Chapter 10

THE NEXT WEEK, I’m on my way to my usual lunch table when Lily collars me outside my math classroom. She’s practically levitating with excitement but refuses to say anything until we’ve ducked behind the portables out by the running track, safely out of anyone’s earshot.

“I just got something,” she says, holding up a nondescript white envelope. “From the city.”

“If you broke into City Hall without letting me come along, I’m going to be so pissed.”

“Your lack of self-preservation is legendary,” she says. “But sometimes there are legal ways to get what you want. Like a FOIL request.”

“A . . . what?”

“Freedom of Information Law.” She rips open the envelope. “It’s this thing that gives people the right to request government documents or information that are considered a matter of public record. Which includes arrest records.”

“You got the arrest records? Finally?”

“Most of them. Some of them got denied; I don’t know why.” She sits cross-legged on the ground and starts pulling out the papers. “I’ll take half, you take half.”

The portables offer privacy but absolutely no shade. I’m sweating in the noon sun, and it’s making it hard to concentrate. Lily is clearly reading every single word of the file in her lap, but that’s just not efficient—at least, not for me. So I do what I know how to do: take in the picture, and look for the pattern.

But as I flick between the reports, I start to panic, because I don’t see one.

Same neighborhood? No. All over the place.

Same crime? No. All nonviolent, all property crimes, but there’s a difference between committing vandalism and burglary. Not that I’ve tried either.

Same time of day? No. Day and night, though . . . only during the day on Mondays and Wednesdays, and at night the rest of the time, which doesn’t make any sense. Then I see it.

“The name,” I blurt out.

Lily looks up from her stack. “What?”

“The name,” I repeat, riffling through my stack to double-check. “There’s the same name on every one of mine.”

“Someone was arrested more than once?”

“Not the perp. The reporter.” I point it out to her. “Reporting: O’Hara.” Then I throw it down so she can see the next one. “Reporting: O’Hara.”

“That’s not a reporter,” Lily says. “That’s a cop.” She scoops up her stack and riffles through it. “Oh my God, you’re right, he shows up all the time. I only have one without him on it. One.”

“The same cop?”

“Same reporting officer,” Lily says. She slams down report after report. “O’Hara, O’Hara, O’Hara.”

“It must be the same cop Luke was talking about,” I say. “‘Harris, or something.’”

“If he wrote all the reports, he was there, probably the first one there, for every one of those arrests.” Lily crosses her arms. “Could that really be a coincidence?”

It’s not that huge of a police department, so it’s possible. But—“If it’s a coincidence,” I say, “it’s a really weird one.”

Lily’s already typing on her phone. She shakes her head. “None of the reports include his first name, and the department website doesn’t list their officers. But still—we have to find him. We have to talk to him.”

“What’s your cover story?”

She frowns. “What do you mean?”

“You’ll have to lie about who you are,” I tell her. “Why you want to talk to him. So what’s your lie?”

“I can’t lie,” she says. “It’s unethical. It goes against every journalistic standard.”

“What’s that matter? It’s not like you’re a real reporter.”

Lily’s eyes go dark. Her mouth tightens. I repeat every word in my head until I figure out which one was wrong, but by the time I do, Lily’s already scooped up all the folders and is halfway down the path.

“Wait,” I call after her, jogging to catch up.

She doesn’t stop. “Real reporter. Okay. Cool.”

“I didn’t mean that.”

“Yes, you did.”

“I’m sorry I said it, isn’t that the same thing?”

She throws her hand up and keeps walking. “No!”

“You’re looking at it all the wrong way.”

She tosses me a look over her shoulder. “Let me guess, you didn’t mean that either.”

“No, I did.” I step in front of her. “It’s an advantage that you aren’t a r—” I clear my throat. “That you’re not an adult.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s not going to be scared of you. He doesn’t know he should be.”

Her shoulders loosen. Just a little. “He won’t be guarded, you mean.”

“He might let things slip, because it won’t occur to him you could use that stuff against him.”

“So I tell him, what? I’m selling Girl Scout cookies?”

No. Stick to the truth, as close as you can. That’s how it’s done. “Tell him you’re writing an article for the school paper. That’s not a lie, so you won’t have misrepresented yourself. But tell him the article’s about something stupid, you know, like—‘heroes in our community.’”

She makes a face. “Ugh.”

