The Drifter

by Nick Petrie

  He looked at her. “We’re not still talking about the dog,” he said. “Are we?”

  She looked at the ground for a moment, then right back at him.

  “My mama was the steady one,” she said. “She taught fourth grade for thirty years, and ran her life like a Swiss watch. My dad was the opposite.” A thin smile. “He never seemed to have a job, but he always had money in his pocket. He came and went without warning. He taught me to ride a bike and throw a baseball. One night, just after my thirteenth birthday, he went on an errand and came home covered with blood that wasn’t his. He burned his clothes in a barrel in the backyard. Then he left. We waited, but he never came home again. Finally we just gave up. And I knew that I would not marry a man like my father.”

  She wiped her face. “James was different. A good man. Maybe the war did something to him. Damaged him. But at least he was a working man, not a crook, not a killer. Then I find that he’s left a suitcase full of money under my porch. And I don’t know what to think.”

  Peter watched the dog water a tree.

  People changed, he thought. Made mistakes. Did things they weren’t proud of, maybe things they were ashamed of. Peter certainly had. Jimmy had been one of the best people he had ever known. A better person than Peter, that’s for sure. He didn’t know what to think, either.

  “Dinah,” he said, “you’re a nurse, raising two great kids and working your way forward. You have nothing to be ashamed of.”

  She shook her head. “We shouldn’t have bought this house,” she said. “Do you know what an adjustable-rate mortgage is?”

  Peter nodded. He’d studied economics, and even if he hadn’t, the financial crisis had given everyone a crash course in mortgage basics.

  Dinah kept talking. “We got one seven years ago, and now it’s coming due. I have to pay the house off or refinance. Everyone thought their houses would be worth more, so it wouldn’t be a problem. Well, now it’s worth half what I owe on it. I can’t pay the house off. And I can’t qualify for a new loan, not without James’s income. If they’d even give me a loan. I have a good job, but it’s not enough. Do you know how much those boys eat?” She shook her head again. “We should not have bought this house.”

  “You’ve got a bag full of money,” said Peter. “Why not start over somewhere else? Move to Chicago. Or Seattle.”

  “I can’t just leave,” she said. “I have obligations. My grandmother lives eight blocks from here.”

  Peter nodded. He understood that. The dog ranged around, following its nose.

  “So stay,” he said, “and be careful with it. Don’t attract attention. Anybody shows up, you say, What money? Do I look like I found four hundred grand?”

  “I can’t—” She stood up and walked three steps, spun on her heel, and walked back. “I can’t take that money,” she said. “It’s bad money.”

  Peter smiled gently. “No such thing as bad money. It’s just money. Comes in handy sometimes.”

  “It’s not the money,” said Dinah. “It’s crossing that line.” She shook her head. “It was better when I didn’t know about it. But now I do, and I can’t have that money sitting around. Or I’ll spend it. Because I damn well do need it. And then where will I be?”

  “Okay,” said Peter. “So we’ll find out whose money it is. And give it back, if that’s what you need to do. Maybe we can get a finders’ fee. Maybe get your house refinanced.”

  “You would do that,” she said. “Wouldn’t you?”

  Her shoulder was almost touching his. Almost, but not quite. He could feel it anyway, the way the earth feels the sun.

  “Sure.” He said it casually, with a shrug.

  As if he didn’t need it as badly as she did.

  As if the ghost of Jimmy wasn’t standing right there staring at him.

  The dog trotted over and knocked the bag of cut sausage from Peter’s hands. It tried to stick its nose into the bag, but with the length of oak in its mouth, the dog just pushed the bag across the sidewalk. Peter got up to help.

  Dinah said, “I don’t want to be around when you take that stick out of its mouth.”

  Peter pushed sausage bits past the fangs with the tips of his fingers while the beast’s throat worked. “Jeez, lady. Where’s your sense of adventure?”

