The Given (12 page)

Grif could see that. A large-screen television took up an entire wall, angled in the corner to face a room that was empty but for one wide lounge chair. That was flanked by a floor lamp and an unimpressive, if sturdy, side table. A command center for one, thought Grif, noting the yellow notepads and sticky notes, dozens of pens in a coffee cup bearing the Sunset Retirement Community's logo:
WHERE
FRIENDS
BECOME
FAMILY
.

Though not readily apparent, Grif sensed a sort of order to the papers mounded everywhere. A nondescript desk sat beneath the room's only, curtainless window, the slats of the cheap metal blinds cutting across the stacked papers in harsh blades of light. Copies of the
Trib,
Kit's family's paper, and the one Zicaro had worked at for so many years, were stacked beneath the desk and along the wall in tottering stacks.

Curious, Grif reached for the edition lying on top. It was dated two years back. He didn't know what was going on with Al Zicaro's body, but he clearly still had a very busy mind.

“He's not here,” Mr. Allen said, returning to the room. Grif dropped the paper back atop its stack, and gave Allen an amiable smile. He could afford it, since a quick glimpse out the window had revealed another couple making their way along a path with a sign pointing toward the gardens. The woman was pushing the man in a wheelchair, but their heads were bent close together, one with thick, dark hair sporting a bright pink rose, and the other completely bald.

“That's okay.” Grif leaned against the desk, blocking Allen's view. “I'm more than happy to wait.”

D
espite the news broadcast blaring from Al Zicaro's room, the man had responded to Kit's gentle knock with surprising alacrity. The image that popped into her mind when she first saw him was of a plucked chicken, one with a few strands of gray hair sprouting atop a freckled pate, and an assessing dark gaze that pierced his bifocals. He took one look at Kit, leaned his full weight on his walker, and scowled. “If you've come to offer me my old job back, I don't want it.”

“You recognize me,” Kit said, placing a hand on the door when he moved to shut it.

“Of course I do.”

She wasn't surprised. Though they'd never met before, she could see a vast expanse of hard-copy clippings sprawling over the walls of the room behind him. He obviously kept up with the news. Besides, as the heiress to the town's largest newspaper—no longer the jewel it once was but still a respected voice in the community—she'd be recognizable to anyone in the
Trib
's extended journalistic family.

“But you don't seem surprised to see me, Uncle Al.” She used his pet name intentionally, though he was no uncle to her. She was hoping it would calm him.

Zicaro's thin top lip raised in a snarl instead. “I always knew that someday a representative of the Wilson family dynasty would end up crawling to my doorstep on hands and knees.”

Kit laughed brightly. “Oh no, honey. Not in this outfit.” She whirled, showing off her fit-and-flare skirt. “Besides, these gloves are vintage. They don't touch the floor.”

Zicaro just growled. “Wanna hear the spiel I've been practicing for just this day?”

Kit shrugged and crossed her arms. “If you feel you must.”

“Go to hell!” he yelled, and tried to slam the door.

Kit's arms shot out, more firmly this time, and her lashes fluttered as Zicaro's wiry eyebrows almost lifted to where his hairline used to be. “I wasn't the one who fired you, Zicaro. I'm a different kind of reporter. And I aim to be a different kind of editor one day, too.”

Zicaro refused to be appeased. Eyes bulging, he leaned close, his hot breath washing over Kit's face. “The world doesn't need a different kind of reporter! I was the best that paper had! I brought readers rock-solid reportage and exciting news angles.”

“You claimed the Nevada Test Site was building robotic soldiers, financed by the U.S. Treasury.”

“And nobody ever proved me wrong!” Zicaro shouted, pumping one fist into the air. He began to topple and righted himself by grabbing at his walker. It didn't slow him down any. “Yet my own paper, the one I'd given thirty-one years of service to, never a deadline missed, gave my beat to some uppity, backstabbing cub and then threw me out like trash!”

Kit bit her lip and mentally recalibrated the situation. Clearly, she wasn't going to talk Zicaro out of his memories. She didn't have time to argue over whether artificial intelligence really existed, either. So she decided to appeal to his ego instead.