“Yeah, but he’ll relax, if it’s something that cheesy.”

She considers for a moment. Then looks to me. “Do you want to come over after school?”

Lily’s house doesn’t look the same as I remember, but I didn’t expect it to. Not because I forgot. If I try, I can still bring up in my head the pink mailbox with ceramic flowers and vines Lily and I helped paint in second grade, or the blue-green tie-dyed curtains in the front window that reminded me of the pond in Balboa Park, or the multicolored doormat woven out of old T-shirts.

But Lily’s house was always a little different each time. Her moms were always swapping something out or making something new, so the house evolved. Like the earth. Or superbacteria.

The mountain of shoes is still beside the door, though.

“Didn’t even have to remind you,” Lily says, watching me untie my shoelaces.

I kick off my sneakers. “Not everything changes.”

I always liked that Lily’s moms made you take off your shoes before going inside. It made it feel different from my house. I also liked that they told me from our very first playdate to call them by their first names—Priya and Marzanna. Dad thought that was kind of weird, but he thought they were kind of weird in general. They’re both artists—Priya does printmaking and illustration, and Marzanna does “high-concept performance pieces.” I was nine before I finally asked Lily what that meant, and she admitted she had absolutely no idea.

“Hey, I’m home,” Lily calls out as she shuts the front door behind me. “And I brought you a surprise.”

“If it’s dessert, you’re too late,” Priya calls from a room to the left—the kitchen. The layout stuck in my brain, too. “I’m making coconut cake.”

I follow Lily into the kitchen, where Priya is standing at the counter, her back to us, mixing something in a bowl.

“Don’t worry, he’s not the least bit sweet,” Lily says. I roll my eyes. Priya turns around, and when she sees us—or really, me—her mouth drops.

“No,” Priya gasps, putting down her bowl. “Gideon?”

I can’t stop the smile creeping onto my face. “Yeah.”

“Yes, I know, he’s all grown up—” Lily tries to head her mom off, as if that would ever work.

“Come here,” Priya says to me, which I can’t really do because she’s beside me in a flash, anyway. She reaches up and smooths down my hair, examining it in the same way she used to look at the prints hanging up in her studio. “Oh, good. You still have some of that red.”

“Mama, stop petting him,” Lily says. “He’s not a golden retriever.”

Priya ignores her but does stop touching my hair. “Gideon, honey. It’s been forever. Where have you been hiding?”

I wonder what Lily told them when I suddenly stopped coming over. Did she make it seem like my fault? I doubt she told them the truth.

So what I say to Priya is: “My bedroom, mostly.”

She throws back her head and laughs. It’s the weirdest thing. People always laugh when I’m being serious and seem to get mad whenever I’m joking.

Priya turns toward an open door to her right—the studio space, with its big windows and sunlight, where Lily liked to choose for hide-and-seek.

“Zanna,” she shouts. “Did you hear Gideon is here?”

A moment of silence. Then: “Yes! Hello! Gideon!”

“Hi, Marzanna,” I call back.

Priya lowers her voice. “She’s under deadline for this huge commission project and completely in the zone, or she’d come out.”

“In the zone,” Lily repeats, grabbing a mug out of a cabinet. “That just means she’s got paint in her hair and hasn’t put on a bra.”

“How’s your dad?” Priya asks me.

“He’s fine. He just opened a new restaurant.”

“Marzanna saw that. Honey, didn’t you see that?”

From the studio: “Yes!”

“What kind of food is it?” Priya asks me.

“Mexican fusion,” I say.

And from the studio: “Too expensive for us!”

“Where did the coffeepot go?” Lily gestures with her mug at an empty spot on the counter.

“Mom has it,” Priya says.

From the studio: “It’s all cold!”

“Of course it is.” Lily sighs and tromps through the open door.

“You’ve grown up so well,” Priya says to me. “Your dad must be so proud.”

She’s trying to be nice. I know she is. It’s not her fault it scrapes against my skin like sandpaper.

“That’s not the word I would use.” I pause. “Or the word he would use.”

Her eyes go soft. “He was always tough on you.”

That makes me feel prickly, and I don’t know why. It’s not like I don’t think that, too. But hearing someone else say it makes it true in a different kind of way.

And maybe Priya can read that on my face, because she adds: “I only mean—he had high expectations. For you, of you. I know that can be hard.”

