37. The Meet

A little before eight a.m. on Tuesday morning, Tonya calls me and says, “It’s on.” Ritz’s assistant at work has phoned the Chief’s cell and told her that Mr. Vojczek wants to meet with Lucy in thirty minutes at the tables outside a coffee shop on Madison, about a block from the Vojczek Management office.

Rik and I will not be allowed to observe anything on the street, since we could interfere unwittingly, but given what’s at stake for the Chief, Toy has gotten us seats at the Greenwood County off-site, which will be the communications center for the operation today. With half an hour to get there, I dash out the door without remembering to pee, and I spend the entire drive waiting out every light with my foot tapping.

I beat Rik by a few minutes, and what I walk in on looks like a low-rent version of Mission Control. There are four huge computer monitors set up on a long folding table, and two men and two women with headsets are seated on stackable plastic outdoor chairs in front of the screens. Dan Feld is in a metal folding chair, rocking back and forth against the wall. He tosses me a tiny wave.

Toy comes to greet me and to explain what we’re watching.

“Ritz has Walter and a couple of his other guys shadowing the Chief to be sure she isn’t being followed,” Toy says. “Which is kind of a hoot, because we’re way ahead of them.” She points to one of the monitors where I can see an overhead view of the Chief’s Camry on its way from the station, just pulling onto Madison.

“A drone?” I ask.

It turns out the FBI has a long-standing arrangement in Highland Isle and Kindle County to share the feed from the cities’ 4K CCTV surveillance cameras that hang over many intersections. The legend is that the cameras are so powerful that in good light you can read the date on a dime lying on the street.

The Chief parks right across from Coffee Kingdom. “Here goes,” she says to herself when she grabs the door latch. She knows she has an audience. The output from the tiny radio in her right ear is exceptionally clear so far, broadcast in here on a couple speakers on standards at either end of the table.

On-screen, the Chief walks into Coffee Kingdom and comes out with a latte. She’s left the jacket of her uniform, with its rows of buttons, and her star, back in her car. Ingram recommended that, figuring Ritz would be concerned that the uni would draw attention to the unexpected sight of the two of them together. Instead, she’s wearing the straight blue skirt that has no markings, which she says she prefers to pants in the August heat, and the teal tunic, without decoration at the shoulders, that she puts on for dress occasions, when there’s no chance that she’ll remove her jacket. She looks pretty much like a civilian.

A minute later Ritz passes by on foot, with his greasy duck-assed do and his big-heeled cowboy boots. A pair of jeans hang loosely over his bony behind, and he’s got on his standard tweed sport coat. Although I should have realized it a while ago, it finally dawns on me that Ritz wears that coat to hide a gun.

Passing the Chief, he does not look back, but Koob, as is his way, seems to appear from nowhere. I don’t realize for a second that it’s him. He’s disguised so that the FBI or whoever doesn’t learn what he really looks like. He’s got on a full fake beard, big shades, a baseball cap and a broad phony nose. But his air is relaxed. He’s in a pair of khakis and a long-sleeve shirt and is wheeling a good-sized rolling briefcase behind him. Very business casual. Just another guy going to work. He walks straight up to Lucy.

“Chief, would you mind joining me down the block?” He points her to Ritz’s big black SUV, a Lincoln Navigator, parked a few spaces ahead of them. The CCTV cameras are better in low light than I thought, and the two techs working across the room enlarge and brighten the image of the Chief and Koob as they climb into the back seat together. In the meantime, Tonya catches my eye. She’s shaking a limp hand in front of her chest and mouths the word, “Da-a-a-ng,” obviously referring to Koob, disguise and all. I flip her off. Rik, who’s been in the seat beside me for a few minutes, is laughing.

“Turn towards me, please, Chief,” Koob says and frisks Lucy deftly. He motions for her to remove her cell phone and her keys, which she’s carrying in the two pockets of her blouse, and he appears to place them on the back seat of the car between them. At that point, Koob reaches into the big briefcase and takes out a machine I’ve seen in magazines. It’s about a foot square and a few inches tall and is called ‘The Hunter,’ a black box with lights. It deploys several different kinds of countermeasures, including electromagnetic field detection and lens finding. Koob looks right out the back of the SUV, so I know the machine has picked up the 4K cameras, but he’ll tell the Ritz that’s normal.

