You're right."
"So we better just watch for a while. Maybe he'll come. Whoever he is." In the short time it had taken to collect our food, return, and eat, the character of the neighborhood had changed. More cars were home; the little street was jammed with people who'd had to park at the curb. The streetlights had come on in the deep dusk and cast sharp-contrast shadows. There were some children outside playing. Angel was right, creeping around that little property was out of the question in a neighborhood as congested as this one. It was hard to see how we could sit and observe, even. How did police stake out places like this? Surely, if we started moving and kept driving by, someone would eventually get suspicious.
We left for a minute, and pulled in down the street a little, in front of a house that was still dark and had no vehicles in the driveway. We looked at our watches and shook our heads; pantomime of people waiting impatiently. Then Angel watched in the rear-view mirror and I watched the side mirror. "I thought you were used to this, Angel," I said.
"How come?"
"You used to be a bodyguard."
"Then, I was watching out for people like me. I was trying to find anyone waiting for my employer. I never waited for anyone." "Oh. What happened to your last client? Martin never told me." Angel diverted her eyes from the mirror to look at me directly. "And for good reason," she said. "Believe me, you don't want to know." I had a feeling she was right.
Sooner than we had any right to expect, our vigil was rewarded. Carl must have been persuasive or righteous over the phone. A pickup squealed up, a white one with a fancy pattern of fuchsia and green flames painted trailing down the side. "Don't know where he can park," Angel muttered. "There's only one spot left on the whole street, and that's right in front of us ... Shit, was I stupid! Get down!" The pickup did indeed maneuver into the space against the curb ahead of our rental car. The driver would have to walk right past us. I dove down onto the floor board and compressed myself into as tiny a ball as possible. Angel, as usual, had had her hair pulled back in a ponytail; now she yanked out the band that held it, fluffed her hair quickly, and unfolded our New Orleans map with hasty fingers. She held the map up, partially obscuring her face, where the bruises were fading and there were only a few scabs left. I heard the pickup door slam and heavy steps pass quickly by the car.
"Is he going to their house?" I whispered.
"Shut up! Yes!"
After a long moment, Angel said, "Okay, you can sit up. He's inside."
"Did you get a good look at him?"
"Yeah." She had the strangest expression as she gathered up her hair and bound it back into her customary ponytail. "So?"
"It was the man who tried to kill us."
The ax-man, somehow in league with Melba Totino and her sister Alicia? So he wasn't in any way involved with my husband's Latin American ventures; we could safely have called the police when he attacked us. We could be on the right side of the law, instead of Martin's side.
"So. We follow him?" Angel asked.
"I guess so," I said. "Can you figure this out?" Angel shook her head. But she wasn't unconcerned; her mouth was compressed into an even thinner line. Her hands gripped the steering wheel until her knuckles turned white. She hadn't liked being beaten, she hadn't liked having been so close to losing her client, she hadn't liked having to tell Martin or her husband about what had happened, and on a personal level, I suspected she really hadn't liked having her face messed up.
From being basically indifferent about what she considered a personal obsession of mine, Angel had graduated to being vitally interested in the Julius case. So we both watched eagerly for the man's emergence from the little house. "We better not be here when he comes out again," Angel said, and she started the car. We drove around the block until we were positioned on a cross street so that when he came out, we would be able to fall in behind him unless he did something crazy, like attempting a U-turn on the narrow, crowded street. I was able to see him for the first time when he