Bad Blood (17 page)

“Yeah, Jimmy. Okay. Where’s Ginny now?”

“Where’s Ginny? How the hell do I know? Who cares?”

“She dropped you for another guy. Who?”

He pulled out a cigarette, tapped it on the pack. “I don’t know.”

“She didn’t tell you who it was?”

“Uh-uh. She only said he was tougher than me. That’s what she likes, tough. She thinks she’s tough, too.” He lit the cigarette, licked his thumb and forefinger, squeezed out the match. It made a sizzling sound. A smudge of smoke rose, broke up, and vanished. “She told me to get lost. She said . . .” He trailed off.

“What?”

He glared, but he answered. “She said she was tired of little boys.”

“Jimmy,” I said, “she hasn’t been home for two days. Her father’s worried.”

He laughed. “Worried? That jerk? He’s lucky she didn’t split a long time ago.”

“Why should she have?”

“He’s on her case all the time. Won’t leave her alone. He’s the king of
don’t
, like she was a kid or something.
Don
’t do that, don’t go there, don’t hang out, don’t be late. He’s a tightass with money, too. She hates him.”

“She told you that?”

“Uh-huh.”

A gust of wind shook the window in its frame. A storm was coming up. There were scratching sounds as pebbly dust was flung against the shack.

“You know Eve Colgate, Jimmy?” I asked. “She lives along Ten outside of Central Bridge.”

“Sure. Tony used to work for her, long time ago. Sometimes he took me over there with him. She used to give me, like, cookies and stuff. I mean, I was a kid.” He flushed self-consciously.

“Last Friday she was robbed,” I said. “She lost some pretty valuable stuff, but it’s not stuff just anybody could unload. I want to know who did that job, Jimmy. Was it you?”

His face was the face of a kid who’d been smacked even though, for the first time in his life, he’d been nowhere near the cookie jar.

“Oh, man!” he said. “No, it fucking wasn’t! What do I got to do for you, man, draw you a picture? I’m clean! Ask Allie. Ask Tony. Ask fucking
Frank!
”

“Okay, Jimmy,” I said, “Okay. It wasn’t you. Who was it? Frank?”

“No way. Even if it was his idea, it wouldn’t’ve been him. He keeps his hands clean. Only he’ll find where to fence your shit for you later, for the right price. What the hell’s the difference, anyway? I got a murder rap hanging over my ass and you’re asking about a robbery I never even
heard
of! What do you want from me?” He stood abruptly. “You keep asking me all this shit I can’t answer. What do you want?”

“I’m trying,” I said evenly, “to dig your ass out of a hole so deep it hasn’t got a bottom. Your keys to the bar were found next to Gould’s body.”

His face went white, stranding his eyes, big and dark and frightened. “What?” he almost whispered.

“Your keys to the bar, on a ring with some other keys. Door keys, car keys. Where’s your truck?”

“My what?” He looked blank; then the color rose in his face again.

“Oh, come on, Jimmy. Ellie Warren says you bought a four-by-four. It’s not up here. Where is it?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“You don’t know? What the hell does that mean, you don’t know?”

“I don’t fucking know! One of the guys must have borrowed it. They do sometimes, you know, like when I’m working and shit.”

“How long is it that you don’t know?”

He paced the small room. “Couple of days, maybe. How the hell’d my keys get in the bar?”

“You tell me.”

“Oh, man! I wasn’t there. I wasn’t! I didn’t know nothing about it, until I heard it over the goddamn scanner.” He stopped pacing, turned to me hopefully. “They were left there on purpose. Like Wally was killed there: to make me look bad.”

“Planted? Maybe. Who had the truck?”

“Oh, shit, Mr. S.! I don’t know! One of the guys took it, Andy or Rich, somebody. I leave the keys in it sometimes when I’m at work. Bad habit, huh?” He tried to grin.

“Same keys? The ones on the silver ring?”

“Yeah. I guess so.”

I pushed to my feet, stood facing him. “This is a load of crap. You don’t just lose track of a new four-by-four. I don’t know how that truck figures into Gould’s murder, but your keys say it does. I want to know who had it. Was it Frank?”

“Frank? I wouldn’t lend Frank a nickel, forget about my truck!”

“But you did lend it to someone. Andy and Rich didn’t just come and take it, did they?”

“No, man, I told you.”

“You told me bullshit.”

