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I SAT A MOMENT, STUNNED, and she left me a little space to think.
The girl who had wrecked my apartment wanted me to rescue her sister from my landlord and some kind of drug cartel. The funny thing was, it felt a bit like Dad trying to get me to find another job. Both ideas sounded good in theory....
She gave up waiting on me and asked her first question again. “Do you have the gun?”
“It’s in my car. Nobody else has seen it.”
“Keep it safe,” she said. “It was used in a murder, and they want to use it to frame me up and get me out of their hair.”
A question occurred to me. “Who used it in a murder?”
“Derrick,” she said, ready for the question.
“Then how are they—”
“Pinning it on me? I grabbed it from him and ran. It’s got my prints and the victim’s blood on it. And they have friends in the D. A.’s office.”
A memory struck me. “Hauser was searching my apartment cabinets. Said there’d been a water leak and they had to tear my place apart. After that, he stationed Derrick to guard my door.”
“They’re looking for the gun,” she said.
“It’s not there,” I said. “I can take it to the cops—”
“No!” she snapped. “I know there’s enough of my evidence on it for them to lock me up. I don’t know if there’s enough of Derrick’s to set me free.”
“I’m not getting in a shoot-out with a bunch of gangsters.”
“You wouldn’t last a minute,” she said. “This isn’t a game.”
I gaped. For a moment I couldn’t speak. I asked, “What do you expect me to do, then?”
“Get her out. No guns. No fighting. You draw a gun, and they’ll shoot my sister and shoot you, too.”
“Jeez,” I said. “Why do you think I’m up to this?”
“Because you’re all I’ve got.” She paused a moment, then said with more sincerity, “Because you keep trying to help me without a reason. A man like that will help my sister, too.”
“How, though?”
“With a careful plan,” she answered. “Like I said, it’s not a game. These guys aren’t robots. They get bored. They get distracted. We’ll find a chance when they’re not looking, and you’ll lead my sister right out the front door.”
“Sounds a little too easy.” It sounded like my dad saying, “Just start handing out your resume.” Easy to say and utterly unrealistic.
“It won’t be easy,” she said. “But out of everyone in the world, you’re in a special place to make it happen. You can do what no one else can, because you’re already here, you know things no one else knows, and you’re too ordinary for anyone to watch out for.”
That last bit hurt, but I didn’t even try to argue it.
I could have hung up on her. I was clear on that fact in the moment. I could take the gun to the cops, tell them everything I knew, and be done with it. Smart people would probably call it the right thing to do. It would certainly be the easiest.
What stopped me wasn’t the girl on the phone. It wasn’t the smoking hottie who’d handed me a gun, the brash babe begging for a hero. It was the girl in the chair outside Hauser’s office, beaten and afraid, with hair over her eyes and asking helplessly, “Can you help me?”
“Sure,” I said. “Sure. If you can tell me how, I’ll do everything I can to save your sister.”
“Good!’ she said. “You’re going to need a ski mask, some work gloves, and a brick. Can you find a loose brick somewhere?”
I sighed. How was this my life?