In the backseat, Juby hummed over her pile of ill-gotten goods, making little noises. Lillian wouldn’t ask. Alice drove.
The sun was finally setting, cooling things down. Alice was tired, and heartsick. How many little girls had been caught up in Richard Miller’s snare? Her hands, on the wheel, vibrated with rage. Now she knew why her dad had needed a new job. How could he stand it? How many men like Richard Miller were there? How could anyone stand it?
Alice glanced into the rearview mirror. Juby had transferred her attention from the stolen mail and was thumbing her phone, her face lit by the screen. “Well?” Alice said.
Juby looked up, smiling wide. “Turn roooiiiight,” the GPS voice said.
“What?” The exit appeared, and Alice turned sharply into it. They’d been heading toward the interstate to go home, but now they descended from the high road down into a subterranean area of Milwaukee’s downtown, the support beams of the highway above surrounding them like trees in a strange concrete forest. “What are we doing?”
“I thought you might like to meet Becki,” she said, holding up an envelope. “I’m sure it’s not a federal offense to take junk mail—”
“It is,” Lillian said.
“—or to take junk mail when you’re trying to protect a young child.”
Lillian said nothing.
“I’ll hand over Becki’s mail personally at the cah-seeeeee-no,” Juby said. “Where she works. With Richard Miller. You’re welcome.”
“How do you know she works at the casino?” Alice said.
“Her full name was on this offer for—what is this?—lawn care? Did that squat even have a lawn? Full name goes into the phone—beep boop—and spits out a not-unhelpful social media presence and a photo—” Here Juby waved her phone between them. “A photo of casino Employee Day at Six Flags from the company newsletter, including one Rebekah Young with her probably-seven-year-old daughter, right there in the front.”
“Is Miller in the photo?” Lillian said finally.
“Not that I can tell.” Juby was engrossed with more search findings or put off by the tepid response to her genius.
“Turn rooiiiight,” the phone said. “And you will arroive at your destination.”
Alice slowed the car. The exit had dumped them in an industrial area, warehouses and container trucks. In the middle of it all, a spaceship had landed. The casino was a glowing blue building with its name in overlarge, brightly lit red letters across its crown. The parking lot below teemed with life, everything coated an eerie alien color.
Alice let the car idle, allowing the day to wash over her. It was getting dark. The trip home wouldn’t be any shorter for the late hour, and the morning no easier. The guy had to be stopped—but why did it have to be her who tracked him down? She felt for her phone in her pocket. Her dad would know what to do, who to call.
She could turn left and put them on the highway toward home. Call it off, all of it.
But then what? She would miss this. Right now she was in the middle of this—adventure? whatever it was—but eventually it would end, and she knew she would someday look back on this night with regret and fondness. She also pined for the quiet evening she hadn’t had, her stomach growling for the dinner she hadn’t eaten. Her life was splitting in two, each half going a way she would never choose to go. Sometimes she wasn’t sure who she was.
“I’ve never been to a casino before,” she said, making her voice Juby-bright as she pulled into the parking lot under the large red letters. A red-letter day. But wasn’t red a warning, too? She pulled up to the curb to let them out.
INSIDE THE CASINO, Lillian was easily found among the lights and buzz of the casino floor, slumped at a slot machine. Beyond her, the blinking and pinging row of machines ran a quarter mile. The place reeked of smoke, old and new. Juby was gone.
“That kid,” Lillian said.
“Where did she go?”
“She went to change. A twenty.” Lillian took a deep breath. “Into the currency of this nation.”
“Wait,” Alice said, looking around. “Are we actually gambling?”
“When in Rome.”
“I don’t think I like to gamble,” Alice said.
“Are you sure? You’re taking a big risk.” Lillian’s face was lit green, blue, green, blue by the lights on the machine. “Looking for this guy. Is risky.”
“What do you mean? You don’t think he would—what do you think he would do?”
“We don’t know.” Lillian gazed around her, like a queen surveying her holdings. Alice had already seen a woman on a scooter, hooked to an oxygen tank. She didn’t like to think someone might look at Lillian and not understand what she now knew, that Lillian was funny, sharp. Lillian was good company. “It’s a risk to go looking,” Lillian said. “Have you thought? If you find something? You didn’t want to know?”
Here came Juby, though, hooked by the arm of a large, square-shouldered man in black pants and a white shirt—plus black jacket, black tie, and a gun in its holster at his other hip. Security. What had she tried to steal now?
But no, Juby was smiling, and so was the security guard.