  9

  It was late afternoon and starting to get dark. The wind blew hard through the bare trees. Thin plastic shopping bags caught in the branches rattled like distant machine-gun fire. Along the streets and sidewalks, paper trash skittered and danced as if alive and in a hurry.

  “So what happens next?” she said.

  Peter wiped his hands on his pants and collected the dog’s leash. “I’ll start with Jimmy. Look at his life. Talk to his friends. See what stands out.”

  “I have a box,” she volunteered. “With some of his things.”

  Peter put the dog in the truck and followed Dinah inside the house. He felt the walls and ceiling with jangled nerves, the static reminding him of all the time he’d spent inside already that day.

  Because she was next of kin, the police had given Dinah the things Jimmy was carrying with him when he died. She’d put them into a cardboard box with things Jimmy left at the house and pushed the box under the bed. She pulled it out now and set it on the kitchen table with the lid still folded shut. As if she was afraid of reopening those memories.

  Peter put his hand on the lid. “May I?”

  Dinah nodded and Peter opened the flaps.

  There was a musty smell, like time itself had been shut away. The box was too big for the contents, as if whoever had packed it was expecting more life to fill it.

  Peter had a box like this in his parents’ house, and another from the war years tucked away in the back of his truck. The catchall box for things you wanted to remember, or couldn’t bring yourself to forget.

  The house was getting to him. His chest was tight, his breath coming harder. The hairs prickled on the back of his neck.

  “I’m going to do this outside,” he said. Dinah gave him a look as he picked up the box, but followed him out the door into the cool November air.

  At the picnic table in the backyard, Peter excavated Jimmy’s box and laid out the things he found, attempting some sort of chronology. There was a scattering of old photographs. Jimmy and Dinah impossibly young. Jimmy in purple choir robes, looking like some kind of prince. Jimmy in his wedding suit with a thousand-watt smile. Jimmy with his boys at various ages, a baseball mitt on his hand or basketball under his arm. The family at a picnic, paper plates on a blanket.

  The wind came up and tried to take the photos. Peter held them in place.

  Jimmy trying to look cool on Manny Martinez’s motorcycle. Jimmy in uniform, looking deadly serious. Jimmy with the platoon, with his squad, with the other sergeants. Jimmy with an Iraqi goat, goofing for the camera. Jimmy trying to get a baseball out of the mouth of the stray dog he’d adopted in Baghdad. The dog got killed when someone shelled the compound. Jimmy was broken up for weeks.

  A high school graduation tassel. A tall stack of letters in their envelopes, tied up with string. An expired military ID, an old watch with a cracked face, a small wooden box. Inside were Jimmy’s medals.

  Peter set the box atop the pictures to keep them from blowing away.

  “His military paperwork? VA paperwork?”

  “In the file cabinet,” said Dinah. She had her arms wrapped around herself because of the cold. The wind smelled like rain. The bare trees waved overhead. “It takes up a whole drawer.”

  Peter didn’t know what the paperwork might tell him. He certainly wasn’t going to go through it out here in the wind.

  The last item was a bulky manila envelope with JOHNSON, JAMES written on it in neat black marker. A business card stapled onto the corner, with the Milwaukee police logo on it. A detective. Peter looked at Dinah, asking
for permission. She nodded. Peter upended the envelope and slid the contents out on the table.

  Keys, a wallet, a rolled leather belt. Nothing else.

  Was this all Jimmy had with him when he died?

  Peter picked up the keys. Four of them, on a plain ring. A Toyota key with a black plastic grip, a key printed with the Green Bay Packers logo, and two others, maybe for a padlock or a cheap door lock. He looked at Dinah.

  “The black key is for the car,” she said. “The Packers key is for this house. I don’t know about the other two.”

  The wallet was leather but cheap, the seams torn and peeling. It held a driver’s license, a library card with bent corners, six dollars in cash, a folded grocery-store receipt for canned soup and instant coffee, and a scrap of torn paper with words written in Jimmy’s easy hand: worth more dead than alive.

  Peter looked at the paper. It fluttered in the wind. Something about it was familiar, but he couldn’t grab on to it. He held it up for Dinah.

