Street Smart

The girl, staring at the photo one more time, shook her head. “I don’t know. I’m probably wrong.” She laughed a little nervously. “I’m always thinking I’ve met people before when I haven’t.”

No way, babe. You aren’t getting me this close and then backing up on me. “If there’s a chance you’ve seen her, ever, can you think where it might’ve been?”

With a hand hovering protectively over her extended belly the girl peered down the street, back at the photo and then once again glanced at Francesca’s attire.

Francesca couldn’t take her eyes off that hand. Or breathe.

“You from Sacramento?” the girl asked.

Oh, my God. Eyes raised, Francesca gasped. Coughed. She knows her.

Pain gave way to an excitement that challenged her dormant emotions. Francesca nodded slowly.

The girl nodded, too. Looked back down the street. And then said, “If I’ve seen her, it was probably at Guido’s.”

Guido’s.

Trembling, Francesca scuffed her feet again. “Where’s that?”

The girl gestured toward Las Vegas Boulevard. “Not far,” she said, backing away. “It’s just on the other side of the Strip.” She named a street Francesca had never heard of. “You can walk from here, easy.” She was at the corner by then, and as the light changed, she turned and hurried across the street, heading in the same direction the girl of Francesca’s dream had taken earlier in the week.

Guido’s. An Italian name.

4

It took her fifteen minutes to find Guido’s. But only because she had to walk back to the Lucky Seven and get her car. And then it was another twenty before she actually approached the door. After having seen the place, she’d gone to the motel to change before going in. The crowd seemed too “young adult.”

In her short but not too short denim skirt and tight green T-shirt, she figured she’d blend in just fine. So long as no one looked too closely at the newly acquired lines of strain adorning the corners of her mouth and eyes.

As far as she could tell, if you ignored the thrift store across the street that had so much stacked in side you could hardly see through the window, Guido’s was an almost-nice neighborhood hangout, with a pizza and sandwich sign above the door, in addition to the requisite Vegas marquee with glitter ing lights—this one proclaiming that the city’s best pool and dart games could be found inside. Sitting in the parking lot, she’d actually been relieved. It didn’t seem like a place where her sister would’ve gone to turn tricks. Or model for any of those millions of cards that people used for sidewalk decor each night.

It felt good to think that Autumn had frequented a place as normal-looking as this.

With a deep breath for luck, or strength, or just enough air to endure, she pulled open the darkened glass door. For all she knew, Autumn was in there right now, sharing a pizza with a friend, throwing darts—although her sister had never been the sporty type—waiting tables, even. Anything. Just there.

Francesca panicked. What if she didn’t recognize her? Kids changed a lot from fifteen to seventeen. And the police had warned her that runaways, because most didn’t want to be found, often drastically changed their appearances.

She jumped as pool balls clacked to her left, followed by the sound of at least two dropping into pockets. Voices were little more than white noise, all blending together until she couldn’t make out a single conversation. A strange mixture of New Age and rock music played in the background, but not as loudly as she would’ve figured for a young adult hangout.

As her eyes adjusted slowly from the bright Vegas sun to the track-lighted room with its dark paneling and wood floors, Francesca couldn’t breathe. She wasn’t ready for this. Wasn’t ready to feel again.

Not yet.

Maybe never.

Thoughts of crawling into bed, hiding under the covers and being thankful that her baby sister was alive while she slept away the next ten years consumed her. Ten years from now Autumn would be an adult. With a real life. In control of that life. She’d come back then.

Except if the cops were to be believed, her sister could be involved with all kinds of dangerous people, just to survive. If she wasn’t rescued she could well be dead before ten years were up. Las Vegas runaways had a relatively short life span.

“You coming or going?” The voice was male. Appreciative. And right in front of her.

“Sorry.” Francesca tried to smile at him. “I don’t know,” she answered. He looked Italian. Somehow that made a difference. “I, uh, I’m hoping to meet a friend of mine.”

“You new to town?”

“Yeah.”

He was older than she would’ve expected. Older than she was. Midthirties, she’d guess. Dark hair, tall, broad, nice brown eyes. A friendly smile.

His presence calmed her—unlike the feeling that had haunted her on and off since meeting her own empty future in the eyes of the man at the Bonaparte the other night.

“If you want to wait for your friend, you can have a seat at the bar,” this man said, walking toward the long, polished dark wood counter with padded leather stools. It ran along the entire length of the building, completely dominating the back wall. “We’re a family-owned place,” he added. “No one will bother you.”

Walking with him toward the bar, Francesca wondered if he was included in that no one. Or if this was just one of the nicer pickup lines she’d heard. Mostly she wondered if any of the girls in the room would turn out to be Autumn. Since she had no idea what to expect, she couldn’t be certain that her sister wasn’t there.

“You work here?” she asked her companion, sliding onto a stool about halfway down the bar. There were quite a few people milling around, but the stools on either side of her were vacant.

“My pop owned the place,” he surprised her by saying, meeting her on the opposite side of the bar. “What can I get you?”

“A diet cola?”

He grinned. “You sure about that? I make a prickly pear margarita that I’m rather proud of.”

“In a pizza place?”

“It’s Vegas.” His smile was contagious. With a white towel he wiped down the space in front of her.

“Okay, one margarita.” Any more than that and she wouldn’t be able to take her sleeping pill.

Glancing around, she was pretty sure Autumn wasn’t there. Her sister could disguise a lot of things—like hair color or style—but, even in the town of illusion, she couldn’t make herself shorter than five-five or change her delicate bone structure.

“By the way.” He set down the glass he’d pulled from a rack above his head, wiped his hand and held it out to her. “I’m Carlo Fucilla. My friends call me Carl.”

“Carlo,” she repeated. “A good Italian name.” Not that she’d necessarily have known that—or noticed—a year ago.

His handshake was warm, firm, but no stronger than her own. “My grandparents came to the States to get married,” he said. Glass in hand, he stood directly in front of her, although with the bar between them all she could see was his white, short-sleeved polo shirt from the waist up. “My grandfather had been married before and the Catholic Church wouldn’t sanction his second marriage. Neither would their families. So they came here to start a new family.”

“And how’d they do?” The voice belonged to Francesca Witting, photojournalist, who’d recently returned from a year spent traveling all over Italy forming a composite of the challenges and strengths of its people. Francesca Witting, who was supposed to have done a follow-up story on Italian families in the United States. The voice was misplaced.

“They were married for sixty-five years,” he told her as he backed away.

Exactly the type of family she would’ve been looking for a month ago. If life hadn’t changed the rules so drastically.

As she sat there today, her shutter finger didn’t itch even a little bit. And she couldn’t care less how Carlo would look on film.

When her drink appeared Francesca sipped greedily, grateful that the man—who hadn’t oversold himself in the margarita department—hung around in between serving his other customers. Although, it didn’t take her long to figure out that she wasn’t the only one he was friendly with. He seemed to truly like people.

Enough to remember his customers after they left? To remember Autumn? And how did she find out without raising his suspicions? Without having to explain more than she wanted to?