Goodbye to the Man Who Betrayed Us novel · Chapter 20 of 32

Chapter 20: First Night

The detective called back on Thursday at two-fifteen, in the middle of the lunch rush.

I took it in the walk-in, between the eggs and the buttermilk.

"I've been in the district attorney's office since eight this morning," she said. "With your father-in-law's insurance records and that forty-second recording."

"And?"

"And the district attorney has asked the judge to take Mr. Ortega's trial off the calendar."

I put my hand on a shelf.

"Is that good or bad?"

"It's good." She sounded almost amused. "They're not interested in Mr. Ortega anymore. They're looking at someone else."

"Someone else."

"Two someones. I can't say more, and you can't either. Not yet."

"He's clear?"

"He's not charged with nothing. He's charged with nothing they want to try." She paused. "Tell him to keep his lawyer's number handy. And tell him to sleep tonight."

I came out of the walk-in with no eggs.

The whole counter was looking at me.

"Well?" said Stool Nine.

I went straight out the back door into the lot.

Rafael was on his back on the creeper under a minivan.

I could see his boots and his knees and nothing else.

I kicked his boot.

He rolled out with a wrench in his hand and grease on his forehead.

"Your trial's off the calendar," I said. "The DA asked the judge this morning."

He lay there on the creeper looking up at me.

He didn't move.

"Say it again."

"They're looking at someone else."

He put the wrench down on the gravel very carefully.

He put both hands over his face.

His chest went up and down, once, twice.

The young mechanic had come out the back door behind me.

He'd heard.

He let out a yell they could hear on San Pablo and threw a full roll of paper towels straight up in the air.

The old mechanic, from under the pickup, said, "Good."

It was the first word I ever heard him say.

By five the whole counter knew.

Stool Nine's wife made a cake.

The deacon prayed over it, long enough that the frosting started to slide.

Raymond opened a bottle of sparkling cider for Lily and a bottle of something else for everybody else.

Lily stood on a stool with Rafael's hands on her waist and made a speech.

"Rafael didn't hurt Grandma," she announced. "He held her. Everybody clap."

Everybody clapped.

Rafael held her up a little higher so she could hear it better, and he kept his face turned away from the room so nobody would see it.

I saw it.

At nine the last regular went home.

The young mechanic was asleep in a booth with frosting on his shirt.

Raymond came down the side stairs in his cardigan with a book under his arm.

"She wants the one about the bear again," he said. "I know three books now."

"Thank you."

He looked at me, then out the back window at the light on in the shed.

"Go on," he said gruffly. "I'll be up with her all night anyway. Your mother's daybed is a torture device."

I went out the back door.

The lot was dark except for the light at the top of the outside stairs.

The crew had built them in a weekend, raw lumber, a steep climb up.

I'd counted them like Lily.

The room over the shed was where my mother used to keep the catering pans.

Now it held a mattress on a frame the young mechanic had nailed out of pallets, a space heater, a lamp, and one window looking down at the back of Twelve Stools.

Rafael opened the door before I knocked.

He'd showered. His navy work shirt was clean and buttoned wrong.

He looked at me in the doorway, in my jeans and a white T-shirt with my mother's Raiders jacket over it.

"Hi," he said.

"Hi."

"Raymond sent you."

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