If She Wakes

by Michael Koryta

  “I don’t want to impose on you, sir. I can tell you’ve got better things to do.” This was smart-ass, but he plowed on past it so fast that Sam didn’t have a chance to retort. “I’m just doing my job, which requires hassling you about a couple of cars that you towed in here from up by Hammel College a few days ago.”

  “Shit.” Sam drank more of the beer. He was tired of those cars from the college. They were costing him more in headaches than they were worth in dollars. “They send you to take the pictures?”

  The kid cocked his head. “Did who send me?”

  “The gal I gave the phones to, she said she was coming back for pictures.”

  The kid didn’t move his head, didn’t change expression, didn’t so much as blink, and yet Sam felt a strangeness come off him like an electric pulse.

  “Who was this?”

  “I don’t remember,” Sam said, and that wasn’t a lie. He was always awful with names and even worse when he wasn’t interested.

  “Police?”

  “Insurance, I think. She gave me a card.”

  Sam drained the beer and shook the empty can with regret, and he was just about to tell the kid that he had an appointment with a slice of pepperoni pizza when the kid said, “You like whiskey?”

  Did Savage Sam Jones like whiskey? He almost laughed aloud. It had been a number of years since he’d heard that question. He was about to shout back, Does Hugh Hefner like big tits? but then he recalled his business decorum. That and the fact that Hugh was dead and this kid might not have the faintest idea who the man was or why glossy magazines had ever been needed. The damned internet had spoiled these kids.

  “Does the pope shit in a funny hat?” Sam asked instead, figuring even a youngster could follow that old gem, and the kid grinned as he approached. He had a backpack slung over one shoulder and he didn’t look like any trouble. Just lazy, that was all. You could tell that by the way he dressed, way he moved, everything. All these damned kids were lazy now, though. If he was here looking for car parts and asking about whiskey, why, he couldn’t be as bad as most of them.

  “I’ve got a bottle I might share with you, then,” he said, and Sam squinted at him. This was more intriguing—and concerning. Was he some sort of street preacher? Was the whiskey a ruse entirely? If the kid got to carrying on about the spirit and the soul, that was not going to go well. It would go even worse if he was trying to sell some homebrew small-batch bullshit.

  What he produced, though, was good old-fashioned American Jack Daniel’s. It was hard to argue with that. Granted, it was a higher-dollar version, something called Gentleman Jack, but Sam had seen it at Walmart and so he knew it could be trusted.

  “What do you want, son?” he said. He didn’t mind the kid, and he surely wouldn’t mind the whiskey, but he also didn’t drink with strangers who showed up at five—well, close to five, anyhow—on a workday.

  “Just a bit of your time. I can pour you a drink if you listen to me for a few minutes.”

  Sam looked at him and then at the bottle, and then he pictured the pizza slices spinning their slow dance in the warming oven on the corner store’s counter. It would be twenty minutes at least until there were fresh slices in there.

  “Who’d you say you worked for?” he asked.

  “I didn’t,” the kid said, and smiled. “But I promise I’ll be less trouble than any of the rest of them.”

  “Rest of who?”

  “The people who are asking about those cars and the phones.”

  “Son, I only towed ’em in here. I didn’t witness the damn wreck, and I don’t have the damn phone.”

  “But there was a phone in the car?”

  Sam wasn’t sure whether he liked this kid or not. He smiled an awful lot, but the smile seemed to belong to an inside joke, which was strange considering it was only the two of them here and Sam didn’t get the joke. “I don’t know,” Sam said. “Go call the cop who called me and ask him—”

  “I don’t think we should call the cops,” the kid said. “I think we should have a drink and talk. Because you made a mistake, Mr. Jones. You shouldn’t have given that phone away to anyone who didn’t have a badge. She had to have been aware of the trouble she was getting you into, and you’re telling me she didn’t warn you?”

  “Shit, no!” Sam was uneasy now, thinking of the number of phones he’d entrusted to the blond gal.

