The Sign Painter

by Davis Bunn

  Bob Denton came out of the office and spoke with him. Amy watched it all through the window. She saw how Drew deflated, then turned and gaped at her through the glass. Her hands were so shaky that she made a squiggly mess of her last rainbow. Fifteen minutes later, Drew pushed through the doors and approached her. Amy tried to plant her brush in the can holding the turpentine and almost turned it over. She clenched her hands and took a very deep breath.

  Then she saw how frightened the salesman was. Drew was bone-pale and extremely nervous. “Look, Ms. Dowell—did I get the name right?”

  “Yes.” She glanced through the showroom window. The entire staff was watching them. Including Bob Denton and the cross woman who was clearing out her desk.

  “That was such a totally dumb move,” the salesman said. “Leaving the cash on my desk. It was a rookie mistake.”

  “Yes. It was.”

  “I gotta tell you, taking all that cash home and giving it to Bob this morning, that was ace.” He fumbled with his wallet.

  “Don’t. Please.”

  “You saved my skin, Ms. Dowell.” His hands shook so hard that he spilled his credit cards at his feet.

  A very curious thing happened then. Amy looked again through the window, really looked, and she realized the people inside were not watching her at all. Their attention was focused on him. Making sure he did the right thing. Seeing this was not what surprised her. Instead, Amy felt as though she looked at the entire world differently. She was no longer the homeless single mother struggling to keep her daughter and make ends meet. She had a home, she had a job, and she had people who were on her side. The sudden calm washed over her like a spring tide. Amy watched him crouch beside where she knelt and gather his credit cards. He had every reason to be nervous. Him. Not her. Amy said, “Mr. Denton already offered me a reward.”

  “Sure, he told me that.” Drew straightened and offered her a sheaf of bills he probably did not even see. “But I want to give—”

  “Thank you. But no.”

  Drew was slender and good-looking, if a lady liked her men flashy and brash and full of themselves. Which Amy definitely did not. He was increasingly tense. Which only heightened Amy’s calm. Reluctantly, he stowed his wallet in his pocket. “Look, about that other thing.”

  Amy took her time rising to her feet. She crossed her arms. Giving him stone. “But there wasn’t any other thing. Was there?”

  Drew struggled to look beyond his own raw nerves. “What?”

  “You forgot to put your money in the company safe. I took it home and brought it back. That’s all there is.” Amy adopted the hard voice she used when she needed to make sure her five-year-old daughter understood her the first time she spoke. “Isn’t that right, Drew?”

  “Unh, yeah, sure, I guess—”

  “There isn’t any guessing here. You were tired. You made a mistake. I helped out. End of story.”

  “Okayyyy.” Drew extended the word so that it lasted through an entire breath. “If you say so.”

  “Yes, Drew. That is exactly what I’m saying.” Amy turned away, satisfied that the message had been received. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m racing the clock here.”

  She returned to painting the window and listened to his footsteps. When the front doors rolled open, he turned and looked back. Amy met his gaze. The man was still confused and worried. Which couldn’t be helped. Amy returned to her painting.

  He knew, and he knew she knew.

  The question was, what should she do next?

  Amy pushed so hard on completing the last windows that she managed to ignore the stares and the comments. And there were a lot of both. Because everyone knew about her returning the cash. The entire sales staff, all the mechanics, even Shirley. The retiring secretary passed Amy several times, and each time she cast a questioning glance. As if the older woman kept asking herself, Why did she do it? Amy had no response to any of them except to keep on working.

  Three hours later, she completed the final window. She collected her belongings and started back toward the side street where she had left her truck. The final payment could wait until tomorrow. She was so exhausted that she stumbled over a crack in the sidewalk. Then she rounded the corner, and in a single heartbeat, she went from half asleep to as awake as she had ever been in her entire life.

  The woman Amy had last seen through the showroom window leaned against her passenger door. The woman wore another designer outfit, skintight and studded with oversize mother-of-pearl buttons. She had the sloe eyes of a Cajun or mestizo and the hard-edged gaze of a killer. She straightened at Amy’s appearance and offered a smile that meant absolutely nothing. “There she is. The lady of the hour.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Oh, I think you know.” The woman had a pro’s walk, sauntering on high heels like she was on display.

  “I don’t want any trouble.”

  “See, that’s what I told my man. He was going on about how he needed to get all up in your face, scare you good, maybe take a few licks. And let me tell you, sister. You get hit by my man, you remember it for a long time.”

  “Get away from my ride.”

  “Sure thing.” The woman took a half step away. “See how agreeable I am?”

  Amy dumped her gear in the camper, furious over how her world had been turned upside down again. And angrier still at the returning sense of helplessness. She slammed the door hard enough to startle the other woman. “I asked you a question.”

  “I’m on your side, girl.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “I’m just making sure there won’t be any mess going down back there at the car place.”

  “I already told you.” Amy crossed her arms in an attempt to stifle the shakes that emerged with each word. “No trouble.”

  “That’s all I needed to hear. See how easy that is?”

  “I don’t even see why we’re talking at all.”

