The Drifter

by Nick Petrie

  This had been a nice neighborhood once, he thought. Now it was being gutted by the recession. Families foreclosed on, bank-owned homes standing empty and rotting.

  “You must be Mr. Ash,” she said, holding the door open, smiling as if a stranger asking about her vanished grandson was the best part of her day. Maybe it was.

  Mrs. Aurelia Castellano looked to be in her late sixties, with steel in her hair. Her skin was the color of burnished bronze. She wore half-glasses, a man’s dress shirt untucked with the sleeves rolled up, and immaculate blue jeans. She looked like a high school principal on her day off.

  Which made Peter wish he had showered somewhere other than a car wash. And shaved. And gotten a haircut.

  “Won’t you come in?”

  He stood at the open door. The smell of mothballs and air freshener wafted out. He felt the static rise and his chest grow tight just with the idea of entering the house. “Ah—ma’am—”

  She measured him with her eyes.

  “Is there something wrong with my house, Mr. Ash?”

  Peter shook his head. “No, ma’am.”

  “Then why are you out here in the cold? Come in, young man, come in.”

  And she took him by the arm and led him inside.

  “Perhaps in the sunroom,” she said, and sat him in a white wicker chair in a bright room with leaded-glass windows on three sides and a broad view of the street. “I put on a fresh pot of coffee,” she said. “You’ll have some.”

  It was not a question. He nodded and sat, breathing deeply, while she brought him a cup of coffee and set out a plate of cookies. Then she perched herself on the edge of the couch, hands on her knees, leaning toward Peter. She took a deep breath, then let it out.

  “Now, then,” she said. “Why are you here?”

  “I hoped you would tell me a little bit about your grandson,” said Peter.

  The bright smile faded into the distance. “Felix was a nice boy. Polite, never in trouble. And a hard worker.”

  “He grew up with you?”

  “Yes, he lived in this very house, from the age of four. Several of my grandchildren lived with me at one time or another. But Felix stayed the longest. He graduated high school, stayed away from bad influences.” The smile turned sad. “My hopes were on him more than the others.”

  “He went overseas?” Peter asked.

  Mrs. Castellano nodded. “It was my own fault,” she said. “He was such a kind, quiet boy. I suggested he join the Navy or the Air Force. He was good with his hands, always fixing things around the house. I hoped he would learn a trade and get money for college.” She shook her head. “He was always a skinny boy. I didn’t ever imagine he would join the Marines and get sent to the fighting. Maybe he thought he was proving something. Four years they kept him. He was always quiet before. But he came home hardly talking at all. Like he had ghosts inside him.”

  Peter knew what that felt like. He felt it still, with the static sparking up inside him, even in that quiet, sunny room in Milwaukee. He rolled his shoulders to ease the tension, but it didn’t help the tightness in his chest.

  “Where did Felix live, after he came home?”

  “He came home to his nana.” She patted her palm on the couch cushion beside her. “I was not going to have him spending his back pay on a place of his own, not until he got a good job.” She pierced him with a glance. “Veterans Day is on Monday. We’re supposed to honor our veterans. You’d think a decorated veteran could get a job. But there were no jobs to be had. He did enroll in college, I made sure of that.”

  Peter nodded. He wouldn’t have been able to resist her, either.

  She shook her head. “But Felix didn’t fit there, either. He was a war veteran sitting in a classroom with children just out of high school. They had no idea of what he’d been through. And the school had no idea what to do with him.”

  Peter had heard this story before, too. “Then he disappeared?”

  “Months later,” she said. “He started going to a veterans’ group. I thought he might be getting better. But I arrived home one day and he was gone. He left a note.”

  Mrs. Castellano reached into her shirt pocket and pulled out a piece of lined notepaper, softened from handling. The creases where it had been folded were worn. After another few months they would wear through the paper entirely. Peter imagined her carrying it with her every day, and setting it on a table beside her bed before she went to sleep.

  She unfolded the note with exquisite care.

  “‘Dear Nana,’” she read. “‘I have something important to do. Please don’t try to find me. If you hear anything about me, please know that I love my country, I will always love you, and I always have done what I thought was right. With love, your Felix.’”

  She turned to look at Peter, eyes bright with tears. “What can he be doing?” she asked. “What can he possibly be doing?”

  Peter didn’t have an answer for her.

  But he was afraid it involved a large sum of money and some plastic explosive. And a disturbed young man who was good with his hands.

  “Ma’am,” he said, “I wish I knew. I really do.” He wasn’t sure how to say the next thing, so he just said it. “Do you remember my asking you about another man who came to talk to you? My friend James Johnson?”

  She wiped her eyes with a white handkerchief. “Yes,” she said. “He said a Marine never leaves another Marine behind. He wanted to help find my Felix.”

  Then she seemed to catch herself, and stared fiercely at Peter. It was like the light of the sun focused down through a magnifying glass, but in a good way. Peter felt what it must have been like to be under this woman’s care.

  “Your friend,” she said. “We spoke several times. He said he would tell me what he found. But I didn’t hear from him again. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Something happened to him.”

  “Ma’am?” said Peter. “Where did you suggest Jimmy start looking for your grandson?”