  The kid made a disappointed sound and shook his head. “I know her type, all friendly talk, winking at you and then somehow leaving with property she doesn’t have any right to, and when the cops show—and they will—the cops will have heard an entirely different story than the one you were told. There’ll be petty charges, maybe, but what’s petty when it’s your own life and your business?”

  Shit, shit, shit, Sam thought. Sam did not want to appear in court, and he said as much now.

  The kid nodded sympathetically and said, “I think we can keep it from going that way.”

  “You can? What’re you, my Boy Scout representative?”

  The kid smiled. “You know, that’s not far off, really. I was raised to know what to do in the woods, that’s for sure. I can still start a fire in the rain.”

  “All due respect, but I wouldn’t mind seeing your boss. Just to talk to somebody at the top, you know?”

  “I’ve been involved in my father’s business since I was very young,” the kid said. “It’s a tricky line of work, and training starts early. I worked with my father, worked with my uncle. I know I look young, sir, but I assure you I know how to handle a situation like this.”

  Sam thought he’d probably just heard gospel. Immature and lazy as the kid looked, he talked a mighty fine game, said the right things and said them firmly. And, hell, he was a worker. That mattered. Most kids these days didn’t show any ambition at all.

  “More I listen to you, and the more I think on it, you’re right, it could get pretty bad,” Sam said. “Got one dead and one with no more brain activity than a head of lettuce, and you just know there’s going to be lawsuits coming out of that. Don’t matter that the Mexican hit them, he ain’t got no money, so they’ll find—”

  “The Mexican—” the kid began, and Sam interrupted hastily.

  “I don’t want you thinking I’m racist or nothing, it’s just, my understanding was that he was some kind of Mexican.”

  “Correct,” the kid said with the barest hint of a smile, most of it lost to the shadows his black baseball cap cast over his face. “He was indeed some kind of Mexican, and now he’s the dead kind. He was murdered outside of Boston, I’m told.”

  Sam gaped. Murdered. That was not a word Savage Sam wanted to hear in connection to any of the cars he towed, even when they were for the police. Murder cases were unholy messes. His sister-in-law over in York County had to serve on the jury of a murder trial once, and it lasted most of a month. Now, she did say the lunches were pretty decent, and the case was interesting, kind of like TV, but Sam had no desire to get wrapped up with anything that could get him on the witness stand. Once he got to explaining those phones…

  “It’ll be a damned turkey shoot,” he grumbled aloud. “I shouldn’t have given the phones to that gal. If she was a cop, maybe. But she promised she’d get them to the police. That ain’t gonna sound real good when I say it, though, is it?”

  The kid gave him a sympathetic look and didn’t answer. Sam lifted the PBR to his lips and then remembered it was already empty.

  “What if I could get them back for you?” the kid asked. He’d walked right up to the front porch steps now. Just a child, and yet he talked with such authority that Sam might’ve believed he was a cop. “Once I understand the details of the situation, I can make sure that your property is returned and that the woman who pulled this fast one on you won’t bother you anymore. By the end, she’ll be more afraid of the police than you will. As she should be.”

  “Hell, yes, as she should be,” Sam said, beginning to think it was a damned good thing that th
is kid had pulled in when he did. Just ten minutes later, and Sam would’ve been settled at his booth down at the store, a couple pieces of old pizza on paper plates in front of him.

  “Let’s have a drink,” the kid said, “and you can talk me through it. Unless, of course, you don’t drink on the job?”

  Sam answered with a snort and crushed the empty PBR can beneath his dusty work boot. “I expect I can get a couple fingers of that sippin’ whiskey down just fine.”

  The kid grinned. “I’m glad to hear it.”

  Sam turned to the door. The keys were still in the lock. He took them out and then swung the door open and held it so the kid could pass through.

  “A few more minutes and I’d have missed you,” he said. “Now I’ve got help and whiskey.”

  “Lucky break.”

  “So which side of the show are you working for? The girl’s family or the dead Mexican fella’s? Or the first dead guy’s? Shit, almost forgot about him. Lot of death around that wreck.”

  “There sure was,” the kid said. “Say, do you have any glasses?”

