Past Crimes

by Glen Erik Hamilton

  “Just a big fuck-you to everybody, huh?”

  The server came over and put down two chocolate-brown pints in front of us. “Saw’s Porter,” she said.

  Saw’s had been Dono’s brew of choice when he wasn’t drinking whiskey. It was the first drink Davey and I had ever stolen a taste of as kids. And it was an uncommon brand.

  I raised my eyebrow at Davey. “You ordered already?”

  The grin reappeared, wider than before. “Nope.”

  We both looked at the waitress. She was tall and in her mid-twenties, with hair the color of polished brass, cut to a length that showed off her good shoulders. Square jaw, wide cheekbones. She had on a white shirt with the sleeves rolled to her upper arms, black jeans, and a short, cream-colored bar apron. Even a little disheveled from the evening rush, she was a beauty.

  “Anything else I can get you?” She was looking at me, not both of us.

  “A first name,” I said.

  The waitress’s mouth stayed serious, but there might have been amusement in her light gray eyes. “Miss,” she said.

  “Good to know.”

  She nodded and headed back to the bar. I tried not to admire her too openly as she walked away, but it took an effort. The black jeans fit very well.

  I turned to Davey. “So when did you tell the waitress about this?” I tapped the glass.

  His smirk was unforgivable. “I haven’t said a word to the woman, I swear.”

  Davey was going to have his fun no matter what. To keep from giving him any more satisfaction, I took a healthy pull on the pint. It was rich and tasted a little like coffee. Perfect.

  I got out the note that Davey had left on the door at the house and showed him the logo at the top. “Frazier Bros Electric. Is that where you work?”

  “Yep,” he said, beaming. “Union man. It’s good money. Speaking of.” He put two fifties down on the table. “The night’s on me.”

  “To payday,” I toasted him.

  “D’you like the army?” His eyes went to my scars again.

  “I like the guys in my unit. And I like the toys they let us play with,” I said, grinning.

  “Not married?” said Davey.

  “I got close, at least once. I’m never in one place for long.”

  “Hell, you’re here now.” He pretended to scope out the room. “I’m sure one of these girls is drunk enough.”

  “Let me catch up to the lucky winner first.” I drank another mouthful of porter.

  Davey glanced over my shoulder toward the far end of the bar. “Hey, there he is.”

  I looked to my right. The fire exit was propped open. A young guy carrying a pony keg was working his way through the tables toward the bar. He was large enough that the keg didn’t give him much trouble. He had curly black hair and sideburns and wore a blue plaid lumberjack shirt and jeans. He looked a little familiar at first, and then suddenly it clicked.

  “Holy shit, Davey,” I said. “It’s Mike.”

  Davey nodded. “I do recognize my own brother. But it’s early yet.” He took another mouthful of beer.

  Michael Tolan was Davey’s younger brother and only sibling. Twenty-two or twenty-three years old now.

  I got up. “Be right back.”

  “Take your time. I’m going outside.” Davey fished a pack of American Spirits out of his jacket.

  I walked over to where Mike was hooking up the keg to a tap under the bar. “Mike,” I said. “It’s Van Shaw.”

  He looked up, and his eyes widened. “Hey!” He rose, and we shook hands. He had half a foot on his older brother and a broad, solemn face. Davey looked like their mother, Evelyn, small-boned and blue-eyed. Evelyn’s husband, Joe Tolan, had left the family around the time Davey and I met; I barely remembered him at all.

  “How’d you end up working for Albie?” I asked.

  “Albie Boylan?” he said. “Albie’s dead, Van. Three or four years back. Heart attack. Dono gave me this job.”

  I stared at him. “I didn’t know you and Dono even knew each other.”

  “We didn’t. I was looking for someplace I could balance with my classes. Mom called Dono. You know her, the Irish network.”

  And Evelyn would have known that Dono would pay Mike under the table. Tax-free tuition money.

  “You went into the army, right?” Mike said.

  “Yeah. Just back for a few days.”

  “I heard about Dono,” he said. “I’m sorry. You have to come by. Ma will want to see you again.”

  “Still the same house?” I said.

