“I sort of do.”
Just then the food came, a heaping plate of steaming lo mein noodles coated with peanut paste and red pepper flakes. Slivered carrots, zucchini, squash, and onions poked out of the noodles like vegetable dolphins in an ocean of heat. A single hard red pepper crowned the top of the dish.
He grabbed the piece of paper and shoved it back in his pocket as he eyed the food suspiciously. Ethan wasn’t into especially spicy foods, but he was too hungry to care. He took two healthy bites, then coughed as the pepper flakes struck his esophagus with the force of a nuclear bomb. He gagged as he washed it away with beer, then went back to eating, this time more careful to separate the peppers when he encountered them.
“Are you with someone?” he asked.
She gave him a look, then shook her head. “Let’s leave the sex lives of the not so rich and famous out of this. Back to your… our problem. What are we going to do?”
He shook his head. “No, Shanny. Me. It’s just me. Thanks for helping out as much as you did, but I can’t have you involved anymore.”
She looked like she wanted to argue but instead lowered her eyes to her beer. She whispered, “You don’t get it. You never did.”
He was halfway through his meal when his phone rang.
He pulled it out. He didn’t recognize the number. He tapped the button to ignore and put it back into his pocket.
He ate another two bites before the phone rang again.
This time he answered it. “Yes?”
“Mr. McCloud.” It was a statement, not a question.
“Yes?”
“I didn’t kill your father.”
Ethan dropped his chopsticks. He jerked his head up and straightened his back, causing Shanny to look up. He held his hand out, then placed it flat on the table.
“Who is this?”
“I think you know.”
“The Six-Fingered Man?” he asked breathlessly.
There was a pause. “Not what my mother called me, but it shall do for now.”
“How’d you find me?”
“We know that the restaurant you’re in is Ms. Witherspoon’s favorite place.”
“How’d you know I was with…” He examined the other patrons in the restaurant.
An obese man with wiry gray hair hovered over a plate of noodles.
An elderly woman ate an egg roll using a knife and fork.
Two college girls laughed and pointed at something on a cell phone, probably one of those nauseating kitten memes.
And then Mrs. Ma.
He turned his attention outside.
A man going by on a bicycle.
A taxi parked down the street.
A man walking a poodle.
Another man standing under an awning.
Ethan let his gaze rest on the man under the pawnshop awning across the street. His face was in shadow. He wore a trench coat, as out of place and so perfectly suitable to the man who was chasing him as to be terrifyingly hilarious.
“Is that you?” He couldn’t keep the quaver from his voice as he hoped desperately the Six-Fingered Man wouldn’t raise his hand and wave. But he didn’t move. It appeared that one of his hands was inside his jacket pocket, while the other was near his ear, as if… as if he was holding a phone.
“I’m not who you think I am.”
Ethan stared at the figure across the street, locked in a paralysis of fear and rage. This was the man who’d killed his father. He didn’t care what he’d said.
He managed to unclench his jaw. “What game are you playing?”
“No game. Just telling you that I am not who you think I am.”
“You’re the Six-Fingered Man.”
“I wasn’t aware that polydactylism was an indication of good or evil.”
“Maybe not, but killing people is.”
This made the man pause. Ethan leaned closer to the dirt-flecked window and stared out between the reverse letters of HAPPY BUDDHA, trying desperately to make out the man’s face, but it was frustratingly steeped in the shadows of the striped awning.
“You’re in over your head, Mr. McCloud.”
You aren’t kidding, he wanted to say, but he held back.
Shanny had been poking him the entire time.
Ethan covered the mouthpiece. “It’s him.”
“Him, who?” Then her right hand shot to her mouth. She followed his gaze to the shadowy man. “Is that him?”
“You need to forget about this, Mr. McCloud. Leave me the contents of the box and you can go in peace.”
Shanny poked Ethan in the arm again. “What does he want?”
“He wants me to stop. He also wants the box.”
“Are you going to give it to him?”
The clash of a knife falling on a plate caused both of them to jump.
“Would it matter?” Ethan thought of his father lying dead on the floor of the bathroom.
“Is this worth your life?” asked the Six-Fingered Man.
Ethan didn’t know what to do. He wanted all of this to stop, but at the same time, he felt a responsibility to his father, to his own legacy of needing to know the truth.
“How did you find us?” He didn’t believe what the man had said about the restaurant.
“I already told you.”
“I don’t believe you.” Then he stared at his phone. He held it at arm’s length for a moment. Then asked, “How did you get my number?”
“It’s listed. Really, Mr. McCloud, I’m trying to help.”
Ethan covered the mouthpiece. “It’s the phone. They hacked my GPS. They can track me anywhere.”
Shanny pulled out her own phone and examined it. “Then he can track me, too.”
“The Council of David will track you down, Mr. McCloud. They will track you down and kill you. Of this you can be certain. You have to trust someone.”
“Leave the phones. Out the back, then into your car.”
She stared at her phone with a glum look. “Are you sure the car is safe? Are there men out back waiting on us?”
“We have no choice. We have to put some distance between us and him.”
“And the Council of David.”
“Them too. Everybody.”
She glanced toward the back of the restaurant. “Through the kitchen?”
He nodded.
“Mr. McCloud—”
Ethan shoved the phone into his noodles. Shanny tossed hers onto the middle of the table along with a twenty-dollar bill. Her car keys were already in her hands. He grabbed his pack and they charged past the fat man, just as he was getting up. Shanny managed to slip by, but Ethan slammed into the mountain of a man. Ethan fell back. The fat man fell forward, his great bulk shattering the table and the plates stacked upon it. Ethan scrambled to his feet, leaped over the man, and found himself in the kitchen a dozen feet behind Shanny.
Voices shouted in Chinese as three men in front of giant woks shook fists and spoons at them. A lanky dishwasher merely stood watching, an unlit cigarette dangling from the corner of his crooked mouth. Shanny hit the screen door, and she and Ethan went through.
Wary of possible captors in the back parking lot, they quickly checked in all directions, but there wasn’t anyone except a woman leaning into her car toward the dark shape of a car seat.
They ran to Shannon’s Fiat 500.