WHEN I WALKED OUT of the King County Courthouse onto Jefferson Street, Evelyn Tolan was sitting on a concrete bench at the curb, her neat black curls pushed sideways by the wind. She saw me and stood, scooped up her handbag, and began covering the ten yards between us at a fast walk.
It was cold outside, a breeze coming sharp and purposeful off the water and into downtown. Evelyn had put on a beige cardigan over the demure blue dress she’d worn to Davey’s preliminary hearing. It had been two hours since the hearing had ended. She had a tense and drawn look that made me suspect she’d spent every minute since watching the courthouse entrance until I showed.
“I want to talk to you,” she said.
For the past three days, I’d done little except talk, or wait around until somebody official wanted me to talk some more. Most of it had been done in the building I’d just left. On the first day, right after Dono’s wake, Guerin and Kanellis had taken me into custody, against the outstanding warrant for fleeing the scene at Formes’s homicide. They didn’t book me, and there was no need for me to make a phone call. Ephraim Ganz had been at the wake. I waited in a county cell until Guerin arranged for the warrant to be canceled, at which point he walked me across the Fifth Avenue skybridge between the jail and the courthouse and straight into an interview room.
Since then I’d been at the courthouse eight or ten hours each day, talking to SPD, state detectives, a handful of assistant prosecutors, a captain sent by the JAG office at Fort Lewis, and a suit from the Justice Department who wanted to determine if the line had been crossed on any federal laws. Everybody wanted to know about Formes and his bugs, and the diamonds, and about the bodies of Boone McGann and Alec that the state cops had recovered from the little unnamed island in the San Juans.
And I told them my story, over and over. McGann and Alec must have been in on the robbery. They’d hidden their share of the diamonds on that island in the San Juans. When the two thieves learned that the cops had picked up their trail after Formes’s murder, they kidnapped Dono’s old friend Hollis Brant in order to steal his boat as emergency transportation to the island. I’d arrived at Hollis’s marina just in time to see McGann drive the boat away from the dock, but by the time I’d found a speedboat to follow them, they were already out of sight. Out on the island, the two men had killed each other over the fortune in stones. If Hollis hadn’t managed to get free and call me on the boat’s VHF radio, there’s no telling what would have happened to him.
Guerin’s people finally broke the encryption that Julian Formes had on his thumb drives. They found the recording of Davey shooting Dono.
I had asked Guerin if their final conversation had been as Davey had described it. He said yes, that Dono had become furious when Davey had told him about Bobby Sessions and the two skinheads and that Dono had threatened violence. The detective said that even if the recording was deemed admissible, it might do just as much to excuse Davey’s actions as to convict him. And that the prosecutor considered the whole incident with the skinheads to be a wash, too far in the past and too complicated to bother trying to get any charges to stick. To Davey or to me.
Guerin also asked me if I wanted to listen to the recording. I had already decided I could live without that.
The various law-enforcement agencies all settled on the same conclusions. Davey had unknowingly set off a chain reaction. With Dono in a coma, Alec had to abandon his original plan of tailing my grandfather to the diamonds. Alec told Formes to stop listening to the bugs, and Formes went to retrieve his gadgets and ended up gifting me with a two-day headache. When crazy Boone McGann got to town, he and Alec settled on the direct approach—kill Cristiana Liotti for her share and kill Formes because he was a loose end.
The cops and I agreed on one last thing: If Dono hadn’t already been shot, Boone and Alec would have killed him, too. After they’d squeezed the location of the diamonds out of him.
Maybe that was the reason I couldn’t summon any real hatred for Davey. My grandfather had been a marked man, long before Davey got shitfaced and stupidly confronted him. As bad as Dono’s last days had been, his passing had been easy compared to what Alec and Boone might have done to him.
Ephraim was present at each interview, making sure everyone understood that I was fully cooperating. The cops didn’t really believe me. But what I was telling them did fit the evidence, and once scuba divers working for the state police started finding black rubber cylinders full of diamonds two hundred feet down, the atmosphere relaxed a little.
Evelyn Tolan followed me as I kept walking down Jefferson. My body was stiff from sitting for too long. Evelyn hurried alongside as we both wove through the early-evening sidewalk traffic.
“If this is about Davey, you should go home,” I said.
“He made a mistake, a terrible one. But he meant to help you.” Her voice was tight.
We passed a newspaper stand. A city-council fight over a new stadium had pushed the police search for the remaining diamonds below the fold since yesterday’s edition. In another week everyone would have moved on and the reporters would stop knocking on the door at Dono’s house. I started off again, downhill toward the water.
Evelyn kept up, the wooden heels of her flats slapping the concrete. “Davey’s not strong enough to survive in jail.”
