The Narrows

I'm going to stay in tonight."
    Of course you can't come out, I thought. You're not even there.
    "I'm kind of jet-lagged, to tell you the truth. It always hits me the second day. Plus, tomorrow we've got the early start."
    "I understand."
    "No, it's not that I don't want to. Maybe tomorrow, okay?"
    "Okay. Are we still on for eight?"
    "I'll be out front."
    We hung up and I felt the first weight of doubt in my stomach. She was up to something, playing me in some way.
    But then I tried to dismiss it. Her assignment was to keep tabs on me. She'd been upfront about that. Maybe I had this latest thing all wrong.
    I made another circuit around the parking lot, looking for a Crown Vic or an LTD, but didn't see one. I quickly drove out of the lot then and back onto Paradise Road. At Flamingo I turned west and went back across the strip and over the freeway. I pulled into the lot of a steakhouse near the Palms, the casino favored by many of the locals because it was off the strip and it drew a lot of celebrities. The last time Eleanor and I had talked civilly she told me she was thinking of switching her allegiance from the Bellagio to the Palms. The Bellagio was still where the money went, but most of that went into baccarat and pai gow and craps. Poker was a different skill and it was the only game where you weren't playing against the house. She had heard through the local grapevine that all the celebrities and athletes that came over from L.A. to the Palms were playing poker and losing lots of cash while they learned.
    In the steakhouse bar I ordered a New York strip and a baked potato. The waitress tried to talk me out of ordering the steak medium-well but I remained firm. In the places I had grown up I never got any food that was pink in the middle and I couldn't start enjoying it now. After she took the order back to the kitchen I thought about an army kitchen I once wandered into at Fort Benning. There were complete sides of beef being boiled gray through and through in a dozen huge vats. A guy with a shovel was scooping oil off the surface of one of the vats and dumping it in a bucket. That kitchen was the worst thing I had ever smelled until I went into the tunnels a few months later and one time crawled into a place where the VC hid their dead from the army statistic takers.
    I opened the Poet file and was settling into a thorough read when my phone buzzed. I answered without checking the ID screen.
    "Hello?"
    "Harry, it's Rachel. You still want to get that coffee? I changed my mind."
    My guess was that she had hurried to the Embassy Suites so she could be there and not be caught in a lie.
    "Um, I just ordered dinner on the other side of town."
    "Shit, I'm sorry. Well, that'll teach me. You by yourself?"
    "Yeah, I've got some stuff to work on here."
    "Well, I know what that's like. I pretty much eat by myself every night."
    "Yeah, me too. If I eat." "Really? What about your kid?"
    I was no longer comfortable or trusting while talking to her. I didn't know what she was doing. And I didn't feel like going over my sad marital or parental history.
    *'Uh, listen, I'm getting a look from somebody here. I think cell phones are against the rules."
    "Well, we don't want to break the rules. I'll see you tomorrow at eight then."
    "Okay, Eleanor. Good-bye."
    I was about to close the phone when I heard her voice.
    "Harry?"
    "What?"
    "I'm not Eleanor."
    "What?"
    "You just called me Eleanor."
    "Oh. That was a mistake. Sorry."
    "Do I remind you of her?"
    "Maybe. Sort of. Not now, but from a while back."
    "Oh, well, I hope not from too far back."
    She was referring to Eleanor's fall from grace in the bureau. A fall so bad that even a hardship posting in Minot was out of the question.
    "I'll see you tomorrow, Rachel."
    "Good night, Harry."
    I closed the phone and thought about my mistake. It had shot up right out of the subconscious but now that it was out in the open it was obvious. I didn't want to think about that. I wanted to retreat into the file in front of me. I knew I would be more comfortable studying the blood and madness of some other person and time.

CHAPTER 27
    AT 8:30 I knocked on the door of Eleanor Wish's house and the Salvadoran woman who lived there and took care of my daughter answered. Marisol had a kind but worn face. She was in her fifties but looked much older. Her story of surviving was devastating and whenever I thought about it I was left feeling lucky about my own story. Since day one, when I had