The Drifter

by Nick Petrie

  Lake Capital was smaller than Peter expected, sharing the floor with three other companies. Its reception area was all glass and stainless steel done in sleek, streamlined curves, but no windows. Expensive conceptual art on the walls, bright plastic machined into corporate abstraction.

  Sort of like what high finance had turned out to be, thought Peter, after the bubble burst in 2008. An expensive abstraction that made other people’s money disappear.

  The woman at the desk wore a severe gray suit of some synthetic fiber that fit snugly over sculpted curves, her long fingernails polished to a high gloss. Her makeup was a thin sheen over flawless skin, her hair a lacquered black helmet. She looked so sleek that reality would slide right off her.

  She kept her access badge on the desk to avoid ruining the effect of the suit, Peter was sure. The room smelled of acetone, hair spray, and carpet-cleaning chemicals. The white static climbed higher, began to fizz and pop. He could feel his heart beating faster, and he was starting to sweat. He wouldn’t last long at this rate.

  “Can I help you?”

  There was no rising inflection in her voice, as if the question were rhetorical. As if she knew in advance that the man standing before her with the purple bruise on his face and sawdust on his work clothes was in a category beyond her ability to help, and she was making no secret of it.

  “I’d like to see Jonathan Skinner,” he said. The CEO, and the only name that was on the website.

  She scanned him with an appraiser’s eye. A hint of what she might be like without the severe gray suit to constrain her. There was a quick gleam of interest, maybe from the width of his shoulders or the size of his hands. But not enough to be transactional, not with his substandard wardrobe and clearly inadequate income. She would sleep only above her level.

  “You lack,” she said, “an appointment.”

  “Well,” said Peter, breathing slow and deep to dampen his heart rate, “I’d like to make an appointment.”

  “Hm,” she said. “And what is this regarding?” She made no move to write anything down.

  “I’d like to engage the services of this firm.”

  “Who referred you?”

  The door opened silently behind her, pushed by a man walking out. Peter caught a glimpse of plush carpet, vacant cubicles, and empty chairs. There was no sound of conversation or business being done.

  The man appeared to be near Peter’s age, with an aristocrat’s bloodless good looks and white-blond hair spilling carelessly down to his shoulders. He wore an elegant suit in a pale green that was the exact color of money. It fit like it was made for him, and it probably had been. He wore it with an elegant disregard, as if he didn’t particularly care for it, or someone else had paid for it, or he had a dozen more like it in his closet. Or all of the above.

  Peter found himself disliking the man intensely. The white static flared higher. Peter pushed it down again. Breathe in, breathe out.

  The man in the pale green suit didn’t appear to realize that anyone else was in the room. He walked past the desk without looking at Peter or the lacquered receptionist. He carried no briefcase or other evidence that he’d done any work that day. He pushed open the door to the elevator lobby, then half turned, as if just noticing Peter, a cocky, handsome grin showing brilliant white teeth.

  “Gretchen, do we have an unscheduled repair?”

  The receptionist opened her lips in a smile, and Peter knew she was sleeping with the man in the money-colored suit.

  “Not at all,” she said. “Nothing to concern you. Remember, you have a squash date at seven tomorrow.”

  The man nodded and turned, lifting a hand in a wave, and walked toward the elevator, the lobby door easing silently shut behind him.

  Peter looked at the receptionist, who still looked at the closed lobby door. There was a slackness on her face as she reviewed a memory of the man or imagined something yet to come. Then Peter knew.

  “That was Skinner, wasn’t it?”

  The receptionist opened her mouth to deny it, but Peter was already pushing through the door to the elevator lobby. The elevator doors were just closing, too late for Peter to get a hand or a foot between them.

  He turned to the stairwell, but the door was locked. An electronic reader on the wall beside it. He thought of the desk man in the lobby. Fire stairs only. Not for the public.

  He ducked back into reception and plucked the woman’s access badge from her desk.

