athens postmark. Just a red-lettered, mechanized postmark barely visible even in the light from the overhead fixture. Vasquez wasn’t your basic, run-of-the-mill prisoner. If I had to make a choice, I’d say he had set up a deception that hadn’t been entirely carried out yet.
But it was then, as I stacked the now-empty tray in its designated place on top of the Formica-covered garbage receptacle, that I noticed him again. The guy in the long wool overcoat who had been drinking coffee in the Miss Albany Diner. He was standing at the ATM machine, making a cash withdrawal. At first I thought I might have been imagining things. But after a few quick looks, I knew for certain it was him. I also knew for certain that I was being tailed, and not just by the cops. I knew I’d have no choice but to let him follow me until I was presented with the perfect opportunity to ditch him. But then, there was another option. I could always flank him, come up on him from behind, stick the.45 in his face, demand information on who had sent him.
But from the looks of things, he had other priorities. Because as soon as the cash dropped from the machine, he stuffed it into his overcoat and made for the exit.
By this time, it was already one-thirty on a Thursday afternoon. I didn’t want to chance going back home to
Stormville. The place would be surrounded by cops and reporters. Some of the cops would know me as a friend. Some of the reporters would know me, too, but not as a friend. I had no choice but to go back to Athens. I also had to dump the Toyota. The fire engine-red 4-Runner was more like a red herring in Athens and everywhere else in New York State, for that matter. The second the police found out I was nosing around Athens, an APB would go out with the red Toyota established as the vehicle to ID. Judging by the police sirens I’d heard in Athens, I had to assume that the bulletin had already gone out. And on top of it all, there was the matter of the overcoat man.
An information booth was located between the ATM and a small souvenir shop. The woman behind the booth was reading from an oversized fashion magazine, W, with a very attractive black-and-white photograph of Cindy Crawford on the cover.
Older, slightly overweight, with silver-gray hair puffed up like a beehive, the woman behind the booth was no Cindy Crawford. I must have looked at her for a full minute before she finally caught on that I was standing there. When she did look up, it was all very theatrical, with a long breath and the bifocals removed from the crown of the nose very carefully, very pompously. The temples of the diamond-studded half-glasses were attached to a hair-thin silver chain, and she allowed them to dangle against her chest.
“Yes,” she said, eyes wide but not interested.
Yes must have meant, Can I help you?
“Where can I rent a car?”
Old Beehive let out another breath and held her place in the magazine using her forefinger and thumb like a clothespin. She nodded over her left shoulder, drawing attention to the pamphlet shelves built into the same wall as her information booth. Dozens of pamphlets and colorful brochures had been neatly stacked and alphabetically organized, all of them promoting one rent-a-car agency after another. The usual -Hertz, Budget, Rent-a-Wreck, and about a dozen independents. I picked up a Hertz brochure and checked out the address stamped on the back.
755 Pelham Way, Catskill.
I stepped back to the information booth.
“This close by?”
I held the address out for Beehive to see. She licked her index finger and flipped a couple of pages of the magazine. She had those little half-glasses on again. The little fake diamond studs embedded in the cats-eye frames seemed to enhance her silver beehive, make it so luminescent that I almost had to stand back and take a breath.
“Next exit,” she said, “northbound. Go left off the exit.” She forced a fake smile. “Will there be anything else?”
Not to be outdone by old Beehive, I forced a fake smile of my own.
“You’ve been very helpful and courteous,” I said.
“Tell me another one,” she said, licking her index finger, flipping another page.
“Nice hair,” I said, but I don’t think that’s what she had in mind.
SOUTHBOUND ON ROUTE 87.
This time in a rented Chevrolet Impala with a white hood, off-white side panels, dark-green trim, and a license plate enclosed in a yellow plastic frame with the Hertz logo on top.
I’d felt less conspicuous in the Toyota.
I switched on the radio, hit scan, and surfed for a local news station. Station 540 appeared on the digital display in light-up yellow numbers.
“Day number four for a corrections officer struck down in the line of duty,” the anchorman announced, “and a warden indicted for corruption and manipulation of evidence. Those stories and more top our news.”
Then, without warning, I felt all the air leave my body. I tried to breathe but I couldn’t. It was as if my lungs had spontaneously collapsed. I felt cold, and the open highway in front of me turned to a wavy blur. My mind spun, and I swore an entire squadron of cops was tailing me. But I must have slowed down without knowing it because the man behind me in a pickup truck laid on his horn. I gripped the steering wheel so tightly that I could feel the tension in my wrists, and I had no choice but to pull off onto the shoulder of the road. I got out of the car and ran down into the ditch and back up the embankment, all the time trying to get a breath but getting only enough air to stay conscious.
