Chapter 9: Sea Girt

The doctor had gone to ground by Tuesday noon, the day after the table.

His office was empty and his housekeeper said he had left for a conference in Boca Raton.

Gina laughed when she heard it.

"He hates Florida," she said. "He goes to the shore when he's afraid. There's a house in Sea Girt his wife left him, and he thinks nobody knows."

"Do you know the street?" Nico said.

"I've mailed his Christmas cards."

We left at one, in a rental Nico had paid for in cash.

Gina sat in the back with the phone on her knee.

I sat in front, beside a man I had taken against a stairwell wall on a roof at dawn two days before, and neither of us had said a word about it.

I watched his hands on the wheel.

The bruise on his cheek had gone yellow at the edges.

"You're staring," he said.

"You hit a curb."

"I did not."

"You thought about it."

The corner of his mouth moved, and then he stopped it.

It was the first almost-smile I had seen since the cemetery.

I turned to the window so he would not see mine.

The house in Sea Girt was a grey-shingled cottage three streets from the beach, with a boat on a trailer and one light on in the kitchen.

Nico parked around the corner.

Marco's cars were not outside.

"They haven't found him," he said. "We have forty minutes before they think of the shore."

"How do you know?"

"Because I'm the one who'd think of it, and Marco asks me."

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