Nothing Short of Dying (2 page)

CHAPTER THREE

T
he sun finally gave up for the day as I cruised down the interstate toward Clifton. In the rearview mirror I could see the tired old ball of atoms settle down in its bed of rocks and sand, pulling its pink-and-red blankets over its head, then finally turning off the light. It would be a while until the moon arrived to take its place. Both windows were down and I could feel the temperature drop immediately, as it always does in the desert. In the cool air I smelled the faint river scents start to push away the god-awful gasoline smog that had been plaguing my nose all day.

The lights of the city were glowing now, overpowering the stars and making the world look upside down. The truck rattled and squeaked off I-70, and together we stopped at the first motel we came to. It was one of those leftovers from an era when car travel was exciting. It even had one of those names: Travel Lodge. All dark brown wood with a small faded sign that showed they had all the modern conveniences, like air-conditioning and color TVs. My kind of place.

Juan called after I'd checked in and unloaded my bags.

“I asked around,” he said. “Found out some things. They reminded me why I decided to get out of this shit. My oldest
brother, Alejandro, remember him? He's still running a crew in Clifton. Mostly sells pot and a little crank. He used to sell it out of a place on F and Susan called the Cellar. Know it? Anyway, about a year ago a new guy came to town, some white dude with a lot of muscle, and he ran Alejandro out.”

“What's this got to do with Jen?” I asked with a sinking feeling. Getting involved in stuff like this was the reason I'd wound up in prison.

“This big honcho, he disappeared a week ago. And the last time he was spotted he was with Jen.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Yeah. And everyone is looking for him. He stopped the flow of good meth. Word is, he's making something even better, but he's cut off any trade in it until it's done so that the ­tweakers will be jonesing real good when the new batch comes out.”

“What's this honcho's name?”

“Didn't ask. I don't want to know specifics, 'cause I'm out of the life, remember?”

“Yeah. So I should start looking at the Cellar?”

“That's what Alejandro said. The big honcho is missing, but his little brother runs the place, slings crank out of there when he has supply. Alejandro suggests you try talking to the main bartender there, a pretty brunette named Allie Martin. Just be careful.”

“You know me,” I said. “Safety first.”

“I
do
know you. That's why I said to be careful. Don't go stepping on rattlers, Barr. You might get bit.”

“Uh-huh.”

“One more thing,” Juan said. “Chopo got out a while back and he's heading this way to help my brother. I know you guys did some business years ago. He might be willing to lend a hand.”

“I got it for now, Juan, thanks. And tell—”

“Yeah, yeah, I'll tell her. Stay alive, man.” He hung up.

A HALF HOUR LATER I
paused at the front entrance to the Cellar and felt under my Carhartt jacket, first to my right and then to my left, for my six-inch Green River butcher knife and my compact .40 caliber. I walked in slowly, letting my eyes adjust to the gloom. The place smelled of piss and mildew and stale beer. There was something else, too: the acrid sweat of the strung out—a smell that reminded me of the little cantinas in Bolivia where people in the coca trade use booze to come down from the powder cloud that gets them through the long shifts. If broken souls had an odor, they'd smell like the Cellar.

A single bar on the right ran the entire length of the building: twelve bar stools, five occupied by men. And to the left of the bar was a group of tables, one of which propped up three people—two women and a guy—who looked like they were passed out. The bartender, a good-looking young woman with a ponytail, was yelling at a man whose elbows were propped on the bar. He stomped outside after the reaming, and I headed toward his abandoned seat.

The four men who remained on the stools glowered as I walked past and sat down. The bartender pretended to ignore me. After she waited the predetermined time it took to show the four men whose side she was on, she walked over and took my order. A Canadian whiskey with a cheap beer back. My version of a boilermaker.