  Sam got so distracted by searching for clean glasses that he forgot the kid hadn’t answered the question about who he was working for. He found glasses and sat down behind the desk. The old chair wheezed beneath him, and dust rose, but the cushions were crushed down to the shape of his frame now, still plenty comfortable. Customized, you might say.

  “There you go,” he said, sliding the glasses across the desk. The kid poured him a nice healthy shot, three fingers, maybe four. Sam almost told him to stop, but what the hell. He didn’t want to come across as a doddering old-timer who couldn’t handle his liquor.

  The kid sat back and capped the bottle. Sam frowned. “Ain’t gonna have any?”

  “Drinking on the job is high-risk, according to my father.”

  “Well, hell, now I feel like you’re getting me drunk just to get me talkin’,” Sam said, and he was only half joking.

  The kid must’ve seen that because he said, “Tell you what—I’d do a beer if you’ve got any more of those around.”

  “Sure.” Sam fetched him a tallboy can of PBR, and the kid drank this without hesitation, which put Sam at ease.

  The whiskey went down with a smooth burn and a faint tang. Sam pulled the bottle closer and tilted it one way and his head the other so they aligned in a fashion that allowed him to read without his bifocals.

  “Gentleman Jack,” he said. “Not bad, but what was wrong with just the good old stuff? Why’s it always gotta be changing?”

  The kid bowed his head and said, “Ah, that’s a sentimental thing, really. My father’s name was Jack. He was a gentleman too. A charmer, sir. People who made it through a whole day or a whole night with him, they always loved him.”

  Now, this was something Savage Sam Jones could embrace, a kid who cared about his father. For all the bullshit you heard about these kids and their cell phone addictions and electric cigarettes and liberal notions, it was reassuring to know there were still some good ones.

  “That’s real nice,” Sam said, and that’s when it hit him—the kid had said his father’s name was Jack. “Oh, man. He’s gone, isn’t he?”

  The kid nodded.

  “I’m truly sorry to hear it. I lost my old man too young too. What happened to yours?”

  The kid lifted his head and stared at Sam with flat eyes. “He burned up in a forest fire in Montana.”

  “Shit,” Sam breathed. “A real damned hero. I’m sorry for your loss, but at least you know he went down doing righteous work. I hope you think about that.”

  “Oh, I do, sir. I think about that often. Matter of fact…” He rose, uncapped the whiskey, and refilled Sam’s glass. “Maybe a toast to him, if you don’t mind? Fire season’s done here, but out in California and Arizona, they’ve still got men on the lines.”

  Sam lifted his glass. “To heroes,” he said. “To men like your father.”

  “To my father,” the kid said, and he clinked his PBR can off Sam’s glass and drank.

  The whiskey tasted fine, but, boy, it snuck up on you too. After just two shots of the stuff—well, two pretty stiff pours—Savage Sam Jones was fighting to keep his vision clear and his words from slurring.

  “So what can you tell me about this woman who came to get the phone from you?” the kid said.

  Sam told him everything there was to tell. He explained his habit of scouring cars for items of potential value and his immediate quest to notify the owner when such a thing was found. He explained how if nobody claimed their shit within thirty days, then you could hardly be expected to imagine they cared about its fate, and so he’d been known to take it down to his brother’s pawnshop a time or two. This kid listened respectfully and didn’t give any of the wry smiles like the blond gal.

  As his whiskey glass was refilled and went back down, he decided to give this polite kid with the dead-hero father a little more of the truth.

  “It was actually in the glove compartment,” he said. “But like I said, I always give a careful look. Situation like that, where people get hurt, people die? Those sentimental things sometimes really matter to people.” He leaned back and waved his glass at the kid. “Hell, you know all about that, with what your dad did. You got anything like that left from him?”

  The kid hesitated, and Sam wondered if it was too fresh, if he’d touched a wound that hadn’t yet healed. But finally the kid nodded. “More than a few things,” he said. “Most of them, I keep here.” He touched his temple, then tapped his heart, and Sam nodded sagely.

  “Well, sure. Of course. I just mean some people like to have a tangible…”

  He stopped talking when the kid brought the gun out.

