“I pretended to. Anything for a happy home. But me and the girls took to eating out one square meal every day.”
“You fellows want to move into the dining room?”
“Here’s fine.” Amos took a solemn pull from his mug, then, “How are you holding up?”
“Good, now that you’re here.” She leaned against the counter, ate a spoonful. The two men managed to compress the kitchen’s air. All the bitter regrets had been expelled. Leaving Jenna able to breathe easy. “Otherwise, the day would probably be touch and go.”
“Aldana said to tell you, we’ve got an empty guest room. She and the girls are ready to help you chase ghosts.”
“Thank them for me, but I think I’ll avoid the valley for a while.”
Amos started to say something, then shifted gears and used his mug to gesture at Zia. “My buddy’s got some news.”
“It’s about the old man,” Zia said.
“He means the late great Dino or whoever he was.”
“The lady knows exactly who I’m in referral.”
“That isn’t actually a sentence.”
“You bring me here to criticize my diction?”
“Or something.”
Jenna knew the grousing was at least partly intended to put her and them both at ease. Play the jesters to lighten their arrival in a bad hour. As she ate and listened, she observed something more, an internal state they had banished. The morning that she would not be having. Lying in her lonely bed, having little or no motivation to move.
Sooner or later she was going to have to face the day, and all the ones to follow. As she ate and watched them bicker, Jenna was momentarily tempted to contact Sol, tell him to arrange a new patient. But just as swiftly, she expelled the thought. She had no interest in running away. She had spent all these years movingtowardthe inherited dream. She needed to treat this as a momentary setback. Nothing more.
Then a sudden welling of regret threatened to stain the hour. Jenna pushed at it hard as she could, swallowed a lump of something far rougher than her breakfast, and said, “Guys, look. Whatever the news you’re dancing around, it’s okay. Dino has more or less been filed in the past-tense drawer. So out with it. Please.”
Zia took a step away from his friend. “Okay, so not all fibbies are a bad smell like mister super-Anglo.”
Amos said, “He means the agent with three first names.”
“Give it a rest. She knows.” To Jenna, “I spoke with a pal in DC. He used to be AIC for the central California office. We worked on a couple of big cases together. He’s definitely one of the good guys.”
Amos said, “He means Agent in Charge.”
“Right. So sixty years ago, your Dino was accountant to the Chicago Mob.”
Suddenly there was no room in the day for remorse. “He thinks or he knows?”
“My pal was definite. Benny Watts was the numbers guy responsible for turning bad money into semi-legal tender.”
Jenna protested, “But that was a different era.”
“Exactly what I told my buddy. Know what he said?”
“I have no idea whatsoever.”
Zia clearly enjoyed his moment in the spotlight. “Maybe you should be sitting down.”
“I’m not moving an inch. Tell me.”
“What he said was, making off with a hundred mil of the Mob’s money makes him a person of interest for a lot longer than that.”
She breathed. Again. “Dino stole a hundred million dollars.”
