The Drifter

by Nick Petrie

  “He’s his own dog,” said Peter. “I just clean up after him. Put that gun away, will you?”

  The running cop was barely breathing hard. He was young, clean-shaven, and his uniform shirt was pressed. He wore sneakers, and he couldn’t hide his grin. “A couple of girls tried to adopt him, let him into their dorm. He raided the lunch buffet pretty bad.”

  “Shit.” Peter didn’t know whether to be proud or embarrassed.

  The cop with the gun spoke loudly and he levered himself out of the golf cart. “Dogs are not permitted in the residence halls,” he said, glaring at the younger man. “And this animal does not have a license. I have notified animal control.” He hadn’t put the gun away. Maybe he just liked to have it in his hand.

  “We’ll just go,” said Peter. “Sorry for the mess.”

  “Oh, no,” said the cop with the gun. It was something fancy, bright, shiny chrome with mother-of-pearl grips. “You’re staying right here, pal. There’s a lot of paperwork for this, and the police are coming. You may face charges yourself.”

  Peter looked at the young cop. “Seriously?”

  The young cop shrugged, his face artfully blank. “Marv’s the senior officer.”

  “Yes, I am,” said Marv, still louder than he needed to be. “Take hold of your animal.” He still had his finger inside the trigger guard. Peter could see the red dot on the safety, meaning the safety was off. The barrel was pointing all over the place.

  “Sure,” said Peter. He stepped between Marv and Mingus, facing the dog. Then he pivoted and took hold of the pistol, one finger jammed behind the trigger so it wouldn’t go off, and twisted the gun from Marv’s grip.

  “Hey!” said Marv, eyes wide.

  The younger cop put his hand to his own sidearm.

  “Wait,” said Peter, eyes on the younger man. He held up the gun by the barrel. “The safety was off. His finger was on the trigger.” He found the magazine release and dropped it into his waiting palm, and handed it to the other man. Then he racked the slide to eject the round from the chamber, caught it in the air, and held it up between thumb and forefinger for the younger man to see. “Is this how you were trained?”

  The younger cop shook his head. “Christ, Marv,” he said. “We talked about this, remember? Somebody’s gonna get hurt.”

  “Goddamn you little shits.” Marv was pulling a blackjack from his pocket.

  “Marv,” said the younger cop, stepping in close. “We talked about this. Get back in the cart.”

  Peter dropped the pistol into a campus mailbox. “I’m leaving now,” he said. “Sorry about the lunch buffet.”

  The security guard from the library said, “Um, sir? I’ll just see you off campus?”

  He was writing Peter’s license number down in his notebook as Mingus jumped into the cab of the truck.

  As Peter climbed in after him, the dog slurped him in the face. His breath smelled like hamburgers. The rest of him smelled like ten gallons of hot sauce at the city dump.

  Peter shook his head. “Mingus, you are a bad goddamn dog. Now I’m never going to get my shower.”

  —

  The cold November wind came through the broken window as he drove. He kept one eye on his mirrors, hoping to see a black Ford SUV. But no luck.

  He had some time before his meeting with Skinner. He needed to get showered and changed if he wanted the guy to talk to him. And Dinah, he had to talk to Dinah.

  He pulled out his phone and called the number she’d given him, which was the nurse’s station on her floor. It took them five minutes to get her to the phone.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” he said. “Can we meet after your shift?”

  “That’s fine with me,” she said. “I’ll be home about six.”

  He wanted to ask if he could use her shower. Maybe run a load of laundry through the wash. But he’d just spent an hour in the library, his head was aching, and bathrooms were definitely indoors. He was used to splashing himself in a glacial stream under the vast dome of the sky. The last time he’d showered was at that motel, which hadn’t gone well. He didn’t ask.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll see you at six.”

  He broke the connection and cruised, watching the traffic. Waiting for the black Ford. Feeling the cold wind on his face. He caught sight of his face in the rearview, the bruise turning truly interesting colors now. Purple, yellow, green. He sure looked like a solid citizen.

