transactions, especially not with characters like Isaac fucking Snow.”
“Sorry about that,” she said, still counting. “I’m taking care of it. He won’t bother you again.”
Skunk Ape put the money box away and leaned back in his chair; it creaked loudly.
“Don’t know why you do business with that guy,” he said and shook his head.
“Maybe cause he’s rich as Croesus? One day, Skunk, I’m gonna retire—for good and forever—and you’ll have to find someone else to root about for your goodies.”
“When I see it, I’ll believe it,” he scoffed. “You’ve got the golden touch. You’re a goddamn bloodhound, and—”
“Annie,” I said, glancing over my shoulder at the stairs. “Are we just about done here?”
“Just about,” she replied, pocketing her payday.
Skunk Ape chuckled, and, because some motherfuckers are too stupid for their own good, he asked, “You got someplace to be, Vampirella?”
She’d been paid. I could kill him now.
But Selwyn put a hand on my chest and said, calmly, “Shitbird’s not worth the trouble. Besides, he’s a valuable shitbird.”
Skunk Ape smirked.
But we left. He didn’t escort us to the door. Out of the sidewalk, Selwyn hailed a cab that ferried us to 42nd Street and the great silver spire of the Bank of America building. The second-tallest building in the Big Rotten Apple. I waited outside and smoked while she was inside. Didn’t ask what else she kept squirreled away inside that tower of glass and steel, or if she had other safe-deposit boxes, maybe scattered all around the five boroughs. Wasn’t none of my beeswax, right? Right. She did say boxes were getting scarcer, what with fewer people using them and the feds having gotten more inquisitive about suspicious financial activity since 9/11. “One day,” she said, “I’ll have to start stuffing the mattress.”
Afterwards, she dragged me to Shake Shack, because she said she was starving.
“It’s something about being around Skunk,” she said. “I always leave that place hungry enough to eat a billy goat if you slapped some mustard and pickles on it.”
From time to time, Selwyn said inexplicable shit like that. Eventually, I got used to it. Frankly, just the smell of the man was almost enough to put me off my feed for a month or so. But go figure. She ate two cheeseburgers with ranch dressing and bacon and whatever else, plus fries, and I had a grape Fanta. I will admit, no matter how delightful the red delicious is, I do miss the taste of a good burger.
“You ever gonna spill the beans about Isaac Snow?”
She looked up from her fries, which she’d doused in ketchup, and she said, “After you left Providence, did you come straight to New York? I mean, if you did, I’m sort of amazed I haven’t seen you before now.”
“I asked you first . . . for the third time.”
“You show me yours, I’ll show you mine.”
“Annie, after last night, I suspect you haven’t got much left to show me I ain’t already seen.”
“Haven’t,” she said.
“Haven’t what?”
“Haven’t already seen. And don’t call me Annie.”
She chewed a French fry, and I marveled at her chutzpah, which was something about her I never got used to.
“By the way, is that Annie Smithfield? Or is it Annie Somethingoranotherelse?” I asked.
She swallowed and said, “Smithfield. Annie Smithfield was my paternal grandmother’s maiden name. I’m just wondering, if you didn’t come to New York right off, and if you made a habit of hanging out in—”
“I didn’t come to New York first,” I said.
“Aha!” She jabbed a greasy finger at me and winked. “I didn’t think so. Then where did you go first, after you told Mr. B to go fuck himself?”
I actually hadn’t told him to go fuck himself. Not in so many words. Our parting was slightly more civil than that, a fact I’ve sometimes regretted.
“I went to Florida,” I told her.
“Florida? Jesus, Quinn. Why the fuck did you go to Florida?”
“For my health. Listen, you know, if I stick around, sooner or later either you’re going tell me who he is or I’m gonna find out all on my own.”
Selwyn sighed and stared at what was left of her second cheeseburger.
“He’s just this dude from Boston, okay? Old money. Brahmin accent. The whole nine yards. A few years back, his mother died—or disappeared—I’m unclear on that. But he and his twin sister, they inherited everything. Those two, like a bag full of spiders. Total New England Gothic cliché. The whole family—the Snows, the Endicotts, and the Cabots, this little clan all tied up