Unlucky 13 (7 page)

My husband kissed me and said, “I love you, Blondie. That much.”

I told him that I loved him that much, too.

We all ran out onto the street in our wedding finery, like a flock of tropical birds.

I was ready
to dance.

I DON’T KNOW
how Yuki’s wedding planner managed to get a private room at Epic Roasthouse with so little notice, but she did it. This great restaurant was wall-to-wall glass panels with a full-on billion-dollar view of the Bay Bridge and the San Francisco Bay. It doesn’t matter how many times you see this wonder of wonders, it never gets old.

We had cocktails and I found myself standing
with Brady. He said, “I can’t believe what a miracle it is that I found Yuki. And you introduced us, Lindsay. You did that.”

“Yeah. Well, she was visiting me, and you came over to my desk. So, okay, I guess I introduced you.”

“You deserve all the credit. My brother will tell you. She saved my ass from a life of grouchiness and solitude.”

“Your brother Doug? He already told me.”

Another great
laugh from Brady. “Yep, I’m so lucky to have found Yuki.”

He went on in that vein a few more times. It was funny to hear him sounding like a young kid.

And then someone clinked a fork against a glass, and dinner was served. Our private room had its own dedicated chef, and the tables were arranged in a horseshoe so that we could all see the lights of the bridge and the glittering moonlit waters.

Joe and I sat at a table with Brady and Yuki, Brady’s two enormous blond brothers, Greg and Doug, and Yuki’s uncle Jack, her only relative in San Francisco.

Cindy, Claire, and her husband, Edmund, who plays bass with the San Francisco Symphony, completed the guest list at the head table.

The first course, spicy citrus ceviche, arrived, and during the next five courses, there were toasts to the
bride and groom. Brady was roasted by his brothers, making everyone laugh helplessly. And Yuki’s coworkers and Murder Club friends offered warm anecdotes and best wishes that made our eyes water with sentiment.

Once the dishes were taken away, the lights were dimmed, and Judge Devine, who was a weekend disc jockey, cranked up the CD player and started with Bobby Darin’s up-tempo classic “More.”

Yuki and Brady took to the floor and soon the space between the tables was packed with couples, backlit by the Bay Bridge.

Rich and his athletic-looking, hot new girlfriend were
stunningly good dancers. They had their moves down, as if they’d been dancing together for years. I wanted to be mad at him for bringing Tina to Yuki’s wedding, where Cindy could see how good they looked together, but
realistically, a lot of time had passed since he and Cindy had broken off their engagement.

It was okay for Richie to be moving on.

I took a few turns around the floor with Joe, then switched off with Claire and danced with Edmund Washburn, who was very smooth.

When I needed a break, I left the floor and found Cindy, pretty in baby blue, sitting alone at the table. She hadn’t said anything
more than hi to me all evening.

I could see it all in her face: the love and the pain.

Judge Devine put on something slow, Nat King Cole’s “Unforgettable,” which was just divine.

I put my hand on Cindy’s shoulder and said, “May I have this dance?”

“You don’t have to do that, Linds. I mean really. No.”

“Come on. Just one dance. No strings attached.”

“And
why
do you want to dance with me?”

“Uh. Because you look so fetching sitting here, clutching your wineglass?”

“Okay, that’s not it.”

“Because I love you?”

Cindy flashed me a smile and got to her feet, and I walked her a couple of yards to the dance floor.

I took her in my arms, turned her so she was facing away from Conklin and Tina. I said, “Relax. Let me lead.”

She laughed.

Then she said, “I’m fine, Lindsay…”

“And what?”

“And I love you, too.”

CINDY PAID THE
cabdriver and stepped unsteadily up the walk to her front door. She fiddled with the key, went inside her dark apartment, and locked the door behind her. She bounced off the hallway walls a couple of times on her way to the bedroom, where she undressed, dropping her clothes on the floor.

Images of Rich and Tina flooded her, and she had no defense. They looked good together.
They were having fun. It was pretty clear from the way they danced, and from the fact that Tina was Richie’s plus-one at Yuki’s wedding, that this date wasn’t their first or their last.

