by S. J. Rozan
“Oh, man—”
“Don’t start that shit, Jimmy!” I slammed my beer down on the table. “Here’s what happened last night: someone cracked me on the head, left me lying in the woods in the rain. That I’m not dead is pretty much an accident. And someone tore up a shed belonging to a friend of mine. I want to know why. And someone drove your truck off the road into the ravine.”
He paled. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“It’s what I said the other night: this is no goddamn game, not anymore.”
“Game,” he muttered. He shook his head. “Are—are you okay?”
“No. My head is killing me, my shoulder’s sore, I’m stiff, I’m tired, and I’m generally pissed off. So now tell me, Jimmy, it’s Ginny who had the truck, isn’t it?”
He shook a Salem from the pack in his parka. “Yeah.” He lit it, looked at me in silence, as though he didn’t want the answer to the question he was about to ask.
“There was no one in it,” I told him.
He let out a breath, nodded. “Jesus,” he said.
“Since when has she had it?” I asked.
“Last week. Thursday, I think.”
“You think?”
“Some time Wednesday night, Thursday morning.”
“Right after she told you she didn’t want to see you anymore? What the hell did you give her your truck for, if she was kissing you off?”
He dragged on the cigarette, blew smoke into the cold room. “I didn’t. She has her own keys. I gave her a set. Well, loaned them to her. The ones on the silver ring.” He looked up at me. “She loves that truck, man. She loves to drive it. She’s so little, it’s so big. She gets a real charge out of that truck. When it was missing, I knew that’s who took it.”
“So she took it, and she’s had it a week, and you didn’t do anything about it?”
“What the hell was I supposed to do, report it stolen? She’s fifteen, man. And her father, he thinks she’s a fucking saint. He’d kill her if she was in trouble with the law.”
“That’s why she hangs around with guys like you?”
He shrugged. “Just because he thinks she’s a saint, that don’t make her one. Maybe if he got to know her a little better she wouldn’t run around looking for trouble to get into.” He hesitated. “Mr. S.? What about my truck?”
“From what Brinkman says, it was totaled.”
“Shit.” He shook his head slowly, gave a short laugh. “Ain’t that a kick in the ass?”
“Jimmy,” I said, “there was blood in the cab. And a nine-millimeter automatic.”
“A gun? In my truck?”
“And I’d bet the rent it’s the one that killed Wally Gould.”
“Oh, Jesus.”
“Yeah. Whose is it?”
“Please, man. Please. You gotta believe me. I don’t know whose it is. It’s not mine.”
“Do you have one? A handgun, any kind?”
He shook his head. “Just the rifle. It’s all I ever owned. Ever.” He glanced at the Winchester standing against the wall. “Tony gave it to me. A long time ago.”
“I know, Jimmy.”
“I’d’ve told you,” he said. “About Ginny. I almost did. But when you said about my keys being at the bar . . .”
“Jimmy,” I said, “I know you’re trying to protect her, but you’re not doing her a favor. I saw her last night.”
“Ginny?”
I nodded.
“So what’re you asking me about the goddamn truck for? You knew she had it.”
“No. She was in her car. I didn’t find her, she came and found me, at the bar. She wouldn’t tell me about the truck. Unless,” I said, “I told her where to find you.”
“Find me?” He had the look of a man trying to make sense of the half-remembered incidents in a dream. “Ginny wanted to find me? What the hell for?”
I drank some beer; it just made the cold room colder. “Any ideas?”
He shrugged wearily. “Frank. You said Frank was looking for me. She’s always trying to impress fucking Frank, he’s always telling her go away and leave him alone. Maybe she thought if she found me, that would work.”
I looked around the room, the wavering lamp flame, Lydia in black leather at the dusty window. “Jimmy,” I said, “remember I told you Eve Colgate was robbed?”
He nodded.
I said, “Someone made a real mess in a shed on her farm last night. I was on my way to see what was going on when I was hit.”
“I don’t get it. Who hit you?”
I gave him the short version. When I was through he didn’t move, didn’t speak. Finally he said, through tight lips, “Jesus, man. You could’ve been killed.”
“Yeah. By whom, Jimmy?”
He rubbed his grimy face. “Honest to God, Mr. S., I don’t know,” he said. “But if I find out, I’ll kill him. I swear I will.”
I laughed, shook my head.
Jimmy looked at me in surprise. He smiled weakly. Lydia, looking over, smiled too.
“Jimmy, listen, what about the burglary?”
He gave me a blank look. “What about it?”
“Could Ginny have done that?”