“He’ll have to be.” Though not for very long. Davey’s public defender would probably plea-bargain the second-degree-murder charge down to manslaughter. With the overcrowded state prisons, Davey might be out in three years.
“You could at least ask the judge to set his bail at a sane amount at the arraignment tomorrow. Please.”
“If I were Davey,” I said, “I’d stay inside.”
“Because of … of Dono’s friends?”
“Yes.”
“But you can talk to them. Ask them not to hurt Davey. They’ll listen to you.”
“Some of those guys knew Dono longer than I did. They’ll do what they want.”
“You won’t even try,” she said, catching my arm to stop me. She was so tight that she was almost vibrating. “Damn you.”
“Go home, Evelyn.”
“How can you do this? You owe Davey your life.”
I looked at her. The same wide blue eyes as her eldest son. I felt the tiniest rush of anger, just at the resemblance. “What did he tell you?”
“Everything. He told me about those drug dealers you were mixed up with after high school. And how he went out to find you and get you to stop. He saw you panic and shoot one of those men.” She glanced around quickly, lowering her voice to a harsh whisper. “For Lord’s sake, Van, you murdered someone yourself. How can you judge Davey so harshly for his mistake?”
I started laughing. Evelyn stared at me like I’d just drop-kicked a kitten.
“I’m more worn out than I thought,” I said. “Should have seen this coming.” I steered Evelyn toward the park on the opposite side of the street. We jaywalked across. I sat on a stone bank that edged a section of elevated lawn, and after a moment she sat down next to me.
“Evelyn,” I said, “Davey lied.”
“I know what happened,” she said. “I looked up the news story, from ten years ago.”
“Yeah,” I said. “But it wasn’t my drug deal. And it wasn’t me holding the gun. Davey called me, two nights after our graduation.” I gave her a short rundown of that night’s events. I mentioned Bobby Sessions and a few other details that Evelyn might have remembered from that long ago.
Her expression moved away from its taut anger to something like dread. “But you left town,” she said. “Right after that.”
“Dono caught me when I came home,” I said. “I didn’t tell him what Davey had done. I should have.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Believe what you like. Ask Davey someday how it felt, the first time he pulled the trigger.”
She stared at me. “You think he shot your grandfather on purpose.”
“Your son’s a lost cause, Evelyn.”
“Dono attacked Davey. It wasn’t his fault.”
“It never is. He killed that skinhead back when we were kids. It didn’t shake him up much. He killed Dono. He has to pay for that.”
“He’s your friend.”
I stood up. The sun was down behind even the lowest buildings, and the center of the city was rapidly growing dark.
“See you at the arraignment,” I said.
“I know why you’re giving your half of the bar to Michael,” she said.
I turned back.
Evelyn nodded. “Your lawyer called us. He told Michael you had signed over the deed.”
“That’s what Dono wanted.”
She shook her head, jaw clenched. “You know what you’re doing to Davey is wrong. I think you’re trying to make yourself feel less shameful.”
“Mike’s getting the bar,” I said, “because Dono always took care of family.”
Evelyn blanched. She opened her mouth and closed it again.
“When my mother fled Dono’s house, he kept her in his will,” I said. “When I left Seattle, he did the same for me. It didn’t matter that he and I had almost torn each other apart. I was still blood.”
“That’s—” Evelyn said. “Michael was his employee.”
“When Luce told me Dono was going to leave the bar to Mike, I thought the old man was cutting all ties with me. Hell, Davey overheard Dono talking to Luce, and even he jumped to that conclusion.
“But Davey had it wrong. Dono was planning to tell me about the diamonds he’d stolen. That could be his legacy to me, if I wanted to claim it. Which left Dono free to give the bar to Michael.” Evelyn was looking down at her lap. I waited until she met my eyes. “Something for both of his boys.”
“You know,” she said.
I remembered Evelyn’s reaction when I had leveled with her about Dono’s chance for recovery. She was a strong woman, accustomed to hardship and loss. But the news had nearly floored her. She’d said Michael’s name, because her first thought was for her younger boy. Who had lost his father.
“I guessed some of it,” I said. “You and Dono, twenty-three years ago. Why don’t you tell me the rest?”
She was very still. For a moment I thought that she wouldn’t say anything, just stay there like a bird frozen in front of a snake, hoping it would go away.
“It was after Joe and I had parted,” she said, “before he left town for good.”
“Just after I came to live with Dono.”
“You and Davey were so young.” Evelyn’s slim fingers worried at the strap of her purse. “I hadn’t meant to get involved with your grandfather. He was trouble. But he was also strong, and I wasn’t, not right then.” She stopped, waiting until the shiver was out of her voice. “Dono and I had broken things off before I ever knew I was pregnant. Marriage was out of the question.”