“No, it’s—” I look out the window, into their overgrown garden of weeds and daffodils. “Better than him not having any, I guess.”

“Is it?” Lily sweeps back into the kitchen. “Don’t be so sure.”

“We have plenty of expectations for you,” Priya counters. “We expect you’ll follow your bliss. And if that bliss is taking five APs and ruining your health by staying up until three in the morning—”

“So dramatic.” Lily downs the rest of the coffee in one gulp. “Last night was barely one a.m.”

Priya holds up her hands in surrender.

“Anyway,” Lily says. “Gideon and I have a project we need to work on, so—”

“I didn’t know you were in any of the same classes.”

We’re not. Lily’s stacked her schedule with APs and Honors, and I’m in the classes Presidio calls “Regular Track.” They should have named it the “Please Just Pass This Bullshit So You Can Graduate Track,” but I guess that wouldn’t have sounded encouraging.

“It’s for the paper,” Lily explains.

Priya turns to me. “You’re on the paper?”

“I just started this semester. It was Lily’s idea.”

“That’s great!”

Lily’s already edging toward the door. “Yep, super great, so we’re just going to go—”

“Really,” Priya says, “I’m so glad you two are connecting again. I know, I know, people grow up, they make new friends, but it’s nice to see you together.” She ruffles my hair. “It’s nice to see you, period.”

“Ugh, Mom needs to get you a puppy, already,” Lily tells Priya, pulling me by the sleeve toward her room.

And from the studio: “No dogs!”

Lily sits down at her desk and flips open her laptop. I stand in the open doorway, not sure what to do.

Lily never liked anyone sitting on her bed. She had a very specific way of arranging her collection of extremely creepy porcelain dolls that came from her grandmother in Poland every year, and she didn’t want you messing them up.

“What’s wrong?” Lily asks. “It just looks so different?”

The dolls and ponies and pastel bedsheets are gone, but this room is still Lily’s.

“I wasn’t going to sit on your bed, because you always had a thing about it, but the rocking chair you used to have is gone. And you’re already sitting in the desk chair. So I was weighing my options.”

She’s quiet for a moment. “You really do remember everything.”

“Yeah.”

“Sometimes I wish you didn’t.” She looks away. “You can sit on the bed. It’s okay.”

I sit down. Lily brings up her browser and starts typing.

“Okay. Officer O’Hara, San Miguel.” She presses Enter and scrolls for a while. “Here we go. An article about the policemen’s benefit dinner, last year. He’s quoted talking about ‘really feeling the community’s support.’”

“Does it have his first name?”

“Better. It calls him Officer Hank O’Hara, thirty-one, of San Miguel.” She nods. “Which is helpful.”

“To know he’s thirty-one?”

“To know he actually lives in San Miguel. Plenty of cops don’t live where they work.”

I guess that makes sense. Hard to imagine someone living in La Jolla or Del Mar on a cop’s salary, but rich people call 911, too.

“Hank O’Hara, San Miguel . . .” She clicks on something, then jerks back in surprise. “Oh . . . my God.”

“What is it?” I look over her shoulder. “Rap sheet?”

She turns the screen so I can see better. “Dating profile.”

HANK (M, 32)

6’1 because I guess that matters (if you’re shallow)

Here for a good time, not a long time

Being with me is like playing an N64: there’s no problem that can’t be fixed by blowing it

“Ew,” says Lily.

“What’s an N64?” I ask.

“No clue.”

She scrolls down to the selfies. And oh. The selfies.

“Does he not own a single shirt?” I ask.

“Does he not have a single friend to take a photo for him?” Lily wonders.

Not every mystery is solvable. Or important.

“Okay, we know he’s kind of a tool, but that doesn’t help find his address.” She x-es out of the tab and scrolls through the search results again. “Nothing.” She types some more. “I paid for a premium subscription. Hank O’Hara should bring up something—”

“But it wouldn’t be under Hank,” I realize. She looks over at me. “That’s not his legal name. He might go by that, even at work, but his deed or lease wouldn’t be under his nickname.”

“What is Hank short for?”

“Hankrick.” She says nothing. “Hankbert.” Her eyes bore into me. “I’m kidding. Henry.”

She types it in, shaking her head. “It’s only one fewer letter, what kind of a nickname is that?”

“I don’t know, blame the English.”

“Yeah, my ancestors sure did.” Then she makes a small, triumphant noise. “There we go! Henry F. O’Hara, 3047 Linda Lane.”

