A spot of yellow peeks out from between Blue’s lips, and La La reaches into his mouth and extracts wet keys on a damp fabric chain. “Yours?”
“Thought they were in my pocket.”
La La drops them in her friend’s palm.
“Seems to run in the family,” Nat says.
She means it as a joke, but it’s true. La La has crime in her blood as surely as the Flying Wallendas have acrobatics, and the Kennedys, politics. Maybe it’s pointless to resist it. Especially now that Zev needs her. The mortgage on his house isn’t going to pay itself while he’s under house arrest.
The boy chases another duck. “Hey!” La La shouts, and waits for him to turn around. “Better watch out. A duck pecked a boy’s eyes out on this lake. Might have been that very bird.”
“I never heard of a duck doing that.” The boy glances over his shoulder. The bird is getting away.
“They don’t brag about it. They might honk now and then, but they’re actually pretty shy.” She’s caught his parents’ attention. Seeing a strange woman shouting at him, they corral him. “Anything interesting happen in the hospital on Friday?” La La asks Nat.
“Litter of pug puppies came in for their first checkup. It was all I could do not to slip one into my pocket.”
La La removes a glove and feeds each dog a biscuit, uncertain if her friend is acknowledging the impulse to steal or simply filling her in on the happenings at school.
Back in her car, La La wonders what she’ll do if her grandfather won’t help.
* * *
After he rehangs the clean curtains, Zev takes out the smartphone La La bought for him to replace the phone the police kept as evidence. He reads everything he can find online about ankle monitors. He’ll give O’Bannon a chance to keep him out of jail, but if it begins to look like the lawyer can’t, he wants to be ready. He orders a duplicate of the monitor because he never really understands a device until he’s taken it apart and put it back together. Approaching his foot, Mo twitches her nose. She rubs her cheek against the plastic edge of the apparatus, marking it. “Don’t get used to it,” Zev says. “I don’t plan to wear it that long.”
He photographs the device from above and below, front and back, only the side pressing his flesh still hidden. He zooms in to capture features he might otherwise miss. “Aren’t many new locks,” he says to Mo. “Haven’t been for years. Just variations on old ones. This one’s got high-tech features, which means they’ve been lazy about the physical ones. Better for us.”
That night, he phones Sam and leaves a message. “It’s been a long time. I’m in trouble and could use your help.” Zev keeps his phone close for the rest of the weekend but doesn’t hear back.
Monday morning, when Zev calls La La to report that he’ll have to use a public defender, La La insists on taking a leave from school and paying O’Bannon herself.
“That’s not what I want,” he says.
“Then you shouldn’t have taught me.”
“If I could take it back, I would.”
In the hall of the veterinary hospital, the flow of care all around her, La La types the name of the registrar into an e-mail on her phone. It’s hard to believe she’ll be leaving this place. Giving up, however temporarily, the life she’s imagined for herself since she was a child. Leaving it forever if she’s caught. Doctors and veterinary students stride past, bringing animals to and from examination rooms, their patients’ needs elevated above everything else. The perfect environment for someone like La La, and the only place she’s ever felt she belonged. Yet Zev has no one else.
My father’s sick, she writes, and then pauses to reconsider. Accompanied by a nurse, a dog limps by. The animals need her, too. But the hospital is full of staff. The dog won’t go untreated. None of the patients will. I have to take a leave, she types.
Leaning against a light blue wall, she doesn’t know if she can continue. She highlights the message, intending to delete it. She should take more time to think about it. But she doesn’t know how long O’Bannon will wait. And she’s afraid if she doesn’t do it now, she won’t do it at all. That she’ll choose herself over her father. I’ll be back next fall, she writes. I hope you understand.
She reads the e-mail a dozen times before she can bring herself to send it.
3
Nine o’clock the next morning, La La drives sixty miles south to a town outside of Denver where she’s a stranger. Aviator sunglasses conceal her eyes; a cap with a hardware store logo swallows her hair, which is pinned up. She wears a men’s winter coat that she bought at a thrift store and loose jeans. Around her neck is an infinity scarf she’ll pull over her nose and mouth as she enters the home in case there are cameras inside.
Reaching a neighborhood Zev suggested after realizing she wouldn’t be deterred, she slows down and eases the Mercedes past houses with three- and four-car garages, sunlight reflecting off meandering snow-covered lawns. The day before, she traded in her Honda, hoping the fifteen-year-old luxury car she got in its place would blend into the upscale neighborhoods where she plans to work, as long as no one looks too close. Her eyes barely crest the steering wheel of the vehicle meant for someone larger.
At the end of the street, she identifies a potential target: a house where flyers flap on the door handle, and Saturday’s snowfall still blankets the driveway. Five thousand square feet, she guesses, a size all but ensuring she’ll find valuables inside. A blue-eyed Siamese cat, abandoned if only temporarily, keeps watch from a bay window. Feeling the animal’s pinched heart, his confusion at having lost his family, La La says, “I’m coming, baby.” But then she notices the red, white, and blue decal of a well-known security company stuck to a corner of a window.
Driving on, she feels relieved. Perhaps this isn’t something she should do. But three blocks later, in front of a property surrounded by a privacy fence, La La’s stomach cramps, the ache belonging to a creature inside. What if she stuck to robbing homes where animals need her? Sure, the owners would be upset, but she’d be keeping their animals out of pain. In exchange, they’d be helping her keep her father out of jail. They might not appreciate the good she’s doing for them, but wouldn’t it be there all the same?
The lattice-top fence, newly stained, shields the family from snooping neighbors and will allow La La to work unobserved, too. She parks around the corner. Taking off her small engagement ring, she slips it into the glove box and pretends she’s someone other than Clem’s fiancée, a woman he doesn’t know and never will.
As she lowers her window, she listens. Trucks rumble and clank on a nearby highway, but the street is quiet. Snowblowers sleep, shovels rest, on the weekday morning. A gray squirrel burrows into a drift, recovering food he stashed or raiding another squirrel’s store. La La reaches into her veterinary bag for a dog biscuit and tosses it. The squirrel stands, jerks his head, and darts toward the bounty. Surely her kindness toward the squirrel and the animal inside outweigh the material loss to the family. Even if they don’t, there’s Zev to think of.
Shutting the window, she pulls on clear medical exam gloves so she won’t leave fingerprints. Many police agencies won’t bother collecting prints from the scene of a burglary. They lack the resources to investigate nonviolent crimes and homes are full of fingerprints that need to be eliminated. But La La isn’t taking any chances. Likewise, she wears oversize men’s boots, toes stuffed with socks so she can walk, footwear meant to throw off the police in the unlikely event they photograph or cast an impression of the boot prints. She grabs a canvas duffel that conceals her tools: crowbar, wrench, dish towel, veterinary bag.