Next he finds the Chief’s hearing aids and asks her to remove them, extracting the batteries as soon as they are in his palm. He looks down at them for a second, long enough to make me think he’s on to something. She picks the left one out of his hand—the one without the radio—to put in front of the machine. She opens and closes the tiny battery door a couple times, and there is no audible response from the Hunter. She’s demonstrating that it’s solely a hearing device, with no power without the battery. Koob smiles so faintly that probably only I notice. He’s heard a great deal about the Chief, and I take it that he’s impressed by her utter nonchalance in attempting to foil the machine and cluing him about which hearing aid to test.

He picks up her cell phone next, handing her back the case as he removes the device from it. Using a couple jeweler’s tools, he extracts the SIM card from the side and then cracks the back off the phone and jimmies out the battery. Finally, he picks up her car key and the fob that’s attached, whose yellow buttons open her trunk and lock the Camry’s doors. He uses the same tools to remove the watch battery from the fob. He holds the physical key in his hand a second—he’s sensed something there, too, I suspect—but he lays it down.

Koob then turns off the Hunter and puts it aside, staring down at the car seat. Through the back window, we can’t see Koob or the Chief below the waist, but I know what he’s set on the rear bench—the hearing aids, the Chief’s car key, the open fob, and the various pieces of her phone. He probably would have bet from the start that this was a law-enforcement operation, but now he seems to be calculating. In the end, he picks up her car key and hands it back to her but holds on to the cell phone and the hearing aids. After another second’s hesitation he closes the battery doors on the aids so that the radio comes back live.

“I need those,” the Chief says. “I’ll be deaf without them. And I’m not letting my cell phone out of my sight. There’s too much confidential stuff on there.”

Koob studies her. He has to figure that she knows about his deal, but he’s trying to decode her communication.

“I think Mr. Vojczek will keep all these until after your meeting. Okay?”

“Well, make sure he’s careful with the hearing aids,” she says. “They cost five grand. And keep this with the phone, I don’t want to lose my credit cards.” She snaps the case, with the cardholder attached, onto the body of the cell phone. She makes it look like a tough fit, but I know she’s activating the recorder in the entry card.

“Nice to meet you, Chief,” Koob says, as he slides toward the car door.

“You too,” she says. “But please do us both a favor and stay the fuck out of my city in the future.”

He raises a hand to his temple in mock salute.

The man and woman operating the camera hanging over the intersection on Madison pull it back so that we can see Koob heading toward Ritz. The radio in his hand makes little clicks as it knocks against the other hearing aid.

“She’s clean,” he tells Ritz. He’s speaking English, rather than Mandarin. I guess Ritz and he have agreed that when they’re out on the street, English will attract less attention from passersby than a white guy rattling on in Chinese. The Bureau is prepared with some AI translation software, and a woman on the other side of the table must be in charge of that, because she sulks as soon as she hears the English.

“Lenses?” Ritz asks.

“Nothing but the CCTV over the intersection.”

“Laser?”

“The machine picked up nothing.”

The Ritz nods and thinks. “So you think I’m okay?”

“That is what the equipment indicates.”

“Good.”

“Are you all right from here?” Koob asks.

“If you did your fucking job.”

Koob extracts his own phone from his back pocket and scrolls through it for a second. At first, I can’t believe he’s reading his texts right there, then I realize what he’s looking for. Apparently, Darnell has confirmed that the money Ritz owed them has been paid.

“I’ll be going now,” Koob says.

“Maybe I’ll call you again.”

“I apologize, but you should know that we will not accept repeat customers when there have been payment issues.”

Ritz shrugs. “It was a misunderstanding, but suit yourself.”

“Just a policy,” says Koob. He turns and turns back, as if he had forgotten something.

“I told your guest in your back seat that you would be holding on to these until the end of the meeting.” He hands over the hearing aids and the cell phone—with the activated recorder still in the credit card sleeve on the back.

“You checked all this?”

“The batteries are out of everything. They’re dead. She’s afraid you may misplace her hearing aids, but to be safe, I would not give them back until you’re finished.” Ritz nods, clearly satisfied with Koob’s cautiousness. The Ritz drops the small collection of items into the inside pocket of his jacket right over his heart. An agent in front of the last monitor on the right stands straight up, shaking his fists over his head in a pantomime of cheering wildly.

Tonya murmurs to me, “Your guy is good.” The only better location for capturing Ritz’s voice on the recorder would be if Koob somehow got Vojczek to wear the key card as a necklace right over his voice box. As for the output from the radio in the right hearing aid, it might eventually be limited, depending on where Ritz parks, but the techs would rather have the microphone closer to him. The Chief will be available later to review her end of the conversation.

