Vicki Pettersson - The Given

“Why would they want to bust you?” Grif asked.

“Because they know I’m onto them,” Zicaro said, emphasizing each word.

Grif said, “I’m the one who called them.”

“And thank you for that,” Kit put in, peering around Zicaro to meet Grif’s eye.

“Sure,” Grif replied, and couldn’t help but add, “Gave you a chance to see your old buddy Dennis again.”

Kit stared straight ahead, jaw clenched, and Grif sighed. He shouldn’t have said that. He could tell from Dennis’s reaction that they weren’t seeing each other, and it clearly wasn’t by the other man’s choice. Besides, she wasn’t Grif’s girl anymore. In fact, it felt like she belonged more to herself than ever before. But it still sent a white-hot pang soaring through his gut to see another man look at her with the same sort of hunger gnawing in his own belly.

“So why would the cops be after you?” he asked Zicaro, getting back on track.

Zicaro put his hands down his pants.

“Oh, God,” Kit said, gripping the wheel, eyes trained on the road.

But the old man just pulled out a plastic denture case, and shook it. Grif relaxed. He’d been wondering what was going on down there. “Because they’ve been keeping tabs on me, and they know I’ve got this.”

Kit glanced over, then immediately directed her car into the first strip mall they saw so that Zicaro could relate his whole story to them over three cups of overpriced coffee.

“The Sunset Retirement Community isn’t just an end-of-life facility,” Zicaro began, once they were settled. Steam rose from their cups in comforting deceit. Nothing was settled; this was only respite. “It began as a retirement community, which is how I got there. But a year ago everything changed.”

“What changed?”

“Sunset was taken over by a new company. The workers were summarily fired and replaced by new staff. The caregivers changed overnight. Long-term residents were allowed to stay, because we had contracts, like leases, and I don’t think they wanted to draw attention to themselves by turning a bunch of old geezers out on their behinds.” He shot them a winning smile. “We’re predisposed to complain and have all the time in the world to do it. But they didn’t allow any new retirees in after that.”

“Is that when Larry and Eric came along?” Kit asked, and was given a quick nod.

“And Justin.” Zicaro explained how he was rousted in the middle of the night and taken to the administrative office, where Justin quizzed him about his relationship with one Barbara DiMartino. “That’s why I was so surprised when you said she was dead. Is it true? Did they kill her?”

Kit nodded, and reached out to give his hand a quick squeeze. “I know it’s hard to hear, Al, and we’re going to find out why, but just to be clear . . . they called her DiMartino? Not Barbara McCoy?”

“Yup, and that’s when I knew something was fishy.” He turned to Grif. “But you know my history with the DiMartino crew. We weren’t what you would call friendly.”

“You were what I might call downright antagonistic.”

Zicaro beamed.

“How long did Justin question you that night?” Kit asked, taking notes, ordering them in her mind.

Zicaro shook his head so that his neck-skin wobbled. “Not sure. But by the time it was over I was thirsty and tired, and would’ve said anything he wanted if he’d just let me go.”

“And what did he want?”

“Your guess is as good as mine! All I know is that they moved my room!”

“What do you mean they moved your room?”

Zicaro’s eyes bugged. “Instead of returning me to my old room they took me to one on the second floor. That’s where the overnight staff bunks up. And when I walked in? All my stuff was waiting for me. It looked as though I’d lived there for years.”

“Anything missing?” Kit asked, lips pursed.

“Hard to tell. All I know is that they trained cameras on me twenty-four/seven after that. Not that they said as much, of course, but I knew it. There was an alarm system on my suite door, my phone was tapped, and I even caught them searching my papers at night.” He winked at Kit. “That’s when I stopped taking my meds.”

Zicaro didn’t seem to notice Kit and Grif’s shared look.

“I’m watched day and night,” he said, shaking his head. “I was essentially kidnapped, and now I’m never, under any circumstances, permitted to leave the grounds. I’m a hostage. A prisoner in my own home!”

“I dunno, Al,” Grif said, leaning back, folding his hands around his coffee cup. “Sounds like one of your own conspiracy stories.”

“Grif!” Kit said. “Those men had guns!”

Zicaro nodded vigorously, strands of hair wisping atop his head. “They were cops! Or military! That’s how they knew how to interrogate me, what questions to ask. That’s how they got the technology to bug my room!”

Grif just raised his eyebrows. Equally skeptical, Kit nonetheless tried to keep her tone neutral. “Big Brother watching? The Man holding us down?”

Zicaro’s shoulders drew up, his eyes bulged, and he began to visibly shake. “And clearly I was onto something, wasn’t I? And then something happened that surprised everyone.”

“Barbara came to visit.”

“Damn it!” Zicaro pumped his fist at Kit. “You’ve been spying, too!”

“Relax,” Grif said, rolling his eyes. “We heard the message you left on Barbara’s phone.”

“Oh.” Zicaro thought for a moment, clearly considering whether that constituted spying, then shrugged. Apparently he was only bothered when someone was watching him. “She left at the end of visiting hours on Friday. Justin and his cronies had gone for the day, but I knew the interrogations would start up again in earnest the next day. And I knew they wanted something from me that I didn’t have. So I decided to figure out what.”

So Zicaro planned a break-in, from within, just after the med techs’ evening rounds.

“It was just like the movies,” he said, fingers splaying as he leaned forward in his chair. “Except better. I even borrowed the military uniform from the guy next door just in case I was seen. He’s known to wander.”

Kit looked at Grif. “Weird.”

Grimacing, Grif nodded.

“The administrative offices are located at the exact opposite side of the building from the residences. No security patrol there at all.”

“I saw them,” Grif said.

“At first all I found were personnel forms and patient charts and the usual admissions data. I tried to access the main desktop, but it was password-protected. Finally, I jimmied open a file cabinet, and that’s when I hit pay dirt. These.”

He flipped open his denture case and out clattered three small black objects. “Disk drives.”

“Flash drives,” Kit corrected.

“Whatever.” Zicaro rolled them like dice across the table. “I took them back to my room and hid ’em in my dentures box. They never look in here.”

“So what’s on them?” Kit asked.

“How the hell do I know?” Zicaro shrugged. “I don’t own a computer. But it might have something to do with you.”

Grif blinked in surprise, realizing Zicaro was looking at him. “Why me?”

“Because Barbara didn’t visit out of the blue just because she was concerned for my health,” Zicaro said, eyeing Grif carefully. “She was there because she wanted to know about you.”

They reached a bit of an impasse after that. Grif asked Zicaro what Barbara had wanted to know about him, but Zicaro only shrugged, saying she’d left as soon as she realized he had nothing to tell. And why would he? Grif had been dead for all but one of the past fifty years.