their grip. It gave her a chance to run.”
“I can’t think that.”
“Because you’re being a good husband?”
I stared into his watery blue eyes. “Because if she was dirty, she still lived with me for three years, and she knows that if she betrayed me and killed our friends and I’m alive to come after her, I will. So if she was dirty, she’d want me dead.” I kept my voice steady and calm.
“So all this energy, and you’re still sitting here in Brooklyn?”
“If I run, they grab me and I’m back in a jail cell.”
“Unless you’re smart about how you run.”
“August. I just got out of a Company prison. I’m not risking a return ticket. We are not having this conversation.”
August put his money on the table and said, “Don’t worry about the change.”
“Okay.” I watched him leave. It’s awkward to tip a friend and I didn’t want him to, but I slid the change into the tip jar. I got back to work, which involved making a pot of decaf for Ollie and serving a group of wannabe artists who came in five minutes later for a round of Pabst Blue Ribbon beers.
Most people at Ollie’s Bar drank beer and wine. But at least six times a day I made vodka martinis; five times a day I poured whisky; and now and then I made a margarita on the rocks. There wasn’t a frozen margarita machine; it wasn’t that kind of bar. Usually a couple of early customers at the lunchtime opening wanted Bloody Marys, and I made them extra spicy and got bigger tips. I made drinks and kept quiet and gained back weight I’d lost and slept a lot. August came and drank during my evening shifts. A few questions to my fellow barkeeps told me that he didn’t come in on my days off. I felt myself getting stronger but I was only running very basic parkour, vaults onto railings and low walls, because I was too out of practice and I didn’t want to risk an injury. I pretended not to notice the surveillance Howell had put on me. Three rookies, two on foot, one in a van, were nearly constant whenever I left the bar or my apartment. They were testing me, seeing what I might do, how close to their orders I would stay.
Or, conversely, waiting for someone to kill me.
10
I LIKE BARS. I don’t drink a lot but I like the air of a good bar—the ripe wisdom of animated conversation, the cutting smell of fine liquor, the sound of laughter among friends. Ollie’s was a good, simple bar. Quiet most nights, a wide, oaken bar surface, stools topped with leather that bore the imprints of loyal and regular customers, not a lot of kitsch on the walls—just mirrors from the beer companies and framed photos of Ollie’s father, the original owner, with many of his longtime customers. The regulars were a bit of a mix, older folks who’d been in the neighborhood a long while, younger folks with a bohemian bent who might be borrowing money from parents to pursue art or internships. Now and then the Manhattan-commuting professionals would slum at Ollie’s, and they tipped well and drank imports and more lavish cocktails. But the people, most of them, were nice. No one asked me questions. I just served the drinks, made idle talk when required, and no one knew my hell.
The Company got me an apartment three streets over from Ollie’s, on the edge of Williamsburg, in Brooklyn. It wasn’t cheap, but I wasn’t paying the rent, and the building I was in was seeing several units remodeled, so I didn’t have many neighbors. Howell, no doubt, liked my isolation. I assumed that Ollie’s and my place were being bugged, perhaps even with cameras hidden inside. Probably installed by August. I found the bugs, four of them, and the next morning I walked straight to the van, and as they stared at me in surprise, I laid the bugs on the van roof in a nice straight line. Then I walked away. The next day they had a new car to follow me in and I didn’t find any replacement bugs. Didn’t mean they weren’t there, though.
It was like life in a cage. But it wasn’t the stone prison cell. I wondered how long Howell’s men would keep an eye on me, and, if I didn’t draw out Lucy’s kidnappers, if they’d shutter me back behind bars.
I thought about