Marcus looks over at her, nods, then walks a few feet and drops Ugly out the open double windows. I hear a thud as he lands and some screams from people one floor below on the street.
“I think she meant to put him down in the office,” I say, but Marcus seems unconcerned with his mistake.
Laurie and I go to the window and look down. Ugly had crashed through one of the awnings above the fruit stand, crushing it. He then landed in a display of cantaloupes, which I hope were ripe enough to have cushioned his fall.
As startled bystanders come over, Ugly staggers to his feet, still apparently more hurt from the effects of Marcus’s punch than his fall. He makes it to a nearby parked car, opens the door, and falls into the passenger seat. The driver, who was waiting for him, pulls out.
“I’ll be right back,” I say. “I’ve got to go buy some cantaloupes.”
I go downstairs to pay Sofia Hernandez, the owner of the fruit stand, enough money to take care of the damage and aggravation. She’s amazingly calm about it, as if thugs falling from the sky are an unfortunate but expected part of doing business.
I’m ready to go back upstairs when Pete Stanton pulls up, along with two other cars with patrolmen. Pete comes over to me, a grin on his face. “When I heard on the radio that the guy came flying out of your office window, I had to take the call.”
“Thanks for caring,” I say, and suggest that he come upstairs. “Marcus is up there.”
Pete nods in understanding. “Ah, the human launching pad.”
Pete comes up, and Laurie and I watch with barely concealed amusement as he tries to question Marcus. If a transcript could be done of this interview, and there were a thousand words spoken, Pete would be shown to have spoken nine hundred and seventy of them. Marcus simply has little to say, whether he is talking to Pete, the SS, or anyone else.
Finally, Pete turns to me as a witness to the events. I ask Marcus if I can speak for him, and he both nods and grunts, which represents a ringing endorsement of me as his spokesman.
I describe Ugly, though it is a basic, not very helpful description. I have no comprehension of how some people can remember faces as well as they do. More amazing is how they can describe them. It’s not even just a question of memory; if you gave me a picture of someone to refer to, I still couldn’t describe him or her well enough for a police artist to draw.
When I am finished, Pete says, “He sounds like any one of a hundred people who work for Quintana.”
“Except this one can fly,” I point out.
“Right. Now, exactly how did that come about?”
“It’s pretty simple,” I say. “He was hassling me, Marcus asked that he stop, he attacked Marcus, Marcus picked him up, Laurie asked Marcus to put him down, and Marcus put him down.”
“Outside the window,” Pete says.
Laurie says, “My mistake was in not telling Marcus which side of the window to put him down on.”
“The guy was having trouble breathing,” I say, “and Marcus has heard Edna mention that the air is fresher out there. He was doing him a favor.”
“After this, Quintana’s going to send people after you in bunches,” Pete says, injecting some depressing reality. “Is Marcus always going to be there?”
I look at Marcus, who shrugs. It’s not the most reassuring shrug I’ve ever seen. Marcus can stop a lot of people, but eventually, one is going to get through. To me. And if one of them gets through to me, it’s game, set, and match.
Pete leaves, and Laurie, Marcus, and I talk about how we should proceed in light of this new, very disturbing development. Laurie is concerned for my personal safety, and while I pretend to be stoic about it, I certainly share that concern. Our hope is that Ugly’s visit, while embarrassing to Quintana, might be thought to have served its purpose. I’ve been warned, and although our collective reaction to the warning was to toss Ugly out the window, Quintana can at least be sure the warning was delivered.
Almost as disturbing was Ugly’s claim that Kenny had something belonging to Quintana, and his demand to get it back. If true, Kenny certainly hasn’t shared the news with me. If not true, Quintana is just going to