He stood up to shake my hand and motioned for me to sit on the hard-cushioned sofa. Smiley sat in a chair across from me.
“First,” Mr. Browning said, “I’d like to thank you again, Dylan, for the interest you’ve taken in helping to get my daughter back and, of course, for the positive articles you wrote about her in your school paper.”
“That’s okay,” I said.
“But”—he brushed some invisible something from the knee of his expensive slacks—“I hear you’re not completely satisfied with the outcome.”
“He thinks it was a frame-up,” Smiley said, but Mr. Browning’s like, “Let’s let Dylan do the talking for the moment, shall we?”
I shifted in my seat, but those sofa cushions were too hard to find any comfort on. There were a couple of things I still didn’t want to let on about, so I just went with the vague stuff I’d already given to Smiley.
None of this had much of an effect on Mr. Browning. He was more interested in how I got to know Beto in the first place. This gave me a chance to make Beto seem more sympathetic. I explained how I met him at Hector Maldonado’s funeral, making it sound like me and Hector were closer than we really were. Beto was really broken up over his cousin’s death, I said, but I didn’t mention how Hector died.
“And on top of that,” I added, “there was this time he saved me from getting the hell beat out of me by this enormous dude with a huge tattoo on his scalp. That’s what kind of a good guy Beto Hernandez is.” No reason to bring up how this had happened next door to one of the houses on Ashton’s FOKC route. Still, I noticed Smiley writing something down about it in a little notebook.
Mr. Browning rubbed his chin and goes, “I appreciate how that might make you feel obligated to Mr. Hernandez, but I’m afraid I’ll have to take my daughter’s word over your character reference. However, I would like to hear whatever else you might know about him.”
His eyes narrowed, and across from me Smiley sat with his pen ready to take down what I might say next. It was clear to me now—they hadn’t asked me over to find out how Beto might be innocent. All they wanted was extra evidence they could use to hang him with.
“Hey,” I said. “If you want me to say something bad about Beto, you have the wrong guy. I’m on his side. But if you really want to find out what happened to Ashton, you need to take a close look at some of her Hollister friends. I think there’s a good chance she’s being coerced into accusing Beto. I mean, do you even know what goes on in their so-called rec hall?”
And Mr. Browning’s like, “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about Gangland—you know, the place you ripped off from Rowan Adams’s dad so your kid would have his own playpen? What do you think they’re doing there on Saturday nights, drinking ginger ale and playing pin the tail on the donkey?”
You could tell Mr. Browning didn’t expect a guy like me to talk to him like that, but he kept his cool. He goes, “I don’t see what the social activities of my son and his friends have to do with any of this.”
I hadn’t meant to talk about Gangland, but I was pissed about how they were trying to trick me into screwing over Beto, so I kept going. “Social activities? Is that what you call it when your son and Nash Pierce go around hiring strippers to laugh at or guys to beat each other to bloody messes just for entertainment? They probably enjoy seeing a good guy like Beto thrown in jail for something he didn’t do. Who knows—Tres and Nash might even be the ones who made Ashton give him up to the cops.”
Mr. Browning stood up. “That’s enough,” he said. His face had gone red. No more Cool Mr. Rich Man for him. Strangely, though, Smiley seemed to be enjoying himself.
“I won’t have you drag my son into this,” Mr. Browning said, pacing in front of his chair. “He’s been through enough.”
Then Smiley goes, “If I could interrupt for a second, sir, I think it might be interesting to find out a little more about these purported fights.” He looked at me. “Is it possible Alberto Hernandez was involved in one of them?”
“I don’t know anything about that,” I said, but I could tell Smiley didn’t believe me.
Mr. Browning was too busy being pissed that I brought up his kid’s bad behavior, though, so he goes, “Of course he doesn’t know anything about it, because he’s making it up.” He walked over to where I sat and looked down on me. “What you need to tell us is how much you knew about Alberto Hernandez and his involvement with my daughter. When did he start seeing her? And when did you realize he wouldn’t let her go?”
And Smiley’s like, “Hold on, sir. I don’t think we need to get into that.”
It was too late, though. Big Daddy Browning had spilled something he didn’t mean to—that he thought Ashton and Beto were an item. That seemed like as good a motive as any to railroad Beto off to prison.
I stared up at him, and one side of his mouth twitched with anger. He was so close I couldn’t stand without my stomach brushing up against his, but I got up anyway.
“I don’t have anything else to say.” It was funny—I thought he’d be taller, but we were the same height. “You’d just twist what I said anyway.”
Then I squeezed by him and headed for the door.
“You’ll have plenty to say,” he called after me, “when the police come to interview you about your involvement in this.”