“I can’t believe you found that so fast,” I say.

“The internet is magic.”

I shrug. “I don’t use it all that much.”

“Someday, Gideon,” she says, jotting something down in her notebook, “you’re going to realize the world didn’t stop in 1942.”

“Unfortunately.”

She stops writing. Looks up at me. Tilts her head. “Maybe for you.”

“Well . . . yeah,” I say, sensing a trap. “Because I like—”

“I know you like the clothes and the movies,” she says. “But that was not a great era for a lot of people. Like, as a brown girl with two moms, not a time period I’d want to step into. Personally.”

When she says it like that, I sound like a privileged dick. And I obviously know she’s not wrong about the forties. Even I can see how sexist noir is, a lot of the time. At best, the genre glosses over racism and bigotry, which is its own kind of problem. At worst, you’ve got Charlton Heston caking on brown makeup to play Detective Miguel Vargas in Touch of Evil, while all the actual Mexican actors get cast as criminally stupid gangsters.

I watched that movie exactly once and was glad when it was over. But most of the time, I don’t think about it. And I guess it’s because most of the time . . . I don’t have to.

“You’re right,” I tell Lily. “That’s a really good point.”

She looks startled. “Wow.”

“You don’t think it’s a good point?”

“I know it is,” she says. “I’ve just never heard you admit that someone else might be right.”

When she says it like that, I sound like a privileged, know-it-all dick.

She types O’Hara’s address into her phone. “Let’s go.”

Officer O’Hara’s house is appropriately average for a guy we know nothing about. And infuriatingly nondescript for a guy we need to know more about. Ranch style, wraparound fenced porch, built in the 1960s like everything else in this city, which tells me nothing except that he doesn’t have the money or the desire to renovate. Which really tells me nothing at all.

I don’t know anything about cars—not modern ones, anyway—but the one in his driveway seems just as average as anything else. Lily catches me looking at it.

“He must be around,” she reasons, and I nod. He’s single. No need for two cars.

Lily knocks on the door. And then again, a moment later. But nobody appears.

“Either he’s freaked out by your trench coat or he’s not home.” Lily turns around and steps off his doormat. “But his car’s here.”

And then my mistake dawns on me. “Not his squad car.”

“We’ll have to come back, I guess,” Lily says. “What a waste of gas.”

She’s looking at this all wrong, again. What an opportunity.

While Lily steps back up to the door to knock again, something to the left of the door catches my eye.

“Lily. Look at this.” I point to underneath the mailbox.

“Footprints?” she says.

“Muddy ones. It rained last night, and early this morning.”

Dad’s jacket was still hanging up to dry in the bathroom when I left for school, and the sidewalk was still damp as I walked. It’s the kind of thing you notice only when you live in a place that sees only forty rainy days a year.

“They lead up to the mailbox and then right back down the stairs. But not to the door.” I kneel down to look closer. “Who would go only to the mailbox but not the door?”

“The mail carrier,” she says. Like it’s obvious.

“You don’t know that.”

“Have you ever heard of Occam’s razor?”

“No, I use the store-brand ones.”

“What?” She shakes her head. “It’s a problem-solving principle. It says the simplest explanation is usually the right one.”

“And if the shoe print was completely flat, no indentations or pattern, what would Oxman say?”

“Occam.”

“He’d say no mail carrier would wear a shoe without any tread. So the simplest explanation is . . . it was someone else.”

I throw open the mailbox and start pawing through it. A catalog, a takeout menu, and . . . bills. Lots of bills.

“This one’s from a debt collection agency,” I tell Lily, turning it over in my hand. Nothing on the front that would be helpful. No “Past Due” or “Final Notice” or “Your Credit Is Fucked, Dude.”

“Put it back,” she orders me. “That’s a federal offense!”

“Only if I open it.” As Lily tries to peer in the front window, I hold the envelope up to the light, but they’ve thought of that—you can’t see through. What are the odds this is the only notice he’s gotten? Low. Even Oxman and his razor would agree.

It’s not collection day, so it’s no surprise his bins aren’t there. Glancing over the porch railing, I see both of them—green and brown—behind a little wooden fence that must lead to his backyard. I hop over the railing, not nearly as gracefully as I’d hoped. That’s one advantage movies have when it comes to action: trained stunt doubles.

