Moonlight Mile (Kenzie & Gennaro 6)

The cab dropped me in front of the house on Tuck Terrace. I left the driver a solid tip but not so solid he’d be able to pick me out of a lineup. I walked to the house as he backed onto the road. I pretended to put a key in the front door as he pulled forward and then rode up the street. I walked over to the house where I’d left my Jeep. Back through the half-finished ranch, back across the field of sand, and I was once more at Kenny and Helene’s sliding glass door. It was unlocked, and I let myself in and stood watching as Kenny added the laptops to a duffel bag on the floor and Helene packed up the cable modems.

Kenny noticed me. “You got my keys?”

I patted my pockets and was surprised to find them. “Here you go.” I tossed him the keys.

He zipped the duffel bag and lifted it off the floor. “Where’s it parked?”

“Yeah,” I said slowly, “about that.”

“I can’t believe you killed my ride,” Kenny said as we drove past the empty Nottingham Hill security kiosk in my Jeep.

“I didn’t kill it. Yefim did.”

“I can’t believe you just fucking left it.”

“Kenny, your Hummer looks like the bus at the end of The Gauntlet. The only way it was reaching your house was by U.N. airlift.”

We came to the same stoplight where I’d almost run into Yefim and Pavel’s truck. A small armada of Foxboro Police cruisers came tear-assing down the road from the other direction. Kenny and Helene dropped in their seats as the cruisers blew through the red light, sirens a-rage. In another fifteen seconds, all four cruisers had disappeared over the rise behind us as if they’d never existed at all. I looked at Kenny, crammed under my glove compartment.

“Subtle,” I said.

“We don’t like calling attention to ourselves,” Helene said from the backseat.

“Which is why you drive a yellow Hummer,” I said as the light turned green.

On Route 1, we passed the stadium again. The Hummer was surrounded by local and state police, a black-panel crime scene truck, and two news vans. Kenny looked at the state of it—the blown tires, the shattered windshield, the shot-up hood. Another news van pulled into the lot. A helicopter flew overhead.

“Shit, Kenny,” I said, “you’re big-time.”

“Please,” he said, “can’t you let a man grieve in peace?”

We stopped in Dedham, back behind the Holiday Inn at the intersection of Route 1 and Route 1A.

“Okay,” I said. “In case you haven’t figured it out, you two are screwed. I saw you grab the computers, but I’m sure you left something behind in the house that’ll tie you to all the wonderful fraud and identity theft you’ve been up to. Not to mention the meth dust in the microwave. I’m only half as smart as most cops at this, so let’s assume they’ll have you two charged by midday and will be out on the prowl with no-knock warrants by dinnertime.”

“You’re such a bad bluffer.” Helene lit a cigarette.

“You think?” I reached over the backrest, took the cigarette out of her mouth and flicked it out the window past Kenny’s face. “I got a four-year-old, you moron. She rides in this car.”

“So?”

“So, I don’t want her going to the playground smelling like a Newport.”

“Touchy, touchy.”

I held out my hand to her.

“What?”

“Gimme the pack.”

“Nigger, please.”

“Gimme the pack,” I repeated.

Kenny sounded weary. “Give it to him, Helene.”

She handed over the pack. I slid it into my pocket.

“So,” Kenny said, “you got a solution for us?”

“I dunno. Tell me what Kirill Borzakov wants with Amanda.”

“Who said he wants Amanda?”

“Yefim did.”

“Oh, right.”

“So what’s Amanda got that they could want?”

“She ripped a load, took it on the run with her.”

I made the sound of an NBA buzzer when the shot clock runs out. “Bullshit.”

“No, he’s serious.” Helene, all wide-eyed.

“Get out of my car.”

“No, listen.”

I reached across Kenny and pushed his door open. “See ya.”

“No, really.”

“Really. We’ve got less than two days to trade whatever Amanda’s got for Sophie. Now I know you don’t give a shit about the life of a teenage girl, but I’m kind of a dinosaur that way, and I do.”

“So go to the police.”

I nodded as if that made perfect sense. “Testify in open court against the Russian mob.” I scratched my chin. “By the time it’s safe for my daughter to leave Witness Protection, she’ll be fifty-fucking-five.” I looked at Kenny. “No one’s going to the cops.”

“Can I have my cigarettes back?” Helene said. “Please.”

“You going to smoke in my ride?”

“I’ll open the door.”

I tossed them back over the seat to her.

“So where’s this leave us?” Kenny said.

“What I said—we need to make a trade. The more you two dick me around on what exactly it is they want from Amanda, the less chance Sophie will be in anything less than three or four pieces by the time Friday rolls around.”

“And we told you,” Kenny said, “Amanda ripped off their—”

“It’s a piece of fucking jewelry,” Helene said. She opened the back door wide and placed one foot on the ground as she lit her cigarette. She blew the smoke out past the door and gave me a look like Satisfied?

“Jewelry.”

She nodded as Kenny closed his eyes and rested his head against the seat. “Yeah. Don’t ask me what it looks like or how she got it, but she stole this, what, crucifix?”

“Well, it’s not a crucifix,” Kenny said. ” ’Least I don’t think so. They keep calling it a ‘cross.’ ” He shrugged. “That’s all we know.”

“And you don’t know how this cross got into her possession?”

Another head shake. “Nope.”

“So you have no idea how Amanda might have had the opportunity to put her hands on this cross, or why she was hanging out with the Russian mob. Is that what you’re selling?”

“We don’t smother her,” Helene said.

“What?”

“Amanda,” Helene said. “We let her make her own decisions. We’re not up her ass all the time. We show her respect as a person.”