“Hey! Hey, you don’t like it, go to hell!” he exploded. “No one asked you to come up here, man! You don’t owe me nothing. I don’t need you. I was doing great before you came!”

“Were you?” I asked quietly.

He turned away with a curse, pounded a fist on the wall. Wood groaned, glass shivered. He stared out the window at the bleak plain. The shaky flame of the kerosene lamp was mirrored in the glass.

I put a hand on his shoulder. He didn’t turn around but he didn’t shrug me off, either.

“Okay,” I said. “I’m leaving. I’ll do what I can. I’ll be back when I can. Jimmy?” I waited for an answer. I got a grunt. It was enough. “If they find you, give up. Let them
take
you. Don’t shoot it out, Jimmy. You’ll lose. I don’t want that.”

He didn’t answer again. I zipped my jacket, stepped out the door into the moonless, starless night.

11

THERE WERE MORE
cars than usual in the lot at Antonelli’s. I parked up by the road, watched the tin sign swing in the wind, blowing stronger now, out of the north. As I left the car two guys I’d seen around over the years came out the bar’s front door, talking, smoking. One poked the other’s ribs, said something low as I passed. I felt their eyes on me as I crossed the gravel, pulled the door open.

Inside was crowded, for Antonelli’s, for a Wednesday in late winter. There were new faces and faces only half familiar. The winter regulars were sitting at tables along the walls as if they’d been stranded there by a flood.

Marie passed, looking harried, carrying plates of burgers and a bowl of chili. I winked at her and she smiled ruefully.

There was an empty stool at the end of the bar and I put myself on it. Tony spotted me, nodded. I waited for him to finish mixing two 7&7s that Marie came back and snatched up off the bar. She called, “Scotch rocks, two Buds, and a Fog Cutter.”

Tony stared. “An’ a
what
?”

Marie lifted her shoulders helplessly.

Tony looked at me. “Grenadine, mixed fruit juice, one-fifty-one rum,” I said.

“Figures you’d know.” Tony reached the Buds up onto the bar. “Can I charge ’em five bucks for it?”

“Charge them whatever you want. Most people you’d have to pay to drink it. What’s going on here?”

“Vultures,” he shrugged. “Same as yesterday.” He dropped ice into a glass, poured Jim Beam over it. The ice cracked under the bourbon.

“You got the ice machine fixed,” I said as he handed the glass to me.

“Did it myself.”

I drank. “I need to talk to you.”

He started to answer, then looked at me. After a moment he turned, pushed open the door to the kitchen. “Ray!” he called to the short-order cook. “Take over here a minute.”

He swung the gate up, stepped out to the customers’ side of the bar. I took another swig of bourbon, left it sitting on its cardboard coaster, waiting for me. Tony and I walked out together into the parking lot.

We stopped at the same time, as if we’d reached some prearranged place, and turned to face each other. Tony hooked his thumbs into his belt and stood waiting.

“I’ve seen Jimmy,” I said. “I just left him.”

Tony spat in the dirt. “Where is he?”

“He says he didn’t kill anyone.”

“Where the hell is he?”

“He’s up at the quarry.”

“Alone?”

“Yes. He’s scared and he’s armed.”

“But he didn’t do it, huh?”

“He says not.”

“An’ you believe him.”

We looked at each other in the red neon glow. “Yes.”

Tony shook his head. “He say who did?”

“He says he doesn’t know.”

“An’ you believe that, too?”

“I’m not sure.”

“He’s so goddamn innocent, why’s he hidin’ out?”

“Come on, Tony. Last time he was in jail Brinkman beat the shit out of him. And guys have gone to prison before this on less than Brinkman and MacGregor have on Jimmy right now.”

A car swept down 30, the beams from its headlights brushing the trees, illuminating nothing.

“Shit,” Tony said. He kicked at a patch of gravel. “You gonna tell that trooper buddy of yours?”

“No.”

He rubbed at the back of his neck. “What do I do?” he asked, but I didn’t think he was really asking me.

“Maybe nothing, for now,” I said. “I wanted you to know he was all right. But maybe you don’t do anything.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, maybe.” He spun around, stalked back into the bar.

I watched him go, gave him a minute. Then I went too, back inside, picked up my drink from the bar, carried it to the phone in the back.

A pretty young girl with a lot of blue eyeshadow was on the phone, talking animatedly with the receiver pressed to one ear and her index finger in the other. I waited, drinking bourbon.