  He passed an old Pathfinder with a crumpled front passenger side, the glass missing, plastic sheeting taped up in its place. That was a great look. No bullet holes, though. You needed bullet holes for the truly custom effect.

  Peter knew he should be making some kind of plan. Some kind of plan for his life. Find some new glass for his truck. That wouldn’t be easy, with a forty-year-old truck. Then fix the sheet metal, fix whatever other damage the bullets had done to the truck he’d taken hundreds of hours to restore. Figure out what to do next. With the rest of his life.

  After he figured out Jimmy, he told himself.

  After he saved Dinah and the boys.

  After that, he’d do the next thing, whatever it was.

  The bruise would heal itself in time. A shower and a change of clothes would make all the difference. Maybe he could shower at the Y.

  Mingus leaned up against him, tongue hanging, stinking up the cab. Weren’t dogs supposed to have a fantastic sense of smell? Peter didn’t know how the animal could stand himself.

  Maybe the stink was like canine cologne. And all the bitches thought Mingus smelled like an investment banker.

  He passed a car wash and had an idea. He circled around and parked facing out, mostly hidden from the street, with a straight line to the exit.

  It was a self-serve place. Eight chrome washing bays, each with a coin-op control and a spray wand. But you could wash more than a truck in a place like that.

  Peter plugged in a dozen quarters and turned the setting to plain warm water.

  “C’mere, Mingus.”

  He got a good grip on the dog’s rope collar and dragged him over. It wasn’t easy to drag a hundred-and-fifty-pound dog somewhere he didn’t want to go. But Peter made it happen, straddled the dog, grabbed the spray wand, dialed down the pressure to the lowest level, and got to work, using his hand to minimize the force of the water.

  It wasn’t a lot of fun.

  When Mingus got wet, the stink got worse. As if the water somehow rehydrated the stench.

  Shit and death and pepper spray mixed with a deep animal funk, worse than anything Peter had ever smelled. It was unspeakable.

  Peter tried to breathe through his mouth.

  Mingus, of course, couldn’t care less about the smell. It was the bath he didn’t like. He whined and flattened his ears and hunkered down close to the pavement while Peter worked his way around, closing his pitiful dog eyes when the water got close to his face. When the time came to wash his chest and belly, Peter had to roll him over by main force, kneeling on him again and talking in the same calm voice as he had under the porch, when the dog had been trying to rip off his face. Mingus whined louder.

  Peter didn’t blame him. The day hadn’t warmed up any, and having some guy you just met wash your belly was bad for a tough dog’s image.

  The soap was listed as nontoxic, so he figured that would be okay. He’d skip the wax setting, though. When the bubbles came out, the stench improved, but Mingus tried to bolt. Peter had a good grip on the collar and almost got pulled into traffic. Soaked through himself, he had to tie the dog’s rope collar to the coin-op machine.

  The soap smelled like plastic strawberries, but that was a definite improvement over the original stench. Mingus tucked his tail and cowered on the wet concrete as Peter used his own hairbrush on the dog’s matted fur. Maybe a haircut was the best solution. For both of them. He’d have to buy some c
lippers. He sure wouldn’t be using that hairbrush again.

  Then back to the warm water, rinsing away the strawberry-smelling soap, talking gently. They were both shivering in the late-autumn air. When Mingus growled, Peter said, “Watch your manners, dog. I’d rather be somewhere else, too, but this has got to get done.”

  The dog growled again. This time it was the tank-engine rumble, the sound that meant business.

  Peter looked up to see a black Chevy Caprice roll slowly into the car wash. It had no city seal on the door, no light bar on the roof, but the tan municipal plates and folded spotlights by the side mirrors clearly marked it as a police car.

  The driver parked in a way that would appear casual to someone who hadn’t run tactical missions in three countries. But the Caprice now blocked Peter’s truck from an easy exit. Unless he was willing to jump a high curb and crash through a fence in a restored forty-year-old truck with a custom mahogany cargo box. Which he wasn’t. Even with the bullet holes.

  The cruiser door opened and Detective Lipsky unfolded his lean marathoner’s frame, surveying the scene. Peter remained crouched over Mingus. Hairbrush in one hand, collar in the other. Man and dog both soaked to the skin.