“You’ve never told Mike?”
“No.”
“But Dono knew.”
“I asked him to let us be.” She stood up. “You’d been living in Dono’s house less than a year, but already I could see his influence on you, Van. I didn’t want Dono to have the same hold over Michael.”
I smiled, without much in it besides the baring of teeth. “Not that it mattered. Mike turned out fine. So did I.” I nodded up the street, toward the windowless block of the jail. “Davey’s the rotten branch on the tree.”
“Your grandfather was a criminal.”
“Yeah. And I imagine he put some money in your pocket every few weeks. For Mike. You ever say no to that?”
Evelyn’s face twisted. “You can’t tell him. Michael is happier as things are.”
Dono had wanted Mike to know the truth. Wanted what was left of his family provided for and brought together.
But the truth had turned poisonous. Mike’s brother had killed his father. Who the hell would be richer for knowing that? Not Mike, and not Davey. Sure as hell not Juliet or their kid.
I looked at Evelyn. “You’re right. Better to let it alone.”
“He can’t ever know,” she said.
“Forever’s a long time. For now you and I can carry the weight.” I looked up Third Avenue. If I walked fast, I could be at Luce’s apartment in time to have a quick dinner with her before she started her night at the Morgen.
“Tell Davey to stay where he is,” I said.
I walked away. Evelyn stayed where she was, standing rigid in the cold wind.
*
THREE DAYS LATER THE city of Seattle, King County, and Washington State had all decided they’d seen enough of me. The county prosecutor signed off on sending me back to the army for local duty. The next morning I locked up Dono’s house—my house—with the new police lock I’d installed and handed Addy Proctor the keys. She gave me a hug.
“I’ll fight off the squatters,” she said. “Just come back safe.”
Luce was waiting at the curb in her old Audi, the engine idling. She had the top down, even though the day was too new to even hint at being warm.
“Nothing else?” she said after I’d squeezed myself into the passenger seat.
“Nope.” I had my passport and papers and the clothes on my back. “Pretty much what I arrived with.”
Luce grinned. “I’d say you’ve got a bit more than that.”
I looked at her, then leaned across and kissed her. “Let’s go.”
She drove us up and over the hill to Madison and the I-5 Southbound exit.
“November twelfth,” she said after a couple of miles. “Six months.”
“Yeah,” I said. The day my enlistment was due to end. Officially.
“Will you be in Afghanistan then? Or here?”
“I don’t know. I’ll be attached to the Second here at Lewis for a while, until Davey’s case is settled. Then the cops will tell the army I’m all theirs.”
“And you’re sure the army won’t punish you? For being AWOL?”
“Oh, they’ll punish me. At least until they’re free to rotate me somewhere more useful.” By tonight I’d probably be baby-sitting a new class of boots on behalf of their drill sergeant, waking them every ninety minutes to do push-ups and yell cadence. But it beat a stint in Leavenworth.
Luce was quiet for a while. About the time we hit the S-curves through Renton, she said, “You won’t re-up?”
She was picking up the jargon. I looked at her. She kept her hands at ten and two and her eyes fixed straight ahead. Her blond hair whipped behind her like a pennant.
“No,” I said. “Once they stamp my papers, I’m done.” I hoped they’d send me on one more rotation. I wanted to see my team one last time.
“Well,” Luce said, and I could tell without looking at her that she was smiling. “At least you’ve earned a pension. Of sorts.”
Talos had been pretty desperate to recover their diamonds. The reward had edged up steadily since the robbery in February, until it reached two hundred thousand. With the two rubber cylinders that I’d turned in to the cops and the others fished off the ocean floor by the state-police divers, Talos already had the lion’s share back in their hands.
Ephraim was sure he could make their insurance company cough up. He had incentive, since the reward would be my only way of paying his legal fees, as well as Dono’s astronomical hospital bill.
There was some money yet to be found. The cash from Cristiana Liotti’s apartment. The police theorized that Boone had hidden it away somewhere. I knew that most of it was still in its plastic wrap, stashed in a locker near a temporarily empty slip at Shilshole marina. When I’d tossed the package to Hollis, I’d told him I thought the Francesca II should be bigger than her predecessor.
I couldn’t keep Dono’s diamonds for myself. I wasn’t that boy anymore, the one who could turn a blind eye to the price paid for free money.
But I was okay with the gray areas.
I closed my eyes and leaned back, just to feel the wind rushing over me.
Even after all the debts, there should be a sizable nut remaining from the reward. Maybe enough to get a boat of my own. Take Luce out, point it south, and see where it takes us.
Pirate days.