The Sign Painter

by Davis Bunn

  Paul knew the former cop did not need him to detail the past twenty-four hours. Granville was using this as an opportunity for his ally on the force to make her own assessment of this stranger. Paul gave it to her in terse bites—the frustrating calls to Washington, the contact with Amy Dowell, the money, the questions.

  When he was done, Consuela continued to study him. She wore her hair as short as a man’s, which accented the strong angle to her jaw and the sharp slant to her dark eyes. “You were a cop?”

  “Federal agent. Based in Baltimore. Five years.”

  “You mind if I make a few calls of my own?”

  “It’s what I’d do.”

  “So why’d you leave the force?”

  He gave her the bare minimum. “Took a bullet. Medical discharge. Burnout and a bad divorce.”

  “Sorry.”

  He nodded, glad she did not press.

  “So now, what, you go around helping out churches with problems?”

  “Something like that.”

  Consuela tapped her pen on the notepad. “It doesn’t add up. Four hundred and eighty-five thousand dollars isn’t enough of a reason for the feds to shut us out.”

  Paul liked how she honed in on the one crucial element. It meant she accepted him, at least enough to discuss the case. “That’s been bothering me, too.”

  “I’ll ask around, see if anyone’s heard something about Denton Chevrolet being linked to the money flow.”

  “But discreetly,” Granville warned. “We don’t want to spook them.”

  “You trained me, remember?” She rose to her feet and said to Paul, “That was smart, forming a ring of guards around the church and moving outward.”

  “Thanks.” Paul shook her hand, which was surprisingly small and hard as granite. “Sooner or later, we’re going to step on the DEA’s toes.”

  Her smile was there and gone in an instant. “I’m counting on it. And I want to be there when it happens.”

  The two men wound their way back through the station and out the main exit. Granville settled behind the wheel, started the car, then hesitated, showing uncertainty for the first time that day. “You got anything planned for tonight?”

  “I thought I’d walk the beat, check on the teams, grab a bite.”

  “This isn’t work-related. Lucy runs a group at the church; they meet three evenings a week.”

  “You mean like AA?”

  “Same tactic, different issue. I’ve been attending for a couple of months. The aim is to help folks who’ve gone through a hard time get their life back on track.” He pulled the keys from the ignition and rolled them like worry beads. “I lost my wife four years ago. Spent a long time pretending I could handle it alone. Too long. The group’s helped me a lot. I just thought—”

  “You thought right,” Paul said, surprising them both. “I’d like to come. A lot.”

  CHAPTER 11

  But as the time approached, Paul became increasingly unsettled. It was one thing to hear a fellow cop talk about opening up to friends; it was another to actually do it himself. Paul had never been good at confession, not even to his wife. Every agent he knew was taciturn when it came to work and personal issues. The two seemed to go together. Frontline forces learned never to discuss their work at home. Opening up about the experiences meant sharing the risks they took. And their spouses and families were already worried. So they didn’t talk. Clamming up became second nature. So what was he doing, agreeing to come to this session?

  The answer was simple enough: His life wasn’t working.

  He felt good about projects like this one. His disability pension was enough to cover his living expenses. His ex-wife was remarried to an orthodontist; they had a daughter and another child on the way. She had never been one to pester him, and occasionally they chatted like people who once were friends. Paul knew he’d been the problem. He was drifting. And not just from city to city, job to job. His work only reflected his restless nature. In the dark hours when he could not sleep, he felt the gnawing hunger of an unfulfilled life. That was why he had agreed to join Granville. He was desperate for answers.

  But as he followed Granville down the church hall, he wished he had shown the good sense to stay away.

  Paul’s misgivings were made worse when Lucy hit him with her heat-seeking gaze before he even entered the room. She rose and halted them both with an angry “What’s going on here?”

  Granville Burnes replied, “I invited him. Paul accepted. End of story.”

  “No, it’s not.” She crossed her arms. “There are no outside visitors in this group. No spectators.”

  “I understand.”

  “So tell me, Paul, I’m interested in why you think you belong here.”

  Paul knew this confrontation was mostly for the benefit of the others in the room. Lucy wanted them to see he had to earn the right to join them. And do so against her wishes.

  He said, “This group wants to get their lives back together. So do I.”

  She tightened her gaze. “For real?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right.” She pointed him to a lonely chair at the table’s far end. “Take a seat there.”

  “Lucy,” Granville groused. “Give the guy a break.”

  “He’s here. That’s all the break he’s getting.” She remained standing as Paul seated himself. “That’s what we call the hot seat. You get to shine tonight. Explain to everybody why you think you deserve to be here.” She waved her hand at the others. “They get to tell you what they think.”

  About thirty people crowded around the table and lined the three walls. His side of the table held only one chair. The rest of the people sat shoulder to shoulder. Thirty pairs of eyes gazed at him with overt suspicion. Paul said, “Four years ago I was shot in the line of duty.”

  A hard-faced black man with a voice as deep as a well asked, “You were a cop?”

  “Federal agent.”