  —

  Mrs. Castellano gave Peter a short list of Felix’s friends and their phone numbers. She’d given Jimmy the same list.

  Felix didn’t go to taverns, she said. He belonged to the YMCA on Forty-sixth Street, he took care of himself. She had convinced the staff to post fliers and review their records. Felix hadn’t been to the Y since before he left her home.

  Peter felt the static rise higher even before he asked his next question. The pricking of sweat on the back of his neck. He knew it would be bad.

  “May I see his room?”

  The stairwell was steep and narrow and tucked tightly under the eaves, and Peter had to hunch over and turn sideways to get up the stairs as the static crackled behind his ears and the steel band tightened around his chest. The bedroom wasn’t much bigger than the stairwell. Peter kept breathing, in and out, in and out. He was sweating freely now. He would last only so long. He’d better make the best of it.

  The narrow bed was neatly made, waiting for Felix to come home. But the closet and a leaning particleboard dresser were nearly empty. The bulletin board over the dresser was bare. Pinholes and uneven fading showed where papers had been tacked up.

  “He took all his medals with him,” she said. There was no space for two in the bedroom, so she stood in the doorway, looking in. “His discharge papers. His dress uniform. What would he need his dress uniform for?”

  Peter felt it in his stomach. Something bad.

  He thought of Jimmy’s little apartment, the rent three months in advance, the fridge cleaned out for a long absence.

  “Ma’am, I’d like to search the room. Is that all right? I’ll put everything back the way I found it.”

  Mrs. Castellano nodded.

  There wasn’t much there. He would work fast.

  He shoved the narrow bed away from the wall, pulled off the cheap linens, lifted the mattre
ss from the box spring, then the box spring from the floor. Nothing.

  He took the drawers from the dresser. A few torn T-shirts and worn-out socks, some old car magazines. He flipped through the magazines and saw only cars. Nothing taped on the undersides of the drawers.

  He went through the closet, item by item. It didn’t take long. Two faded dress shirts, a plastic belt with a broken buckle. A thrift-shop suit with tickets to the North Division High School prom in the breast pocket and a dried boutonniere on the lapel. The flower, once a white rose, had thinned to pale parchment as fine as ash.

  Mrs. Castellano stood in the doorway, watching him make a mess of her grandson’s room. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll put it all back now.”

  “No, no,” she said, wiping her eyes. “I should have done this myself when he left. But I just couldn’t.”

  Peter remade the bed, put the clothes on their hangers, and picked up the drawers and went to return them to the dresser. On the floor in the open bottom of the dresser, maybe where it had fallen from the bulletin board, lay a business card.

  A cream-colored card. With green lettering.

  The Riverside Veterans’ Center.

  Peter picked up the card and turned it over. On the back was the same spidery black handwriting and the same phone number as the card that Jimmy had hidden in his money belt.

  Peter took out his own wallet. Not much in there.

  He removed the cream-colored card with the green lettering that Lipsky had given him.

  The same card.

  He turned it over.

  The same phone number.

  —

  Standing outside on her stoop, Peter thanked Mrs. Castellano very much for her time. He told her that he would call her to let her know what he found out. He reminded her of the number for his cell phone.

  “I’m so glad you called now,” she said. “I’ll have a new number this time next week. You never would have found me.” She pulled out a pen and wrote it down for him.

  Peter looked at her.

  She smiled brightly. “I’m moving into my sister’s house,” she said. “I worked at a bank for forty years, but when the FDIC took them over, my pension lost most of its value. My retirement savings dropped with the market. I haven’t been able to find a new job. I refinanced my house five years ago when my sister needed surgery, and now the bank is calling in the note.” She shrugged gracefully. “They’re taking the house.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  She waved a hand. “Oh, it’s been a year coming,” she said. “I’ve come to terms with it. Although it certainly made Felix quite furious when he came home. That horrible bank putting his nana out of her house.”

  “Is there something else you can do?”

  “No.” She put her hand on his arm. “At least I have a place to go,” she said. “And I can get Social Security. Think of all those people without jobs, without savings, without any place to call home.” She shook her head. “My husband would roll over in his grave with all these bank bailouts, these executives getting their bonuses, while hardworking people lose their homes and children go hungry.”

  “Do you need help moving?” Peter asked.

  “Oh, no,” she said. “I have family for that.” Her grip was fierce. “You just find my Felix.”

  27

  Lewis’s tan Yukon with its tubular steel bumper was parked up the street from Dinah’s place, with a clear view of the house. The Yukon was shut off, and the windows were cracked open a half-inch. Someone sitting in a car was easy to miss, but tailpipe exhaust or fogged windows would get noticed by anyone watching Dinah’s house for more than a few minutes. This wasn’t Lewis’s first rodeo.

  Peter stopped, leaned across the seat, and rolled down his passenger window. “Anything?” he said.

  Lewis wore a thick down coat and a black watch cap. “Nothing.” His breath steamed in the cold. “No dude with scars, no black SUV. I’m starting to think you made this motherfucker up.”

  “He didn’t get past you, did he?”

  Lewis gave him a look.