Standing there, on the edge of the tree line, with the rented Impala parked where any cop who happened to be passing would notice, I wanted to die.
In my imagination I saw myself in shackles and cuffs.
I’m being led down a concrete corridor with a low concrete ceiling and a yellow line-stripe painted along the center of the floor. I’m brought into F- and G-Blocks, the ghetto blocks, and all the inmates come to the front of their cells to greet me, their former warden, the man who came down hard, the man who tried to empty their cells of the drugs and the booze. Big men, small men, black men, brown men, white men, all with their bodies pressed up against those bars, hollering, jeering, whistling, shouting and screaming for my ass. And me, with my head between my legs, knowing full well that I’m a dead man. No former warden in any prison has got a prayer of chance if he wants to stay alive.
I tried to take three distinct breaths and I tried not to think about any kind of future whatsoever. There was no future. I tried to recall just what in God’s name had gone wrong along the way. How could I not have seen this whole thing coming? How could I not have suspected Pelton as he arrogantly robbed me of my corrections officers when I was already so poorly understaffed? How could I have been so naive as to think I could have singlehandedly removed every drug, every still, every needle and flashpan in Green Haven? How could I not have known that important people were making money off the drug and contraband trade? I had always been aware that some of the COs were on the take. But I never had imagined Pelton on the take. And here I was standing at the tree line trying to get a breath, blaming myself for something that was beyond my control. I had only tried to do my job.
If I had to guess where I made my mistake, I would say that I hadn’t made a mistake at all. I would say that Pelton had made the mistake when he’d appointed me super of Green Haven Maximum Security Penitentiary.
But now I was making a mistake by not getting back into the rented Impala and doing what I’d intended to do in the first place. The sooner I could locate Vasquez, the sooner I could get to the bottom of what had happened out there on Lime Kiln Road. And the sooner I could catch Logan and Mastriano in their lies, the sooner I’d be out of this mess. Of course it all depended on finding Vasquez, and then it all depended on him talking without killing me first.
By now I was breathing more comfortably so I walked back to the car and got in. The second I pulled out, I noticed a blue sedan pull up behind me, not exactly on my tail, but about three car lengths behind. The sedan was obviously the kind of unmarked car an undercover cop would drive, but there was no way to be sure. I tried to get a good look inside, but the glare from the windshield made it impossible to see anything but shadows and darkness. I tried instead to get a look at the plates. But even from that distance, I could see that there was nothing official about them, nothing indicating local or state police. But then, that didn’t mean anything either. The driver could still be an officer of the law and if I had spent any more time on that embankment, he would have pulled me over. For now, I had to maintain those steady breaths and the speed limit and not give this cop (if he was a cop) any reason to believe that I was anyone other than some jerk who had happened to stop by the side of the road to relieve himself.
Whoever and whatever he was, persistence was one of his finer qualities. After a few miles, he decreased the distance between us and practically pulled up onto my fender.
I adjusted the rearview to get a better look at him. Now I could see that it wasn’t a cop driving the sedan at all, at least not a uniformed cop. It was the overcoat man. How he’d managed to follow me all the way out to the Hertz office and back without my noticing was anybody’s guess. I knew then that he had to be a professional, and I knew there would be no getting around him. Especially if he worked for the law. I also knew I couldn’t pull a gun on him any more than I could blow him away.
My God, I thought, as I punched the gas pedal of the Impala, just who the hell can I trust anymore?
No one, a little voice inside my head told me. Not a fucking soul.
THE OVERCOAT MAN TAILED me all the way to the Athens exit. But after I pulled off and paid my toll, he was suddenly nowhere to be found. Ten minutes later I reached the outer limits of town. Things had changed in the short time I’d spent away. Now Athens was lit up with dozens of red and blue flashers from the cop cruisers and EMS vans that blocked off the roads. All along Main Street I could see the reflections of the flashing lights in the picture windows and storefronts of the two- and three-story crackerboxes that lined the main drag.
Yellow barricades had been set up around the perimeter of the downtown. I could only drive in so far before I had to turn the Impala around and cut across one of the narrow side streets that would lead me to North Water Street and the Stevens House. But North Water Street was just as congested as Main Street with cops, fire trucks, onlookers, and on-the-spot satellite crews.
I parked the rented Impala in the middle of the road because I couldn’t go any farther without running someone or something over. I took a quick look at the river. The Hudson flowed thick and gray-black on an overcast afternoon. A barge floated in a southerly direction toward Manhattan, pushed along by a red-and-black tug.
