“Well,” I said, still waiting, “it all starts with Kraunauer.”
A good start: Debs nodded. “Okay,” she said.
“One of his clients is this Mexican drug lord. Raul,” I said.
“I don’t give a shit what his name is,” she snapped.
“Well, ah—Raul found out that Kraunauer was representing me. And, um…” I paused, and not for dramatic effect. This was where the whole thing would fall to the ground—unless I had a sudden flash of inspiration. I waited for it. Deborah waited, too, but not quite as patiently. She began tapping the mangled spoon again, faster and faster. “Raul is very paranoid,” I said. “And, um, he felt that, you know…”
“I don’t know, goddamn it,” she said. “And you’re not telling me, either!”
I closed my eyes and thought once again about the relative merits of honesty. It seemed to me that the only thing you could say about it, as far as its being a good thing, was that if you didn’t tell the truth, sooner or later your made-up story would whirl around and bite you in the crotch. The only other thing I could say about honesty was that whatever else you try first, it never works and honesty ends up as your last resort anyway. And then you’re standing there with a crotch wound, and you have to tell the truth just the same, but now you have to drop it into an atmosphere of anger and resentment. Life is a rigged game; there’s really no way to win.
Here I stood, bitten to the bone by my feeble fictions. And there was Debs, more than ready and willing to bite, too, and quite probably add a few kicks to the injured area.
I took a very deep breath and opened my eyes. Debs was looking at me, and she was not wearing an expression of calm patience. “Well?” she said. A very large tendril of ice spread out from her voice and sent a slow and jagged spear of frigid malice across the table at me. She flung down the mangled spoon. It bounced twice on the table and then slid onto the floor. “Why, goddamn it?”
All righty, then, I thought. Here goes nothing.
“Do you remember my brother, Brian, Deborah?” I said, putting as much nonchalant charm into the words as possible.
It wasn’t quite enough. Debs hissed at me and half rose out of her seat. “The psycho son of a bitch that tried to kill me?” she said. “That Brian?” There was not a single vestige of soft or quiet left in her voice. “Why isn’t he dead?”
“Sit down, Debs, please,” I said.
She stayed in her half crouch a second longer, glaring and panting with rage, and then she lowered herself back down into her seat. “You miserable shit,” she grated at me through a still-locked jaw. “You hooked up with him?”
“I needed help, Deborah,” I said. “There was no one else.”
I hadn’t really intended that as any sort of shot against Deborah, but she clearly took it that way. She turned bright red and lowered her voice to a dangerous rasp. “You needed help because you expected me to put my entire fucking life and career in the dumper for you! And you’re nothing but a fucking psychopath who finally got what he deserves—and your brother is even worse!”
It really was a shame that Deborah chose to retreat into saying the same hurtful things, just when we’d been on the verge of getting along again, and the mere fact that they were mostly true things did not take away the sting. Mostly true—after all, what fair-minded person could possibly call me “nothing but” a psychopath? I’m very good at board games, too.
“He helped me, Deborah,” I said. “When I was all alone with no hope left, he helped me.” I spread my hands. “He didn’t have to, but…I’m not saying he’s Mother Teresa. But he helped me. And he hired Kraunauer to defend me.”
“He’s a psycho fucking killer,” she said in a voice that could grind granite.
“Of course he is,” I said, a little peevishly. “But he’s my brother. And he helped me.”
She glared. I could see her jaw moving in a half circle and I thought I could even hear her teeth grinding away. “What does he have to do with this?” she said. “With this Raul taking my kids?”
“Brian thought Raul was dead,” I said. “He took a large chunk of money and ran with it.”
“And Raul wasn’t dead.”
“No, he wasn’t,” I said. “And he came after Brian.”
“And Kraunauer put Raul onto you?”
I nodded. The story still had a few holes in it, but I hoped we were done; it already sounded bad enough. “And so Brian and I lured Raul’s shooters into a trap and captured one, so we could learn where the kids are,” I said. “And now we know.”
I watched Deborah work her jaw again. It might be that I was seeing only what I hoped to see, but she looked like she was actually thinking it over and deciding to accept things as they were. In any case, she didn’t seem to be grinding quite as hard.
“Deborah,” I said. “We need to get going.” She looked up at me and there was still anger in her face, but not as much—and it was mixed with something else, too—determination? Acceptance? I didn’t know, but I pushed it anyway. “Whatever you think of Brian is beside the point,” I said. “What matters is that we need him.” Debs opened her mouth and began to rise up from her seat again, but I overrode her with, “The kids need him, Deborah.”
She goggled for a second, her mouth half-open, and then she thumped back onto the seat. “What the fuck does that mean?” she hissed.
“Do the math, Debs,” I said. “We have no idea how many guns will be against us when we get on that boat—but I promise it’s more than two. Maybe as many as a dozen.” I leaned forward and tapped the table for emphasis, a dramatic technique I’d seen used effectively many times on TV. “We need everybody we can get,” I said.