Lindsay was right when she assumed that watching Rich and Tina dancing together was agony for her. And Lindsay didn’t know the rest of it. She didn’t know about her trip to Wisconsin.

Cindy turned on the shower,
sat down in the corner of the tub under the hot spray, and sobbed over what a total loser she was. She’d blown the best relationship she’d ever had, and she’d gone to Henry Tyler and basically told him she was teeing up her Pulitzer Prize. Now what was she going to tell him?

Henry, Morales wasn’t there.

When she was all cried out, Cindy dressed in striped-pink flannel, top and bottom, no T-shirt
with SFPD slogans or attached memories of her Richie.

She wanted another drink, but she made coffee, turned on the gooseneck lamp in her home office, and booted up her Mac. After her mailbox loaded, she opened an e-mail from her new friend Captain Patrick Lawrence of the Cleveland, Wisconsin, PD.

Hey, Cindy,

Just to let you know, the FBI bomb squad defused the explosives in case some knucklehead
campers come up from the lake and break in. There were three trigger points. Good thing Morrison saw a wire. The milk in the fridge had a sell-by date of two weeks ago. That’s all I know. The Feds are keeping sharp eyes on the place and we can always hope Morales drops by. Thanks again and take care.

Pat.

Cindy leaned back in her chair and stared at the ceiling. She was going to have to tell
Henry Tyler what happened
to her glorious mission and she would have to come up with another plan. Somehow, she didn’t know how, she was going to have to “git ’er done” or die trying.

Cindy wrote back to Captain Lawrence and then got to work researching every place Morales had been in her entire twenty-six years on earth. Morales was no Randolph Fish. She was no genius, just a merciless killer
bitch.

Where could that bitch have gone?

MACKIE MORALES WALKED
quickly along West Washington Street in the Loop, Chicago’s central business district. It was a Monday morning, and pathetic office workers were marching into ugly gray office buildings. Cars and taxis sped past like they were actually going somewhere. The streets were gray, the people were gray, and the very atmosphere was gray.

It was a day when coats and hoods
were everywhere and, therefore, unremarkable.

Mackie had been born in a hospital only a short jog from here. She knew every street in this city—every alley and every building and where it fit into the cityscape. She didn’t even have to look up as she crossed LaSalle and continued on toward the bank in the middle of the next block.

Randy began speaking to her from inside her head, where he was
forever safe. He was saying she should put up her hood to foil the security cameras and to slow her pace.

Hug the shadows, sweetheart. Be a shadow. You know?

“Gotcha, lover.”

Sometimes she could see his face. That was the best, but even when she couldn’t see him, he was with her. Talking to her. Keeping her company. Watching her back.

Bury yourself in pedestrians.

“I wasn’t born yesterday,
baby.”

He laughed and she smiled, pulled up her hood, and jammed her hands deep in the pockets of her gray three-quarter-length waterproof coat. Her right hand fitted the grip of her Ruger quite naturally.

Mackie saw her reflection in the windows of the shops she passed: the boutique with silly girly clothes on display, and the AT&T store, murky inside with a crowd of customers; then the dark
glass of the bus shelter, where four people clustered together, staring out at the street.

Now she was at the entrance to the Citibank branch, her destination. She walked through the open doors as two women were coming out, passing between her and the armed security guard. The guard was in his twenties, out of shape, and carrying a lot of excess gear in the heavy leather belt around his waist.

He didn’t seem to notice her.

Still moving forward, Mackie passed the ATMs on her left and, keeping her head down, entered the main part of the bank. It was warm inside and lit with bluish light from
the overhead fixtures, making the space evenly bright. No shadows here at all.

Randy was humming a lilting, wordless tune in her mind. He did that sometimes, and she found the melody sweet and comforting.

She looked around the bank, assessing the customers and the bank employees, sweeping her gaze across the circular customer-service station to her right, where a large customer rep with purple bangs and her middle-aged paunchy colleague attempted to calm an irate man with a big battered briefcase.

Directly ahead, to the back of the bank, were the teller windows. A line of three customers waited
to conduct their transactions, and Mackie joined the queue.

