Settling Old Scores: BWWM Second Chance Romance (18 page)

The
main floor was as Kevin remembered it. There was a big parlor feeding
into a living room followed by a dining room that had been chopped
off and turned into two bedrooms. The parlor had an entrance to the
hallway and the stairs going up to the other bedrooms were built over
the basement stairs. The banister and stair rails had been removed
along with all the built-in china cupboards in the kitchen. Kevin
eased up the stairs. He had never been up there before.

As
he crept up the stairs sticking to the wall side, he wondered not for
the first time since going in there, why the hell he was doing this.
He wasn't looking for anything specific. He was just curious. The
stairs opened up to a hallway. There looked to be four rooms up here.
Again, all the doors were missing from the house. Kevin looked
methodically inside each room. They were all bare. There was a big
built-in cedar closet in what must have been the master bedroom, in
the front of the house. It looked like someone had tried to break it
loose from the wall and take it until they must have realized that
wasn't going to happen. It was much bigger than any of the exits it
would have to come out of. He slowly pulled the enormous drawers of
the closet open, one at a time. He half expected to find a body when
he pulled open the drawers. They were that big. They were like the
drawers in a morgue.

There
were no bodies, however. The closet was bare as were the rest of the
rooms upstairs. Kevin quickly finished nosing around, made his way
back down to the basement and with some difficulty, crawled out the
same window he came in. With the second house, he entered in by
prying the plywood partially open on the back entrance door, and
slipping in. The search of that house didn't turn up anything of
note, either. He did notice a raised abandoned vegetable garden in
the back that had not been there years ago.

Kevin
rounded up his gear, and with a sigh of relief retraced his steps
back to his truck. He was quickly on his way and gone, no worse for
the wear except for being much dirtier. As he headed home, he
questioned what he had just done. There was no reason for it. He just
wanted to explore a couple of houses of ill repute. He had always
wondered about them a little when he was a kid. Maybe, that's what
this was all about, thought Kevin.

When
he got home, he lugged his tool box back upstairs, locked it and
stowed it with the loaded gun inside. Then he got cleaned up. He
expected that he would see Pat tonight. Then, he sat down for a solid
afternoon of study. Interrupted only occasionally by errant thoughts.
One of the things that he knew he would do the next day was hit the
university library. They did have a section of reference materials
that contained an extensive collection of State Manufacturers
Directories. You could look up just about any company you wanted by
geographic location or SIC code. That would be a handy way to see
what kinds of companies were located in the Lumberton, North Carolina
area.

They
also had an extensive collection of white pages for just about every
city and small town in America. Some of the info was dated to be
sure. This was the kind of work skip tracers did all the time. You
could occasionally pick them out of a library lineup by the way they
looked and the section of the library they frequented. Kevin had a
thing for Libraries. He always made it a habit to visit the local
libraries at every port he went to. He had been to Libraries all over
the East, and the Gulf Coasts in his travels.

At
about 6pm, Pat came in. Kevin looked up from his books to greet her.
"I cried for you every night you were gone," he said with a
grin.

"I
bet you did. You probably were thankful the bitch was gone" said
Pat as they embraced.

"Actually,
I did need a couple of nights of good sleep. You been working me so
hard every night, I was thankful for rest. So, what’s new
girl?" Kevin asked as he stroked her backside.

Pat
got him caught up on her days without him. She had two pieces of big
news: Her dissertation had been accepted and submitted for review.
She also had an audition coming up with the Houston Symphony. She was
excited. Kevin was delighted for her. "Finally, I am going to be
done with school. I've been wanting this for a long time," she
said.

Kevin
shared her joy and said, "You won't know what to do with your
time once you stop going to school.”

"Oh
yes, I will! For one thing, I will read a book for pleasure and not
feel bad about spending time doing it. I can join a blues band and
play sax in my spare time. I can even spend time with my lover and
not feel guilty about it," she said.

“
Oh
yeah! What’ his name? I'll kick his ass!” chimed in
Kevin.

"You're
going to have to kick your own butt then, because you are him. You'll
be busier than the proverbial one legged man," she laughed as
she embraced him.

Then,
Kevin filled her in on some of what he had been doing. He didn't hold
back on anything. He told her about meeting Mr. Bailey, who he was,
and what he said. He told her about his experience buying a gun at
the old gun shop. He told her about looking in the old abandoned
houses on English Avenue. Finally, he had the good news about Matt
being eligible for some disability pay for his hearing loss.

"I
know I should set my mom down and have a long talk with her. I
haven't talked to her about my dad since I was 14. There must be
things she could tell me now, that she wouldn't tell me then,"
she said coming down from her high a little bit.

"Can
you believe that I bought a gun from the store the same way I got my
first one ten years ago? Those guys really do work on both sides of
the street. Nothing has changed for them either. It reminds me of the
Russian cadet story I've told you before. We meet in Istanbul, trade
information back and forth about what books we study from, look at
each of our ships, and even look at what each other is hauling. It
turns out we had different math books, and are hauling two different
kinds of weapons to two different adjacent countries. One is the
counter to the other. One cargo to Haifa, Israel; the other to
Tartus, Syria."

"Yeah.
It really makes me feel good that you got the counter for a pearl
handled .32 caliber. You just can't get some of that stuff out of
your system, can you?" asked Pat.

"A
stainless steel .357 is a very effective counter for a pearl handled
.32. All I can say is that I like being a bad boy and I was curious
to explore the two houses of ill repute," Kevin said.

"Well,
you have done some good for Matt. You did some good for me too, even
though I didn't want you to. Part of my problem with guns is that I
am afraid of them. You aren't afraid, you rather like them," she
said.