He shrugged. “I guess she could have. She’s always trying to prove she’s tough. Bad, you know. Like she smokes Camels, without filters. She could’ve done it to show, like, that she could.”
“To show whom?”
“The guys. You know, everyone.”
“Frank?”
“Yeah, she does a lot of shit like that. But it never works. Frank don’t want nothing to do with her.”
“Why not? She’s too young?”
“Frank don’t give a shit about that. He’s just, like, he just don’t want her around.” He stood, paced the gritty room. “Jesus, Mr. S., I feel like I don’t know a fucking thing. Except I know I’m sick of this place. I’m sick of these clothes, and that goddamn stove, and hearing the goddamn wind all day. Tell me what to do.” There was nothing guarded in his eyes now, nothing hidden. All there was was weariness and fear. “Whatever you say, I’ll do it. You think I should turn myself in?”
I thought about it. “No. Someone’s trying to set you up for Gould’s murder. My choice is Frank. That’s pretty straightforward, but there’s something else going on and I don’t want Brinkman to get his hands on you until I know what the hell it is.”
He lifted his shoulders in a helpless gesture.
“Where does Frank live in Cobleskill?” I asked.
“Those condos over the bridge. You know, the ones with the pool. The first building, on the third floor. His name’s not on the bell.”
“What name is?”
An embarrassed look. “Capone.”
“Capone?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Too bad,” I said. “A sense of humor almost makes a guy human. I’d hate to think that about Frank.”
Jimmy added his cigarette butt to the pile on the table. “But he’s got this other place he uses sometimes, in Franklinton.”
“A grungy green house at the top of Endhill Road?”
Jimmy’s eyes widened. “Uh-huh. How do you know that?”
“I know all sorts of things,” I said. “And if I knew why Wally Gould was killed at the bar, I could die a happy man.”
“Christ, Mr. S., I’ve been thinking about that for two days. That basement—Jesus! Why would anyone go there? There’s nothing to steal. Tony hasn’t got anything.”
I said, “Maybe they went there because that’s where they had a key to.”
“A key—you mean, mine? That they would’ve got from Ginny? Yeah, but still . . .”
I finished my beer, set the can down. “Yeah,” I said. “But still.” I zipped my jacket, pulled my gloves on. “Okay, Jimmy. Give me another day. But if I come up with nothing, then I think you should turn yourself in. Not to Brinkman, to the troopers. I have a friend there. And Jimmy? What I said the other night, about if they find you?”
“Yeah, I know
. Don’t shoot nobody.” He tried to grin.
“Right,” I said.
He stood in the doorway watching us leave. An unsteady shaft of light from the kerosene lamp pointed over the dust and rubble.
“Mr. S.?” he called after us. I turned. “How’s Allie?”
“She’s fine,” I said. “She’s worried about you.”
“Tell her . . . I don’t know. Tell her I was asking.”
In the car, picking our way down the rocky road, I said to Lydia, “I know he’s hard to take.”
“I liked him,” she said.
“You’re kidding.”
“No. He reminds me of you.”
“Oh, thanks.”
“You said this wasn’t a game anymore. Did he ever really think it was?”
“He said he did. But no. He didn’t.”
She steered onto the blacktop. “Where to, boss?”
I let the “boss” go. “Back to my place for my car, then to Antonelli’s. You’re going to meet our client, and if I’m lucky, Frank Grice will come to me.”
“Ancient Chinese wisdom,” Lydia said. “‘That kind of luck you don’t need.’”
16
EVE COLGATE WAS at the bar talking quietly with Tony when Lydia and I walked into Antonelli’s. The whole place was quiet, almost back to normal. Sic transit gloria. Tony poured me a drink, put together a club soda with lemon for Lydia. Eve and Lydia, appraising each other, headed for a back table. As I picked my bourbon off the bar to follow them Tony said, “Smith, I gotta talk to you.”
I glanced at Lydia and Eve, found myself thinking how balanced they were, one quick and dark and small, the other tall, pale, still. “In a few minutes?”
“Okay.” Tony went back to wiping glasses, his face unreadable.
Eve’s clear eyes regarded me steadily as I sat. “How were the milking machines?” I asked her.
“They might do,” she said. “Harvey thinks it will work.”
“I’m glad.” I sipped some bourbon, reminded myself about the beer at the Creekside, put the bourbon down. “Eve, I’ve told Lydia everything that’s happened, and everything else she needs to know. She understands what’s important to you, and she’ll try as hard as I’m trying to keep your private life private.”
Eve turned her eyes to Lydia, said nothing.