Before departing, Koob manipulates something in his briefcase. A waterfall of white noise begins at once. Koob gestures to the briefcase, but we can’t really make out the precise instruction. Ritz ends up strolling toward the Lincoln, rolling the briefcase behind him. Without a backward look, Koob strides off purposefully, passing out of the top of the picture on the nearest monitor.

Another of the agents in the room with us, who’s wearing headphones, tells Toy, “Channel 4,” and when she moves a switch on the radio, the broadcast from the laser tap trained on the Lincoln comes in over the speakers. We can hear the Chief humming faintly. I think it’s “Don’t Stop Believin’.”

The noise of the sound machine intrudes as Ritz slides in on the driver’s side. He places the briefcase on the passenger seat, reaching into it. We can’t see what’s he’s doing, but it’s immediately plain that he’s brought out the small white-noise box since its timbre intensifies, turning what’s overheard from the laser microphone into an undifferentiated fountain of hissing sound. But the Chief’s voice remains audible, as she speaks at volume.

“Jesus Christ, Ritz, turn that fucking thing off. Your gadget man took my hearing aids. I won’t understand a word you say.”

“You won’t hear me say a thing, Lucy. I’m listening to you.” With the radio right over Ritz’s heart, his voice is now far clearer than the Chief’s.

On cue, she immediately answers, “What’s that?”

For a second, Ritz slaps at his jacket pocket, apparently willing to give her back the aids, then seems to reconsider in light of Koob’s advice. Instead he reaches down and somewhat reduces the level of the white noise, prompting another fist wave from the same agent, who I now realize must be the sound guy.

“When you get hearing aids?” Ritz asks.

“It’s about a month,” she says, and explains about the shooting range and how she finally gave in to her daughters, who’d been telling her for years that she needed them. It’s why she grew her hair out, she adds.

“Yeah,” says Ritz. “I’m headed that way, too.”

He motions her to the front seat, but she says, “No, this is what I call a comfortable distance.”

“I thought you can’t hear me.”

“Just keep your freaking voice up, Ritz, and I’ll hear you fine. I know goddamned well you’re packing, so sitting behind you feels just a little safer.”

“You’re still an amazing pain in the ass,” he says.

“I don’t like being here any more than you do. Let’s just get this done with. I don’t have that much to say.”

The Ritz lifts a finger to hush her. “Just hold your water for a while,” he says and starts driving. He follows a typical path to detect a tail, turning right and left at random, sometimes suddenly. He barrels down a couple alleys and executes quick U-turns in the middle of the street. The laser microphone fades in and out as they’re driving, mostly out, but we can still hear what little is being said through the radio in Ritz’s pocket, especially since the Chief is speaking loudly. She laughs repeatedly and says several times, “There’s no one following us, Ritz.”

“Shut up, Lucy,” he answers after the third or fourth maneuver with the car. “We’ll talk when I want to talk. You’re the one who asked for this meet.”

Following ten minutes of evasive driving, Ritz heads over the Bolcarro Bridge into the North End of Kewahnee, and the car disappears from the screen for a while. Rik grabs my arm, afraid the Bureau has lost eyes on the car, but after no more than a minute the Bureau techs pick up the feed from the CCTV cameras in Kindle County. Ironically, the North End is the city’s highest crime district, so the closed-circuit cameras have a view of virtually every block.

Toy is listening intently to her headphones, and I tap her shoulder and point to my own ear to ask what she’s hearing.

“The follow cars,” she mouths. Despite the good vision from the cameras, three or four FBI vehicles are still trailing Ritz, with Don Ingram in charge. They are far enough behind Ritz’s detail to be sure they won’t get made, but still in the vicinity so they can race in if the Chief suddenly needs help.

Eventually, just as Walter predicted, Ritz arrives at the underpass he’s used previously. It’s in Pulaski Park, several square blocks of green space with two little lagoons and bike paths. The park is named for a Polish hero of our Revolutionary War. By night, it’s supposedly neutral territory for the gangs, but that agreement somehow hasn’t prevented seven young men from being shot here in the last year.

The third and fourth computer monitors light up with the feed from the Bureau’s own cameras, which were positioned here earlier to shoot through the front and rear windows of Ritz’s car. Now both angles are up on the monitors. I tap Rik’s shoulder to be sure he’s noticed. He’s been unusually quiet and intent. I know he’s concerned for Lucy, but as a guy who’s obsessed with consumer electronics, the technology on display here has him under a spell.

