He leads the way to the driving range, where we stand among other pairs and singles to hit balls off into the distance. I use the time to practice my swing. That’s the whole point of the exercise anyway. I’m surprised when no one else joins us. I guess we aren’t meeting anyone officially after all.
“The problem with women,” Gio begins, “is that they’re really attractive.”
I feel my heart sink. This is not the kind of conversation I want to have at the moment. I screwed up; it has nothing to do with how pretty Sofia is. Or does it? Gio continues talking without waiting for a response, leaving me with only one viable option. I listen.
“One time I was in Costa Rica,” Gio says. “Doing something down there, I won’t say what. And this girl comes up to me, a beautiful woman, big tits. And she says that she’s having a problem with her ex and asks if I can help her.”
Against my better judgment, I’m interested in hearing the rest. “What did you do?”
“What could I do?” Gio replies with a laugh. “So, I go to see this guy to tell him to back off.” He pauses to drop a golf ball onto its tee and launches it into the air. “It turns out this guy is deep into politics. He’s got a whole police squad with him.”
“What happened?” I ask.
“I got arrested,” Gio says with a shrug.
“How did you get out?” I wonder.
“They have this big argument,” Gio goes on. “I can hear it from my jail cell. She tells him a whole bunch of stuff about how he’s lousy in bed and he’s disrespecting her mother.”
I picture Uncle Gio locked in a jail cell, listening to a woman he wants to sleep with argue her way back into a relationship with another man. It’s absurd. Uncle Gio isn’t what you would call stud material with his gruff exterior, but I know he has a way with the ladies. Even though he looks a little scary, he always manages to find someone when he wants to.
“What happened then?” I ask, curious to know the outcome.
“Next thing I know, I’m hearing different kinds of sounds if you get my meaning. Apparently, this was something she did often,” Gio says. “After they let me out but told me I could never go back to that city again.”
“Have you ever been back?” I wonder.
“Hell no,” Gio says with a chuckle.
I laugh. It feels good to laugh. Trust it to Uncle Gio to find a situation worse than my own. I’m not in jail, and with any luck, I can avoid that scenario altogether. I just have to figure out how to approach Sofia. My anger takes a spot on the back burner, and I begin to think logically.
CHAPTER 28
SOFIA
The attack doesn’t come that day, and it doesn’t come the next either. I’m going out of my mind with worry, however, the fact that I’m still alive doesn’t mean much. I wonder what kind of wheels have been set in motion that I don’t know about. Is there a price on my head?
I stay inside. I’m down to a few cans of tuna in the cabinet and half a bottle of nearly expired milk. I don’t want to go grocery shopping, and I’m even afraid to order takeout. I spend all my time walking from the living room to the kitchen, gazing out the windows and wondering when destiny will strike.
I keep my phone charged, although Frankie hasn’t texted. I know right away that Francisco has shared the story of our meeting in his study with his son. There’s no other reason Frankie wouldn’t have texted me by now.
I wonder if Frankie will kill me himself, or if he will send one of his father’s goons to do it for him. Conversely, I wonder if my punishment will be something even worse, like my parents being killed or my bank account being targeted. There is a whole spectrum of horrible things I can imagine, and the time they aregiving me to wallow in my nightmares is almost worse than the real thing.
Monday comes, and I realize I can’t live this way. I’m becoming a hermit, and I’m endangering the lives of those I care about. I need to get out of the city fast. I decide that the best way to do that is to pay cash for a bus ticket, but I need to stop by the office first.
I can’t disappear without telling Mr. Harlan what’s happened. I don’t trust my phone or the landline in the rental office. I need to go in person. I take a shower because I don’t know when I’ll have the opportunity to do that again. I open the tiny fireproof safe I have in my closet and withdraw all my cash.
I grab the ledger that I stole from Francisco’s office and stick it in my pocket. Glancing at my phone, I reluctantly leave it on the counter. It won’t help me where I’m going. I can spend a little bit of my nest egg on a burner phone at the bus station. At least I’ll be able to contact my parents.
It feels strange not to have my phone with me. The whole time I’m driving, I worry about getting into an accident and not being able to call for help. It also feels strange to be outside of my apartment. Every person I see looks like a mafia hitman in disguise. I’m not sure where the fatal blow will come from, so I’m hypervigilant the whole time.
I wonder if I will have to ditch my car. How deep do Francisco Corello’s roots run? Pretty deep as far as I can tell. There are no names attached to the numbers in the ledger, but that doesn’t stop me from speculating. There are probably police officers or even city officials who are on Corello’s payroll.
“One thing at a time,” I remind myself out loud.
I pull into the parking lot across the street from the newspaper office. I have a keycard that I swipe to get in and out of the lot, and that makes me nervous. What if I trip a sensor somehow, and Corello knows it’s me? I’m just going to have to put one foot in front of the other because this whole second-guessing thing is driving me crazy.
I straighten my shoulders, trying not to look like a person on the run. Walking in the front door, I show my badge at the front desk. No problems there; they just wave me through like normal. I ride the elevator up to my floor, running through the game plan in my head. I’m going to barge into Mr. Harlan’s office no matter who he’s with. A few minutes later, I’ll stop by my desk, grab a few things, send a few final emails, and then I’ll be off.