The little wooden gate isn’t locked, only bolted from the inside, so I snake my hand through one of the slats and unlock it.

“Where’d you go?” Lily calls from the porch.

I’d tell her I’m down here, but I don’t want to call attention to it. Instead, I open up his green bin and start rummaging through for anything useful.

Plastic takeout box, deli container, Come Again Soon happy-face bag—he eats out a lot, probably can’t cook, not that I should judge, I also can’t cook.

One-half of a bill, torn through the center—keeping that for now.

I tuck it under my arm and go back to sifting through.

Beer can, another beer can, another beer can, a water bottle—so occasionally he hydrates—another beer can.

Another ripped bill, not the same font as the first—

Lily leans over the porch railing. “Oh my God, are you going through his trash?”

“No.” That would be gross. “It’s recycling.”

“Gideon!”

“What?”

“What do you mean, what?”

When I unfold the first ripped bill, my eyes snag on numbers at the bottom of the page.

lance was $6,972.45

lance is $0.00

“Balance,” that’s clearly the word that got cut off. Balance. Was and is. High and then nothing. Huh. I unfold the second ripped bill. Different font, different-color logo at the top of the page.

Dear Mr. O’Hara

In consideration of payments received

hereby releases and discharges the abo

will be notified the debt has been satis

Different letters mean different companies—agencies? Whoever handles debts. Different debts, too. Not from just one maxed-out credit card, but two sources, maybe a third, if the letter from his mailbox is any indication.

“What did you find?” Lily asks. “Anything?”

“He’s in debt. Like, a lot of debt.” But—no, that’s not exactly right. “He was in debt,” I correct myself. “But now he’s in a lot less. All at once. Really quickly.”

I don’t think that’s how debt works, unless you have a millionaire grandpa who dies or a lotto ticket that wins.

“So he’s got more money than he used to.” Lily takes in the view of his house. “Not that you’d know it.”

“It’s not a coincidence,” I decide. “Him being the reporting officer. He’s getting something for it.”

Lily nods. “Come on, let’s go before someone sees us.”

The unopened letter is still in my hoodie pocket. I hand it to Lily over the porch railing. “Can you put this back?”

The heels of her boots tap on the wooden porch, then slide to a sudden stop. The mailbox shuts with a clang—and a short gasp from Lily.

“Gideon,” she says, softer this time, which is good. And more urgent, which might be good or might be bad. “Get up here.”

The fastest way is back over the porch railing, but that’s also the noisiest, so I go through the gate. That requires less upper-body strength, which is a bonus.

Lily’s standing by the open mailbox, something small and white in her hand.

“Look what I found,” she says, holding it out—a note. Tiny and folded and carefully taped.

“Where was it?”

“On the side of his mailbox. Taped to it.” She starts to peel the tape, then stops. “I don’t know, maybe it’s nothing.”

I glance around. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. But either way, we’ve overstayed our welcome here.

“Drive a few blocks,” I say, “then we’ll open it.”

“I wonder how long it’s been there,” I say as Lily drives. “The note.”

Lily thinks about this. “You said it rained last night.”

“Yeah, and it was misting this morning. That’s how the footprint got there. The mud.”

Lily thinks for another moment. Then she says: “The note was on the side of the mailbox. And the porch isn’t covered. Wouldn’t it have gotten wet?”

I turn the note over in my hands. She’s right—not only isn’t the paper wet, it’s never been wet. No wrinkles or running ink. I nod. “Somebody put it here today.”

We stop in the parking lot of a strip mall to read the note. At least here, we know some lady from the HOA won’t be spying on us through binoculars.

Careful not to damage the paper, I rip the tape and open the note.

2mrw

And underneath, in an almost illegible scrawl:

USUAL TIME

“What the hell?” Lily says. “It’s a cartoon.”

No, it isn’t. “It’s code. It only has to make sense to whoever sent it, and whoever got it.”

“O’Hara.”

“Right.”

“Then how are we supposed to figure out what it means?”

An arrow left, then an arrow up. No. Not left. Back.

“Backup.” I point to the arrows. No mystery there—someone wants O’Hara for protection. Who better to hire than a cop who needs cash?

“Tomorrow,” Lily reasons through the next part. “Night. Tomorrow night.”

The gun is self-explanatory. But . . . fish?

“There’s an arrow,” I point out. “So maybe you’re supposed to read the last two together. Gunfish? Is that . . . a thing?”