  “Yep. I’m still living there, too. Davey and Juliet escaped to their own place.” Mike shook his head, mock mournful. “Lucky shits.”

  I smiled. “Don’t knock it too much. You’ll probably miss the meals.” Evelyn Tolan had been a good cook, I remembered. Dinner with the Tolans had always been a nice break from Dono’s potatoes-and-meat served seventeen ways.

  Mike picked up a case of beer and began unpacking the bottles into a fridge under the bar. “If it got me my own apartment, I’d live off cat food. Or even cats. It’s good to see you, man.”

  “You, too.”

  I turned to see the blond server standing by our table and watching me and Mike. She’d traded her tray for a clipboard, and she had three shot glasses of golden whiskey already set on the table.

  “A touch of Frost,” she said as I sat down, quoting an advertising slogan. Galway Frost was a brand I hadn’t even seen since leaving home. Hollis used to acquire crates of it.

  I was about to surrender the game and ask her directly how she knew me when the clipboard in her hand gave it away. With it she didn’t look like a waitress. She looked like a boss.

  Albie Boylan was dead. Maybe his half of the bar hadn’t defaulted to Dono. Maybe it had gone to Albie’s nearest relative.

  “How you been, Lucy?” I said.

  She smiled. “Glad you caught up. I’m good. And it’s Luce now.”

  “I’m sorry about Albie.”

  “I’m sorry about Dono.” She picked up one of the shot glasses. I did the same. “To the boys at the bar,” she said, and we downed the whiskey.

  It took ten seconds for my throat to open up again. “When was the last time we saw each other?” I said.

  “It was right here at the Morgen,” she said, “in the back room. You were here with Dono. You played your Game Boy while I read magazines.”

  “Your memory’s a hell of a lot better than mine.”

  “I was only pretending to read. But you ignored me.”

  I grinned. “Well, I was pretty stupid then. Fourteen?”

  “Around that age. I was eleven.” She set her shot glass down on the table. “Are you here to talk business?”

  “Do we need to?”

  Luce’s gray eyes narrowed a fraction. “Eventually.”

  If Dono died, I’d inherit his half of the Morgen. Was she worried about that? Or was she more concerned about the loss of cash flow if Dono wasn’t washing stolen money through the bar’s registers?

  Maybe it was both. No wonder Luce was giving me the charm offensive.

  “He’s not dead,” I said.

  The skin tightened around her good bone structure. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

  “Thanks for the drink.”

  She stood a little taller, then turned and walked back to the bar. Her hair was a much darker blond than when we were children.

  Davey passed her on his way back to the table. He pointed at the empty shot glass of whiskey in front of me. “Now you’re talking.”

  Another server took over our table for the next round, and the rounds that followed, and it wasn’t until Davey got up to take a leak that I thought to look for Luce again. She wasn’t behind the bar anymore. The place had thinned out, and the remaining staff was busy cleaning up for the night. Before long they would start to throw hinting glances in our direction.

  Davey came back to the table. “I think she left,” I said to him.

  “Who?
Oh.” He laughed. “Her.”

  “Didn’t say good-bye,” I said.

  “Didn’t she? No, I guess not. We’d remember that, wouldn’t we?”

  It had been a while since I’d thrown it back with such enthusiasm. Damn nurses hadn’t allowed booze in the hospital at Landstuhl.

  “What?” said Davey.

  “What what?” I said.

  “You said something about damned nurses. I don’t think lovely Luce is a nurse as well as a bartender, buddy.”

  Hmmm. “I’m drunk, Davey. And I’m going home. You, too. Juliet will be waiting up.”

  “Ah, my Julie. Too fine a girl for me,” he said. I was a little afraid he’d break into song. “You driving us?”

  “I’m paying for our cab. We can get the cars tomorrow.”

  Twenty minutes later I watched sleepily as Davey clambered out of the backseat of a taxi onto the sidewalk in front of his house. The living-room lights were on. I had called it right. Juliet had a candle burning to mark the way home for her man.

  “‘Home is the sailor, home from the sea,’ ” said Davey.