Finally she was through. She hung up and sashayed across the room to a table where a skinny boy with a skinny mustache was waiting. I picked up the receiver, to which the scent of her perfume still clung. It was nice perfume. I fed the phone, dialed Eve Colgate. When she answered there was Schubert in the background again.

“I just wanted to make sure you were home,” I told her. “There’s something I want to talk to you about. Can I come over?”

“Yes. When?”

“Soon. After I get something to eat.”

“Where are you?”

“At Tony’s, but I’m not staying. Too many people here for me.”

I could hear the small smile in her voice. “I know how that feels.” A hesitant pause; then, “Why don’t you come here?”

As she spoke the jukebox started up, filling the room with Charlie Daniels. “Sorry?” I said.

“For dinner. Come here. I have beef stew. There’s plenty.”

“Well, I—” I stopped myself. “Thanks. I’d like that.”

When I left, the bar’s door swung closed behind me, as though, if allowed to drift out, the light and the music, the talk, the taste of bourbon and gin would dissipate like woodsmoke in the vast darkness, and Antonelli’s would be as empty and desolate as the night.

I crunched up through the gravel of Tony’s lot toward the road, hearing nothing but my own footsteps and the hissing of the wind, seeing nothing but the shadowy forms
of
trees moving restlessly. In those trees, patient and alert, owls waited.

My car, up by the road, was a mound of flat, featureless black in the surrounding murk. No moon or stars threw careless light to be reflected off it; no cars rushed past it to emphasize by their motion its own stillness. Dark, and still, and silent, full of things I could only sense, not see: the night up here was always like that, and in that sense, comforting.

But here, now, in this night, something moved. Beyond my car, a red glow, the tip of a cigarette drifting lazily through the air.

Such a small thing, an everyday thing.

My skin sizzled. All my senses were instantly alert and bare. I reached, but there was nothing else, no sound, scent, nothing more I could see from that place.

But the night had changed completely.

I eased the zipper of my jacket down, slid my .38 out as the red glow vanished. If this was someone just finishing off a last smoke out in the night before driving home, he’d get in his car now and pull out. It didn’t happen. Or if he’d just wanted a few moments of peace before heading down to Antonelli’s, his footsteps would start soon, and he’d pass me, nodding a greeting, going on.

That didn’t happen either. The smoker, quiet as the night, didn’t move. Up by my car, he waited for me.

I didn’t slow my steps. I could be walking into a setup, but it wasn’t likely. If he’d wanted me dead without fuss he could have picked me off as I stood framed in Tony’s
doorway
. This was someone who wanted to talk, just us two.

Still, I slipped the safety off the gun as I covered the last few yards.

He was on the far side of my car, a dark form between it and another I could now see parked beyond it. On this side of my car, nothing, no one else visible. A few more steps. Then I swung the gun up sharply, the car still between us, and snapped, “All right, don’t move!”

The stillness changed; I could feel the smoker’s body go stiff, maybe with surprise, maybe obedience. But not that, because although there was no movement, a girl’s soft voice breathed, “Wow! Are you going to shoot me?”

I was at my car now, facing her across it. At this distance we could see each other, though shadowed and indistinct. She was small, her face pale, her clothes dark; I was large, and I was armed. For a moment nothing moved. The entire night was waiting for us. Then slowly she lifted her hands. She wore gloves without fingertips, the gloves you need if you’re hammering nails or selling apples by the side of the road; and I could just make out her mocking smile as she wiggled her fingers like a child saying bye-bye, showing me they were empty.

I held the gun steady. She hesitated, then shrugged. Reaching up, she pulled her knit cap off, shook out her thick, golden hair.

“Fuck this hat. I fucking hate hats.” The words were spoken with a careful casualness, the way you’d try out a phrase when you found yourself among native speakers of
a
language you’d been studying. “But it worked.” Her voice held a self-satisfied tone. “You didn’t see me until you got close.”

A dark turtleneck sweater, much too big for her, engulfed her tiny frame in soft folds. Her tight jeans were tucked into high leather boots; even with the heel on the boot, she was barely five feet tall. Without looking, she tossed the unwanted cap onto the hood of her car.

“The cigarette was a big mistake,” I told her.

“Well, shit, I’ve been freezing my ass off out here for a fucking hour! Guys keep coming in and out of that stupid bar. How was I supposed to know this time it was you?”