“The arrow’s not just pointing at the gun,” Lily says slowly. “It’s pointing at—”

She starts typing on her phone, thumbs moving a mile a minute, then pumps her fist. “I knew it. Triggerfish, it’s a whole species. See?” She holds up the screen so I can see a picture.

“It looks like an angry pancake.”

“I hope you don’t eat pancakes that have fins.”

“So, okay, a triggerfish,” I say. “But what the hell does that mean? How does that tell O’Hara where to go?”

“Maybe the aquarium,” Lily suggests.

“That’s so far.”

“It’s a straight shot on the Fifty-two.”

“Yeah, all the way to La Jolla,” I say. “Maybe it’s a seafood place. Like it’s on the menu somewhere, and that’s where they meet.”

“We can’t look up every menu in Greater San Diego.”

We don’t have to. I stick the note in one pocket, pull my phone out of the other, and dial.

“Hey,” Dad says in that strained, too-close-to-the-mic way that tells me he’s got the phone nestled in between his ear and shoulder. “I’m about to start. I’ve only got a second.”

“Does any place in San Miguel make triggerfish?”

“What?”

“Like as food, does anywhere make it?”

“You can’t eat triggerfish,” Dad says. “It’s poisonous.”

“Oh.” I look over at Lily and shake my head no. “Okay, thanks anyw—”

“Is someone trying to get you to buy them alcohol?”

My jaw drops. “What? No!”

“Because that isn’t even on the market yet.”

“Dad, what are you talking about?”

“Triggerfish is a beer,” Dad says. “Or will be a beer, when they finish that brewery. It’s already taken years.” He pauses. “No one’s asking you to buy them alcohol?”

“Why would they do that? I look like I’m twelve.”

“Well. Good.” He pauses. “Then . . . why did you ask?”

“Huh?”

“About triggerfish.”

“Oh. Um.” I scramble for an answer. “Trivia contest. At school.”

He pauses for longer. “Do you understand this is cheating?”

“There’s no prize.”

“Maybe the prize is your own integrity.”

“God, I’ll leave the question blank, all right?”

“What question?” Lily whispers.

“You don’t have to use that tone,” Dad says.

“Sorry for the tone thank you for the help bye!”

I hang up. Lily shakes her head. “How does he put up with you 24/7?”

“Badly,” I say. “Triggerfish is a beer. That’s what he said, in between lecturing me. They’re building a brewery somewhere around here.”

Lily sits with that for a moment. “And that’s where O’Hara’s supposed to meet . . . this person.”

“Someone who couldn’t call him. Or email him. Or even leave a straightforward note.”

“They don’t want anyone surprising them.”

It’s more than that. “They don’t want to leave tracks.”

“So they have to leave notes that can be destroyed, and meet at places that aren’t populated. Like a brewery that hasn’t opened.”

“A construction site, it sounds like.”

“But . . . when? What time?”

The usual time. Which helps us not at all. “Sometime between sunset and sunrise.”

Lily makes a frustrated noise. “That’s too big of a gap. We can’t stake out a construction site all night; even my parents would freak out.”

“What time does construction have to stop?” I ask her. “Like, according to the city, when do you have to stop drilling and stuff, for the day?”

She types on her phone. “Eight p.m.”

“So we figure after that. Or maybe a little earlier, since tomorrow’s a Friday. Everyone goes home earlier on a Friday, right?”

Lily gasps sharply. “Not everyone.” She shoves her phone in my hands and rummages in the back seat for her folder of arrest records. “I’m going to read you dates; you tell me which ones landed on a Friday.”

We sift through them rapid-fire, until Lily’s left with a handful of records. “The earliest arrest O’Hara ever made on a Friday was ten p.m. The latest was three a.m., the next day. He must work overnight on Fridays.”

“Sometime between eight p.m. and ten p.m.,” I say slowly. “That’s his only window.”

Lily folds the note back up and sticks it in her center console.

If nothing else, we’ll figure out who O’Hara was supposed to meet. We’ll know who’s been paying off his debt and who might be feeding him the people he’s been arresting.

She stares at a spot in the distance for a while. Buckles her seat belt. Starts the car. “I’ll pick you up tomorrow at seven forty-five.”

It isn’t until I’m in bed that night, inches away from sleep, that I realize—we never put the note back.