  “Same thing,” a woman muttered. “One cop is enough.”

  Granville shook his head, his acne-scarred cheeks ruddy with genuine irritation. But he didn’t speak.

  Paul went on. “My wife left me. She said she wasn’t going to hang around and wait until the next bullet took me out. I spent the next six months hooked on prescription painkillers. Lost my job to a medical discharge. Didn’t care.” He had to stop and push through a couple of hard breaths. “I had no idea what to do. But I knew if I didn’t find something, I’d swallow either a bottle of the drugs or my gun.”

  Lucy’s tone softened a fraction. “So you started working for churches.”

  “That’s right. I had a friend who was the pastor of an inner-city Baltimore church. He saw me through my divorce. Some days it felt like he was the only person I could talk to. He urged me to find a new direction. Not forget the past, but . . .”

  The black man said, “Find a new balance.”

  Paul nodded slowly, giving his body time to release some of the tension. He tried to tell himself it was right to do this. Confess. Open up. With strangers. Do the impossible—ask for help. “There was a youth ministry run by a friend of his. The pastor suspected his own assistant of drug dealing. And enlisting the kids in their racket.”

  “Man, that is cold,” Granville said.

  “I helped them take care of things,” Paul said.

  “Quietly,” Granville said, looking at Lucy. “Nobody needed to know the problem even existed.”

  “He had a pal in another church with another problem,” Paul went on. “And another. And another.”

  “And now you’re here,” Lucy said.

  “Yes. I am. And I’ve already got another place that needs me when I’m done here.”

  The black man had the build of a boxer on the wrong end of too many losses. “How many times you done this, man?”

  “This is
the eighth church.”

  “Is there anybody else doing what you do?”

  “I don’t know of any. But there should be.”

  “That’s not what brought you here tonight, is it?” Lucy said. “This isn’t about problems at churches.”

  “No.”

  “So tell us the real reason, Paul.”

  “I’m doing what’s right. I’ve got a job I can get my teeth into. But it’s not a life. I feel like I’m drifting from one place to another. I live on the job, but at night, when I go back to my motel room, I turn on the television, and I have no idea what I’m watching. I eat a meal that I don’t taste. I sleep sometimes. I get up, I get on with the job. And when it’s done—”

  “There ain’t nothing,” the black man said, nodding. “But another dark cave some folks call a life.”

  Paul found the strength to look up. And found his gaze held not by the man who spoke but by the woman who sat next to him.

  Amy Dowell wore an oversize sweatshirt, one large enough for her to pull out and over her knees, tucking her legs up onto the chair with her. She drew the sleeves down so that they covered all but her fingernails. She wrapped her arms around her shins, and she rested her chin upon her knees. She watched him intently, her eyes the pale blue of a rain-washed dawn.

  He realized Lucy had spoken to him. “I’m sorry. I don’t . . .”

  “I asked what you wanted from life.”

  It was the issue he had spent too many months avoiding. “That’s just it,” Paul said. He heard the crack in his voice and found that for once he did not mind. “I don’t know.”

  “Which is why you’re here.”

  “I need to know this. I need to understand what comes next. I need to figure out how to . . .”

  “How to live,” the black man said.

  “Yes.”

  “How to really live. How to live like tomorrow means something.”

  “I’ve tried to do this alone. And it doesn’t work.” Paul’s voice sounded strange to his own ears, as if it had marched on through time, leading him forward to the point where all the wasted days waited to condemn his futile efforts. “I need help.” He sat and sweated and stared at the table between his fists. His whole body felt pummeled, as if he had spent the past few minutes beating at himself.

  Then a soft voice from the table’s other end said, “I need help, too. With something really private.”

  CHAPTER 12

  After Lucy had given the closing prayer and dismissed the class, Amy asked if Paul and Granville would remain behind. The whole time she talked, she kept her gaze locked on Paul. No one spoke. Paul found no need to ask questions. The only suggestion he made came right at the start. Amy spoke in fragments, as if the tension in her voice were reflected in fearful bursts of thought. So Paul asked her to go back and start at the beginning. From the moment she first saw the cash.

  It was a favorite tactic of many interrogators when dealing with a witness who was so frightened that the events came out disjointed. Taking it from the top opened the conversation and revealed discrepancies. Which Paul doubted they would hear in Amy’s words. He was quite certain she was telling the truth. But forming a time line was crucial in establishing a probable chain of guilt, and of evidence.

  They sat around the oval conference table. Amy and Lucy sat on one side. Paul sat with his back to the windows overlooking the internal hallway. Granville sprawled two seats farther down, his hands laced over his ample belly. On the surface, Granville looked like a rumpled bear. But his eyes glowed fiercely. Paul knew that light: It was a hunter’s gleam, burning when the prey came in sight. Paul felt exactly the same way.

  When Amy went silent, Granville shifted, making his chair squeak. “Let me make sure I got this straight. You see the cash lying there. The guy’s desk—What’s his name again?”

  “Drew.”

  “Last name?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Drew’s desk is over in the corner of the showroom. Right or left?”