  Peter grinned. “What about the alley?”

  “Nino’s there now. We trade off.”

  “Does Dinah know you’re here?”

  Lewis shook his head. It didn’t seem to make him happy.

  “I’m picking her up now,” said Peter. “You can go home, get warm. Come back in the morning. I’ll be parked out here all night.”

  “You owe me, motherfucker.”

  “Hey,” said Peter. “I just stepped into this. It’s not my fault you got pulled in.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Lewis. “I know what you doing. But that ain’t what I mean. Nino all banged up, and Ray out with a ruptured fucking testicle, thanks to you. And I got something going in four days. So if Ray not good to go by then, you gonna get drafted.”

  “We’ll see,” said Peter. “And thanks for this.”

  “Don’t thank me yet, motherfucker.”

  —

  When Peter pulled up, Dinah came down the steps of the new front porch. She wore her good wool coat with a yellow scarf. He hadn’t really talked to her in a day and a half, and a lot had happened since then.

  He got out to open the door for her. She stopped him on the curb.

  “What happened to you?” She leaned in to examine the bruise on his face and touched it with cool, professional fingertips. Her breath was warm on his skin. It smelled like peppermint.

  “A misunderstanding,” said Peter.

  She gave him a look, still leaning in close. “How does the other guy look?”

  “Two of them, actually,” said Peter, suppressing a smile. “We have a lot to talk about. But I have something to show you first. Should we go?”

  She got in the truck and they drove toward Jimmy’s apartment. Dinah rubbed her hands together. “I’m cold. Do you mind rolling your window up?”

  “I can’t,” said Peter. He cranked up the heat. “The window’s broken.”

  “I am so sorry.” She shook her head. “This neighborhood is just sad. I have got to get out of here. Did they steal anything?”

  “That’s not it,” he said. “Somebody shot at me.”

  “What?” Dinah was horrified. “Where? How?”

  “It’s okay,” said Peter. “I’ve been shot at before.” He didn’t want to tell her he’d killed the man who’d shot at him. He didn’t want to tell her about his latest meeting with the scarred man, either. “But I think I got someone’s attention.”

  “Was it the man with the scars who shot at you?”

  Peter shook his head. “No. But that’s probably who sent the guy. I’m working on it.”

  He turned at Jimmy’s block and found a parking spot. He pointed at the duplex house. “That’s where Jimmy was staying. The keys from his pocket fit the door to the upstairs apartment.”

  Dinah watched the house through the glass. She didn’t speak.

  Peter watched the line of her jaw, the curve of her neck. The pulse of the vein beneath her skin. “We could go in if you want,” he said. “I met his landlady. Jimmy told her he was going on a trip. He paid his rent three months in advance. He was looking for a Marine veteran who had gone missing.”

  Dinah put her hand to her mouth and turned to Peter.

  For a brief moment, it was the face of a child who had been told a terrible truth of the grown-up world. But Dinah was an adult. She knew what it meant.

  Peter said it anyway. “It wasn’t suicide.”

  He saw the muscles in her jaw clench and knot. She grabbed the edges of the seat with her fists and pressed her feet to the floor as if she were setting herself against the waters of a flood. She closed her eyes, turned inward, and took a deep, shuddering breath.

  Then she turned and looked Peter hard in the face. “Tell me everything you know.”<
br />
  He told her about meeting Miss Rosetta Phelps, about Mingus being Jimmy’s dog, about searching Jimmy’s apartment. He told her about the kid with the assault rifle and being grilled by Lipsky. He told her about going back to Lewis’s building, and the fight with Nino and Ray, and how Lewis had promised he would watch her house.

  “I don’t believe it. Lewis said that?”

  Peter nodded. “When you’re a guy like Lewis, all you have is your word. Your own sense of honor.”

  “Lewis is a criminal,” she said. “A criminal and a killer.”

  Jimmy was a killer. It was part of his job description. Peter was a killer, too, and now a criminal. He didn’t bring that up. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Lewis will keep his word.”

  “Lewis will keep his word? You believe that?”

  Peter nodded. “I do. In an uncertain world, honor is very important. Lewis knows that.”

  She looked skeptical.

  “Lewis lives by a code,” said Peter. “You remember how he wouldn’t let Nino and Ray take your money? That’s part of his code. He’s been parked on your street, watching for the man with the scars. Even though I basically twisted his arm to get him there. That’s part of his code, too.”

  Dinah shook her head. She was having trouble with the thought that Lewis might not be entirely bad.

  Peter said, “It’s an old idea, from a time before police and lawyers and contracts. When violence was an everyday occurrence. Living by your word was both a promise and a threat.” He shrugged. “It still works for a certain kind of honorable criminal. And for soldiers.” He gave her a small smile. “Marines, especially.”

  “Like Jimmy,” she said, maybe beginning to understand. “Is that why he moved out?”

  “I think so,” said Peter. “He needed to stand on his own. I think that’s why he started looking for this missing Marine, too.”

  He told her about sorting through Jimmy’s things, about finding the same yellow flier on the wall that was tucked into Jimmy’s belt when he died, and about Felix Castellano and his grandmother.