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Perez looked down at his gun for a moment instead of down the shooting sights.

“Detective Perez, I’m guessing that by now, you either know who I am or at least have a pretty good idea of what I do. So, if you don’t mind, I’d just like to have a drink and talk for a moment. If you’ll do that for me, I promise I’ll leave your house and never come back.”

Perez thought on the offer for a moment before pulling back the seat at the far end of the table with his foot and sitting down, keeping his relatively useless weapon firmly pointed at Charlie.

Charlie didn’t seem to care and pushed the second glass toward Perez with his outstretched fingertips.

“That bottle was a gift,” Perez said, nodding at the Jameson. “I was saving it for a special occasion.”

Charlie looked at the bottle, then back at Perez before he emptied his glass. “Never leave a word unsaid or a bottle unopened. You never know what tomorrow will bring.”

“I’ve never met a spook before,” Perez said flatly, staring at him.

“Are you sure about that?” Charlie said, refilling his own glass. “As the old saying goes, our failures are known, but our successes aren’t. You might pass one of us on the street every day, for all you know.”

Perez had to admit that the obnoxious man was right, though he’d always thought of Nikki as being about as close to a federal entity as anyone in Bluff Falls, with all those supposed contacts of hers. Whoever they were, though, they had turned up Charlie’s file.

The two men sat in silence, just looking at one another for a long, awkward moment. Perez didn’t have anything to say, but he figured if it would get Charlie out of his house, he could at least let the man get whatever it was off his chest.

“I was never a good brother,” Charlie said, slurring a bit and waxing nostalgic, as if he’d had a more than a few shots already. “When my parents split, I kind of just went off in my own little world and started to look after myself. I guess I always kind of thought Kay had done the same thing, so when I heard she was under suspicion of drug trafficking in St. Louis, I figured I should go see her. By the time I got there, she’d already disappeared, and it took me a little while to find out she was here.” He took another drink and sighed deeply. “Can I tell you something?”

Perez shrugged. “Sure. Seems like you’re telling me everything else anyway.”

“I’m not sure what I woulda done if she’d still been alive,” Charlie said as he stared at the glass in front of him, as if neither Perez nor his gun existed. “I mean, what would I do? Walk up to my junkie of a sister after a decade and say, ‘Hi, sis. Remember me? I’m here to take you to rehab so we can live happily ever after.’ Is that how things really work for normal people?”

“I’m not exactly an authority on normal,” Perez said.

Charlie looked down at Perez’s glass, then up to Perez, willing the man to join him in a drink.

Perez conceded and sipped gingerly. The warm, spicy aroma of the special-occasion whiskey filled his nose as the mild toasted flavor danced on the tip of his tongue. He had to admit, obnoxious or not, Charlie was right, there really was no reason to save such good whiskey. He glanced back up at his uninvited guest. “You’re just using the stripper, aren’t you?” he asked, both warmed and emboldened by the shot of liquid courage.

For the first time, Charlie didn’t offer a response in any way. His eyes stayed focused on Perez, but he didn’t twitch or move in the slightest.

“Just an asset, huh? Weak link or something? You needed a place to stay, someone who could point you around town, maybe give you a good lay? They teach you that in spy school?” Perez couldn’t help but goad Charlie. He was sick of the secrecy and furious that Charlie felt as if he had the right to act with impunity in his town.

“I saw a few pictures of you and a lovely woman in the hall. Your wife?” Charlie asked, changing the subject.

Perez set his glass down, jarred by the shift in subject, and felt compelled to raise his gun again, but there was something in the look on Charlie’s face that seemed too innocent to take a bullet. “Yeah,” Perez said, “going on eleven years.”

“She’s sick, isn’t she?” Charlie asked.

“How do you know that?” Perez said, his grip tightening on his glass.

Charlie looked down at his empty glass. “You said going on eleven years. You didn’t say anything like ‘were,’ as if she’s gone. There are dirty dishes in the sink, and the shelves are coated with dust. I figured it was either sickness or an extended vacation.  I noticed that you flinched at the mention of my brain tumor, so my bet was on illness. Deduction is one of the things they teach in spy school, supposedly.”

