Sutter drove to El Segundo, and neither of us said a word the whole way. It was nearly dark when we got there, and another one of Sutter’s mercs, a sinewy black woman with scarred forearms and a Glock on her hip, spoke to him in French.
Shelly was at the kitchen table, working on a burrito the size of a cat, and Alex was just finishing a plate of enchiladas verdes. Alex smiled and waved and Shelly said “Yo” through a mouthful of rice. Elena was curled on the sofa, eating yogurt from a cup, and she rose when she saw me, as if she knew I had news.
“Let’s talk in back,” I said to her. She shuttered her face, put her yogurt cup on the kitchen counter, and walked down the narrow hall to the rear bedroom. She sat on the edge of the bed. Her feet were flat on the floor, and her mouth was a straight line.
“So?” she said.
I nodded and told her about my meeting with Mandy, its interruption, and my visit to Malibu. I didn’t go into the details of Bray’s threats, but I did say that I thought he was serious.
“He wants Alex returned, and he wants it on his terms,” I said, limping to conclusion. “He left no room for negotiation.”
Elena’s silence was long and heavy, and neither Shelly’s pitchy laughter from the other room, nor Alex’s giggles made a dent in it. Her gaze was fixed on the window behind me, and the darkness beyond.
“So you meet the old man, face-to-face,” she said finally. “What you think?”
“Scary guy,” I said. “Maybe a little crazy.”
“No maybe. And not a little,” she said. “How he scare you?” Elena’s eyes were locked on mine now. I swallowed hard.
“He threatened to shut down my clinic, and to hurt some people I care about.”
She nodded. “But if you give him Alex, then everything’s fine. For you.”
“I’m not going to do that, Elena.”
She nodded again, slowly. Her gaze went back to the black glass. “So—what are you going to do?”
I took a deep breath. “I’m still working on that. Sutter had an idea about trying to get Mandy on tape, making the same threats her uncle did. That might give us some leverage.”
A smile flitted across Elena’s small mouth so quickly I wasn’t sure I’d seen it. She shrugged. “Sure, that could work, or maybe something else. You keep thinking.”
“I will. And you just sit tight. You and Alex are safe here.”
Elena’s eyes didn’t stray from the window, but the little smile came and went again. “Sit tight. Sure—what else I’m doing? Nothing but sitting.”
Sutter brought me back to my car. I drove home slowly and reluctantly, trying as I did to come up with a way of telling Lydia and Lucho and Arthur what Harris Bray had said that made his plans for them seem less disastrous than Godzilla’s for Tokyo. Trying and failing.
The clinic was dark when I got there, but I could feel Lydia’s irritation and exhaustion in every room, like background radiation, even before I found the note taped to my desk chair: Sent 7 to ER @ County this afternoon. Assume they went. Hope so. Assume you remember we’re open both days this weekend. Hope so. Her handwriting was firm, precise, and angry.
I dropped into my chair, and dust rose in the darkness. It settled around me as I debated not calling Lydia and Lucho and Arthur just then, and instead waiting until morning to tell them. Or perhaps crawling upstairs, into my bed, and not coming out again. Or perhaps never moving from this chair. What difference would a few hours make, with a giant radioactive dinosaur bearing down? Better to let the good citizens of Tokyo have a few hours more of sleep and blissful ignorance. Somebody should dream—why not them? Then I thought about the files Bray said were squirreled away on the servers of Arthur’s clients. God only knew what kind of sewage they contained, and a few hours might make the difference between finding and not finding them, between defusing the situation and having it detonate in Arthur’s face. I sighed heavily and reached for the phone.
Of course they knew it was bad news. Why else would I call Lydia and Lucho back in at nine in the evening? Why else would I ask Lucho to bring Arthur along? They looked vulnerable in the waiting room’s plastic chairs, in their after-hours clothes—tee shirts and sagging jeans, Lydia in a faded tracksuit—like our patients, pale, small, disheveled, and bewildered. Lucho brought coffee for me. I took it from him but couldn’t bear to drink it.
“It’s Kashmarian, right?” he asked. “He’s selling the place on us? We gonna shut down?”
I shook my head and told them, without preamble or pause, and without looking any of them in the eye.
The silence afterward was leaden and sickening, and went on for a long time. Then Arthur muttered “Motherfucker” and sprang up and disappeared down the hall. In a moment I heard the sound of rapid fingers on a keyboard. Lydia made a shuddering sigh, put her head in her hands, and murmured “Dios.” Lucho squinted at me and shook his head.
“What the fuck, doc? This asshole is the kid’s grandfather? And he bought my fucking apartment building—and this place too—just so he could kick us to the curb? Who does that? And what the fuck does he want from Artie? Artie never did anything to him, or to anybody—he doesn’t even work here, for chrissakes. What the fuck?”
Lydia looked up. “It’s got nothing to do with Arturo or you or me,” she said, her voice low and tight. “It’s got to do with him.” She pointed a blunt finger, and I thought she was about to stand, to come at me from across the room. But then the breath and everything else left her, and tears ran down her face. When she looked at me again she was a decade older. Her voice was quiet and beaten.
“I’m not even going to ask what you’ll do—I don’t want to hear it. Anyway, it’s always the same: you do what you want to do, like always, and the hell with what anybody else wants, or what it costs them.”
“Lyd—”
She held up a hand, as if she were warding off the evil eye. “Don’t. Just don’t fucking bother.”