“Have you spoken to him?”

“No.” Listened to his voice mail less than an hour ago, but not spoken to him.

“Heard from him?”

“He left a message, said he was safe.”

“Safe?” Shit. “Unusual choice of words, don’t you think? Why wouldn’t he be safe?”

“It’s what he said. I didn’t think about it.”

“Safe,” Jenkins repeated. “Safe. Is it dangerous, what he does?”

“I don’t really know.”

“Of course, he’s got five thousand in cash on him, so maybe that’s why he’s worried. See, the deposit was for a hundred and fifty K, less five thousand.”

Five thousand? Five thousand dollars? Crow didn’t have enough money to fix the muffler on his Volvo.

“You and your boyfriend ever use illegal drugs?”

Tess glanced at Tyner. “She doesn’t have to answer that question. Self-incrimination.”

“Okay, your boyfriend ever use illegal drugs?”

Tess sat, stony-faced.

“Your boyfriend dealing in illegal drugs? Because I have to tell you, that’s the only thing that makes sense. The cash, the road trip. I bet he deals out of your daddy’s bar. Lord knows that business needs all the help it can get, too.”

“He would never do that.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“I know him.”

“Yet you didn’t know he had all this money.”

“I never said that.”

“Did you? Did you know?”

Again there was the not-lying problem. The federal rules seemed so unsporting. “His parents are very well-to-do.”

“I guess we’ll have to put them on our list.”

“List?” She hated the way her voice squeaked, making the word two syllables.

“Yeah. We’ve already started checking into your finances, your father’s. I mean, when there’s a drug dealer in the family, who knows how far it goes?”

“You keep saying that as if you’ve established the fact.” Tyner spoke, as Tess was having trouble with complete sentences. “I know the young man. He is not a drug dealer.”

“We think he is.”

“Based on?”

“Information that we’ve gathered.”

Tess’s mind felt as if it might split in two. One part was stuck on this stupid accusation, trying to shoo it away, but wondering maybe, what if, did he…? The other part was trying to be heard over these shrill fears, signaling to her urgently. You can’t lie to them, but / You can’t lie to them, but / You can’t lie to them, but…

They can lie to you.

“It’s illegal for me to tell you anything that I know to be untrue, right?”

“Yes,” Jenkins said, leaning forward on the table, hands clasped as if in prayer. So friendly, so kind, so inviting.

“Then why is it legal for you to lie?”

Jenkins’s mask of collegiality slipped then. Just for a moment, but Tess saw the angry man behind the warm and fuzzy façade. “We haven’t said anything that’s demonstrably untrue,” he said.

“But you can, right? You can say anything you want to get me to talk, but if I say the least little thing wrong, you’ll pounce on me. It hardly seems fair. If you’ve got proof my boyfriend is a drug dealer, then show me. Get a warrant to search my house.” She remembered belatedly the phone buried beneath her dirty underwear, as well as the minuscule amount of marijuana concealed in her unicorn box, and regretted the offer, but there was no turning back. She was on a roll. “Show one iota of evidence that he’s done anything but turn up with a lot of money in his checking account. If he deposited it in one lump sum, the bank has to report it, right? Hardly seems like the work of a criminal mastermind trying to launder money. And where did the funds come from anyway?”

“That’s for us to know,” said the young prosecutor, sounding for all the world like a peevish eight-year-old. He might as well have added, “and for you to find out.”

“You don’t have anything,” Tess said. “You’re just bullies.”

Collins stiffened, the first time Tess had seen him show any unwilled reaction. Gabe Dalesio looked as if he wanted to fling himself on the ground and drum his heels until Tess did or said whatever he wanted.

Jenkins, however, was back to playing nice.

“Look, I have a daughter about your age. I know how things happen. You meet a fellow, you’re in love, you don’t look too closely or ask too many questions. You know what I mean? Or there are those girls, the ones who get, like, life sentences in federal prison because they took a bag on the train to New York, no questions asked, and it turned out to be heroin. I’d hate to see that happen to you.”

Tess widened her eyes, so ingenuous as to be disingenuous. “What’s her name?”

“What?”

“Your daughter.”

He paused just a beat. “Marie.”

“You got a photograph of her?”

“What?”

“Your daughter. I figure you must have one, you being so loving and all. So concerned.”

Jenkins leaned back, no longer making a pretense of affection and concern. “Okay, so I got two sons. But we’re not talking about me. Where the hell is your boyfriend?”

“I don’t know,” Tess said, never happier to be ignorant. “I just don’t know.”

They kept her for another hour, then released her, reminding her that she was making a grave mistake, that she should demand Crow’s whereabouts the next time he checked in, that they were far from finished prying into her life. In front of them, she was at once blithe and resolute, but she began sagging as soon as she got into the elevator and felt strangely dizzy by the time she and Tyner reached the street level.

“Are they lying?” she asked Tyner as they made their way into the parking garage, where homeless men slept on the steaming grates. “Could Crow really have this kind of money?”

“I don’t know, but it would shed some light on his happy-go-lucky nature. Easy to be a blithe spirit when you don’t have to worry about making a living.”

“He was stone-cold broke when I found him in Texas. He’s always refused his parents’ attempts to help him out. Where does he suddenly come up with a hundred fifty grand? And why would he keep it secret from me?”

“You can ask him when he calls,” Tyner said. “But just remember-anything you know, these guys will make you tell eventually. I wouldn’t ask any question just now if I wasn’t sure of the answer.”

Ed made Crow and Lloyd wait until after dinner to test the bumper cars, delivering a rather ponderous lecture about how they worked. And while Lloyd took great pleasure in ramming Crow’s car from every angle, Ed delighted in gliding around and away from them, demonstrating a level of control that would do a NASCAR driver proud. “Try to catch me,” he yelled over his shoulder, and the younger men happily gave chase, futile as it proved to be. At one point Lloyd even demonstrated with an unmanned car exactly how the accident with Mr. Parrish had happened, and Crow could see that it had indeed been Mr. Parrish’s fault.

He knew he would sleep particularly well that night, and Lloyd didn’t even complain about the cool, salt-laden breeze that came in through the open window. Sleeping with the windows open had been an ongoing contest between them since they first arrived.

“Crow?” Lloyd said, his voice drowsy.

“Yes?”

“What we gonna do tomorrow night?”

It was almost eleven when Tess, just on the edge of sleep, heard her laundry hamper ringing. She could have reached the phone before it switched into voice mail, but she didn’t even try. She lay in bed, listening to the burst of music, one of the few classical airs she recognized, the beginning of Madama Butterfly. Had Crow programmed that into the phone for her before he slipped it into the FedEx pouch? Puccini gave way to the double beep indicating that a message had been left. She got up then, but not to retrieve the phone. Suddenly wide awake, she decided she would need a hit of pot to recapture the unconsciousness that had been so close just a few minutes earlier.