  “Yes,” said Dinah. “The police thought it was a suicide note.”

  Something there didn’t sound quite right to Peter, but he couldn’t figure out why. He filed it in his mind for further thought.

  He tapped the driver’s license. “This has your address. Where was Jimmy staying?”

  Dinah shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Jimmy never told me. He kept saying he wouldn’t be there long. He said he’d let the boys visit when he found a better place.”

  “Didn’t the police look?”

  “They didn’t find anything. I asked that detective. He was actually pretty helpful. The tavern where he worked didn’t have a different address for him, and the VA didn’t, either. He wasn’t listed with the phone or cable companies, or the power company. The detective couldn’t even find a bank account.”

  Peter was surprised the man had tried that hard. “But you must have had some idea, right?”

  “If there was an event with the kids, he’d meet me at the school, or come here and I’d drive.” She scratched her chin. “Once, maybe a month before he died, he called to say he was running late. He asked me to pick him up on the corner of Twentieth and Center. He must have lived nearby. It’s not the best neighborhood. I told the police, but they never did find it.” She shook her head. “I kept telling myself I’d go over there and look. You know, go knock on doors. But I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I think I was afraid of what I’d find.”

  “Well,” said Peter. “It’s a good idea. And now there’s a better reason.”

  Not that the man’s things were likely to be there anymore. But maybe Peter would find somebody who knew him.

  He just had to find a crack, a fingerhold.

  —

  The last item in the police evidence envelope was a leather belt. Peter ran it through his hands and smiled.

  Jimmy called it his traveling belt. It looked like nothing more than a sturdy leather belt, but a hidden flap on the inside opened to reveal a long, narrow compartment. It was a pickpocket-proof way to carry money, and very useful if you were a Marine on furlough intent on getting seriously drunk. He was willing to bet the police hadn’t realized what it was.

  Peter opened the flap.

  Inside were five crisp new hundreds, folded to fit.

  Peter held up the bills. “This is how you knew the money came from Jimmy.”

  Dinah nodded. “I knew when I saw it that something wrong was going on. He never kept that kind of money. If he had ten dollars extra when he came over for dinner, he’d sneak it into my desk drawer.”

  Peter dug deeper into the belt. Past the hundreds was an accordioned piece of yellow paper. Peter opened it up. It was a flier for a missing person, the corners torn away like it had once been stapled to a telephone pole. It had a young man’s photo on it. HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN? PLEASE CALL, with a phone number.

  Peter didn’t understand why Jimmy would stash the flier in the belt. Hiding the money made sense, but some flier from a telephone pole?

  Peter ran the belt through his hands again. One section was still too stiff. He dug a long finger inside.

  It was a folded business card for something called the Riverside Veterans’ Center. Green lettering, cream-colored card stock. The address put it near Dinah’s neighborhood. No name on the card, but on the back, written in a faded spidery black hand, was a phone number.

  Who was Jimmy hiding this stuff from?

  Peter thought for a moment. The coroner had turned over the belt with the wallet. “Dinah, did they give you anything else? Any clothing?”

  Dinah nodded. “His pants and shirt were ruined. But they gave me his boots and his old field jacket. He didn’t like them, but they were warm, and he wouldn’t buy new stuff when we had so little money to spare. I’ll get them.”

  She went inside returned with the jacket and a pair of sand-colored desert boots. The boots were completely clapped out, the seams separating, one sole peeling loose. The field jacket was worn but holding. It had been a lot of places. There was a faint spray of dark stains across the front. Blood from when he’d shot himself, maybe. Peter found the hole in the upper-left sleeve where a bullet had barely missed Jimmy’s arm. He’d kept the jacket. He’d said it was good luck, like lightning not striking twice.

  Some luck.

  Peter dipped his hands into the pockets, looking for anything Jimmy had left behind. Something the police didn’t bother to look for.