Positioned below the underpass, Ritz’s vehicle sits beneath the iron girding of the roadway and the steel surface of the bridge above. The radio signal is more broken up now, but the laser microphones still produce sound clear enough to understand, despite the constant interference of the sound machine, which sends out an oscillating rush of noise like someone breathing loudly in your ear. After some hand gestures from Tonya, the tech arranges it so that the laser mike is coming from one speaker, and the radio in Ritz’s pocket from the other.

“Do I have permission to speak now?” is the first thing the Chief says on-screen after Ritz has come to a halt.

He lifts a hand. “Okay, go,” he says.

“P&F is going to require me to testify.”

“You said that. It didn’t make a lot of sense to me. You know, I’ve been following this case, because I have such great affection for you after our years working together, and I thought you were a big grand jury target. Last I heard, Moses Appleton was kicking and screaming about them ordering you to testify, because if you get immunity, that would put him out of business.”

“The federal investigations are done, apparently. No thanks to you.”

“Why you blaming me?”

“Go fuck yourself, Ritz. I’m not even going to pretend to pretend. Anyway, the FBI has concluded that the three assholes you sent to whiz on me were all liars. So I’m no longer a subject or target of an extortion investigation.”

“Liars? Walt and Primo just had little memory lapses. Happens to everybody. And what about poor Blanco? Why do they think what he said wasn’t true?”

“For one thing, his wife, Marisel, told them that Frito never had an uncle who died during the fall of Saigon or went to St. Viator’s. I think Frito had some other issues, too, but nobody’s explained them to us. I’m not asking questions, though, if they say I’m out from under.”

“Okay. But from what I read online, I thought you had another issue.”

“Which is?”

“Rumor is, all of Blanco’s fibbin made you so angry that some say you had the poor boy capped.”

“There’ve been some developments there, too.”

“Such as?”

“No business of yours, Ritz. I didn’t come here to discuss the Blanco homicide investigation with you.”

“Is that what it is now? A homicide investigation?”

“What’s the deal, Ritz? Why so interested in Blanco?”

“Some guys follow sports. I like police investigations. Never got it out of my blood.”

“Hah,” she answers, but returns to her subject and says they need to talk about her testimony.

“And why should I give a crap about what you say under oath?” he asks.

“The photo.”

“The photograph of you forcing poor Blanco at gunpoint to pleasure you? It was shocking,” says the Ritz. “I was truly shocked. It was pure justice that he took that picture.”

“Ritz, I’m not gonna act like we’re characters inside some video game you invented. You and I both know Blanco didn’t take that photo. And you and I both know you had somebody hack my computer to get it.”

“I don’t know anything like that,” he says.

“Ritz, I still have three more pictures. Your guy zapped the ones in my photo library, but I still have the old phone with the originals. You weren’t any better looking in those pictures than you are now—but it’s definitely you. And I won’t be deep-sixing any evidence, because frankly, I’ve already shown them to Rik, and he doesn’t work that way. I’ve avoided giving him an explanation so far. But pretty soon, I have to tell him and then the commission why Moritz Vojczek has his head between my legs and my service weapon on his temple.”

For the first time, Ritz seems to take a second to reflect. The Chief goes on.

“My guess, Ritz, is that’s not a look you like any better today than you did then.”

“Okay,” he says. “What are you thinkin?”

“I’m thinking I’ll say, ‘Ritz and me had a little fling. Both single people. No big deal. And that photo was just a joke between us. We took a lot of weird pictures, if you want to know. But when I was appointed Chief, I knew it could get sticky for a lot of reasons. So I cut off the relationship. And Vojczek was so pissed with me he quit the force. Then when this thing started, Ritz got a laugh by giving Blanco the photograph and telling Frito he could say it was him.’”

Ritz tilts his head while he stares at her for a second.

“Aren’t you the fuckin little nun who used to ride around in my cruiser, saying you’d never lie under oath?”

“I guess I grew up, Ritz. I don’t have a lot of choices at the moment.”

“Imagine that.” He tosses up his face as he sneers. “And you want me to say I took the picture?”

“Right.”

“No chance. I got zero to do with Blanco. I barely knew the guy.”

“Okay, how about something closer to the truth. I’ll say I took the picture and my computer was hacked a few months ago. I can prove that. Just not who. But the photograph got to Blanco from someone who wanted to bolster the case against me and figured, given how much you hate me, you wouldn’t set the record straight.”