  “Just keeping things cool.” The woman reached inside her jacket pocket. What she drew out froze Amy’s blood.

  The knife had many names. Originally, it was known as a Batangas, or a Balisong, after the region in the Philippines from which it came. On America’s streets, it was known as a butterfly knife. Two years ago, Amy would not have dreamed she would ever know such things. She watched in horror as the woman began the spinning dance that local gangs called flipping or fanning. The dual handles and the blade shimmered in the light. It was like watching a cobra dance.

  The woman smirked. As she turned and walked away, her heels clicked on the sidewalk in time to the blade’s spin. “You have yourself a good day now.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Amy had two cases of the shakes on her way back to the church. The knife flashed, the woman gave her the empty smile, and the tremors worked their way up from her gut and caused the truck to shimmy. She parked over by the apartments, then sat there long enough to bring her breathing under control. This should have been the happiest day she had known in a long while. And that was the face Amy was determined to show her little girl.

  When Amy walked down the hall to the day care, Lucy emerged from her office and said, “Your little one is still napping. How did it go at the dealership?”

  Amy fought down a ferocious urge to tell her what had happened. But there was no way she could tell part of that story. Telling it all meant cops. So all Amy said was “It went okay.”

  Lucy cocked her head. “Something wrong?”

  The fear and the need forced out a tear. “I’m just tired.”

  “Understood. Listen, we have a group that meets here tonight. Friends putting their lives back on the right track. There’s room for one more.”

  Amy was about to refuse, but the urge to find strength from others was too strong. “Let me fix the little one dinner and I’ll see.”

  She entered the day care
and gently lifted her daughter. Her daughter whined over the smell of Amy’s turpentine-stained clothes without fully waking up. Amy unlocked their apartment and settled Kimmie into the big bed, then got in the shower and lingered. The water was gloriously hot and the bathroom was sparkling clean and the towel was fresh. There wasn’t any grime on the floor from other unseen visitors. There was no rust in the water or on the taps, the mirror wasn’t broken, the sink wasn’t stained. Her home.

  She stretched out beside her daughter on the bed and stroked the white-blond hair with her paint-stained fingers, thinking she would lie here just a moment, not long, and then she would get up and make her daughter something to eat. Amy did not expect to sleep, but she was so exhausted that she conked out for almost two hours. When she awoke, Kimmie was playing on the carpet by the coffee table, building another house for the doll she had adopted from the church toy box.

  “Mommy, you’ve been snoring.”

  Amy’s entire body complained from the simple act of sitting up. “Baby, why didn’t you wake me?”

  “ ’Cause you were so sleepy.”

  “But what did you eat for dinner?”

  “Froot Loops.”

  “You made a bowl of cereal all by yourself?”

  “Missy helped.”

  “Who?”

  “Missy!” Kimmie held up the battered doll. “She found the peanut butter, too! And the crackers!”

  Amy rubbed her face, and her eyes focused to where she could see a packet of open saltines on the coffee table, next to a jar of peanut butter with a knife jammed into the contents. The low table and the floor were covered with a colorful array of cracker crumbs and cereal and milk. “Aren’t you my good sweet girl.”

  She cleaned up the remnants of her daughter’s meal while she made herself coffee and a sandwich that she ate standing by the darkened window. Her reflection showed a woman at the very fringe of coming undone. She knew she needed help. But she had spent two grueling years dealing with life alone. It was so hard to ask. Even when people seemed ready to lend a hand.

  Amy put pajamas on her daughter and tucked Kimmie into the narrow bed, pulling the sheets up tight to her chin. “Mommy is going out for a while.”

  “To work?”

  “No, sweetheart. I told you. The job is done. I’m going to church.”

  “To meet with Lucy.”

  “That’s right. And some friends of hers.”

  “I like Lucy.”

  “I like her, too.” Amy set her cell phone down on the little table next to Kimmie’s bed. “If you wake up and need me, what are you going to do?”

  “Turn on the phone and hit redial.”

  “That’s my big girl.” She had dialed in the number to Lucy’s direct line. Amy stroked her daughter’s cheek. “Close your eyes and drift off to dreamland.”

  “It’s quiet here, Mommy. I like it.”

  “I like it, too, honey.” She stayed until her daughter’s breathing changed. Then she rose in stages, for her position had been the same as when she was painting the lower segments of the windows. Her back had stiffened, and her thighs were so tired that they trembled. Even so, she gathered up her keys and purse and softly shut the front door behind her.

  She needed to do this.

  Paul Travers and Granville Burnes spent the day setting up the volunteers, pairing the weak with the strong, ensuring that they could all be relied on to treat the work as real and the threat as genuine. The side wall of Granville’s office now held an elongated flow chart, with teams and assignments running out for the next two weeks. The opposite wall held a hand-drawn map of the neighborhood, a mile to a side, with the church at the center. Known hot spots were noted in red, with codes for what the dots signified in case prying eyes came in for a lookie-loo. Paul had continued to field calls, to no avail. The DEA’s operation climbed the food chain so high that none of his Washington contacts were able to bring a satisfying response as to why there was no movement on an official protest backed up with hard evidence. In fact, two of his allies had come back with the terse instruction that Paul was not to contact them again. Debt or no debt, this was off-limits.