  “That’s an epitaph, Davey,” I said.

  “A what?”

  “It’s for a gravestone.” I closed my eyes.

  “Oh,” he said. “Crap. G’night, Van.”

  “Night, Davey.” I gave the cabdriver careful directions, probably unnecessarily, as he drove me two miles north to my own street. I handed him a wad of bills and got out. The streetlights were weaker than ever in the night fog. I stretched my legs and took in slow drafts of the chill air until my head cleared a little. In front of me, the old house was dark.

  “No candle for me,” I think I said.

  My keys were hiding from me. It took half a minute of fumbling in the dark before I could find the lock. I walked inside and felt for the light switch, and then there was a massive bright burst inside my head that spun me around like a doll cast aside by a toddler. The floor slipped away from under my feet, but it was only gone for an instant. The hardwood came rushing up to meet me. My world was sideways.

  Someone ran past, almost tripping on my legs. I glimpsed a corona of curly white hair and a human figure in dark blue, in between the unbearably bright spots floating in front of my eyes. Another moment and even those miniature suns turned the color of midnight.

  AGE TEN

  Granddad was staring at me. He was impatient.

  But I had to concentrate. This was crucial.

  “I think,” I said, “I’m gonna have the Boom Blast.”

  “That’s what you told me before we sat down,” said Granddad.

  “I know, I know,” I said. The Boom Blast had chocolate brownie and chocolate ice cream and salted peanuts. I liked all three things. The Boom Blast was what I always pictured in my head whenever somebody said the word “dessert.” I hadn’t had one since my last birthday. That had also been right here at Farrelly’s, not in this same booth but in the one across the room. A fat kid in a green sweater was sitting in that spot tonight.

  I’d been thinking about the Boom Blast all week. Although I really wished Farrelly’s were just a plain old diner. It was a little stupid, with bright red vinyl booths and cartoon farm animals on the walls and everything striped like candy canes. I wouldn’t have wanted to come back if it weren’t for the you-know-what.

  But then, on the big plastic menu with the pictures of every dish, there was something new. The Avalanche. Three kinds of ice cream and whipped cream and cherries and your choice of sprinkles. Gargantuan. That was what Davey would have said.

  Granddad raised a hand, and one of the waiters in the candy-cane shirts hurried over. Granddad could always do that, have someone run right over to help him, without him even saying anything. It was cool.

  He ordered a dish of mint chocolate chip for himself and the Boom Blast for me. For an instant I thought of changing my order—again—but I really didn’t like cherries, and the Avalanche had those. Even if I picked them off, I might still taste them. Stick to the plan.

  Granddad sipped his coffee. “Mrs. Stark tells me you’re doing better with your spelling.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  Like I had a choice. Mrs. Stark was a buster. Another of Davey’s words. If I got behind again and failed another quiz, she’d be on the phone to Granddad in ten seconds.

  “How’s social studies?” said Granddad.

  Uh-oh.

  Did he know somehow? “It’s okay.”

  It really was, even though I hadn’t done the homework last week and Mr. Smithson wouldn’t let me make it up. I was doing good on all the tests this semester. I knew that my grade wasn’t on a shit slope. But if Granddad learned about the homework, he’d be pissed.

  Maybe even pissed enough to skip our Saturday lessons and make me do extra chores instead. When I’d been caught at the 7-Eleven instead of in class last year, he’d canceled our Saturdays for a whole month. And I really wanted some more practice on that five-pin Yale lock. I knew I could beat it.

  “Mr. Smithson sent me a note,” Granddad said, “asking if you and I wanted to book time with the school counselor.”

  I almost fell back against the bench with relief. So that was all it was.

  “Did he mention your mother again?” Granddad said.

  “No.” And he hadn’t. Not since that one time.

  On the first Wednesday of the school year, Smithson had kept me after class. I was more confused than freaked. I couldn’t be busted already, right? I waited at his small, banged-up desk at the front of the classroom.

  Smithson asked the last student out to shut the door.

  “I was one of your mother’s teachers, you know,” he had said. “A long time ago.”