“If that’s what you wanna say,” he says.

“What I’m asking, Ritz, is if you can back that story?”

“Sounds to me like I would be doing you a big fucking favor. You smell like roses this way, when you’re really just a stinking bucket of shit. Maybe I’ll tell the real truth. How you violated my fuckin civil rights and all that.”

“By threatening to tell the FBI you were robbing drug dealers?”

“No idea what you’re talking about. You never said shit to the FBI, did you? You a sworn officer of the law and all? Either you were derelict in your duties or that’s just a bunch of bullshit.”

“I got you off the force, Ritz. Which meant no more strong-arming the dealers. So that was pretty good law enforcement as far as I’m concerned, especially since I didn’t have any firsthand evidence. You want to tell the real story, I can go down that road. I bet the FBI wouldn’t regard you stealing narcotics as too old to look at. With RICO, they can prosecute you for crap that happened before your grandparents left the old country. I just kinda thought you’d rather I didn’t say that. That’s why we’re fucking sitting here. To figure out something that works for both of us.”

“You’d never tell the real story. They prosecute me, then they can prosecute you for sexual assault or something.”

“No RICO there, Ritz. And besides, I got a non-subject letter. Rik already told them it’s you in the picture.”

“I think you’re talkin shit. You admit blackmailing me with that picture and the only thing Amity will be able to do for you is maybe help with a job as a barista at the place you got your latte. Cause you sure as shit aren’t gonna be her chief of police.”

“Which is why I need you to say that the picture was just you and me having fun.”

He doesn’t speak for a second, then says, “I’m still not liking this deal from my side. What do I get?”

“You mean besides me not mentioning that you were stealing narcotics? That sounds like plenty. But what else do you want, Ritz? You’ve beaten me up pretty good. I admit it. And being honest, I don’t really have it left in me to go another three rounds in this cage match. But what you’ve been doing to me—this is about more than revenge. You got a goal here, besides making me miserable. You could call off Steven tomorrow, if you wanted to, and make me a nonissue in the mayor’s race.”

“I don’t control Steven, Lucy. Sorry.”

“Right. You want to know what my goal is? If I hold on to this job for three more years, I get to thirty. That’s a great pension. Ninety percent of my current salary, plus an annual cost-of-living bump for the rest of my life. For a guy with money like you, that’s not much bigger than an ant’s behind. But you know, I’d really be okay. So tell me, Ritz. If I run up the white flag, what is it you need? We’re sitting here, nobody listening. Whatta you want to leave me be for three more years?”

“Sure, I lost my pension, but you get yours. Not happening.”

“You landed on your feet, Ritz.”

“It was mine. I worked for it. I’m still more pissed about that than the goddamned picture.”

“And you’ve gotten even the last few months. And some. So you tell me, what else do you need to let bygones be bygones?”

Ritz is looking over his shoulder at the Chief in the back seat. The mean snarl has never left his face, even while he’s pondering now.

“You know, Lucy, what a lot of people have against you is you’re a shit police chief.”

“And why is that?”

“Well, Stanley, he was a great police chief.”

“Stanley? And how do you figure that?”

“As I hear it, he was not a curious person.”

“I see. And what do I have to ignore? It’s something in Highland Isle, obviously.”

“I wouldn’t know anything about that. I was just saying Stanley knew how to do his job. Stay in his lane. He knew what was his business and what wasn’t.”

“Well, how am I gonna know what lane to stay in?”

“I don’t know, Lucy. I really don’t. But if somebody ever calls you to say, ‘Stay away,’ then I’d stay away, if I were you. I mean, that’s my advice. It’s nothin to me either way. But Steven and all them? They might appreciate it.”

“Okay. But how am I gonna be sure this stay-away person speaks for you?”

“You’re a smart lady, Lucy. You’ll be able to figure out what you need to know. And what you don’t.”

“And you leave me be for three more years for that, right?”

“I don’t know. It’s not up to me. I’m just a bystander. I got nothing to do with any of this.”

“Okay, Ritz. Fine. What’s your guess? If I can shut my eyes a couple of times when somebody tells me to, do I get three more years?”

“We’d have to see.”

“See what?”

“Well, you’re on the ropes now, Lucy. Word is Amity is wishing she cut you loose months ago. So if somebody was going to bail you out of this, they’d have to be certain that you know where the lines are painted on the road.”