  “Hey, you jerk,” she said, launching into further sophisticated language that went mercifully silent as the door closed behind him and he put the badge to the reader and the lock opened with a clack.

  He dropped the badge in the lobby and took the steps three at a time, his boots slapping hard on the concrete. The sound echoed behind him, the static submerged by the adrenaline of action. Through the door to the main lobby, he turned the corner to the elevators and the lights over the door. He’d arrived right on time. But the elevator didn’t stop. The down arrow simply blinked and the number changed to LL.

  Skinner was headed farther down. Probably to get his car.

  The desk man looked at him and reached for the phone. Peter ducked back to the stairs, thankfully unlocked on a public level, and down two more short flights to the rear exit. People streamed out of the elevators in all directions, but he couldn’t see the white-blond hair or the money-green suit. There had to be ten parking garages within a few blocks.

  A man who ran a billion-dollar hedge fund wouldn’t walk far.

  Peter turned to the exit and through the doors. He was in a low covered area, for taxis and deliveries and drive-through banking. A security guard looked at him but made no move. People were walking up a long, shallow foot ramp to the street. He jogged past them into the relief of the high, darkening sky and the cold lake wind, looking left, then right.

  A big parking structure with the U.S. Bank logo was at the end of the block across the street. Peter ran.

  A long, dark sedan appeared at the mouth of the structure, coasting into the road, turning away. Under a streetlight Peter saw a flash of pale skin and white-blond hair through the driver’s window. Peter didn’t recognize the model of the car. He didn’t even recognize the logo on the trunk.

  Then the engine gave a noisy blatt. Look at me, it said. See how special. As the car leaped down the block and out of reach. What the hell kind of car was that? The rich didn’t even buy the same cars as everyone else.

  As the taillights disappeared around the corner, Peter wondered if Skinner was always this elusive, or if his secretary just had an attitude. Because the only thing that got Peter here in the first place was a stainless-steel pen with the name of a hedge fund on it.

  Maybe it was just another dead end.

  Peter’s stomach rumbled. He stretched his shoulders. Exercise would loosen him up. Mingus could use a run, too. He turned and walked up the hill toward his truck. At the top of a loading zone, past a car with a Zaffiro’s Pizza sign and a big telecom truck, nearly invisible in the lowering dark, stood a big black Ford SUV idling at a hydrant.

  Before he could do anything, the Ford pulled into traffic with its lights off and rolled down the hill and around the corner, down the same street Skinner had taken.

  “Shit.” Peter sprinted around the corner for his truck. Cars thick on the main drag at five o’clock, four lanes waiting for the signal to turn green. He couldn’t even get out of his parking spot with people in a hurry to get home.

  By the time he’d cut off twenty people and nearly wrecked a city bus to get into traffic, Mingus barking like a hellhound in the back, the black Ford was gone.

  20

  He drove through downtown, the white spotlit U.S. Bank tower bright behind him, disappearing then reappearing in his mirrors over the heads of smaller buildings.

  He slipped through the traffic, took the open side streets when h
e could. He dodged the lights, coasted through stop signs, and generally tried to drive how the scarred man would drive, looking for the fastest routes away.

  Had the scarred man followed Peter, or was he there to follow Skinner?

  After a twenty-minute tour through the small downtown without another glimpse of the black Ford, he turned toward the old neighborhoods and Dinah’s house.

  The narrow streets were crowded with cars, and he drove on automatic pilot. He saw the veterans’ center building, and his foot rose off the gas as he pictured the woman with the ponytail and the paint-spattered jeans. He’d meant to stop back anyway. To ask about Jimmy.

  His new phone buzzed. Only one person had the number. He swung the truck over and pulled the phone out of his pocket. It was a text message.

  Too busy to talk today. Let’s catch up tomorrow. -Dinah.

  Peter texted a reply. Your new doors are installed, keys under flower pot on picnic table.

  Thanks! How much do I owe you?