“You obviously haven't been doing your homework,” she said, causing his dentures to grind. She hurried on before he could move to slam the door again. “If you had, then you'd know that when I say I'm different, I mean that I'm different like
you
. I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty. I go after the truth, no matter where it might lead. And I've had more brushes with danger than an entire robotic army could dish out . . . not that you'd know anything about it.”

She turned to leave, and got just as far as she'd expected. Zicaro's reedy voice chased her into the hall. “Don't tell me what I do and don't know, missy! I was penning bylines before you were ever born. You're Katherine Craig, daughter of the doomed paper-princess, Shirley Wilson Craig, and of the man who was killed as much for the knowledge in his head as the badge on his chest.”

Kit whirled, and sharp-eyed Zicaro caught her flinch and laughed. “That's right, I know all about you. From your rocky start at your own paper to the way you shut down a kiddie prostitution ring. I know about the way you got yourself mixed up with those drug cartels last year, too. You
do
have a knack for getting in trouble, Craig . . . and I admire that. Question is, can you get out of it, too?”

She held out her arms, palms up. “I'm here, aren't I?”

She meant that she'd survived both those stories, but Zicaro snorted as he tapped at his freckled scalp. “Yeah, and my Scooby senses tell me you're getting
into
more trouble . . . and aim to take me with you.”

He began to shut the door.

“Whatever,” Kit said, tossing him the word that summed up her entire generation. It had to irk him. It irked
her,
but then she'd never been one to shrug off anything lightly. “You're so old now you likely couldn't help me if you wanted to.”

The door cracked against the wall inside, and, already smiling, Kit turned again, this time catching Al Zicaro in all his aged glory: bony knees sticking out from beneath striped boxers, a ribbed tank revealing more hair on his chest than on his head. He pushed the walker into the hall before him like it was a shield.

“You little pissant! I've got more knowledge stored in my left ass cheek than you do in that entire pretty head of yours! So roll that up and smoke it for a while.”

“Really?”

“Hell yeah!”

His face had gone red and mottled, his rib cage heaving as he glared at her, and, wondering if she'd pushed him a little too much, Kit took a placating step forward. “Then why don't you tell me about a woman named Barbara McCoy, who recently returned to the valley after fourteen long years away?”

The question didn't surprise Zicaro the way it should have, and seeing her note it, he colored and turned back around. “No.”

“Yes,” she retorted, following so that she could stick her foot in the door this time. Her shoes were vintage patent leather, too, but she'd sacrifice them if she had to. “Why did you call Barbara on Friday?”

He fell back a step at that, eyes going wide, and Kit reached out a hand to steady him, but he shook it off. “Who told you that?”

Kit just shook her head. She was asking the questions now. “What did you mean when you told her you weren't going to get rubbed on her account? What was she into that you were so wary of?”

“I don't gotta tell you squat!”

Kit inclined her head. “True, but here's what I already know. Barbara was a user, a nasty woman who liked to mess with people. She had secrets that went all the way back to her time as a kingpin's wife, and an old newshound like you might prove particularly useful to her.”

“A DiMartino active in the valley again,” he said, almost to himself. He smacked his lips as he leaned forward. “You think she's working with someone? Like a conspiracy?”

“You tell me.”

Zicaro made a sucking sound through his teeth, and Kit waited. She didn't insert herself in the doorway, banking instead on his satisfaction that someone was finally listening to him. Finally, he motioned her inside.

But Kit shook her head. “Let's go for a walk.”

“I don't walk so well.”

“And I don't trust this place.” She tilted her head at him. “Do you?”

He said nothing to that, but his averted gaze spoke volumes.

Feeling the momentum swing her way, Kit pushed. After all, Grif could only stall for so long. “Someone is telling you that you're safe here, am I right? That there's security? That Barbara and the DiMartinos and the past can't get to you here? Is that why you stay? Is it why you keep your television volume so high? Or why you probably check for bugs in your room? For drugs in your . . . drugs?”