I got out of the Impala and walked along the sidewalk toward the corner of North Water Street. I moved on past the old buildings, some of them covered in wood-slat siding, others covered in rust-colored asphalt shingles made more for roofs than facades. Along the river, the tug pushed the barge past the glowing yellow light from the lighthouse.
I pushed and shoved my way in toward the front door of the Stevens House. I saw her then, in the very second that I broke through the crowd-Chris Collins reporting live via satellite for Newscenter 13. The same cameraman I’d seen inside Mastriano’s room at Newburgh General now supported a shoulder-mounted video camera and aimed it in the direction of Collins’s face. The camera was the only reason she did not get a look at me right off. She stood only a few feet away from me, with her back to the Stevens House entrance. The glow from the camera-mounted spotlight made Collins’s wide black eyes light up like big black marbles. Her hair was parted just to the left of center and hung down stylishly, curling below the ears, barely touching her narrow shoulders. She wore a bright red suit with matching blazer and miniskirt. Intent eyes stared into the camera, away from me, directly at her viewers.
Collins held the aluminum-tipped microphone to her mouth. The black head touched her red lips. I stepped back into the crowd before she had a chance to spot me. At the same time, the cameraman lifted his right hand, palm up. Like opening a switchblade, he snapped his index finger into position. He brought his arm down fast, pointed directly at Collins. Her legs went rigid, high heels pressed together, left leg bobbing just a little at the knee. Then everything about her went absolutely tight, absolutely rigid.
On the air.
“A significant portion of the mystery is solved this Thursday afternoon,” she announced, a slight smile growing on her strong, confident face. “Eduard Vasquez, convicted cop-killer and recent Green Haven escapee, has finally been found, but not alive. The slain body of Vasquez was discovered only moments ago by a group of law enforcement officials who’d received a tip from an anonymous caller who, it is alleged, recognized a suspicious, as of yet unidentified man driving the streets of Athens in a red Toyota 4-Runner.”
A team of paramedics hauled a stretcher out the front door of the Stevens House. One man at the feet, another at the head, two on each side. Vasquez’s body was on the stretcher, a dark red blood stain on the white sheet where it covered the face. You could see the imprint of his nose, lips, and sunken eyes. Cops in uniform followed the stretcher out the door.
“Vasquez appears to have taken a bullet at close range,” Collins went on, “with a heavy caliber firearm, sources told me just moments ago. But for now, that’s all the vital information police officials will offer. However, when asked to confirm rumors about whether or not Jack ‘Keeper’ Marconi met the description of the ‘suspicious man driving the streets of Athens,’ Martin Schillinger-the detective in charge of the Vasquez apprehension operation -refused to comment. What he was able to tell us is that Marconi does indeed own a red Toyota 4-Runner that fits the anonymous man’s description.”
I pictured Schillinger’s chubby white face. Then I saw the real thing following the uniformed state troopers out of the Stevens House. I took another step back, pressing against the wood-slat exterior wall of the bed-and-breakfast so that I was no longer in Schillinger’s line of sight.
“There is also speculation that Keeper Marconi was spotted by more than one witness walking side by side with Cassandra Wolf, Eduard Vasquez’s longtime girlfriend. Although nothing is official, such allegations make Marconi and Wolf prime suspects in the shooting death of the deceased cop-killer. The thirty-two-year-old Wolf, who had been sharing a room with Vasquez here in the Stevens House bed-and-breakfast under the assumed name of Hewlet, also fled the scene at approximately the same time that Marconi was purportedly seen.”
I looked away from Collins, beyond the crowd, out toward the tugboat and the barge it pushed. In my mind I sprinted through the crowd, dove head first into the river water, swam to the barge, stowed away to New York, and made my way south to Mexico. I’d change my name, grow a beard, grow my hair, blend in, drop out.
I felt sick to my stomach and deprived of oxygen.
“This is Chris Collins reporting live from Athens.”
She relaxed her arm, let the mike drop against her thigh, and took a deep breath. The cameraman had already moved away from her and shifted his focus to the EMTs who had loaded Vasquez’s body into the back of a black Chevrolet Suburban with tinted windows. The same kind of truck that took Fran away one year ago. The crowd grew so quiet that you could hear the small waves breaking on the western shore of the Hudson, the tugboat and barge having cut a heavy wake when they pushed through.
The townspeople of Athens fixed their eyes on the final scene-with the red, white, and blue lights from the cop cruisers flashing off the rear windows of the Chevy Suburban after the heavy double doors had been closed and secured. Call it shock, call it another panic attack, but I must have fallen into a semiconscious state. Because when Henry Snow, the gas station attendant, stepped out of the crowd in his light blue uniform, raised his oil-slicked right hand, and shouted out my name, it didn’t quite register, didn’t quite sink in. Until I heard the distinct sound of shoe leather slapping against concrete.