  A few things. A small spiral notebook in the sleeve pocket with half the pages torn out. A pair of beat-up cold-weather combat gloves in the side pocket. And beneath the gloves, a fat stainless-steel pen, a nice one. On the side of the pen were the words LAKE CAPITAL FUNDS. And a Web address.

  Peter figured it was some kind of investment house. Jimmy could have borrowed the pen from someone and stuck it in his own pocket when he was done. Jimmy was a notorious pen thief.

  Peter held up the pen. “Do you know this place? Lake Capital Funds?”

  Dinah shook her head. “We don’t have any investments, Peter. We never had enough extra money to invest.”

  Peter looked at his watch. Lake Capital would be closed for the day.

  —

  He repacked the box and walked back to his truck, thinking he’d try to find the place where Jimmy was staying. He’d taken a single photo to show around the neighborhood. While the truck warmed up, he pulled it from his shirt pocket to look at it again.

  Jimmy wore dusty desert camo and carried a beat-up M4. He stood in front of a half-demolished mud-brick house with Manny Martinez and Bert Coswell, the platoon’s two other squad leaders. Although Jimmy’s broad shoulders were slumped and his face was lined with fatigue, his eyes were lively and the smile was genuine. It was a photo of a happy warrior. But now Peter could also see the man who had sung his young sons to sleep.

  Peter remembered the day clearly, because he had been there.

  Peter had taken the picture.

  But that was then.

  Who was Big Jimmy in the weeks before he died?

  What had he been doing that involved four hundred thousand dollars and four slabs of plastic explosive in a Samsonite suitcase?

  The Man in the Black Canvas Chore Coat

  He turned the old blue Ford pickup from the two-lane onto a gravel side road not found on maps. The wind had stripped the trees bare of leaves, and their branches mingled overhead like long, bony fingers. There were no houses in sight.

  Past the first curve, a clean white Dodge cargo van idled at a wide spot in the road. The driver leaned against the fender, smoking a cigarette, nodding in time to the music coming through his earbuds. He wore jeans torn at the knees and a gray hooded sweatshirt with a plumbing company’s logo on the chest.

  The van itself had no markings other than the make, m
odel, and license plates.

  The man in the black canvas chore coat parked the pickup next to the cargo van and killed the engine. The van driver pulled out his earbuds and hung them around his neck, then pushed himself off the fender and walked toward the back of the Dodge. He pinched out the cherry of his cigarette with a callused thumb and forefinger and tucked the butt in his pocket before opening the van’s rear doors.

  There were no seats or toolboxes.

  Just an old canvas tarp draped over the cargo.

  The man in the black coat dropped the pickup’s tailgate and hoisted up one of the white fifty-pound bags of fertilizer into his arms. Fifty pounds wasn’t heavy, he thought. About as much as a small box of books, or a healthy six-year-old boy. He handled the weight easily enough. He’d carried heavier loads for far longer distances before this.

  He carried the bag to the van, then held it momentarily in one arm while he threw back the canvas tarp with the other. Then laid the bag down carefully. The bags would be moved multiple times, and it helped to keep the plastic intact. The van driver came behind him with the second bag and threw it beside the first.

  “Careful with those,” said the man in the coat. “I’ve told you before.”

  “Dude,” said the van driver. “They ain’t gonna go off on their own.”

  The man in the coat allowed himself a small sigh.

  “One more stop,” he said, looking up through the bare tree branches. “You have the rendezvous for tonight?”

  “Yup.” The van driver nodded. Thrash rock came through the dangling earbuds, spoiling the quiet. “Hey, we’re about out of food. Definitely out of beer. Okay if I find a gas station or something?”

  “Sure,” said the man in the coat. “Don’t make any new friends. I’ll be an hour or so.” He walked to the pickup.

  The van driver leaned into the back of his vehicle to grab the corner of the tarp. The fading light shone weakly on the growing stacks of white fifty-pound bags.

  Until the tarp covered them up again, and the doors slammed shut, and the van looked like any other white Dodge van in fifty states.