  Nothing. USMC still picking up tab. He didn’t like that he was still lying about the repairs, but there was no way he’d let her pay for it. Talk to you tomorrow.

  Across the street, the veterans’ center door opened. Someone came out and looked at him. She waited for a break in the traffic, then angled across the street. It was the woman with the ponytail and the paint-spattered jeans. Different jeans today, but these were also flecked with paint. She wore a Brewers hat with her hair pulled through the opening in the back. It was a look Peter had always liked.

  “Hey,” she said. “I thought I recognized that truck. You’re about on time for dinner. Three-bean soup tonight.”

  “Sorry,” he said. “I have plans.” What those plans were, he wasn’t quite sure.

  She cocked her head at him. “So. What are you doing here?”

  “I got a text, so I pulled over.”

  “Aren’t you the responsible one,” she said. “Do me a favor and come inside for a few minutes. We’re getting this place into shape and we need help. You’re a carpenter or something, right?”

  Peter opened his mouth, then closed it again. Drawn by this woman, but not wanting to go inside. He was conscious of the bruise on his face. He already had a headache from his time indoors that day. She saw the hesitation. “Or not,” she said. “Hey, whatever.”

  “No, I’ll come.” He turned off the engine and the lights. “But I only have a few minutes.”

  “Sure,” she said. “I’m Josie.”

  “Peter.”

  She stepped into the flow of traffic so he could open the door. Cars slowed and diverted around her without honking, as if she were a boulder fallen in the road or some other force of nature. Her eyes flicked across the bruise on his face. “Just to let you know,” Josie said. “House rules. No drugs, no weapons, no fighting, and no assholes.”

  “Who decides on the assholes?”

  She put her hands on her hips and faced him squarely, chin out. “I do,” she said. Standing in the street, backlit by the headlights of waiting cars. “Problem with that, Hoss?”

  “No, ma’am,” said Peter, smiling. He liked her toughness and her ponytail and the faint smear of paint on the corner of her jaw. “No problem at all.”

  She nodded, turned into the traffic, and led him through. By the time Peter crossed the street, she was holding the door open for him.

  But when he got to the threshold, the white static began to fizz and pop. Sparks flew the length of his nervous system. His fingers drummed anxiously on his jeans. The iron band around his chest began to tighten, making it harder to draw a full breath. The need to do something, anything, was urgent and real. Fight or flight.

  He was stuck in the doorway. His legs wouldn’t let him inside.

  It was a big room, the full width of the storefront, with fresh paint on the dented walls and mismatched carpet remnants laid over the bare concrete floor. At one end, three ancient steel desks stood in a line, their legs rusting from the bottom up as if they’d survived a flood. The nearest held a desktop computer and a potted plant and a broken-handled mug filled with pens. At the far desk, a skinny young guy with a buzz cut and a gigantic black beard poked experimentally at a vintage laptop while he muttered to himself.

  Arrayed near the big front windows were a long homemade plywood table and a dozen cheap folding chairs. In the middle of the room stood an assortment of ratty plaid couches, where another man lay sleeping with his arm over his eyes and his coat for a pillow. At the back was a raw plywood wall, rough-nailed in place, with a framed opening that led to a dim plywood hallway.

  It was the bare plywood that stopped him, thought Peter. It looked like the combat outpost they had carved out of that Afghan hilltop. Unfinished plywood walls and ceilings, plywood bunks, even a makeshift plywood command center. Everything reinforced with Hescos and sandbags to keep out the RPGs and contain the mortar blasts.

  “It’s not much,” said Josie. “Not yet, anyway. Go in. I’ll show you what we need.” She still held the door behind him, still waiting for Peter to walk inside. He liked the lines around her mouth, the bright intensity of her eyes.

  He reminded himself that he’d wanted to ask about Jimmy. It was a big open room with big windows. He’d be okay for a few minutes. He took a deep breath and stepped inside.