“Okay. Fine. Test me.”

“Test, huh?” He appears to think, although Feld predicted exactly where he’d go. “It’s nothin to me, but since you didn’t want to say, why don’t you tell me what the latest developments are on Blanco and why the Feds are suddenly sure you had nothing to do with it. So that’s your test. Spill. Why do you say it’s a homicide investigation now?”

“Why does that matter to you, Ritz? I can’t play spin the bottle with a murderer.”

“It’s not that it matters to me. It’s that it matters to you. You want me to say, ‘Okay, she’s gonna be cool,’ then be cool and answer the effing question. You want a chance for your thirty or not?”

In the back seat, Lucy falls back and sighs deeply. She is just flat-out wonderful, playing her part. Feld came up with the scenario: Start with the picture, come on vulnerable, and watch Ritz pivot to Blanco as soon as you mention the word ‘homicide.’ Dan figured that Vojczek was too exposed not to ask questions once he knew the investigators had established that Blanco’s death was not from natural causes. But the plan, artful as it is, would fall flat if Lucy were less convincing.

“You know,” the Chief says then, “the Bureau isn’t really talking to me. This is what Tonya Eo, who’s been working with them on Blanco—this is what she seems to know.”

“Which is?”

“They did another chemical assay on Frito’s blood. I don’t know why. But they’re sure now he died of an overdose of some drug I never heard of. Starts with a C and sounds like fentanyl but it’s some super-duper form.”

On-screen, the Ritz draws back just enough that we can no longer see his face in detail because of the shadows under the overpass. But he definitely seems to freeze from both camera angles.

“And how they thinking that happened?” he asks.

“Well, there are two injection sites on Frito’s upper arm. But they’re still not sure about why or who. Apparently, Blanco had some ugly little secret he needed to hide. He might even have killed himself, except there was stuff missing—his phone and the needles. And the needle marks are on the back of his arm, where he’d have a hard time reaching. So best thoughts now are either: One, he was shooting up with somebody else, who came out of their nod and scampered away with his phone and the syringes, probably to protect themselves when they realized Frito was dead. Or Two, someone offed Frito.”

“Why would anyone else kill him?” asks Ritz. “You’re the one who needed to get rid of the guy.”

“How am I gonna zip-tie a guy with six inches and fifty pounds on me? But like I said, Ritz, for whatever reason, they don’t think it was me, which I’m damn happy to hear. Beyond that, I’m not asking so many questions. Like you’d figure, I’m out of the chain on the investigation, so whatever I hear is limited and thirdhand. I do know that they’re trying to figure out where that shit, the C-fentanyl or whatever, came from. There’s some of it around, but it hasn’t shown up in any of our cases. Then again, routine tox screen doesn’t pick it up, so maybe there’s more being used than we think. You got any ideas about that?”

“I have no ideas about any of this.”

“You seem pretty interested.”

“Me? I told you. I’ll always be a police officer at heart. Someone kills a cop, I’m interested. Blanco? Nice kid, nice family, sorry for all of them, but I got no stake.”

“Well, let me put it another way. Did I pass the test?”

“Maybe. You’ll find out.”

“Great. But I need at least one answer right now. You gonna back my story or not, Ritz?”

He waits, maybe thinking, maybe just to keep her hanging.

“Oh, sure,” he finally says. “I get a subpoena, I’d say we did all kinds of kinky shit, you and me. But I dumped you. You were starting to sound serious, and to me, you know, you were just another hole to plug. I could say that, I guess. I dumped you and you cried like your mama died. Then they picked you for chief. I had to quit because I could see what would be coming my way then. ‘Hell hath no fury.’ But the photo? I never had it and had nothing to do with passing it to Blanco.”

You can see on two camera feeds that they’re staring each other down.

“Okay,” the Ritz says, “I think you oughta get out now.”

“Here?”

“Yeah, call yourself a fuckin Uber.”

“You have my phone, jagoff.”

He throws the various pieces and the hearing aids over the seat. She has to grope on the floor to pick up what Ritz has tossed in her direction.

“Get out, Lucy.”

“I’ll get out when I have everything put back together and I know it works.”

You can see and hear her fumbling for most of a minute. Then she faces the phone toward herself and finally nods. “Okay,” she says and opens the passenger door. “Oh,” she says with one foot in the street, “one more thing.”

“Yeah?”

“Smile, Ritz.” She clicks a picture, then is gone.