The four men fidgeted, animated about something or other, eyes constantly searching, seeing and cringing at the spiders on the walls and the mothmen in the corners. All four
tweakers were white, thin, and tall. And close to the same age. All wore baggy shirts and baggy pants, and their flat-brimmed ball caps were crooked. When they spoke it was clipped and fast and they used hand gestures that looked like bad karate. Occasionally they'd look my way, make a gesture, laugh, and sneer. One spit at my feet. I smiled, nodded, and held up my whiskey.

The three at the table must have been coming down from “a long time on the moon,” as the meth heads called the time they spent tweaked. Their heads were cradled on skinny folded arms and one, the guy, snored.

“You Allie?” I asked the bartender as she pulled a bottle down from the top shelf and wiped an inch of dust off it.

“Maybe.”

“You know a girl named Jen Barr?”

She smiled, a strange smirk that told me she knew a lot of things. After putting the bottle back on the shelf, she said, “I might. You a cop?”

I pulled up my coat sleeves, showing her scars and green ink. “Do I look like a cop?”

She laughed. “Everyone has ink. Cops too.”

Which I couldn't argue. When I left, only sailors, bikers, and cons had tattoos. From what I'd seen since I'd returned to this country, everyone and their grandmothers had something scrawled on their skin.

“I don't care much for the law,” I said. “I'm just a brother looking for his sister Jen.”

“You should ask the owner,” she said with that same strange smirk. “He's outside smoking, but he'll be back soon. He might know her.”

“Care if I sit here and wait?”

“Be my guest.”

So I sat and sipped and waited. “Who owns this dive?” I asked after I finished the whiskey.

“Brent. Everyone here calls him Spike.”

“Spike?” The name made me think of a cartoon bulldog.

“Yeah. He got the name when he stopped smoking and started using the needle.” She pantomimed someone sticking a syringe into a vein. “It's a stupid name. Fits him well.”

“Got it.” She either believed that I wasn't a cop or she hated her boss. Or both.

She walked over by the till, shook the empty tip jar, and glared at the four restless men next to me. Grabbing a rag, she started wiping down the bar and made her way back to me.

“Brent's not going to like someone coming into his place and asking questions,” she said. “It's not the kind of place where you get answers.”

I nodded, not showing any worry, but I was getting restless. This was taking too long. I thought I'd just ask a few questions, then hit the road with a direction. Hunting people was much more frustrating than hunting animals, because it involved talking, which I wasn't very good at. I sipped my beer, resigned myself to a long night, and thought about all the dirty little dive bars I'd been in over the years.

Allie kept wiping, trying to push a puddle of liquor off the bar. I said, “You do know her, though?”

She folded her arms and stared at me with a look of defiance that told me she was done with annoying men for the day. On
her
the expression looked cute.

“Maybe you should ask
him
,” she said, looking over my shoulder.

I turned and watched a short guy with fussed-over dusty-brown hair who I assumed was the owner come back into the bar like he'd forgotten something. He strode quickly across
the room, quickening his pace further when he saw me. He wore green slacks and a brown T-shirt that was too tight. There were track marks on both of his Popeye arms. The gold Rolex on his wrist wobbled as he cracked his knuckles.

“And who the holy hell are you?” he asked, his voice high-pitched and angry.

“You must be Spike,” I said.

“You didn't answer my question, asshole. This is pretty much a private club. No outsiders. You're going to tell me who you are, and why you're here, then you're gonna get your ass off that stool and out of my bar or I swear to God—”

“The name's Clyde Barr,” I said, pushing back on the stool a few inches. “I'm looking for someone and thought you could help. Want a beer?”

“No, I don't want no stupid beer. And I don't talk to no cops, either.”

This cop thing was getting old.

“He's not a cop, Brent,” Allie said. “And don't take out your being pissed at me on him. He's looking for his sister.”

“Shut up, bitch, no one asked you. We'll deal with our thing when this is done,” Spike, or Brent, said.

Allie threw the wet rag at Brent and walked to the other end of the bar.

“You should watch the language,” I said. “But she's right. I'm not a cop and I'm looking for my sister Jen. Know her?”