  Lipsky looked down at him, those X-ray eyes surprisingly pale in the daylight. “I guess you really are a dog lover,” he said. “That’s illegal in fifty states, but I keep an open mind. You two need a little more private time?”

  It didn’t look good, Peter had to admit. He said, “The dog didn’t mind the pepper spray, but I did.”

  Lipsky wore a chocolate-colored topcoat over a moss-green blazer and dark blue dress pants, no tie. “Yeah, I took a nice long shower myself,” he said, crossing his arms comfortably. “In my own house. Where I happen to live. Suit’s already at the dry cleaner’s.” He glanced at Peter’s jeans and shirt, the same he’d worn two days before. “You do have more than one change of clothes, right?”

  Lipsky was trying to get into his head again. This wasn’t the direction Peter wanted the conversation to go. “Any news on those license plates from the other day?”

  Lipsky ignored the question. He gave Peter a steady stare, apparently done with the banter. “It wasn’t hard to find you,” he said. “I can tell that truck of yours from a mile away. You are still a suspect in that killing. And apparently a nuisance at UWM, you and that dog both. Your truck plate came in with a request for information.”

  “I’m not hiding,” said Peter. “I have work to do. What about those license plates?”

  Lipsky shook his head and watched the traffic. “The Impala turned up stolen, owned by a white kid lives on the south side. His dad called it in that afternoon. They found it in a parking lot at Mayfair Mall, with a couple of bullet holes in the rear end.” He said, “The other plate, the Ford SUV, I think you got the number wrong. The number you gave me is for a BMW sedan, not a Ford SUV. Owned by a dry cleaner in Brookfield, seventy years old. No record. I talked to the guy, said he hasn’t been downtown in years.”

  Peter knew he hadn’t gotten it wrong. His face must have showed something.

  Lipsky put a curious look on his face. Maybe it was even genuine. “What do you care about that Ford?”

  Mingus whined. Peter went back to work with the hairbrush. “I told you the guy in that Ford almost ran me over, right? What really happened was he almost hit my dog. That’s why Mingus ran off that night. That guy was driving like a complete asshole. I wanted to have a talk with him about civic responsibility.”

  “Mm,” said Lipsky, clearly not buying a word of it. He looked at Peter as if measuring him for a suit he knew wouldn’t fit. “Is that where you got that beautiful shiner? In a conversation about civic responsibility?”

  “What, this?” said Peter, touching the multicolored bruise on his cheek. “Just a misunderstanding. Could happen to anyone.”

  “A misunderstanding,” said Lipsky. “With a couple of ex-Army tough guys who got patched up at Saint Mary’s night before last, am I right? They gave the ER doc a line she didn’t believe.”

  Again, not how Peter wanted the conversation to go.

  The detective smiled. “I like to check the hospitals after a shooting,” he said. “See what might connect up.”

  Mingus abruptly ducked his head and backed out of the wet rope collar, then dashed gleefully to the far side of the parking lot. After shaking himself thoroughly, he looked at Peter, tongue out in a canine grin.

  “Shit,” said Peter.

  Lipsky measured up the bruise with his X-ray eyes. “What happened, they call you a jarhead?”

  “Something like that,” Peter admitted.

  Lipsky nodded. “Let’s take a little inventory here,” he said, ticking off each item on his fingers. “One, you’re sleeping in your truck. Which has a broken window, and some bullet holes, let me add, so its usefulness as a homeless shelter is dropping fast. Two, you’re doing pickup carpentry in a shit neighborhood, so I know you’re going broke if you’re not there already. Three, you’re getting into fights with strangers, although at least you seem to be winning. Then there’s number four, the personal-hygiene thing. Generally a problem when you’re homeless. Can I ask how long has it been since you had a shower? And walking through a car wash doesn’t count.”

  Peter could see Lipsky’s point. But Lipsky didn’t have the whole story, and Peter wasn’t about to tell it. Lipsky could think what he wanted.