  “Looking through the front window, his desk is to the right.”

  “The cleaners haven’t gotten there yet. But they will. So you rush in and grab the loot, and when you do, you find yourself staring at a white powder residue.”

  “More than a residue. The desk looked like a countertop where the flour has been shaped around making cookies.”

  “So you decide the only thing to do is to sweep up the powder with the cash.”

  “Did I do wrong?”

  “No,” Paul replied. “Not at all. You did exactly right. Leaving it would signify that whoever holds the cash has seen too much.”

  “If the man was so stoned that he left almost five hundred grand behind, he won’t be certain of anything.” Granville kept up an easy rumble, as if taking a verbal stroll through the park. “So you’ve still got it, right? The white stuff.”

  “Yes.” Amy’s attention remained focused intently on Paul. As though she could speak at all only because of him. He wasn’t sure how it connected to his confession, but he was certain the two were linked. Even though the act of revealing himself left his throat and heart raw, he was glad he had opened up. Amy’s gaze was unwavering, almost unblinking. Even now, with Granville leading her through a recap, she watched Paul. As though he were the only man who mattered.

  Paul asked, “Is it still in your backpack?”

  “No. I cleaned it out. I use my pack all the time to carry my personal effects. I collected all the powder I could, then I wiped down the pack. Twice.”

  “Where is the white stuff now?”

  “In my pocket.” She was talking faster. “Lucy said no drugs. So I kept it in the camper. I knew I was going to have to tell somebody. But I just needed a little time, I don’t know . . .”

  Lucy said softly, “Amy, you haven’t done a single thing wrong.”

  A tear escaped. “I like it here so much.”

  “I’m glad. You know why?” Lucy reached over and took hold of her hand. “This is your home.”

  Granville asked, “Can I have the white stuff, please?”

  Amy used her free hand to pull out a small plastic bag and slide it across the table.

  “Thank you, Amy.” Granville made the packet disappear. He eased farther into his chair and tilted his chin until he was addressing the ceiling. As though the room were not crowded with Amy’s tension. “So you go back to work today. And this salesman rushes in, searches his desk, talks to Bob, then comes out and offers you cash.”

  “Which I refused. I couldn’t take it. I just couldn’t.”

  Lucy asked, “Does that make a problem?”

  Granville pursed his lips, then decided, “I suspect old Drew is so grateful to have his cash back, he’s convinced his world is just golden.”

  Amy said, “I told him there was nothing else to discuss. Ever.”

  “That’s right. You did good.” Granville kept talking to the overhead lights. “So you finish the last window. And you walk back to your camper, which is parked . . .”

  “One street to the north.”

  “And there’s a lady of the night there waiting for you. You’re sure she was the same one you saw in the showroom buying the ’Vettes?”

  “She didn’t buy them. The guys did.”

  “You said that already. Good. But you’re sure it’s her. Even though the desk was . . . how far away from where you were painting?”

  “Across the showroom. But she came over and spoke to me.”

  Granville’s head came back down. “You didn’t say that before.”

  “She spoke to me through the window. But I understood. Every word.”

  “What did she say?”

  Amy kept looking at Paul as she repeated, “‘Girl, what are you waiting for?’ ”

  Paul could see how close she
was to the edge. They had all they needed for the moment. And there was something more that had to be done that night. He rose to his feet and said quietly, “Thank you, Amy. What you’ve given us may just be the key.”

  “It’s all coming together,” Granville agreed. “Thanks to you.”

  Paul went on, “I really appreciate this gift of trust.”

  Another tear escaped. Her lips trembled so hard that she mangled the words. “Protect me and my baby. Please.”

  “That is my first duty,” Paul replied. “I’m just a guy trying to help out a church. And you’re part of this. You and your daughter.”

  “But . . . what can you do?”

  He turned to Lucy. “If there’s an apartment available, I’d like to move in. Tonight.”

  Lucy was already up and moving before he finished speaking. “Outside. Now.”

  Lucy led him down the hall far enough to block them from the pair still seated at the conference table. She stepped in close, so Paul could see the glowing embers in her dark eyes. She said, “I can’t have you preying on my people.”

  He could not have been more surprised if she had reached out and slapped him. “What are you talking about?”

  “Amy. And don’t give me that innocent tone.”

  “She isn’t—That’s not it at all.”

  “You didn’t think I’d notice how you two scoped each other out in there?”

  “I’m not chasing the lady.”

  “That’s right. You’re not. My people are at their most vulnerable when they come in here. The worst thing, the absolute worst thing that could happen, would be for her to find some strong, dark knight who offers to make everything right in her world. Because you’re not staying. You’ll do this job, and then you’ll leave. And she’ll realize you were just another vulture, only dressed in nicer clothes and talking church talk. And she will think she’s not safe here even in the church. She’ll decide she’s destined to be prey for the rest of her life. She’ll strop trusting. And I won’t have that. You are not becoming part of that woman’s problem.”

  “Lucy, you’ve got to believe me. Going after Amy is the last thing on my mind.”