  “A friend of mine used to come here,” he said. “Maybe you knew him, James Johnson, usually went by Jimmy. He was here maybe three or four weeks ago?”

  “What’s he look like?”

  “Black guy, big.” Peter held his hand six inches above his own head. “Real friendly, big smile, great sense of humor. The kind of guy who liked everybody, or tried to.”

  She nodded in recognition. “Yeah, I think he was here a few days. We’re not much for recordkeeping, so I couldn’t swear to it. I haven’t seen him since. How’s he doing?”

  “The police said he killed himself. That’s why I’m here. Trying to understand.”

  She closed her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Fuck.” Angry now. “What a fucking waste.”

  The skinny man with the gigantic beard said, loudly, “On behalf of the American people!”

  Josie sighed. “Cas, keep it down, okay?”

  The skinny man’s eyes were wide. He stood abruptly, knocking his chair over backward. “The American people! We shall rise!”

  “Cas,” said Josie, slightly louder now. “Have you taken your meds today?”

  The skinny man closed his mouth with an audible click, eyes flicking from side to side. Then hurriedly bent to pick up his chair and sat down.

  Peter looked at the skinny man more closely. The beard was big and bushy, hiding the lower half of the man’s face. With the buzz-cut hair, what you saw was the shape of the skull. But there was something familiar around the eyes.

  “Sorry,” said Josie, turning back to Peter. She lowered her voice. “Cas is our special case. The shelters are full of the people that got foreclosed on or dumped on the street when the mental hospitals got closed down. Even veterans are on waiting lists, and there are a lot of us who are homeless. Someone figured out Cas was a Marine, and he ended up with us. Harmless, but a little excitable. Just don’t talk about the financial crisis or the economy. Or politics.”

  “He’s sleeping here?”

  She nodded. “Don’t tell the city, ’cause we’re not legal. But yeah, we’ve got people sleeping here. Where else are they supposed to go?”

  “Semper fi,” said Peter.

  “Absofuckinglutely.” The woman was fierce. “If you served your country, you deserve help. It’s not easy getting back to the world. The skills we learned overseas don’t tend to apply to the civilian world. Veterans have double the rate of unemployment and homelessness as similar nonveterans. Then there’s bomb-blast brain injuries and PTSD, a lot of it undiagnosed. And the suicide rates are through the roof.
The VA isn’t helping much. So we’ve got to help ourselves.”

  “And my friend Jimmy, was he here to get help?”

  “I hope so,” she said. “I really do. I only talked to him once or twice.” She made a face. “But clearly we didn’t help enough. Not if he killed himself.”

  The white sparks clamored in his head. “I’ve got to leave soon,” he said. “You wanted to show me something?”

  “Right.” She turned toward the opening in the plywood partition. “This way. We want to expand the bunkroom and add more bathrooms. Maybe you could help.”

  The hallway was dim, lit only by a hanging string of construction lights in yellow plastic cages, which shed no light into the darkened openings of other rooms. Stacks of cardboard boxes only made the hall more narrow. There was a giant black metal door at the end.

  The grain of the plywood whirled and looped. Peter felt dizzy, and his legs wouldn’t carry him forward. The iron band around his chest drew tighter. He couldn’t catch his breath.

  “I can’t.” Sparks rose up in him like white starbursts. His head felt like it would split. “I need to go.”

  She looked at him then, just long enough for him to notice the disconcerting way she seemed to see him, clearly and in entirety. Her expression held neither pity nor disappointment.

  “No problem, Hoss. I’ll walk you out.”

  He stepped away from her and out the front door into the open canopy of night. He leaned against the spalled brick façade and let the clean, cold autumn wind blow through him. The street was busy with cars, and the trees on the parking strip were naked of leaves. But the wind filled his chest with oxygen and he could begin to breathe again.

  Josie stood a few paces away, hands in her pockets, watching the traffic.

  Eventually she said, “You were boots on the ground, right?”

  He nodded.