Kit was reaching now, but Zicaro's expression was blasted wide like he'd been waiting for someone to confirm all his greatest worries. He shook his head, and it was like erasing a drawing on an Etch A Sketch. Wonder replaced his anger. “You
are
paranoid.”

“And you're a legend,” she said firmly, holding his sharp gaze.

It was his emotional trifecta. She'd appealed to his reason, his ego, and his pride. He considered her with narrowed eyes, then nodded once. “Let me get my wheelchair.”

Kit nodded too . . . then inclined her head. “Don't forget your pants.”

H
ow do you know Mr. Z?” Mr. Allen asked, making small talk. He'd used the walkie-talkie at his waist to call Erin at the front desk and report Zicaro missing from his room. Grif had assured Allen that he could go look for the old guy himself, but Allen replied politely, and firmly, that under no circumstances could he leave Grif alone in Zicaro's room.

So Grif spouted the same rap he'd told Erin, saying he was an old friend. Since there was an obvious age difference between his thirty-three years and Zicaro's seventy-six, he added that his grandfather had known Zicaro first.

“They were both beat reporters back then,” he said as they waited. “My old man followed in Granddad's footsteps, worked at a paper in Philly, but he lost his job in the recession. The newspaper business isn't what it once was.”

“Nothing is,” Mr. Allen replied in a soft, bland voice. Grif imagined that working in a place like this, he'd seen that firsthand. “And how about you? You in the family business as well?”

Grif hesitated, but Allen's wide face held nothing more than mere curiosity. “Nah. I don't have the newshound bug in me. All that fact-checking, you know. I'm a man who relies more on gut instinct.”

Mr. Allen smiled. “Me, too.”

Then the phone rang at his hip. Turning away, Grif feigned interest in the wall clippings, glancing at Allen while trying to appear as though he were not watching. He wanted to go through each and every stack of paper. He had a feeling there were more answers he and Kit were seeking in Al Zicaro's humble room than in the rest of the entire Las Vegas Valley, yet Mr. Allen headed back into the adjoining bedroom just as he put the phone to his ear, and that wouldn't do. Why was a Life Enrichment Coordinator taking personal calls while on duty? Wouldn't Erin have contacted him via the walkie-talkie at his other hip?

Grif followed, peering into the bedroom in time to catch Allen leaning over the nightstand, staring out the single window. It faced the same direction as the one over the desk, so Kit and Zicaro would be easy to spot if they hadn't moved quickly. But what really had Grif holding his breath was the holster attached to the belt at the small of Allen's back. A Life Enrichment Coordinator with a gun? That, along with the flash of white outside the window—two orderlies jogging in the same direction as Kit and Zicaro—brought Grif around the corner.

He kept his feet light and his movements relaxed as he slipped into the room, and just stared when Allen—still squatted low—turned back around. His worry for Kit must have shown. Maybe his shoulders were already drawn in a fighter's hunch, or perhaps Mr. Allen didn't like the way he flexed his fingertips.

Or maybe it was simply uncomfortable for a man used to towering over others to turn and find himself eye-level with Grif's chest.

“What do you mean he's with someone?” Allen said into the receiver, eyes rising to meet Grif's. His gaze was no longer questioning or kind, and he was careful to remain in his half-crouch as if unwilling to scare a sleeping cobra. Good instinct. Because that's exactly what Grif felt like, knowing that two men were after Kit.

Never losing eye contact, Mr. Allen whispered into the phone. “I don't care if it is a woman. Round her up . . . because she's not working alone.”

The plan had been for Kit to lead Zicaro away from the building, then circle back around to the Duetto in the front lot. That would keep them out of the eye of the surveillance cameras for as long as possible. However, Kit and Grif had clearly underestimated the staff's interest in Zicaro.

Allen slowly lowered the phone from his ear as he straightened. Grif shifted, catching the slight bend in Allen's knees, the looseness in the elbows. He leaned forward at the waist, a way to keep from telegraphing his lunge, and his left foot was forward, marking him as a righty. He had at least forty pounds on Grif, and from the way he mirrored Grif's readiness, he knew how to use it.