It happened fast.
I heard the order shouted by Marty Schillinger to apprehend the man in the dark blazer. But just before that, I made an all-out dash for the Impala, gaining maybe ten or twelve steps on the cops. With cowboy boots slapping hard on the pavement and air shooting out of my chest and mouth, it was like the Impala was in one of those dreams where you reach out for something that isn’t there. The closer I came to the car, the farther away it appeared. Cops shouted, threatened to shoot. A distinct, all-at-once high-pitch cry from the crowd told me that weapons had been drawn.
At the Impala, I searched through the pockets of my blazer for the small key ring with the yellow plastic attachment shaped like a little number “1” and the word Hertz printed on it in bold black letters.
The cops worked their way closer, service revolvers drawn.
My brothers, my fraternal order.
I looked over my shoulder, once. The crowd was on the ground, men and women on their stomachs, some of them lying on top of their children.
I could see them all now-Chris Collins alongside Schillinger, microphone in hand, cameraman behind her, filming the scene for history, posterity. “Warden Gunned Down after Jumping Bail.” What a story it would make. Uniformed cops on their knees behind their black-and-whites, using the cars to shield their bodies. Shield them from what? All side-arms drawn, aimed at me.
The sharp crack of the revolver echoed off the walls of the buildings along North Water Street. So did the shots that followed.
Who had given the order to shoot?
Someone had to have given the order.
Maybe someone thought I’d gone for my gun. But I hadn’t gone for my gun. I was going for the keys to the rented Impala. I searched until I found them, finally, in the right-hand pocket of my blue jeans. But not before a slug blew a hole in the windshield. “Shoot the tires!” one cop screamed. “Go for the tires!”
He was right. That’s what I would have done. Shot out the rear tires. But no one shot out the tires. No one shot at me as I managed to get back into the car. I turned over the engine, threw it in reverse, fishtailed and hit a Volkswagen Beetle on its driver’s-side panel, then sideswiped the tail end of a red pickup on the right. The rear windshield exploded the second I threw the floor-mounted automatic transmission into drive.
Don’t look back, Keeper. Never look back.
Bastards had no idea what they were doing.
My fraternal order. Just what the hell did they know about the truth?
I could have gone for my gun, returned their fire, called it self-defense. But what good would it have done? In the end, going for my gun would have been the foolish thing to do. Not a smart move at all, not with my right foot putting the pedal to the metal, not with the rented Impala veering dangerously to the right side of the road, not with the unmistakable feel of a cold pistol barrel pressed up against the back of my head.
PLANTED ON HER NECK, a heart-shaped tattoo.
A small red heart about the size of a man’s thumb print, plainly visible just above her left shoulder when she turned to see if the cops were still on our tail. The associations came to me, fast. Vasquez’s cell in G-Block…the manila envelope stored underneath his mattress containing the pornographic stills…an unidentified woman with a heart-shaped tattoo on her neck…an unidentified man with a scar under his chin…
Associations.
Connections.
“Did you kill him?” My right foot pressed down on the gas, I was trying to prevent the Impala from veering off onto the soft shoulder.
“If you only knew,” said the young woman, with the piece pressed to the back of my head.
“But did you kill him?” I had to hold the wheel tight to keep it from going ditch-bound.
“If only you really knew me,” the woman said in a flat, expressionless voice.
The barrel was pressed hard against the back of my skull. Maybe.32 caliber. Maybe smaller. What difference did caliber make at pointblank range?
“Somebody had to kill him,” I said, gazing into the rearview mirror at the heart-shaped tattoo on her neck where her long hair fell to her shoulders. Definitely the woman from the porn stills. Definitely Cassandra Wolf, Vasquez’s girlfriend.
“If it wasn’t you, sister, then who was it?”
I felt her warm breath on the back of my neck.
“If you only knew what I was like,” she said, “you wouldn’t even ask the question.”
I took that as a definite denial.
In my estimation, I had about a mile-and-a-half jump on the cops. By the time I turned off Route 9 for the less-traveled Route 27, I’d increased the distance to maybe two or three miles. Still, it was only an estimate. But it could also have been wishful thinking. I knew that no matter how many miles I put between me and the cops, there would be another pack waiting up ahead. The trick would be to get as far away from the area as fast as the rented Impala could take me, before the roadblocks went up. Meanwhile I had to deal with a woman who had what I guessed to be a Saturday Night Special pressed up against my head.
I took another good look at Cassandra in the rearview.
“How’d you find me?”