  No shit, I’d thought. Back when my mom was my age? That had to be fifteen or sixteen years. I wondered what she’d looked like. Did Smithson know she was dead?

  “She was a good student,” he said. “I’m happy to have another Shaw in my class.”

  I nodded. Smithson was definitely old enough. The little halo of hair still on his head was the same shade of white as the dandruff flakes on his sweater. He was thin, I guess, but he had a belly that made Terry Bonder next to me whisper “Beer here” like the guys selling plastic cups of Budweiser at the Kingdome.

  “You living with your dad now?” said Smithson.

  “No,” I said.

  He waited for me to say more. I didn’t. I hated telling people that I’d never met my dad, and that the guy wasn’t my dad, not really.

  “Do you live with your grandfather, then? Your mom’s dad?”

  I nodded again. Smithson nodded, too, like he’d been expecting that answer all along.

  He tapped the top of his desk with his fingertips, staring at the coffee-cup stains on the wood. “When Moira—your mom—was here, she went to live with Mrs. Reynolds and her family for a couple of years. Did you know that?”

  “No.”

  “Sharon Reynolds was one of the first-grade teachers then. She had your mom in her class.” Smithson’s watery brown eyes narrowed. “Your grandfather was … away. Is he around a little more these days?”

  “Uh-huh. All the time.”

  Which was true. I didn’t count Granddad’s trips out of town, which were never more than a few days. He always made sure I was okay. I had my spare key, and he’d give me cash for food.

  Smithson sighed and smiled. It wasn’t a very big smile. “Well, I’m glad to hear it. That everything’s cool.” The word “cool” sounded totally wrong coming out of his mouth.

  “Yeah.”

  “Moira was a very sharp kid. She would have gone far if —” He stopped.

  If she hadn’t had you, was what I put on the end of that.

  Right then I decided I didn’t like Mr. Smithson. Even if he had liked my mom.

  The waiter came back and put the dishes of ice cream down in front of me and Granddad, and I forgot all about my social-studies teacher and his stupid questions. I was too busy letting t
he salt from the peanuts melt into the chocolate on my tongue.

  When I was done—after running the long-handled spoon around the inside of the dish so that the brownie crumbs would soak up the melted ice cream and get that last bite and a half left—I looked up and caught Granddad watching the front entrance. His mint ice cream was only partly eaten, and mostly liquid.

  He wasn’t looking straight at the front door, of course. He was watching from the corner of his eye, only flicking his gaze in that direction every few seconds. But I could tell.

  I dropped my spoon on the red vinyl bench. When I bent to pick it up, I peeked under the table.

  Two Seattle cops were standing in the entrance, next to another man who wore the same striped shirt as the waiters plus a red vest. The cops were acting casual, talking with the guy in the vest, but they were watching me and Granddad. They weren’t as good at hiding it as Granddad was.

  I started to turn and look at the back of the restaurant, but Granddad said, “Don’t.” I snapped my head around. Don’t look at the rear exit. Don’t signal that we might go that direction.

  But then a second pair of cops in their two-tone blue uniforms stepped up to the booth. And I realized that “Don’t” had meant “Don’t bother.”

  “Mr. Shaw?” one of the officers said.

  Granddad nodded.

  “There may be some trouble with your car, sir,” the cop said. Louder than he had to for just me and Granddad to hear him. “Would you come with us?”

  Everyone was staring. The fat kid’s mouth was wide open. He had yellow ice-cream dribbles down the front of his green sweater.

  Granddad got out of the booth without a word, and both cops took a hasty step back. I grabbed my coat and stood up, too, dodging one of the officers as he tried to put a hand on my shoulder. We all walked out of Farrelly’s, all four cops and me and Granddad.

  There were two more uniformed cops in the packed parking lot outside, standing by our black GMC. The passenger-side door to the truck was open. One of the cops—a woman—was sitting in the cab, rummaging through the glove box.

  My face got hot. Our truck!

  The cop standing next to the one in the passenger seat looked up and saw us coming and walked over. He was as tall as Granddad and much thicker. His name tag said YOUNGS. “You’re Donovan Shaw,” he said to Granddad.