"Maybe
I should take you out to a pistol range some time. Learning the
basics of shooting would help you get over your fear of guns. You
probably would like it, once you got into it. Besides that a Texas
girl needs to know her firearms.”

"I'll
give it some thought. One thing for sure is that you either got me
doing things or almost got me doing things I have never considered
before. So far, you haven't steered me wrong. I guess I have to trust
your ideas a little more," Pat said.

They
talked some more. Kevin told her every detail of what he saw in the
houses he explored. The way he told it to her, it was like telling a
little kid a scary bedtime story. When it was all done and there was
no scary ending, Pat seemed to want to supply several of her own.

There
was the "You turned around and there was Sam McCann standing
there ending." There was the "You pulled out the drawer and
there was a body ending." She even had a "You opened the
boiler door and there was a body in the boiler ending." Then she
turned silly and did the "You turned around and there was a
voluptuous hooker reaching for your private parts ending." Kevin
liked the last one best of all.

27.
Greek Breakfast

Kevin
picked up Matt the next morning and they headed for a little Greek
place up in the neighborhood Matt used to live in. Kevin thought of
the
Saturday Night Live
Cheeseburger parody of Greek restaurants as he looked at the menu and
ordered Gyros and scrambled eggs. Matt had the same thing. They
started talking as soon as the steaming fresh cups of black coffee
were set in front of them by the owner's rather pretty daughter.

Matt
observed that in all the years he lived in the area, he never ate at
this place even though it had been there for years. "I don't
even know what gyros is," he said.

"Well
Matt, I've never eaten here before either, but I guarantee the food
will be good, the portions ample, the coffee fresh, and the toast
delicious because this is a Greek joint," Kevin said. Then he
proceeded to tell him what gyros was and how good it tasted.

The
platters came and they were heaped with eggs, Gyros, Hash Browns, and
toast slathered in butter. They dug in and began to eat. After about
two bites, Matt raved about how good the food was. They ate steadily.
Kevin told Matt he was going up to the old junior high just off the
Avenue to give a math demo for the Math club.

"Do
you remember Mr. Sharpe from your days there? Well, believe it or
not, he is still a teacher there," Kevin told Matt.

Matt
smiled at the memory and said that Mr. Sharpe was one of the few
teachers he ever had that he really liked. Then, Kevin told him about
his deja vu experience with Marcy Greenberg. He didn't tell Matt that
Sylvia was dead; only that she was a clone of her mother down to the
detail of her voice being pitch perfect with the exact speech
cadences of her mom. "I remember Sylvia too. I spent a lot of
time around the back of that store. Well, all the stores over there.
Do you remember when I told you I knew you carried a gun? I saw you
pull it out and show it to Willie after you two beat up the guy with
the knife. Know where I was? Inside an empty dumpster behind the TV
repair store. I saw a lot of shit from inside dumpsters," Matt
said.

"So,
that's how you knew I carried back then? I was wondering about that
when you asked me to get you a gun," Kevin said.

"That
ain't all I know. I know Sylvia had different men visiting her at
night. I think she was a prostitute," said Matt.

"As
a matter of fact, she was. What else do you know?" asked Kevin.

Matt
shrugged, "Well, a lot of the time, I was pretty stoned and
don't remember much of anything. Sometimes, I slept in the clean
trash dumpster behind the funeral home. I had a sleeping bag and
would pull some of the cardboard over me in case someone came by and
looked in."

"Jesus!
Matt, are you ever going to be ready to give up on living like that?"
Kevin asked.

"Everyone
thinks it is so bad. I could sleep under the stars or covered
depending on the weather. They generally have a side opening you can
crack open & look out. When it's dark outside, nobody even
notices if you crack things a little and look to see what’s
going on. Dumpsters are about as safe and quiet as you could want,"
Matt said.

Now
it was Kevin's turn to shrug, "I suppose I shouldn't knock it if
I haven't tried it."

When
Matt and Kevin finished eating, they were stuffed, and they both knew
the meal was going to stick with them for a while. Kevin left a
generous tip and they left feeling pretty good. Then, they drove by
Matt's parents’ house. Kevin pulled over and asked Matt if he
wanted to go knock on the door. Matt looked the house over carefully
and shook his head.

"I
don't want to. At least, not today. Nothing against them. I just am
not ready to do that right now. Maybe, in another week or so,"
he said.

"I
am not going to pressure you about anything Matt. You are doing
great. Small steps are okay. I will take you back downtown,"
said Kevin. They made plans to eat breakfast at this same place again
the next morning, and then Kevin dropped Matt off back at his hotel.

Kevin
drove to the downtown library, found a parking spot and went in. He
was ready to go into skip tracer mode. Once he got into the reference
section, he went to work. The Manufacturers Directories were the
easiest to access. He easily found a current one, and then started
searching in the Lumberton area for SIC codes that covered knitting
mills and related manufacturing. There were 4 or 5 in the area. Kevin
copied down notes about each one on some index cards he brought with
him. The info included name, address, phone number, how many
employees, annual sales volume and that kind of stuff.

Then,
Kevin went searching for the White pages that covered the Lumberton
area. He did locate some and thumbed through them. There were
listings under the name Washington. However, there were no Dwayne, or
Clarence listed. There was a C. J. Washington, though. That could be
the one Kevin was interested in. He took the whole directory over to
a copier and fed coins into the machine to make a copy of all the
listings. Just to cover his bets, Kevin got a Wilmington White Pages
and made copies of the listings there under the name Washington. This
one had several more listings under first initials. It was getting
time for him to go back up to the school for his presentation to the
Math Club. Kevin turned in the materials he had requested to the
reference librarian and got on his way.