  It was a revolver, a Ruger maybe, with black grips and a blackened muzzle and bore but chrome cylinders for the bullets. It was a beautiful gun, and a mean one. Any fine-looking weapon was a frightening one. People hadn’t fallen in love with those friggin’ AR-15s because they were ugly guns. They looked the part. Hold one and look in the mirror and you felt the part. Problem was, that got in some people’s heads. Some children’s heads, for that matter.

  “You just carry that with you, do you?” Sam said, and he didn’t like how unsteady his voice sounded. He’d been around guns all his life. Why did this one scare him?

  “Yeah, I guess.” The kid pocketed it again, and while Sam was glad it was out of sight, he was aware of how natural it fit in the kid’s hand.

  “Where are you from?” Sam asked.

  “All over. Moved around a lot, growing up.”

  “Because of the fires,” Sam said, thinking of the kid’s dead father. “They don’t stay in one place, nice and tidy, do they?”

  The kid smiled. “No,” he said. “Fires tend to move around.” He started to pour again, and Sam waved him off, because at this point if he tried to drive even as far as the corner store for pizza, he’d be taking a hell of a chance. His vision was blurring in a way it usually didn’t from whiskey.

  “Aw, come on,” the kid said. “Just one more, for my dad. His burned bones are on some mountain out there I’ve never seen. Right now, they’re probably already under a blanket of snow. Have a drink for him, would you, sir?”

  How could you say no to that? A kid asking you to toast to his dead father’s bones, burned black by fire and now buried by snow, and the kid was offering his own whiskey, and you were going to say no? That didn’t seem right.

  “Pour it,” Sam said.

  The kid poured it tall again, but what the hell. If Sam needed to doze off here in the chair for an hour or two until he was ready to get behind the wheel, that was fine. He’d done it before. He saw no reason to be troubled by his heavy eyelids.

  “The card?” the kid asked loudly.

  “Huh?” Sam jerked upright. He realized he’d actually been on the way to sleep, and he’d let his eyes close.

  “You said you couldn’t remember the woman’s name, the one you gave all of the phones to, but that
she left a card.”

  “Oh, shit. Yes. Yes, she did.” Sam tried to stand, but he was woozy. Damn, that new Jack Daniel’s had a different kind of kick to it. Sneaky as a snake in the grass. He’d stick to the old classic in the future. He fumbled around on the shelf behind the desk and then he turned around, triumphant, the card held high.

  “Here ya go.” He tossed it on the desk so the kid could read it. No way Sam could pick the words out of that blur, not now.

  “‘Hank Bauer, Coastal Claims and Investigations,’” the kid read. “Hank was a woman?”

  “No, but that’s the card she left. She must work for him. She wasn’t as young as you, but not very far from it either. Maybe thirty. Tiny little thing, with blond hair. She was decent, I suppose, but she might be a smart-ass. And like you said, she should’ve left the…the…uh…” Sam couldn’t keep his thoughts steady, and he was beginning to sweat. “It should’ve been the police that came, is what I mean.”

  “Sure. Well, Mr. Jones, consider your problems solved. I’ll take care of this whole matter, and I’ll do it discreetly.”

  Sam tried to nod. Tried to say thank you. Instead he felt his eyes close, and this time he didn’t fight them.

  “That’s some damn strong liquor,” he said, and the words were hard to form and seemed to echo in his own ears.

  “It’s a proprietary blend,” the kid said. “I add a little custom touch to it.”

  Wish you’d mentioned that earlier, Savage Sam Jones thought but didn’t say, couldn’t say. His eyes were still closed, and he felt his head lolling forward on a suddenly slackening neck.

  I need some water, he thought. I need some help.

  When Savage Sam Jones slumped forward in his chair, Dax Blackwell didn’t move. He waited a few minutes, calm and patient, before pulling on thin gloves and checking for a pulse.

  Nothing. The old man’s flesh was already cooling. His heart had stopped.

  Long after he was certain of this, Dax Blackwell kept his hand on the man’s wrist and his gaze on the man’s closed eyes. He studied the tableau of death where life had flourished just minutes ago, until Dax’s arrival on the doorstep of this man now turned corpse.