Page 6 of A Week Away
I’d heard of it but couldn’t tell you where it was. “What’s she doing there?”
“Casino.”
His answers were not exactly explanatory. My guess was he hadn’t told her where he was. And that she didn’t exactly care. I was also getting the impression she wasn’t exactly careful with money.
Those were his problems though. I needed to figure out mine. “So are you going to give me trouble?”
“What do you mean?”
“I like being Dom Reilly. I’d like to keep being Dom Reilly.”
“What you’re doing’s illegal, isn’t it?”
“Probably. I haven’t bothered to check, but I’d guess there are at least half dozen laws I’m breaking.”
I had a feeling about where this was going. I was about to be asked for child support of some sort. Also known as blackmail.
“I overheard people talking at the party. Are you some kind of cop?”
“I’m an investigator for a lawyer. I was a cop, a long time ago, but no one knows that.”
“Who do you think killed my dad?”
“No idea.”
We sat there for a bit not saying anything. Mostly I think we were figuring out what we wanted from each other. Our meal came. He took a bite of the burger right away. I ate some salad.
He swallowed, and said, “If you find out who killed my dad then you can keep being him.”
“There’s a little problem with that. If we find who killed your dad and you turn them in to the police, I can’t be Dom Reilly anymore.”
“I’m not going to turn them in. I’m going to kill them.” Then he took a bigger bite of his burger, pushed in a couple of French fries after it, and guzzled some Coke. The idea of murdering a murderer seemed to have improved his appetite.
I should not do this. That was my first thought. But if I didn’t the kid could, and probably would, throw a grenade into my life and that would be it. I wouldn’t be able to be Dom Reilly. And I couldn’t go back to being Nick Nowak. I’d be nobody. I’d lose the life I probably shouldn’t have built in the first place. The life I loved. I wondered if it was too late to lie to the kid and tell him I really was his dad. Maybe I could make that work.
No. I couldn’t.
“Okay, sure. I’ll help you find out who killed your dad.”
He’d over-filled his mouth and was chewing hard. Still, he managed to smile.
“You go back home. I’ll go to Reno in a week or so and try to find the guy who sold me your dad’s papers. Get him to tell me who he bought them from and we’ll go from there.”
He swallowed hard. “No. We need to do it now.”
“What’s the hurry?”
He’d taken another bite though and I had to wait. “I don’t trust you,” he said with his mouth still half full. Teenagers were meant to be innocent and a little gullible. I wondered what happened to this one to make him so cagey.
“Okay, we’ll go to Reno tomorrow. First thing.”
He shook his head. “Can we drive there?”
“It’s an eight- or nine-hour trip. We wouldn’t get there until tomorrow morning.”
“Let’s go to the airport.”
I didn’t like that. I dug into my salad so I could think it through. He wanted to go to the airportnow. While there was a party going on at my apartment. Going back to grab a few things wasn’t going to be easy. In fact, it was going to be impossible. Ronnie would flip out that I was leaving. Rightfully so. I’d have to explain who the kid was, truthfully or not, and why we had to leave right this minute—again, truthfully or not. All of that was challenging. Too challenging.
