I could feel a roiling anxiety rise through my body like nausea. “This is a bad idea.”

“You got a better one?”

When I didn’t reply, she went on in a warning tone. “You don’t help, we’ll just turn around and find someone else. I want that backpack and I mean to have it.”

“Come on, Pearl. Would you cut it out? This is ridiculous. If you’re that desperate for a backpack, you can buy one at the nearest army-navy store.”

“Not like this one.”

“And why is that?”

She broke off eye contact. “You don’t need to know.”

“What, like there’s a secret compartment where Terrence kept his Sky King decoder ring?”

“Go ahead and make fun. That backpack is valuable.”

“I’m not moving an inch until you tell me why,” I said.

Felix looked from me to Pearl and back. “Her lips is sealed,” he said, “But mine ain’t.”

She squinted at him. “Would you shut your mouth? We’re having a conversation here that’s no concern of yours.”

He leaned closer to me with a proud smile, like a little kid who swears up and down he can keep a secret when he can’t.

Pearl banged him on the head, but it was too late.

“Backpack’s where Terrence hid the key to his safe deposit box.”

“A safe deposit box,” I said, making a declarative sentence of it instead of a question.

“Like at a bank,” he said, as opposed to those at the laundromat.

I closed my eyes and let my head sink in despair. If Terrence had a will . . . which Dandy claimed he did . . . he probably kept it in a safe deposit box. Which might also contain information about his ex-wife and kids and any final wishes he might have about disposition of his remains. This was exactly what I’d been looking for for the past four days. “I don’t know how I get caught up in shit like this.”

Pearl said, “Atta girl! Now you’re talking.”

8

I slid in behind the driver’s seat. Felix squeezed into the back while Pearl crushed her cigarette underfoot and then settled into the front. I felt a flutter in my chest like I’d swallowed a hummingbird. I turned the key in the ignition, put the Mustang in gear, and pulled away from the curb. I took a right on Milagro and moved into the lane that ran parallel to the freeway, allowing southbound cars to merge with oncoming traffic. In the interest of being thorough, I took the first exit, which emptied just shy of the bird refuge. I’d never seen the bums work that area and I realized now it was because that particular ramp was too close to home. If a patrol car cruised by, there was no way to disappear without the risk of drawing attention to their camp.