I refilled my mug. “First thing you need to know is that if we find Marc, I think he’ll let you both walk clean. I honestly don’t think he gives a crap about either of you. I might be wrong, but it didn’t seem that way to me.”

They both exhaled.

“But we gotta find him to make that happen,” I said, looking at Stevie. “So, I wanna know everything. From the beginning.”

Stevie reached for the pot and filled his mug. “Alright. We work for a guy named Gino Miller. Used to, anyway. Marc borrowed money from him.”

“He’s a loan shark or something?”

Stevie shrugged. “Or something. He does a lot of crap, but yeah. He does a lot of that. Decent terms, but you gotta pay him back. On time.”

“Or?”

“Or shit happens.”

I sipped at the coffee, the steam rising into my nose.

“So, Marc borrowed and missed his payment,” Stevie said. “Gino went nuts, told us to go find him.”

“You guys are his muscle?”

Boyd shifted in the booth, folding his arms across his chest.

Stevie shrugged. “I guess. He tells us to do stuff, we do it. It’s a job.”

I remembered Isabel telling me that she’d helped them both, but that they were almost always up to no good. They were like a lot of runaways. They didn’t believe in themselves, didn’t believe they had any other skills than the ones they’d used to survive on the streets. Getting help didn’t necessarily mean getting out.

“So, you went looking and couldn’t find him,” I said.

Stevie nodded. “Right. Checked the usual spots, asked around. No luck. Then Boyd found out who he was.”

I looked at Boyd. “From who?”

Boyd squirmed. “Just some guy. I’d seen Marc with him a month or so ago. He told me his last name.”

“So, you guys didn’t know that before?”

They both shook their heads.

“Then what?” I asked.

“We were idiots,” Stevie said. “I didn’t even check with Gino, thought we’d pull it off, look like heroes. We went to see Mr. Codaselli.”

“You didn’t know who he was?”

Both shook their heads again.

“So, you go to shake him down, bribe him, whatever. What happened?”

Stevie took a long drink of the coffee, wiped at his mouth with his sleeve. “Anchor put a gun in Boyd’s mouth.”

Boyd flushed.

“Fun,” I said.

“Mr. Codaselli said I should tell him who we worked for,” Stevie said, biting on his upper lip for a moment. “If I didn’t, Anchor was gonna shoot Boyd, then put the gun in my mouth. Sorta realized we’d screwed up at that point.”

“I’ll bet.”

“I told him about Gino,” Stevie said. “Anchor pulls out a cellphone and calls Gino. Had him on speed dial. And he kept the gun in Boyd’s mouth the whole time.”

Boyd stared at the table.

“Anchor asks him if we work for him,” Stevie said. “Gino said yeah, I guess. Anchor hands the phone to Mr. Codaselli. Mr. Codaselli says something to Gino like he would consider it a favor if Gino wouldn’t mind transferring us to his employment and that he’d like to cover his son’s debt. Something like that. It was weird and I was scared.”

I was certain that he was. He probably had never run into anyone like Codaselli and might never again. Walking in blind might have been a wake-up call for both of them that they were out of their league.

“Mr. Codaselli hangs up, hands the phone back to Anchor,” Stevie said. “Tells us we work for him now. Anchor finally pulls the gun out of Boyd’s mouth.”

Boyd was still staring at the table, shaking his head.

“He tells us to tell him anything we know about Marc,” Stevie said. “And we did. Everything we could think of. I had no idea if he was gonna kill us or not.” He swallowed. “Then he told us to go find him and that we report to Anchor anything we find.”

All of that made sense and sounded right. Stevie sounded too frightened of Codaselli to lie to me.

“Then I got a call from Anchor tonight,” Stevie said. “Telling us to work with you. You called me. Here we are.”

“Okay,” I said, spinning the coffee mug on the table. “Now tell me what you know about Marc.”

“Can we get some food?” Stevie asked. “I’m starving.”

Boyd nodded, but didn’t say anything.

I signaled to the waitress and she came to the table. They both ordered hamburgers, fries and sodas. I forgot they were kids, probably still living on the street, without steady income or regular meals. Sitting in the diner was probably torture without being able to eat.

“Not a lot,” Stevie said after the server left the table. “About Marc. Other than he has a girlfriend.”

“Know her name?”

“Jessica,” he said. “No last name. Neither of us know who she is and we haven’t been able to find out. But he borrowed the money for her. He told Gino that when he came to him the first time. That he needed it for a friend. Gino pressed him, made sure he knew he was responsible for it, that Gino didn’t care who or what it was for.”

“But he never said why?”

“Nope.”

I thought on that for a minute. The waitress brought their food and drinks and they tore into them, not bothering to take their eyes off their plates until there wasn’t a crumb left.

“You said you knew who I was,” I asked. “How?”

Stevie wiped his mouth with the paper napkin, wadded it up and tossed it on the plate. “We’d told Codaselli about Isabel, that Marc worked for her. Then we told him about you when we saw you that first night with her.”

“So how’d you know who I was?”

“Took a picture of you and got your license plate,” he said. “Gave both to Anchor. He called me back an hour later, told me your name, who you were, what you did. Said we should stick close to you, that you’d probably find Marc.”

It didn’t surprise me that Codaselli knew who we were when Isabel and I had gone to his office. It explained why he was so quick to see us and why security had been fairly lax around us. Though I felt pretty sure that Anchor sounded like the kind of guy who always provided enough security.

“You mentioned my daughter,” I said.

Stevie pushed his plate away. “Look, man. I wanna live, alright? I’m not gonna lie. Codaselli scares the shit out of me. We don’t find his kid, I’ve got no doubt we’re gonna end up in a grave.”

He looked at Boyd. Boyd nodded in agreement.

“So, we have to find Marc,” Stevie said. “And Anchor said you could do that. And I looked you up, man. I think you can find Marc, too.”

“What does that have to do with my daughter?”

“Help us find, Marc,” he said, shrugging. “And I’ll tell you what I might know.”

“Or, I could just call Anchor now,” I said. “Tell him you guys are full of shit and I’m done with you both.”

The blood drained from Boyd’s face.

But not Stevie’s.

“Yeah, you could,” he said, staring at me. “But then Anchor would kill us and you won’t know what I could’ve told you.”

Boyd glanced anxiously at his partner, then back at me.

I laid my hands flat on the table. “How could you possibly know anything about my daughter?”

Stevie held my stare. “You’d be surprised what you can learn out there. You ask the right people, you hear things that don’t make sense. Until they do.”

He was doing to me exactly what I told Isabel she had to do with kids she knew. Leveraging. And he was doing it well.

“If you’re lying to me, I’ll let Anchor take out Boyd,” I said. “But I’ll take you apart myself.”

Stevie shifted in the booth. “I can live with that. Just help us find Marc.”

I took a deep breath, steadying my nerves and my anger. I had to trust him and remember that Tim Barron was also helping me. It might work out that I didn’t need his help.

But something told me he might be telling the truth.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s find him.”

TWENTY-NINE

We walked outside the diner and the icy wind pierced my ears. I shivered against it and pulled up the collar on my coat. They both stood rock still, inured to the bone-chilling temps.