  Peter opened the back of his truck and climbed up for his duffel. “I do have a change of clothes,” he said, peeling off his wet shirt and pants. Not sure why he felt the need to explain himself. The photo of Jimmy in his pocket had gotten damp, too. He dried it gently and laid it down where he wouldn’t forget it.

  “That’s good,” said Lipsky, peering past him into the box. Peter could practically feel him cataloging the contents. “Otherwise you’d freeze to death. Which reminds me. I think I found you a new driver’s-side window. At some car graveyard in Mobile, Alabama.”

  Peter turned to look at him, halfway into his last pair of clean pants.

  Lipsky shrugged. “A guy I know runs a salvage yard,” he said. “All this shit’s on the Web now, it took him about five minutes. I’m getting it at cost. It’ll be here in a couple days.”

  Peter stared at him. “Why would you do that? You don’t know anything about me.”

  “Here’s the thing,” said Lipsky. “Maybe I do. Just a little.”

  While Peter put on a clean white shirt, and tucked the photo into his breast pocket, Lipsky turned away to lean on Peter’s truck. Looking out at the parking lot, he took a pack of gum out of his pocket, selected a stick, and stripped off the wrapper.

  “When I got my discharge from the Rangers—this was ’93—I was seriously fucked up,” he said, as if to nobody in particular. “Somalia killed about a dozen of my closest friends. Then Iraq—I got there months before Desert Storm. My unit was on foot in the desert, spotting targets. The Republican Guard I met didn’t have their hands up.”

  Lipsky shook his head. “They teach you to kill, but they don’t teach you to forget. That’s what bourbon’s for, right? I saw some bad shit over there. Hell, I did some bad shit. When I got home, I was lost. Couldn’t sleep. Drinking with both hands. Ready to do some damage, if only to myself.”

  He sighed. “Anyway, my stepdad was a cop. A real hard-ass bastard. But he got me into the academy. I don’t know what I would have done otherwise. It gave me something to do, something to focus on. Something useful. I can’t say it plainer, the man saved me.”

  Lipsky watched the dog poke his nose into the bushes, then turned to Peter with his pale X-ray eyes. “Now you,” he said. “You’re the only suspect I have in that killing on Sixteenth Street. I can’t prove you did it, but hey, I know you did. Personally, I don’t give a shit one way or another. I figure you had a good reason. Guy with an assault rifle hosing down a residential street
. Somebody had to stop him. That’s reason enough for me. He lost his right to due process the minute he pulled the trigger.”

  What do you say to that? A police detective telling you he knows you killed a man and doesn’t care? Peter didn’t know what to say.

  So he kept his mouth shut.

  “But here’s the damn thing, kid. You can’t just kill people,” said Lipsky, seeing right through him. “You can’t. That’s not a way to behave, back in the world. I don’t know what you’re into, or what happened over there, but it has to stop. You need a new mission. So I can put you in jail. Or I can put you to work. Your choice.”

  Mingus wandered the parking lot, watering the light posts. Lipsky kept talking.

  “I know a group works with returning veterans.” He scratched his chin. “It’s kind of raggedy-ass, no money to speak of. They have a building not far from here. I don’t know what they’ve got to offer, maybe some job training, basic construction skills, stuff like that. But I’m thinking you could maybe teach some of those classes. Talk to some of those guys. And they have showers, a kitchen, some bunks set up for guys who don’t have anywhere to stay. Some good guys,” he said. “Even some jarheads.”

  “Okay,” said Peter.

  “Okay?” said Lipsky. “You’re not just blowing smoke up my ass?”

  Peter shrugged. “I’ll check it out,” he said.

  “Sure you will. Here’s the deal.” Lipsky stared at Peter. “If you want your new driver’s-side window, you’re going to have to meet me at this place to pick it up. I don’t work there, but I’ve met a few people. I’ll introduce you around. You can see what we’re trying to do there. You can even use the showers. No strings attached.”

  Clearly, Lipsky thought Peter needed saving. Peter couldn’t imagine why. He was living in his truck and had just done his personal grooming at a car wash, but that was a temporary thing. Operational necessity.

  Still, when Lipsky reached out to him, offering a business card between two fingers, Peter took it.