"I knew you would." He tapped the counter twice with his knuckle, a light little rap, like knocking on a door. "Tell Jodie I'll see her tomorrow." And he went out, and the bell jangled, and I watched him through the window, past my own reflection, walk to the Chevelle and get in and sit there with the engine running and the wipers going for a long minute, looking at the front of the cafe. Then the brake lights came on, red in the rain, and he pulled out onto Marine Drive and went east, toward Brownsmead, and was gone.
I stood there. Eino, at the end of the counter, put down his fork.
"That's Edna Tolan's grandson," he said. He'd been sitting there the whole time. I'd forgotten him. "Little Darrell. He used to sit in five."
"Yes," I said.
Eino looked at me over his glasses for a long moment, the way he'd looked at the bar in a southwest gale for thirty years, deciding whether to take a ship across. Then he went back to his supper. "I never liked him," he said. "Even when he was little. He used to kick the jukebox."
Toivo came out of the kitchen and picked up the ten-dollar bill off the counter, and folded it once, and put it in the pocket of his apron.
"That goes back to her," he said. "Not in the register. Not in your tips. Back to her."
"I know," I said.
He nodded. Then he said, which was more words than I'd heard him say in a row in a year, "He came in here to see if you'd lie. And you did. And he's not sure, but he thinks so. So now he's going to go home and think about what Jodie's going to tell you, and what you're going to tell Jodie, and he's going to get to her first. Tonight, if he can. You understand?"
"I understand."
"Then go get the old lady," Toivo said, "and take her across the river. And then go home."
We waited until it was full dark, a little before seven. Irja wrapped up a piece of the lemon meringue in wax paper and put it in Edna's handbag without asking. Toivo gave Edna the ten-dollar bill, and she looked at it in her hand for a long time, and then folded it and put it in the change purse with the penny and the nickel and snapped it shut, and didn't say anything. I brought the Pinto around to the alley door behind the kitchen, where the garbage cans were, so nobody on Marine Drive would see, and Toivo walked her out under a big black umbrella with one hand under her elbow, and put her in the passenger seat, and shut the door on her like it was made of glass. Then he leaned down to my window.