Perez finished the rest of his glass and turned it upside down on the table. “We aren’t gonna talk about this.”

“It’s that bad?”

There was just something in the constant flow of Charlie’s words, the prodding that wasn’t really prodding at all; Perez sensed that the man really wanted to know, that the stranger in his kitchen really wanted to be his friend. “Yeah,” Perez admitted, “it’s bad. She’s at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, but I can’t get out to see her as much as I want. They tell me there’s some new treatment they want to try, but—”

“But your insurance doesn’t cover experimental procedures, right?” Charlie said.

Perez shook his head.

“So, when you told me to go back to work and get on with my life, you were convincing yourself, weren’t you? Giving yourself permission to be a cop instead of waiting next to a bed? She probably told you the same, to go home and do your job.”

Perez wrinkled up his nose just short of a sneer; he was disgusted at how easily Charlie had read him. He ejected the magazine from his gun and popped the two bullets out from the clip, the ones Charlie had claimed were duds. When he reached for the other two bullets, Charlie made no move to stop him from loading them back into the clip.

“If you don’t mind, now that you have a full clip, I’d like to use your bathroom before your finger wanders over to the trigger. Maybe give you a moment to think about what it would mean to try and take a guy like me into custody.”

Perez tilted his head to point down the hall toward the bathroom.

“You’re one of the good guys,” Charlie said from the entryway as he walked past Perez.

“What makes you say that? You don’t even know me.”

“Because I know bad guys, and if you were one of them, you wouldn’t have woken up wondering if you heard glasses clinking. You would have wondered if that was gas you smelled.”

It was almost a full minute before Perez realized he didn’t hear any sound from the bathroom. As he looked around his house, he noticed that all the windows were shut and the doors were locked, but Charlie was gone. Perez couldn’t sleep for the rest of the night. It wasn’t so much the gas comment as his own doubts. Maybe he should have shot Charlie when he had the chance. Then again, maybe he really was one of the good guys. Why in the hell did Charlie Kelly have to show up in his town?

Chapter 17

It would have been a waste of time to knock. Charlie had to admit that it had been fun, making a grand show out of all of it, going over the top as if he were putting on a performance. It wasn’t at all difficult to create drama and confusion in such a remote place, at least when he thought he could get away with it. Standing outside of the old Drumlins’ Pharmacy building, holding a couple of wires he’d twisted into perfect lock picks, he realized he needed to do things a bit more subtly going forward, so that he didn’t go down in a hail of small-town gunfire, especially since both sides of the law had an eye out for him.

It was an idea all the more supported when he saw the seam and bolt pattern in the door and recognized it as a heavy metal arm used to blockade from the inside. There was no way to pick it, so he needed to find another way in. Charlie took a lap around the block as he thought to himself. If this Baker guy was such a good meth cook, he would need to have a decent ventilation system. Charlie didn’t so much like the idea of taking the tunnel rat route, but he was thin on time and options. Charlie just hoped The Baker wasn’t in the middle of making a batch of meth. He’d never used it and had no interest in it, nor was he eager to inhale the phosphorus hydride gas or any of the other toxins that could be present around an active meth lab.

Charlie took his time on the roof, looking at the huge old air vent that could have easily accommodated three human beings. It was the old kind of vent, the stuff of Hollywood films, since it was perfectly roomy enough for the good guy to crawl around in. Charlie felt no heat and smelled no fumes coming out of it as he estimated, with his best guess, how far he might have to combat crawl before getting inside the building.

All in all, Charlie’s estimation was pretty close; he simply hadn’t accounted for the fact that the vent might not be bolted on both sides. As such, it swung open under Charlie’s weight, sending him tumbling at least ten feet to the ground. He rolled the best he could, like he’d been taught to break a fall, but it didn’t feel good. There must have been a bit of shock and awe for the occupants of the deserted pharmacy, because as Charlie stood up, he saw a thirty-something white guy staring back at him, with his glasses at the tip of his nose, and his long, brown, scraggly, unwashed hair scattered in every direction.