“That’s funny,” she said, jamming the pistol barrel hard against skin and bone, “I was about to ask you the same thing.”
“I mean it,” I said, taking a deep breath, trying to shrug away the pistol but only making it hurt that much more. “Tell me how you found me?”
“When the police raided the Stevens House,” she said in a monotone voice barely audible above the racing engine, “Eddy threw me into the bathroom.”
“They had reasonable suspicion?”
I knew full well that the possibility of my presence in town, thanks to Henry Snow, must have tipped Schillinger off as to the whereabouts of Vasquez and Cassandra.
“Eddy tried to stop the police at the door,” Cassandra said.
“Let me guess,” I said, speaking to her through the rearview, “they kicked the door in.”
“I climbed out the window, onto the fire escape, made a run for the river.”
“They didn’t think of blocking the fire escape.”
“We’re not talking brain surgeons here. I hid in the public ladies’ room near the lighthouse.”
“You must have seen me when I got out of the car.”
“I saw everything from the ladies’ room,” she said, voice cracking now, showing the first signs of stress and pressure. “When you got out of the car, I went to get in, but-”
“But what?”
“I couldn’t at first.”
“What do you mean you couldn’t?”
“I mean I couldn’t get into the car.”
“I don’t get it,” I said. “It’s not like I locked it.”
“The minute you took off, some guy in a black overcoat started poking his nose around inside the car.”
I pictured the man from the Miss Albany. I hadn’t lost him after all.
“What was he looking for?” I pressed.
“How should I know?” she said.
I slowed around a curve in the road, making a right turn, heading for Route 87 north toward Hudson. Nobody ahead of me, nobody in back. Still lucky, but not for long.
“You going to keep that thing pressed up against the back of my head forever?” I eased up on the gas just a little more. “We’re on the same team here, sister.”
“I’m not your sister,” Cassandra said. “So don’t speak to me like I’m a second-class citizen. Got it, brother?”
“Maybe I’m a little cranky,” I said. “But then, they think we both killed your boyfriend, and you’ve got a gun to my head, and some freak in a wool overcoat has been tailing me all day.”
“Please. Just. Drive.”
I could feel the jab of the barrel against the sensitive, bony portion of my head, just to the left of the right ear lobe.
Enough was enough.
I sped up, gradually this time, the engine of the Impala revving and the warm air pouring in through the hole in the windshield. The double- and single-story homes on both sides of the road whizzed by. At just the right time, I gave the wheel a slight turn to the left. I braced myself, hit the brake, leaned into the turn, spun the wheel sharp, counterclockwise, resisted the G-force by leaning into the door. The Impala fishtailed 360 degrees. Cassandra flew back hard against the right side of the car, the pistol knocked out of her hand. I was sure of it because I heard the thud of the pistol against the carpeted floor.
I’d been listening for that sound.
I threw the transmission into park, lunged like a diver over the opening between the two front bucket seats. The pistol was on the floor by her feet. I grabbed it before she could and aimed it at her face. Pointblank.
“Now we do things my way,” I said.
“Go ahead,” Cassandra said, laughing hysterically, barely able to get the words out between laughs. “Shoot.”
Sweat ran down my forehead, stinging my eyes.
“You’re crazy,” I said, running the back of my free hand across my brow.
Over my shoulder, I saw a car coming. It was still a ways back, but coming up fast. My eyes stung badly from the sweat pouring into them. I couldn’t make out the type or style of the car. I had no idea who might be driving it. Maybe a cop, maybe the overcoat man. I didn’t know anything anymore. All I knew was this: we didn’t haul ass right then, we’d both have something to cry about.
I took the aim away from Cassandra’s face and planted a bead on the oncoming car.
“The pistol,” she said, “it’s not loaded.”
I turned to her, quick. “What do you mean it’s not loaded?”
“The cops were breaking down the door,” she said, pressing both hands down flat against the floor of the car. “I didn’t have time to escape and load the gun.”
I cracked the cylinder on the black-plated.32. No bluff. All six chambers were empty.
The car was clearly visible now. A white car, whiter than the Impala. Maybe an unmarked cop car. Maybe not. I had no plans to hang around long enough to find out.
I tossed the empty.32 in Cassandra’s lap and swung around into the driver’s seat.
“See,” she said, “I told you it wasn’t loaded.”
I pulled the Colt.45 out of my belt, held it up for Cassandra to see.
“This one is,” I said.
I pulled the car ahead, just a little.
Just then, as the white sedan passed, I ducked down, then sat up again in time to see it turn into a church parking lot just up ahead on the left.
Not a cop after all.
Definitely not the overcoat man either.