The woman in front of her was maybe twenty-five, wearing a full-length yellow raincoat. She had a heavy handbag over her shoulder and black rubber boots. She was reading something on her tablet and seemed lost in it.

Mackie figured it would take about four minutes to get to one of the three tellers, and Randy agreed, suggesting that
Mackie use the time to read their body language.

Mackie observed the nearest teller, a gray-haired white woman in a blue silk blouse, speaking in brief rehearsed sentences to her customer. Next to her, a white male teller was counting out money, paying close attention to the count, then counting again.

The teller to his right was a black woman, pretty, wearing a tight floral-print blouse and
a gold chain around her neck. She was laughing at something the customer had said.

Mackie thought the old woman would probably take directions best.

The line advanced and then the black teller flipped on the light at her station to show that her window was open. She looked at the woman in the yellow slicker standing in front of Mackie and said, “Miss? You’re next.”

Mackie walked right up to
the woman in yellow, close enough to see the chipped red polish on her fingernails. Mackie said, “Gee, I think you dropped this.”

The woman turned her head and looked at Mackie, who had taken her Ruger out of her pocket and now pressed it hard into the woman’s side.

She didn’t need Randy to feed her her lines.

“This is a gun,” Mackie said quietly. “You want to live? Do exactly as I say.”

THE WOMAN IN
yellow said, “What?” and stiffened her back.

Mackie hissed, “Keep your eyes front. What’s your name?”

“J-J-Jill.”

“Jill, we’re going up to the window. Be good or be dead. Understand? Let’s go, now. Move.”

Randy’s voice inside her head:
You’re doing fine, baby doll. Wake her up
.

Mackie said, “Jill. I. Said. Move.”

“Please don’t shoot.
Please
.”

Mackie gave the woman
a hard poke and they crossed the eight feet of granite floor between the rope line and the teller’s window. The teller wore a name tag on her blouse. S
ANDRA
C
ARNAHAN
.

Sandra said, “And how may I help you ladies today?”

Mackie leaned in and speaking over Jill’s shoulder said, “I have a gun. Act normal.”

“I understand,” the teller said. Her eyes were huge and fixed on her.

“Don’t hit the alarm,
or I
will
shoot.”

“I have a baby,” the teller said.

“Good for you, Sandra. Your baby wants you to clean out your drawer and give the cash to me. No dye packs. No alarm. Screw with me and your baby loses her mom.”

“I’m doing it. Don’t worry.” Sandra sniffed.

She opened her drawer, piled three stacks of bills into the metal transom, then flipped it so that it opened on the customer side.

Mackie
reached around Jill and had just wrapped her hand around the money, when Jill lost it. She
screamed
.

Sandra was hyperventilating, looking like she was going to scream, run, or both. All the eyes in the bank went to Mackie and the woman in yellow.

Inside Mackie’s head, Randy said,
Sandra stepped on the button
.

Really? Big mistake, Sandra. This is on you.

Mackie raised her gun, aimed, and fired.
The bullet punctured the plexiglass window, but Sandra had ducked under the counter. Mackie turned to see everything going crazy. People dove behind pillars, got under desks, pressed against walls.

Jill dropped to the floor, covered her head, and began keening, “Nooooo, nooooo, noooooo.”

Mackie spoke in a cold monotone, saying to Jill, “Look what you made me do.”

She fired twice, bullets punching
neat holes in the yellow vinyl. Then Mackie turned to face the audience from her place on the stage.

MACKIE FELT A
surge of adrenaline, the good kind that made her fearless and able to do anything. She had killed before but only in a crowd.

Blending in was her strength.

This was something different.

She held her gun in front of her and yelled out into the open areas of the bank, “Everyone get down on the floor.
Down
. I’ll shoot anyone who moves.”

People scrambled, dropped, covered
their faces. Briefcases, phones, and umbrellas clattered to the floor and echoed in the new silence.

It was as if time had frozen, and Mackie used that solid moment to take stock.

She saw everything in sharp detail: the paralyzed faces of customers and bankers, the fat girl with the purple
bangs, an office girl with big black glasses, a white-haired man with a red face that was turning blue.