Inside the pouch were six unnumbered ten-ounce gold ingots, each with a minimum millesimal fineness of 999. Nothing was more portable, and the fact that the gold was hard to come by only helped Denny weed out the wrong kind of client.

Denny took a few minutes to memorize the next assignment. Then he handed the sheets back to Zachary and picked up the pouch. Once he’d wrapped the goods in an old Safeway bag from his jacket pocket, he opened the car door to go.

“One other thing,” Zachary told him as he started to get out. “It’s a little close in here. You might think about a shower next time.”

Denny closed the door behind him and walked away, back into the night.

I clean up just fine, he said to himself, but you’ll always be a lackey asshole.

Chapter 47

THE DOORBELL RANG in the middle of our dinner the next day. Usually it was the phone, and was almost always one of Jannie’s girlfriends. And she wondered why I didn’t want to get her a cell phone.

“I’ll get it!” she chirped, and jumped right up from the table.

“Five dollars says it’s Terry Ann,” I said.

Bree put her money down on the table. “I’m going with Alexis.”

Whoever it was had obviously been cleared by Rakeem.

But almost right away, Jannie was back. Her face looked totally blank, almost shell-shocked.

And then Christine Johnson walked into my kitchen.

“Mommy!” Ali knocked over his chair getting out of it. Then he ran over to be scooped up in his mother’s arms.

“Look at you! Look at you!”

Christine hugged him tight and smiled at the rest of us over his shoulder — that brilliant smile I remembered so well, the one that said all was right with the world, even when it wasn’t even close to that.

“My God,” she said as her eyes went around the table. “You all look like you’ve seen a ghost!”

In a way, that’s how I felt. A few years ago, at Christine’s request, we’d signed a stipulation reversing legal custody of Ali to me. She saw him at her home in Seattle for thirty days every summer and fifteen days during the school year. My only condition had been that we stick to the agreement, for everyone’s sake. So far, that’s what we’d done… until tonight anyway.

“I can’t believe this boy!” She set Ali down and looked him over again. Her eyes were glassy with tears. “How did you get so much bigger since the last time I saw you?”

“I don’t know!” Ali squealed, and looked over at us.

I smiled for his sake. “Look who it is, bud! Can you believe it?” I stared at Christine. “What a surprise.”

“Guilty,” she said, still smiling. “Hello, Regina.”