Blowout

subtitles, and the translation was so bad the dozen or so people in the theater were laughing. Danny didn’t, though. It was like he was watching a different film, sitting forward, his eyes glued to the screen. It was filmed in Split, that city on the Dalmatian Coast where that Roman emperor built this huge palace that’s still used today.”
    “When you were at Angelo’s, did you talk about your day?”
    “Not really. Danny didn’t want to. He was always talking about Justice Califano, about Eliza and Fleurette, but Friday night, he just ate, listened to me talk mostly, or so I thought. You know what? I was jealous. I was thinking about Fleurette and how he thought she was so cool, and I was jealous. I wasn’t very nice to him. I was going through the motions. I wanted to drive away with that Gucci briefcase I spent nearly a week’s salary on, and throw it in a dumpster.”
    “But he wasn’t thinking about Fleurette.”
    She shook her head. “No. When we got back to his apartment, he—” She looked over at her parents. Thankfully they were still six feet away, facing the window now, their backs to Savich and their daughter.
    She lowered her voice and Savich had to lean down to hear her. “He jumped on me the instant we got through the door. Danny was always horny, but this time it was different. He was excited, not just about sex, but about something else. And it wasn’t Fleurette. How could it be?”
    Savich’s heart began to pound slow steady beats.
    “We made love on the living room floor.” She said this in an even lower whisper, her eyes on her mother’s back. “Then Danny got up and ran to the kitchen, opened a bottle of wine, and poured us each a glass. He toasted me, grinning like a loon. I’ll never forget the look on his face. He said, ‘Annie, I’m going to be rich.’ And I said, well, sure, Danny, you’re smart and blah blah blah—I don’t remember the rest of it. I said something about was he going to take a client on the side. Truth is, I was cold and wanted to put my clothes back on. But there he was, expecting me to drink the wine, and so I did.”
    She might be twenty-three, Savich thought, but she was still so very young, so insecure in her youth.
    “Danny shook his head. ‘No,’ he said, ‘this is something else entirely.’ But he wouldn’t say what. And he grabbed my hand and dragged me into the bedroom.” Again, her voice was a whisper. “We did it again before he finally fell asleep.”
    “He said nothing about what this something else might be? No hints? Nothing else at all?”
    Annie shook her head. “No, I was lying there listening to him snore. When I woke up the next morning, it was late. I put on one of his T-shirts and went into the kitchen. He was standing there, looking at the TV, and he was saying, ‘My God, my God, my God’—over and over. We stood there and watched the news about Justice Califano’s murder. I couldn’t believe it. Danny looked like he’d been kicked in the gut, like his world had ended. But then everything changed on his face, and his posture became really straight. He got taller, I swear it, he stood there and got taller.”
    “You realize now that he’d come to a decision of some sort? That he realized he could use what he knew?”
    “Yes, I can see that now. Poor Danny. It sure didn’t take him long, did it?”
    “Evidently not.” Savich knew there was more, but not in her conscious mind, not yet.
    “Then what did he say?”
    “I asked him what the hell was going on with him, but he shook his head at me and said I had to leave, he had stuff to do, real important stuff.”
    “I was so mad. I yelled at him that I wasn’t going to do his laundry for him anymore. I went in the bedroom, got dressed and left, didn’t say another word to him.”
    “Where was he when you left?”
    “I heard him moving around in the kitchen. I think he was on his cell phone.”
    “You didn’t hear anything he said on his cell?”
    She frowned, clasped his hand even harder, but slowly shook her head. “No. I remember how his voice fell, then it rose, but I was really so mad that I just slammed out of his apartment and went back to mine.”
    “But you went over again Sunday morning.”
    She was chewing on her lips. They were chapped. “Yeah, I did.”
    “Why?”
    “I guess I wanted to know what was really happening with him. I suppose I was worried about Fleurette again. Have you ever seen Sonya McGivens, Justice Wallace’s law