“I’ll be right back,” I said to Gillian.
I put down my lunch and headed toward him, toeing out. I could feel myself still grinning from talking to Gillian. I crossed the street and stood at the driver’sside window. It was down, Griffin’s arm still hanging out from when he’d waved me over. He looked more like cement than ever, his big gut in a gray sweatshirt spilling over faded jeans. Even the car seats were gray. “Sorry to interrupt,” he said. He didn’t sound it.
“S’okay. It’s my lunch hour.” I gave him the smirk—full-on Danny.
“How’s school?”
“Good.”
“Rough start, I hear.”
I shrugged and smirked some more.
“Gillian’s a nice girl. Meet her at Open Book?”
“Yeah.”
He looked past me, toward her. “Too bad about her dad. Ruined a lot of people. Old folks mostly, on pensions. Some of them lost their homes.” He tapped the door with his thumb. “I lost a little myself.” Then he made a little snort, a cop laugh. “He was a helluva liar.” He looked back at me. “Fooled everybody. Including me.”
“That’s too bad.”
“It is too bad. Anyway, that’s not why I’m here. Got something for you.” He reached into the back and handed me a paper. It was a photocopy of two head-and-shoulders pictures, taken from the front and the side, of a guy with the numbers 61472 in front of him. Mug shots. The guy was young and thin, with a mullet, bad skin and a shoe-salesman moustache.
My heart started pounding in my ears. “Who’s this sucker?” I already knew who it was.
“Michael Bennett Davidson,” Griffin said. “Also known as Michael Bennett, David Bennett, Bennett Michaels, Ben Michaelson, Michael Norton, Harley Bennett, David Benson…the list goes on. You’d know him as the guy who got you to Tucson. What did he want you to call him?”
Harley, I thought, finally getting it—Harley-Davidson. “Mike,” I said. “Just Mike.” I wondered if Bill Blessing was on the list somewhere. I hoped not. “Like, who was he?” I had to ask, but I wanted the pounding in my ears to shut out the answer.
Griffin sighed, hoisted his eyebrows and rhymed it off. “Out of Dayton, Ohio. Did short time for fraud and possession of stolen in Illinois and Minnesota in the early nineties, arrests in San Francisco and Portland, Oregon, after that. He might have lived in Portland for a while in the mid- to late nineties, but mostly it looks as if he kept on the move. Known to police, as they say, here and there. Age at death, forty-two.”
I looked again at the mug shots. Young Harley looked back at me. Griffin said something I missed. I looked up.
“How long were you with him, do you think?” he said again.
I shrugged. “I dunno. A few weeks, maybe a month.”
Griffin nodded. “Remember places you went?”
“Not really. It wasn’t exactly my territory. I kept asking if we were going north yet, and he’d say to leave the driving to him.”
Another nod. “He ever try anything on you?”
I shook my head.
“I ask because he seems to have had a history of traveling around with young boys, claiming they were his sons. He was with one two years ago in Maryland, and another last winter in Florida.”
I felt a little dizzy. I put one hand on the car roof.
“Or maybe it was the same boy.” He did a slow, owlstyle blink. “Who knows? The question then would be, what happened to them? You might have got off very lucky indeed, especially after that first van you climbed into.”
“Maybe,” I said. I was sweating. “Maybe I deserved a break.” I needed one now. This guy knew too much.
“Maybe you did.” Griffin paused and shifted in his seat. The car bobbed under my hand. “How’s the family? Shannon okay?”
“Yeah. She’s glad I’m home.”
“I know she is. She deserves some happy. How about Carleen? Hugs and kisses?”
“She’s okay.”
“Yeah, I heard you went shopping together. How’s Ty?”
“Haven’t seen him. His car got repo’d.”
“Lucky you. Back in the day, some people thought, given those two, you might have just taken off.”
I squeezed out, “It happened like I said.” Never change your story.
He nodded again. “I thought different.”
“Aren’t you retired?” I said. It was easy to sound angry. “You don’t have to think anymore. Shouldn’t you be playing golf or something?”
“I hate golf,” he said. “Swofford plays golf. You know what golf is? ‘A good walk spoiled.’ You know who said that?”
I shook my head.
“Mark Twain. Know him?”
I nodded.
“I thought you would. They tell me you’re a reader now. That’s nice.”
“Who tells you that?”
“Lots of people tell me things.” Griffin reached into the back again and came up with a paperback. “Here. This is for you too.”
He held it out to me. I looked at it but didn’t take it. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain. Two scraps of paper stuck out from the page tops. “I already read it,” I said—and I had, a long time ago.
“Try it again,” said Griffin. “I marked a couple of places you’ll enjoy.”
I took it. I figured it was better to see what was on his mind.
He started his car. “Stay safe.”
“You better put your seat belt on,” I said. “You don’t want to break the law.”
I watched him until he pulled away. By then I thought I could move without trembling. I folded the copy of Harley’s pictures into the book and waded back to Gillian through a wave of Bad Time. “What time is the movie?” I asked.