Charlie looked around the room at all the paraphernalia, which reminded him vaguely of his high school chemistry class. “I take it you’re The Baker?” he asked as he grabbed his porkpie from the ground next to him and stood up. He had meant to sound menacing, but everything he said always tended to come out nonchalant.

The Baker didn’t move. He set his eyes on Charlie and didn’t show as much concern as Charlie expected. “Who are you?” The Baker asked flatly, as if he was not impressed at all.

Charlie could barely restrain a laugh. “I suppose that’d make me the candlestick maker.” His eyes stopped and locked on The Baker’s. “Or maybe I’m the butcher.” Charlie held back a smile as his voice found just the right tone of ominous to force a clenched look onto the man’s face. “Either way, you can call me Charlie.” Charlie then walked toward one of the work benches and sat down.

The Baker didn’t move at all and never took his eyes off his impromptu guest.

“You know,” Charlie said, “you and I are very different people, and I don’t just mean from a morality standpoint, because I know there are plenty of people out there who object to the kind of work I do. I’m talking about on a simpler level.” Charlie took off his hat and set it on the table. “Your job is to make meth, and a by-product of that is that things don’t blow up. I, on the other hand, make shit go
boom
on purpose.”

Finally, The Baker began to show some emotion, and worried creases formed in his brow. Nevertheless, he didn’t say a word.

“Maybe you ought to take a seat and breathe,” advised Charlie. “It’ll all be okay. See, I normally don’t talk so much, but ever since I got to town, I’ve been talking a country mile. I suppose it’s all pent up after years of not being able to say much. I miss talking, ya know? Just casual bullshit, like the Cardinals lineup, movies, or even trade craft. I bet you and I know a lot of the same things.”

“Like what?” The Baker asked, his voice somewhat high pitched, like a kid in middle school; Charlie assumed it might just be from nerves, because the guy was clearly a few years beyond a pubescent voice change.

Charlie poked around the scattered containers of solution and powders, all meticulously labeled and arranged. Charlie had to hand it to him; the guy knew what he was doing
.
“Like what happens when you heat this chemical and that one or combine acids and bases—you know, trade craft…stuff like that.”

The Baker cleared his throat and pushed his glasses further up his nose. “Yes, well, the whole point of this is to make sure none of that happens. I make high volumes of high-quality product. My research and knowledge cuts down on the need for so many of those grimy little trailers out in the parks, with guys holding shaker bottles or people cutting with dangerous chemicals. This isn’t the old cat litter, fertilizer, and Heet treatment. This is the real thing.”

Charlie smiled. “So you’re saying you make better, safer meth, huh? The new and improved version?”

“That’s right,” The Baker said, with no irony in his voice.

Charlie stood up and walked around the table to give The Baker a slap on the back. “A true humanitarian.”

The Baker scoffed with contempt, making it clear that he’d finally found some balls. “I can do without your sarcasm. You’ve obviously got no idea what you’re talking about. Meth has been around for over a hundred years. They used to give it to fighter pilots in the thirties to keep them alert and awake and, thus, alive. It was even sold over the counter as a cure for obesity. The government cracked down on it, like they do everything they realize they can’t control with absolution, anything they can’t make money off of, so it all went underground. The labs that popped up then were nothing more than time bombs, just waiting for some junkie to mix the chemicals wrong. Guys like me know how to make meth a better way, and we’re doing what the government doesn’t have the balls to do. Save your judgment, Mr. Butcher or Candlestick or whoever the hell you are. I know you killed Clarence and Dick. What do you think that makes you? Some kind of good guy? A vigilante? Some fucking superhero for the greater good of mankind? I hardly think so.”

Charlie tapped his fingers along the metal tables as he perused the area, wondering if and where the Baker kept a gun. “Good guy? No, not really. Sure, I do some of the same things good guys do, the things big fish in boardrooms and meeting halls seem to think necessary, but I’m not a good guy. Good things rarely come from the actions of good men. History, as you seem so fond of quoting, is written with dirty hands.” Even Charlie thought for a moment that he heard a twinge of regret in his voice. “I’m damn sure not a superhero either, but for what it’s worth, I’m absolutely certain the bad things I do pale in comparison to the big picture.”