V Is for Vengeance

around the corner from Santa Teresa Street. A car approached, moving at a crawl. I slouched down on my spine, peering out at the street under the lower edge of the screen. Even with the screen in place, I knew I’d be visible if someone passing turned to look directly at me.
    I saw a newspaper fly out of the car window. I heard a thwop when it landed and then the car moved on. At the next house down, a second paper sailed out and into the yard. When the driver turned the corner at the end of the block, I got out and scurried around the side of the green stucco house. I plucked a plastic-wrapped newspaper from the steps and scurried back. In the car again, I removed the plastic sleeve and placed it on the passenger seat beside my camera and my clipboard. I made a note of the time in the interest of record keeping. There was no real imperative for me to do so. In theory, I was working off the hours Marvin had paid for, but he’d told me I could use the time any way that suited me without accounting to him. At this point, I was in it for the pleasure of the game, though I couldn’t afford to do so indefinitely. I had a business to run and bills to pay, matters I wasn’t at liberty to ignore.
    When it was light out, I read the paper, occasionally peering through the holes Henry’d cut in the screen. Not that there was anything to see. I searched for a Diana Alvarez byline, but she’d apparently fired off her best shot. There were already six letters to the editor commenting on the subject of the proposed suicide barrier, half in favor and half against. Everybody was indignant about the opinions and points of view that didn’t line up with their own.
    For the next three hours, I watched the neighborhood come to life. A jogger trotted into view on Santa Teresa Street, moving left to right. Three women walked their dogs, moving in the opposite direction. Two guys bicycled past in skintight bicycle shorts and what were surely shaved legs. It served no purpose to think about how bored I was. I went through my index cards, which I’d just about memorized. Surveillance is not for the fainthearted or for those dependent on external stimulation.
    For a brief period, I filled in what I could of the crossword puzzle in the local paper, a version Henry disdains as too simpleminded. He likes thorny puzzles based on common sayings spelled backward, or puzzles where all the answers have a tricky common link—birds of a feather, for instance, or famous last words. I got stuck on 2 Down: “Patron deity of Ur.” What kind of person knows shit like that? It made me feel dumb and uninformed.
    Idly, I registered a shriek of metal on metal and when I looked up, I realized the Prestwicks’ front gate was sliding open. The black Mercedes eased out of the driveway and into the street. I squinted through the hole in the cardboard screen and caught a flash of blond as the driver turned right. Mother or daughter, I wasn’t sure which. As she slowed at the corner and took a second right onto Santa Teresa Street, I turned the key in the ignition. I snatched the screen off the windshield and tossed it over the seat. I headed after her at a modest rate of speed, hoping not to call attention to myself.
    At the corner, I nosed the station wagon forward and caught the dull red glow of two taillights a block down on my right. She’d reached the T at Orchard Road and stopped for two cars that were speeding around the bend. She turned left toward State Street. I gunned it to the end of the block and took the same left she had. The Mercedes waited at the four-way stop, allowing cross traffic to pass. She turned right. I goosed it again and reached the four-way stop moments after she had. I turned right, straining for sight of her.
    This end of State Street became livelier as it bore west. After a string of apartment buildings and condominiums, the area was given over to small storefront businesses. At the next light, a supermarket on the left anchored a strip mall that didn’t have much else to recommend it. In another three blocks, I’d pass Down the Hatch, where I’d met Marvin three nights before.
    I expected the Mercedes to keep moving, but her left-hand turn signal began to blink. When the light changed, she turned onto the side street that bordered the supermarket parking lot. Commercial establishments in this part of town seemed to go from “Grand Opening” to “Liquidation Sale, Everything Must Go” without much in between. I kept