I pulled out my wallet and handed him a twenty. Paul looked at it in his hand, not sure whether to believe his eyes. “If you run into a jam, grab a cab,” I said.

“A cab?” Paul said. “An actual cab? What if I end up not going out tonight?”

“Then you can give me the twenty back.”

Paul nodded quickly. “Well, I’m pretty sure I’m going to be going out.”

“Can I have the Virtue?” Angie asked, calling out from the kitchen. I glanced out and saw that it was at the end of the drive, blocking the Camry. I didn’t want to take the time to switch cars around.

“I’m taking it tonight,” I said.

“Aww. It’s got the sunroof.”

I said goodbye, got in the Virtue, moved the Snapple bottle from my jacket pocket to the cup holder, and slipped the key into the ignition. I turned it forward.

Whir whir.

What the? I turned the key again.

Whir whir.

What the hell was this? My new car didn’t want to start? I turned the key a third time, and it proved to be my lucky attempt. The engine turned over. It was, I told myself, just a fluke. I backed down the drive and headed south on Crandall. Once I was out of sight of the house, I tromped on the accelerator, although in a hybrid, that didn’t accomplish a lot. The car took its own time getting up to speed, making me anxious about circling the block in time to see Angie pull out.

But I managed to get around the block with a few seconds to spare before the Camry, with Angie at the wheel, backed out onto Crandall and headed south. Good, good, I thought. Everything was going okay. I was pumped. I was getting into it. At one point, I realized I’d been saying “Hello, shweetheart” under my breath unconsciously. But that was Sam Spade, wasn’t it, from The Maltese Falcon? Not Philip Marlowe.

I’d have to check that later.

What I didn’t know, until Angie reached the end of the street and turned right, was that the left brake light was out on the Camry. Not good, but at the same time, as it got darker, it would make it easier to spot the car as I attempted to maintain some distance between us.

The other thing I quickly realized, not ever having driven behind Angie, was that Angie was not very good at remembering to signal. She’d made a right at the bottom of Crandall without putting on her turn indicator. And a mile or so further along, when she made a left, she forgot again.

I was going to have to talk to her about this. Just as soon as I could figure out how to tell her I’d been in a position to notice. I blamed Sarah for this. Angie’s disregard for the rules of the road had to be a genetic thing.

In addition to watching Angie, I was watching all the cars around her, in particular the black Chevy Lawrence and I had seen Trevor Wylie leave in earlier. So far, no sign of him.

The Camry turned onto Elmdale, home to a long block of coffee shops, ethnic restaurants, boutiques catering to the eclectic. I held back as the one Camry brake light came on and Angie began cruising the street slowly, evidently looking for someplace to park. I pulled over into a no-parking zone close to the curb, figuring I could idle there long enough to find out what she planned to do. A Jeep Wagoneer, a Mazda, then one of those new Mini Coopers drove past, and I did a quick study of each of the drivers, on the off chance that Trevor might be behind the wheel of something different. Two women, and an older guy, in the Cooper, trying to cure his midlife crisis.

Angie tried to parallel park at an open curb spot, but even from where I was sitting, it looked like a tight fit. She gave it a couple of tries, then went further up the street, where she found another, larger opening. This time, she slipped right in. Nice parking job, I thought. Way better than when we practiced it together prior to her final driving test.

She came back up the street on the sidewalk, in my direction, and I suddenly realized I needed an exit strategy to avoid being spotted. Could I back up and maneuver around the corner? I’d be trying to back right into traffic. If she got all the way up to the corner, where I was idling, she’d see me for sure.

But she stopped in front of a coffee shop, glancing up at the sign. Then a young man came out the front door, his arms wide in greeting. He was maybe twenty, with thick black hair, about a week’s worth of scraggly beard, nearly six feet. Dressed in jeans and a brown leather jacket, trim with a solid upper body, like he played a sport, football maybe, or hockey.

Angie spread her arms as well, and then they had their arms around each other, and Angie angled her head up to his, and he bent his head down and kissed her. But this was not some quick, hey-how-are-you kiss, but a long, lingering embrace. Fifteen, twenty seconds, easy. They pulled apart long enough to look into each other’s eyes, and then they kissed again.

Oh man.

I guess I hadn’t really considered the implications of following my own daughter. It had never been my intention to witness something like this. I wanted to be able to make myself disappear, to transport myself out of there. Anything to make myself less uncomfortable, less scummy. It was one thing peeking in on your little girl when she was playing with her dolls in her bedroom, and quite another observing her with a member of the opposite sex in a moment of intimacy.

I looked away, at the clock dashboard, at the cars going by, at just about anything but my daughter locking lips with this young man.

Maybe, if I hadn’t been overwhelmed with shame and felt the need to look away, I might have missed seeing Trevor Wylie drive past my car in his black Chevrolet.

14

ANGIE AND HER BOYFRIEND disentangled themselves from each other-it seemed to take some effort, I thought-and slipped into the coffee shop as Trevor Wylie’s black Chevy drove past. The car continued slowly up the street, rumbling a bit, exhaust spewing from the tailpipe.

“You little bastard,” I muttered under my breath. I pulled away from the curb and fell in behind Trevor.

He turned right at the next stop sign, then three more rights, and we were going past the coffee shop again. The Camry was still parked on the street. We did that loop, Trevor and I, three times, until finally a large enough spot opened up for Trevor to back his long Chevy into it. I waited for him to get fully into the spot, then drove by, trying very hard not to look over. Now I did another loop of the block on my own, and when I came around again, Trevor was still in the car, looking half a block ahead at the coffee shop.

I weighed my options.

My first instinct was to pull up alongside Trevor, box him in, get out of my car and haul him out of his car and beat the shit out of him.

Then I considered whether to pull up alongside Trevor, box him in, put down the window and strike up a conversation. “Hey, Trevor, what brings you down here?” See what he had to say for himself. See whether he could, on the spot, come up with some convincing lie.

Possibly.

But suppose he denied following Angie down here? What was I going to do, exactly? And what if, in the middle of this confrontation, Angie and this leather-jacketed player from the tonsil hockey league emerged from the coffee shop and witnessed this exchange? And who’d have a lot of explaining to do then?

So I drove by Trevor and did another slow turn around the block. This time, another spot had opened up, this one close to the corner, half a dozen cars behind Trevor, which was perfect. I could park here, keep an eye on both Trevor and the front door of the coffee shop. I slipped into the spot. It was fully dark now, and I felt fairly anonymous sitting in the car, watching people stroll by on the sidewalk.

Okay, how about this, I thought. I walk up, open the passenger door of Trevor Wylie’s car, slip in, close the door. Have a frank and open exchange of ideas.