DOES YOUR DOG bite?” she said.
“Neither of us does,” I said, and put my gun back into my pocket. Rosie’s ablutions would have to wait. She’d had her chances.
“How did you get here?”
“I walked,” she said. “I don’t think I was followed. But I can’t be sure. Not sure of anything these days.”
She hugged herself against the cold.
“I need help,” she said in a small voice. “I didn’t know who else to ask for it.”
“I can help you,” I said. “But only if you let me.”
“Only if it’s not too late,” she said.
She took a couple steps back toward the SUVs. So did Rosie and I. A treat had made Rosie stop growling.
“How long have you been waiting for me?” I said.
“A while,” she said.
She wore a black vest, as if trying to blend into the night, and running shoes. Even seeing as little of her face as I could, I saw that she was prettier in person than in the picture Tony had given to me.
But everything about her, the sum of her own jangled nerves, indicated that she could bolt at any moment.
“Who is after you?” I said. “Is it Tony?”
“I told him we have to end this,” she said.
“End what?”
“All of it!” she said.
“You spoke to him?”
“Little while ago.”
She looked to her left, and to her right, her eyes no less frantic than they had been since we had started talking.
“He said he wanted me to find you because he cares about you,” I said.
“Only now I’m the one who found you,” she said.
I thought of all the questions I wanted to ask her, as if I could see them, one after another, written on a page.
“It’s freezing out here,” I said. “Let’s go inside.”
She hesitated, as if conducting a brief interior debate, and said, “Okay.”
We walked, Lisa and Rosie and me, around to my front door. I opened it. Lisa went in first. We followed her.
“I can make coffee,” I said. “You look like you could use warming up.”
“Okay,” she said.
I led her to the kitchen. She sat down at the table. I got a cup, and filled it with water, and inserted the pods into my Keurig.
As I did, she began speaking, almost to herself, tapping both hands nervously on the table in front of her.
“I need to explain to Tony, once and for all, that I’m not the threat to him,” she said.
“Then who is?” I said.
She suddenly seemed out of breath.
“I don’t want to do this anymore!” she said.
Makes two of us, I thought.
Keep her talking.
“How did you end up in Paradise?” I said.
“I’d go there sometimes, this little bed-and-breakfast, when I needed to clear my head for a couple of days,” she said. “Paid cash this time. But told them at the desk, here’s my number, if anybody came around looking for me, call me right away. Few nights ago, somebody did. So I ran again. I didn’t want to end up like Callie.”
“Callie knew where you were?” I said.
She nodded. I thought she might cry.
“I told her just enough to get her killed,” she said.
“What do they want from you?” I said.
Still having no idea whatsoever who they were.
“They want to know if I told anybody their secret!” she cried.
“What secret?” I said.
She looked down at her watch.
“I have to go,” she said.
I wondered if she might be on something.
“Wherever you’re going, I’ll go with you,” I said. “You shouldn’t go anywhere alone. You said you came here because you needed help.”
“It always comes down to being the man,” she said. “Doesn’t it?” She looked at me, almost pleading. “Now Tony thinks I care what he had to do to stay the man? He’s always done what he had to do. Does he think I don’t know that?”
She seemed out of breath again. I felt as if I should be, chasing her around the conversation this way.
“I didn’t care what kind of deal he made!” She shook her head. “It’s like Tony says all the time. We’re all whores in the end.”
“Why did you leave?” I said. “Can you at least tell me that?”
“It was the young girls,” she said. “I told him he had to stop working girls younger and younger. You know? Even younger than I was once. Getting beat up. Getting used up. Killing themselves or getting killed. It was on me, looking the other way on that as long as I did. I tried to tell Tony he ought to get out rather than do that. But he said he didn’t have a choice. Wasn’t his call. I said, ‘You’re Tony Marcus. You’re the one makes the calls.’ He said, ‘Not anymore.’ But I told him there’s always choices. Told him we could leave together, he already had more money put away than he could ever spend. Go to the islands someplace. Go to Hawaii. Far away from here as we could be. Cash out and go.”
“What did he say?” I said, knowing the answer almost before I’d asked the question.
“Laughed right in my face,” she said. “Right before he told me he loved me as much as he’d ever loved anybody. Told me it didn’t work that way for people like us, that we were serving out life sentences, we just couldn’t see the bars.”
Now she was crying.
“I can protect you,” I said.
She looked at me, her eyes bigger than ever, shook her head. It was as if she were standing on some kind of fault line. Maybe she had been on it since leaving Tony. Maybe it had only gotten worse since Callie had died.
“Be back in an hour,” she said.
“Where are you going?” I said.
“Place over in The Fens,” she said. “Told Tony I’d meet him there. Settle things. Maybe even settle his mind once and for all. Remind him he’s the one who’s supposed to be the man. Or tell him I’m leaving him for real and never coming back.”
“It makes no sense,” I said, “coming to me for help and then running back to Tony. You know that, right?”
“Know more than I ever wanted to know,” she said. “More than I should have.”
She stood, her chair making a loud noise on the floor as she pushed back from the table.
“You got a bathroom I can use?” she said.
I told her there was one off the front hall. I said I’d show her. But when we were in the front hall, she was at the front door and opening it, in a blink.
“Lisa!” I yelled. “Wait!”
But she was already out the door, out on River Street Place, sprinting away from me, as fast a runner as Tony had said she was. I could run, too. Just not like her. I tried to chase her anyway, but finally gave up at the corner of Charles. She was already pulling away, heading in the general direction of the Public Garden.
“Goddamn it,” I yelled, but only Rosie could hear, and perhaps the neighbors, because by now Lisa was already gone. On the run again.