I got only a quick glance, but the guy driving the car had a head of gray hair, and he was wearing something that looked like a black T-shirt. A priest maybe. Who would have guessed?
But I had learned a valuable lesson.
I knew that I had to ditch the Impala and go after my third car in a single afternoon. I had to find a safe house and make a plan. Now that Vasquez was dead, Cassandra had to be a part of that plan. Cassandra Wolf had to take her boyfriend, the cop-killer’s, place.
IT WAS A SMALL, white, old New England-style church with colorful stained glass, clapboard siding, and a steeple shaped like an inverted icicle mounted on an A-frame roof. Directly across the street was a funeral parlor that, in my mind, seemed oddly convenient. Attached to the rear of the church was a good-size, two-story Cape Cod-style house with dormer windows and a small front porch. I pulled into the lot and drove slowly past a wooden placard with Church of the Nazarene engraved on it in black letters against a white background. A daily mass schedule was printed below that.
I drove all the way around the church to the back of the house. In the meantime, Cassandra got up off the floor of the car and balanced herself on the edge of the backseat. Shards of broken glass covered the vinyl seat cushion. Through the rearview I saw her face, her dark teardrop eyes, her high cheekbones, her full red lips, her equally red, heart-shaped tattoo.
I pulled up to the two-door Pontiac Grand Prix-the same car that had passed me a few minutes before. “I’ve got an idea,” I said. Then I killed the engine on the rented Impala and stuffed the keys into the pocket of my blazer.
“But tell me something first,” I went on, turning to Cassandra, “how are your acting skills?”
The plan went something like this: Cassandra would ring the rectory doorbell, plead her case to the pastor, explain to him that her car had broken down and was now stranded alongside the road a ways back. The breakdown occurred while coming back from her sister’s house near Catskill. Now she had to get back to Albany to pick up her daughter from Public School 21, and if the priest knew anything at all about Albany, he’d know what a dangerous neighborhood Public School 21 was located in. It was very late in the afternoon. She was an hour late. There was nobody in Albany for her to call. She and her daughter, they were all alone in the world now that her boyfriend had split…
The pastor would ask her to at least phone the school. But Cassandra would insist she didn’t have time for that. She’d be unreasonable, she wouldn’t be thinking straight. Please! she’d scream. In the name of God you have to drive me to Albany! She’d appear panic-stricken, desperate.
The pastor, being a man of God, would have no choice but to act the role of the good Samaritan.
I had a clear view of Cassandra from the driver’s seat of the Impala as she walked to the screen door of the rectory and rang the doorbell. If all went as planned, we’d be on our way out of town in five minutes or less.
But for now, I had to wait and hope that her acting abilities were as good as her talents for evading the police. Of course, she couldn’t deny her film experience, but that kind of film didn’t take a whole lot of talent.
She was better than I could have hoped.
It took only about ninety seconds and Cassandra had the pastor by her side, the two of them making a beeline for his Pontiac Grand Prix. From what I could see, the pastor was older than me by four or five years, with very thin arms and legs. His belly, on the other hand, was enormous and hung over his black polyester pants. A black collarless shirt was unbuttoned at the stomach, exposing a white T-shirt underneath. He held a key ring in the fingers of his right hand. Nearsighted, he held it up to his red face while peeling back key after key until he came to the one for the Grand Prix.
Cassandra wiped both eyes with the backs of her hands. She was good. She was very good. Not only had she fooled the pastor into believing her story about a stranded daughter, but she had forced tears. But then, her boyfriend had just been shot and killed, so the tears may have been real, not an act at all.
The pastor unlocked the passenger-side door for Cassandra. He went around to the driver’s side and got in.
That was my cue.
I got out of the Impala, gripped the.45 in my right hand, barrel pointed down at the macadam. I moved fast and silent, careful not to alert the pastor, who, with shaking hands and trembling fingers, was inserting the key into the steering column. The driver’s-side window was rolled down so it must have been a complete surprise to him when I raised the.45 and stuffed the barrel into his ear.
“Don’t move, Father.”
The pastor stiffened, gripped the black steering wheel, white-knuckled.
“In the name of sweet Jesus,” he swallowed, “don’t kill me.”
All life seemed to drain from his face. He breathed heavily, sucking air in and blowing it out fast. I hoped his heart was still good. If his gut was any indication, a massive coronary was imminent. But it was a chance I had to take.
“Shut the car off, Father,” I ordered. “Backseat.”
I unlatched the door, held it open for him. He started sliding out as ordered. But when he was all the way out and standing in the lot, he began to breathe faster than his lungs could soak up the oxygen.
“Nice going,” Cassandra said. “Now the priest is having a heart attack.”