  Granville had not shown any disappointment at Paul’s failure. The former cop apparently had answered whatever doubts he might have been carrying. That afternoon he had led Paul from the church, humming a little tune. As they walked another circuit of the new perimeter, he related what had happened that morning when Amy returned the car dealer’s money. Twice Granville chuckled as he described the encounter and the woman and her tears over a reward she deserved but had not expected.

  They returned to Granville’s car and drove to a Venezuelan café. Granville went inside and returned with coffee and breakfast burritos. That was something Paul missed from his days on the force, the gift of food signifying the stamp of friendship. And the all-day-breakfast routine. Cops worked to their own internal clock. That Granville had not asked Paul if he was even hungry suggested the man was ready to treat Paul as an ally.

  Granville drove back and parked down the street from the drug house, in the opposite direction from the DEA surveillance team. They peeled the tops off the coffee cups and sipped, and unwrapped the burritos. Two men well used to the quiet spaces between words.

  Granville asked, “How much does a new Corvette run these days, eighty thou?”

  “I’ve been thinking the same thing,” Paul replied, and took a bite. There was nothing to compare to a fresh, homemade burrito. His contained two scrambled eggs, chopped tomatoes, white salted cheese, beans, and a bit of spinach. “This is the best meal I’ve had in a long time.”

  “Yeah, they’re addictive.” Granville patted his ample pouch. “Living testimony.”

  “Four hundred and eighty-five thousand dollars,” Paul said. “The amount doesn’t add up.”

  “I asked about that,” Granville said. “The salesman claimed the extra was down payment for a couple of vans.”

  “But the way he left all that money on his desk . . .”

  When Paul didn’t go on, Granville said, “Finish your thought.”

  “The man’s mind was elsewhere,” Paul said. “As in, seriously taken by whatever brought in the cash.”

  “Seriously stoned, more like,” Granville agreed. “This smells like a lot more than just a cash purchase of three very expensive sports cars.”

  “What if the buyers didn’t just waltz in off the street and choose this guy at random?” Paul said, thinking aloud. “What if they had this arranged in advance? And their salesman is known to them. Because he’s a client for the dope they’re dealing. So they come in, they buy the cars, they leave a lot more cash than the cars are worth. But by this time, the salesman has taken a couple of trips outside with his clients, and they’ve done a lot more than race the car engines. So he’s well and truly toasted, and he leaves the cash there on his desk.”

  “It’s the only reason I’ve come up with for how that money ended up lying there,” Granville agreed.

  “Which brings us to the question you don’t want to ask yourself.” Paul finished his burrito and wished there were more. “If they’re laundering money, it’s going to take more than the one inside guy.”

  “Which is why I wanted to see Amy hand the money back,” Granville confirmed. “I’ve known Bob Denton since my early days on the force. He’s totally stand-up. We’ve been through a lot. The loss of both our wives, problems with his only son. He’s the only civvie I’ve ever talked with about my bad days on the force.”

  “How did it look to you?”

  “He was caught completely off guard. There was nothing behind the surprise except gratitude. I’d stake my pension on Bob Denton being totally clean.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  Granville nodded slowly, as though he had been wondering the same thing and had come to a decision. “I need to swing by the
station, have a word with an old pal. Want to come along for the ride?”

  The city of Brentonville hid its beauty well. The northern part, the section where the church was located, merged into the sullen underbelly of Orlando. But farther south stood an entirely different town. The traffic slowed; the roads became lined by trees and blooming hedges. The homes were as well tended as the lawns. Paul lowered his window and listened to birdsong and children’s laughter. In the distance he glimpsed the glistening waters of a palm-lined lake.

  They entered an old-fashioned business district. People strolled and chatted. Granville pulled into a spot on the street and fed the meter. A pair of English spaniels on leashes offered Paul a tail-wagging welcome while the woman leading them spoke with Granville. He introduced her as a member of his Sunday school class. Paul did not catch her name. She invited Paul to join them the next day and departed. The dogs sniffed his hand one final time and trotted along beside her. Paul asked, “You teach Sunday school?”

  “The other guy kicked the bucket. They asked. I’ve always had trouble saying no to the church.”

  They walked the entire three blocks of the business district, then crossed the street and retraced their steps. Paul knew the purpose was to introduce him to Granville’s home, the town under threat, the reason the man would remain a cop as long as he drew breath. Paul liked Granville even more for taking the trouble to explain without words.

  The police station was tucked down a side street, hidden from the shopping district by the courthouse and the city’s largest office building. Granville greeted officers with the ease of a cop who’d never truly left the force. They were buzzed through the back door, walked a hall past offices and interview chambers, and entered the bullpen. Granville led Paul to a desk by a window and introduced him to Consuela Sanchez. The detective was compact and sturdy and examined Paul with a pro’s cold distance.

  Granville said to Paul, “Tell her what you’re thinking.”