We pulled in the parking lot and Angie sat in the car while I went inside, found locker twelve, and dialed the combination on the lock. It popped open on the first try and I pulled out a leather gym bag. I hefted it, but it wasn’t terribly heavy. It could have been filled with clothes for all I knew, and I decided to wait until I was back in the car before I checked. I closed the locker and walked back out of the terminal, got in the car.

Angie pulled onto Fourth Street and we drove through what appeared to be a slum, lots of people lounging on the porches in the heat, waving at flies, kids huddled in groups along the corners, half the streetlights knocked out.

I placed the bag on my lap and unzipped it. I stared inside for a full minute.

“Drive a little faster,” I said to Angie.

“Why?”

I showed her the contents of the bag. “Because there’s at least two hundred thousand dollars in here.”

She stepped on the gas.

19

“Jesus, Angie,” Jay said, “last time I saw you, you looked like Chrissie Hynde taking fashion tips from Morticia Addams, and now you look like an island girl.”

The jail clerk slid a form over the counter to Jay.

Angie said, “You always knew how to smooth-talk a girl.”

Jay signed the form and handed it back. “No shit, though? I didn’t know a white woman’s skin could get that dark.”

The clerk said, “Your personal effects,” and emptied a manila envelope onto the counter.

“Careful,” Jay said as his watch bounced on the counter. “That’s a Piaget.”

The clerk snorted. “One watch. Pi-a-jay. One money clip, gold. Six hundred seventy-five dollars cash. One key chain. Thirty-eight cents in coins…”

As the clerk checked off each of the remaining items and slid them across to Jay, Jay leaned against the wall and yawned. His eyes skipped from Angie’s face to her legs, rose back up over her cutoff jeans and ripped sweatshirt with the sleeves shorn off at the elbows.

She said, “Would you like me to pivot so you could ogle the back?”

He shrugged. “Been in prison, ma’am, you’ll have to excuse me.”

She shook her head and looked at the floor, hid her smile in the hair that fell around her face.

It was odd to watch them occupy similar space, knowing what I did now about their past together. Jay always wore a certain wolfish look around beautiful women, but rather than take offense, most women found it innocuous and a bit charming if only because Jay was so blatant and boyish about it. But there was more to the look tonight. Jay’s face held a melancholia I’d never seen before, an aura of bone-deep fatigue and resignation as he glanced at my partner.