I grabbed the pastor’s shoulders, put my face in his red face.
“Breathe, Father,” I said. “Take your time and breathe.”
“Can’t…get…air,” he stuttered, in a voice so forced I could actually feel the pain and struggle in my own lungs.
“I’m not going to hurt you!” I shouted, my heart pounding against my rib cage. “I just need you to get into the back of the car.”
“Right…pants…pocket,” he said. “Breathilator…right…pocket.”
“Get his freaking breathi-whatever!” Cassandra shouted.
“I heard him,” I said, feeling around in the right-hand pocket of the pastor’s black pants. When I found the breathilator I pulled off the cap and stuffed the round inhaling end into his open mouth. The pastor took a breath while I squeezed down on the device at the same time. What a team we made. By the time I took the breathilator away, he was already beginning to breathe normally.
“The good Lord,” he said, between breaths, “has blessed me with many things. Good lungs is not one of them.”
“You okay now?” I said, taking a look around the parking lot to make sure we hadn’t been spotted.
“Yes,” he said. “Better.”
“Good. Now get back into the car.”
The pastor stuffed himself into the back. No arguments, no struggles, no heart attacks. I took another quick look around. Nothing but a slightly overcast afternoon and the wavy, mirage-like heat rising off the blacktop.
I got in and started the car.
“Take the pastor’s belt off and tie his hands at the wrists.”
Cassandra’s eyes were wet and heavy looking. She faced the floor of the car.
“There’s no need for that, my son,” the pastor said in a fabricated voice he might have used during his Sunday sermon. “I’ll give you no trouble.”
“Do it,” I said, pulling out of the lot and turning left, northbound.
Cassandra turned, extended her slim body into the back, reached for the pastor’s belt, and unbuckled it. I watched in the rearview as she slid the belt out from between the loops and told the pastor to hold his wrists out. Then she wrapped the belt around them until the slack was gone and the belt was buckled tight.
There was a pause for a second or two while I drove past the open fields browning in the unusual summerlike heat and past the scattered wood-framed cottages and bungalows.
“You’re that warden, aren’t you? And you’re that young woman. You murdered that escaped criminal, that man who killed the policeman with the pregnant wife. Not that he deserved to live, but who are you to judge?”
I kept the speed at an even forty-five. Not too fast, not too slow.
“Would it help, Father,” I said, “if I told you that both of us are innocent?”
“Your guilt,” the pastor said, “is entirely your affair, as is your inevitable council with the Almighty Himself. What does not have to be inevitable is your lack of repentance. What you need to ask yourself, my son, is this. Just what do I profit through my corruption that I should gain the world but lose my soul? Why must I lie, cheat, kill? Son, you can still be saved so long as you admit to your crimes, turn yourself in, turn your soul back over to Jesus Christ, your Lord and Savior-”
“Cassandra,” I said, “gag the pastor.”
I reached into my pants pocket, pulled out a hankie.
“I won’t be able to breathe,” he protested.
“Make sure his nostrils are clear,” I said.
“See,” he said, “this is exactly what Fm talking about, case and point.”
“Sorry it has to be this way, Father,” I explained, as Cassandra turned and stuffed the hankie into the pastor’s mouth. “But I believe your opinion about the state of my salvation is not relevant.”
Of course, the pastor had no way of responding. But he was not to be silenced either. He mumbled something nearly indiscernible through the gag. Something that sounded like, “May God have mercy on your souls.”
I HAD LEFT MY mobile phone inside the Toyota, leaving me with no choice but to call Val from a wall-mounted pay phone outside a twenty-four-hour supermarket located just a couple of miles south of the Albany city limits. But before that-before I got out of the Pontiac-I made the pastor lie down on the backseat, out of sight. In the meantime, Cassandra, through the opening between the bucket seats, kept the barrel of the.45 pointed in the direction of the pastor’s head. What the Father did not know was that I had discharged the clip and slipped it into my pocket before handing the piece over to Cassandra. It was one thing trusting her with the.45. It was quite another trusting her with a loaded.45.
“Superintendent’s office,” Val said.
“You alone?”
“Where are you, Keeper?” Her voice suddenly muffled, but urgent all the same.
“Pay phone.”
“Vasquez is dead.”
“I know,” I said.
“I saw the special report on television. You were running away.”
I let out a breath.
“I didn’t do it,” I said.
“Of course,” Val said. Voice funny, distant.
“Listen carefully. I’m running out of change and time. You have to call me back.”
I read off the payphone number.
Val hung up without saying goodbye. I wasn’t entirely convinced she’d call me back, but it was a chance I had to take.