“I might. She may have been that slut my brother was—”

I'd had enough. I leaped off the stool, grabbed the mouthy prick by the neck, and shoved him up against a carpeted pillar. My eyes caught movement as the four bar-stool guys rushed toward me. I'd forgotten how fast tweakers can move.

So I popped Spike on the ear—hard with a cupped hand—then swung him down and at the feet of the four guys. He
dropped, tumbled, then rolled on the floor and caught the feet of three of them. They went down. The fourth moved like a Benzedrine cat and hopped over Spike, came down, and tried to get me with a big right. I stepped inside it and chopped my forearm onto the side of his exposed neck. As he started falling I hit him in the face with my palm and stuck my knee into his ear. He crumpled as the other three got up.

They were fast but not fast enough. I reached back, grabbed a shot glass, and crashed it into the nearest one's temple. Then I smashed my palm under the next guy's jaw, lifting him off his feet and onto his back away from the others. The last man stood and warily came at me in a cage fighter's stance, faking jabs and ready to take me down wrestling-style if I gave him a chance.

I didn't. I faked a big right, stopped it as he started to duck under, then hit him with my left elbow. It rocked him a little and I moved in, hammer-fisting the back and side of his head until he went down. Spike was starting to get up, not very well, clutching his ear, so I stomped on his ankle as if crushing a beer can. Something cracked and Spike passed out. No one was getting up.

I went back over to the bar, sat down, and sipped on my beer. Allie stood wide-eyed by the beer taps, staring at the fallen men.

“You going to call the cops?” I asked, pointing my chin in the direction of the phone on the back wall.

Instead of answering, she started laughing. Sort of. Not girlish giggles, but mirthful mumbles. Then she shook her head and said, “Hell no. We get fights in here all the time. Not like that, but if anyone deserved a beating, it was those assholes.”

Other than the sound of her voice, the place was relatively
quiet: snoring from the three people passed out at the table, and an occasional groan from one of the men on the floor.

I finished my beer, thought about getting another, then decided against it. I asked Allie, “Should I leave, or can I ask you a few questions?”

She stood still and calm and collected, then leaned over the bar and studied me. She waited a few beats, then said, “Shoot.” She didn't look anything like the tweaker patrons. Instead of being a ghostly white stick figure, she was tan and healthy. There were no signs of the usual mannerisms that went with meth: no shaking, no grinding teeth, no picking at the skin.

“You don't use the stuff they sell in here, do you?”

“Nope,” she said proudly. “I'm only here because Brent pays real well, and I have a lot of bills.”

For some reason this made me feel as if we were on the same side. I continued admiring her. She had long black hair pulled back and wore a gray sweatshirt and jeans. No makeup, no jewelry, but she didn't need them. Juan had understated how pretty she was.

“So you know Jen. You've seen her?” I said.

She nodded and said, “She's a regular, day crowd. Works nights. I always wondered how she didn't get fired. Guess if you're a janitor, they don't care if you're drunk, or maybe she used enough of the shit Brent sells to stay awake.”

I nodded, even though it hurt to think of Jen back on that path. At least she was trying to work.

“I heard that she was last seen in here, hanging out with some big-time guy.”

Allie turned and walked to the back bar, and I thought our conversation was over, until she returned with a new beer. When I reached for my money roll, she waved it off and said,
“This one's on me. For taking out the trash. Even if it means I might have to find a new job.”

“You know the guy she was last seen with?” I asked, sipping on a beer I didn't need.

More silence while she decided whether she could share with me. I hoped she felt she could—that the two of us were different from the others on the floor.

Finally, after another couple of seconds, she said, “Brent's brother, Lance. The infamous Mr. Alvis. Your sister was here the last time Lance graced us with his presence. He bought her drinks, and they left together, but I didn't pay too much attention because it was a busy night. We pulled in two thousand in a couple hours, and I made three hundred in tips. I haven't seen Lance or Jen since.”

“Do you know where they went? Where they'd be now?”

Allie shook her head. “Nope. But either your sister has horrible taste in men or she's in trouble.”

“Why do you say that?”