Chapter 18: The Envelope

Lydia told Cain on Monday at four o'clock, at the end of Pier 9.

She asked me to come, and I said it wasn't my business.

"I don't need you to talk," she said. "I need someone in the car who knows where the exits are."

So I sat in the back of the long black car with Gus and a deck of cards.

We watched through the windshield.

The pier ran out into the harbor for four hundred yards, flat gray concrete and stacked containers.

Cain stood at the far end with his hands in his coat pockets.

Lydia walked toward him, small against all that steel.

"Gin?" said Gus.

"I can't."

"You can't play gin?"

"I can't watch and play."

"That's what makes it gin. You deal, I'll shuffle, and you owe me eleven fifty."

"It's in the book."

"It's in your head, Bell, that's not a book."

He dealt anyway, and I picked up my cards without seeing them.

At the end of the pier, Lydia stopped an arm's length from Cain.

She was talking.

I couldn't hear her. I watched her hands, open at first, then pressed flat together at her chest.

Cain did not move.

A gull walked along the rail. A crane swung a container into the air and set it down.

"Eleven years," Gus said quietly. "I kept the car out front three days after she left."

"Did he ask you to?"

"He didn't ask for anything. He sat in the back and looked at the door."

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