I took a quick look at the Pontiac while I waited (and prayed) for the pay phone to ring. Of all times to lose my cell phone. Cassandra sat in the passenger seat, gripping the two-and-a-half pound, unloaded.45 in her right hand, holding it steady on the pastor. She made a fist with her free hand and rested it in her lap. Her face lacked even a semblance of expression-mouth closed, teardrop eyes staring through the windshield, heart-shaped tattoo looking out of place but somehow natural on the smooth skin of her neck.
The phone rang.
I felt a wave of relief when I pulled the receiver and put it to my ear.
“Tell me what you know?”
“FBI came snooping around this morning,” Val said. “There was a bag of something. Dope, heroin, something; I don’t know what. A bag of cash, too, inside your desk drawer under lock and key.”
I felt like my legs had been chopped out from under me.
“They found two bags, Keeper. How am I supposed to feel about that?”
“Plants,” I said, taking a deep breath, trying like hell to regain my equilibrium. “Don’t you see, Val? Setup.”
“Of course,” she said, in that strange, unfeeling, monotone voice.
“Come on, Val. You have to believe me.”
The silence that followed verged on unbearable. I gazed into the Pontiac at the ever-still pastor and the ever-still Cassandra Wolf with.45 in hand.
“I told you before, Keeper,” Val said finally, in a whisper voice. “I work for you first.”
There, I thought. She said it. She said exactly what I’d wanted her to say. But it was the way she said it. A funny, unsure, trembling voice.
“You have to do me a favor,” I pressed. “I’m heading north to my cabin in the Adirondacks. I want you to meet me at Exit 28 of the Northway tomorrow morning at nine. Pull off the exit and wait. You won’t see me, but I’ll see you.”
“You have a cabin in the Adirondacks?”
“My grandfather’s before he died. Then my father’s until he died. He left the place to me. I haven’t been there since I was a kid, but I don’t know where else to go.”
“Sure,” Val said, as if she didn’t quite believe my cabin story either.
“Now,” I said, “you’re going to need a pencil and some paper.”
I waited until Val was ready.
“Go,” she said.
“I want you to bring me a first-aid kit and some food. Enough stuff to last two people a couple of days. Also, two shotguns.”
“And where am I supposed to find-”
“Just call Tony Angelino at Council 84. He’ll help you.”
Val wrote down the instructions.
“Two twelve-gauge shotguns,” I added. “Remington 1187s if he can get them. Four boxes of shells, plus a box of.45 caliber rounds. I need a pair of black jeans, black combat boots, black turtleneck, black watch cap. You know the sizes.”
“Guns,” Val whispered. “Guns and combat boots.”
“Here’s where I really need your expertise,” I said. “I need an identical set of clothing for a woman.”
“Cassandra Wolf sort of woman?” Val said.
“Yeah,” I said. “That sort of woman.”
“What’s her size?”
I took another quick look inside the Pontiac.
“She’s a little taller than you I guess, maybe a hundred seven, a hundred ten pounds, average hips, better than average chest, I suppose.”
“Sounds like a four,” Val said. “Lucky you.”
“Also,” I said, “I need some cash.”
“Anything else, Keeper?”
“Anything you can think of that I might have missed.”
“Who’s gonna pay for all this?”
“Just tell Tony to put it on my tab.”
“He’s gonna love that, Keeper. A union lawyer financing a fugitive.”
I could feel the uneasy silence oozing through the line.
“You have to be guilty to be a fugitive, Val.”
“I’m sorry. It’s just that I saw you running away on TV. Away from the police, I mean. And there was the stuff in your drawer.”
“I didn’t do it, Val. Neither did Cassandra Wolf.”
“It’s just the way it looked.”
“Remember,” I said, “you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”
I pictured Val’s soft face, her brown eyes, and well-sculpted black eyebrows. I pictured the way she reached for the ceiling when she stood up from the swivel chair inside my office at Green Haven. Scared and anxious, that’s all she was. So was I.
“Keeper,” she said, releasing a quick resolved breath. “I’m with you all the way.”
“You do this for me,” I said, “you become an accessory after the fact.”
“Listen, Keeper, I’m thirty-six years old. My husband took off on me six years ago. Other than Mike Norman, I haven’t had a steady relationship in almost as many years. I have to do something for me. Take a stand. Maybe this is my stand.”
“I won’t let you down, Val. I swear it.”
I gazed once more inside the Pontiac. Neither the white-faced pastor nor Cassandra stirred. Just a blank look on her face, and a.45 in her hand.
“Remember, Val,” I said. “Exit 28 of the Northway. Nine o’clock sharp.”
“I’m already on it”
“You’re my angel, Val.”
“You bet your sweet ass I am,” she said.