“She’s a golden ticket,” Lillian breathed.
“Heyyyy,” Juby said, beaming at the security guard like he was an award she’d been handed. “I just met Rayyan here, who says Becki’s about to go on her break and we can meet her right here.”
“Will you recognize her?” Alice said.
Rayyan frowned, reclaimed his arm. “I thought you said you knew her.”
“I know her,” Lillian said quickly. “But I don’t move so fast. As you can see.” She gasped to finish. “If I know Becki. She’ll be moving fast.”
Rayyan seemed placated, if confused. Bored. “You ladies have a good night. Rebekah should be along.”
Juby saw him off with a beaming smile. The second his back was turned, she wheeled on Alice. “Could you be cool once in a while and not say the first thing inside your head? Good thing Lil is so fast on her feet—”
“So to speak,” Lillian said.
“—or we might be waiting for Rebekah outside.”
“Sorry,” Alice said.
“Or from jail, I suppose, since I’m a felon now.” Juby pulled her phone from her pocket, thumbed it, and held it up to Alice’s face. “Future reference, that’s what Rebekah looks like.”
The crowd in the photo wore matching neon-green shirts. Juby had zoomed in on a woman in the front row, compact, even muscular. She had gold rings on every finger and straightened but short, sleek black hair. The little girl next to her was lighter-skinned, with puffs for pigtails and deep dimples. “OK, got it.”
“Rebekah’s your age, I’m thinking, but she’s closer to my color, so we’re going with Plan Juby,” Juby said. “Per the usual.”
It’s my Doe. But Juby had a point. “OK.”
“I have low blood sugar,” Juby announced. “As soon as we bag this Becki babe, let’s get food. I promised my gal Lil a date and she is going to have a date.”
“If she’s on break,” Alice said, “maybe Rebekah would like a snack, too.”
Juby appraised her. “That’s better. Now you’re thinking. You’re also buying.”
WHICH WAS HOW they came to be seated in an open corner of an inside café near the entrance with a woman they’d just met, an order for four expensive cheeseburgers placed.
Rebekah Young, black pants, white shirt, had been tipped off by the security guard before leaving for her break, so she hadn’t been ambushed. She seemed in fact quite happy to be treated instead of eating her packed lunch in her car. It was almost ten p.m. by the time they sat down. Rebekah only had twenty-two minutes to give.
“I want to get a smoke before I go back up to the tables,” she said.
“You may regret that. One day,” Lillian said. “This is the lasting result. Of a rock ’n’ roll lifestyle.”
Rebekah might have been trying to smile at Lillian, but it came out as a sneer. Without the cheerful puff pigtails of her daughter and the colorful, matching T-shirts, Rebekah, in person, was fearsome. “They’ll dock me if I’m a minute late. What did you want?”
Juby gave Alice a look and jumped in. “You used to live in the same building as a man named Richard Miller, right?”
Rebekah leaned back coolly from the table. She glanced toward the door. “What is this?”
“Look,” Juby said. “I’m going to level with you. We are not the cops. We can’t make you talk to us. But we have reasons for asking about Richard Miller and, actually, there are some things about him you might want to be aware—”
“Who sent you?” Rebekah stood up, her chair scraping the floor. “How in the world—”
“Now, Ms. Young,” Lillian began.
“Don’t Miz Young me in the place I work!” Rebekah looked frantically toward the door and another security guard there. “Shevon, where’s Rayyan?”
“We really don’t mean any harm,” Juby said, trying the milky-tea voice she had used on the landlord.
“I don’t know who put you up to this—”
“Richard Miller is a danger to your daughter,” Alice said, cutting through the rising chaos. The group went quiet. Juby sat back.
Rebekah turned her wild eyes on Alice, looking her up and down. “Who are you? Are you . . . ?” She shook her head. “I’ve left my kid with him a million times.”
“What I’m saying,” Alice said, enunciating clearly, “is that it might be a bad idea to do that.”
Rebekah gathered her things. “I would trust Richard Ki—I’d trust him with my daughter’s life, and mine, and you know what? I did. You’re the ones come digging where you don’t belong. Wherever he is, leave him be. And don’t lead anyone else there. Or here.”
She hurried away, toward the security station.
“We’re so getting kicked out of here,” Juby said. She reached into her pocket and threw down four red casino chips. “Not a single dollar lost. Get the check, Alice. I’ve got the tip.”
“Guess I’ll get. A head start.” Lillian dug herself out of her chair onto shaky legs. “Best date in decades.”