“I also understand,” Lydia said, “that you don’t want me here. I don’t blame you. I’ll try to make it as easy as I can.” She met Eve’s eyes with her own polished obsidian ones.
“I find it difficult,” Eve said slowly, “to understand how you”—she indicated both of us—“can do what you do.”
“You mean dig out things people buried on purpose, and want to keep buried?” Lydia asked.
“That’s exactly right.”
“Well,” Lydia said, “but someone’s doing that to you, right? Or you’re afraid they will. Having us on your side just evens the odds.”
“Are you always sure you’re on the right side?”
“No,” Lydia said simply. “Sometimes I make mistakes.”
Eve looked at me. “And you?”
“All the time,” I said. “Morning, noon, and night. That’s why I need Lydia. She’s right at least sometimes. Can you two excuse me a minute? I have to talk to Tony.”
As I stood, I caught a look passing between Lydia and Eve that seemed to augur well for their getting along, though I had the feeling it didn’t do much for me.
I walked to the bar, leaned on it while Tony finished mixing someone’s scotch and soda. “What’s up?” I asked.
“C’mon outside,” he said, wiping his hands on a towel, not looking at me.
We left the warmth of the bar for the damp night chill. This was Tony’s call, so I followed him, stopped when he did, waited.
He had trouble starting. We hadn’t gone far from the door, and he stood with his back to the building, hands in his pockets, neon glowing over one square shoulder, the pitted tin sign in the air behind him. “I gotta tell you,” he said. “I gotta tell you what happened. What I did.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Last night—” he began, then suddenly stopped as his eyes flicked from mine to something behind me. Fear flashed across his face. I tried to turn, to see what it was, but Tony slammed into me like a wrecking ball. I crashed onto the gravel. Maybe I heard tires squeal, maybe I heard shouts; the only thing I was sure I heard was the whine of bullets cutting the cold air.
I twisted over, yanked my gun from my pocket, emptied it at the tail lights tearing out of the lot. I couldn’t tell if I hit anything, but I didn’t stop them.
Now there were shouts, running feet, shadows. I turned, saw light from the open door cutting a sharp rectangle on the ground. Tony lay just beyond it, two spreading pools of red merging on his chest.
I ripped off my jacket, tore my shirt off and wadded it up. I leaned hard against the places where Tony’s blood welled. A forest of legs surrounded me, too many, too close; and then Lydia’s voice: “All right, people! Move back, give them room. Come on, move!” The legs receded. Tony moaned, opened his eyes.
“All right, old buddy,” I said, pressing on his chest. My heart was thudding against my own. “Don’t move. Don’t talk. It’ll be all right.” In the cold air the blood seeping under my hands was sticky and hot. I called, “Lydia!”
“Right there,” she said.
“Get me something to use for a bandage. Call the nearest rescue squad.”
“They’re in Schoharie,” said a calm voice beside me. Eve crouched on the gravel, took Tony’s hand. He focused his gaze, with difficulty, on her face.
“Shit!” I said. “It’ll take them fifteen minutes to get up here.”
“What the hell happened?” A face bent over me; a voice echoed other voices on the edges of my attention.
“Back off!” I spat. The face retreated and the voices became background noise again.
Lydia reappeared clutching a roll of gauze and a pile of clean towels. “They’re calling the ambulance,” she told me, kneeling.
Tony’s eyes closed. His breath scraped through lips tight with pain.
“No time,” I said. “I’ll take him. Lean here. Hard.”
I reached for a folded towel, but Eve took it from me, said calmly, “I’ll do this. Get the car.”
She began peeling my shirt back from Tony’s bloody chest, laying clean cloth, directing Lydia’s help with short, quiet words.
I grabbed my jacket off the ground, searched it for my keys as I sprinted across the lot. I backed the car down the lot, pulled as close as I could to the place where Eve and Lydia knelt.
Eve was knotting the ends of the gauze. The dressing on the wounds was neat and tight, better than it would have been if I’d done it. I picked a big guy out of the wide-eyed crowd; he helped me lift Tony, manuever him into the back seat, strap him in as well as we could.
As I climbed out of the car, Eve slipped in. She perched on the seat where Tony lay. Someone pushed through the crowd, passed Eve a blanket. It was Marie, white under the deep shadows of her makeup.
I looked around for Lydia; she was at my side. “Call the state troopers,” I told her. “Tell them I’m taking 30 to 145, 145 to 1, to the highway to Cobleskill. Tell them to pick me up wherever they can.” She repeated the route back to me. “Good,” I said. “When they get here, tell them what happened, but nothing else. Stay here until I call you from the hospital.”
“Good luck,” she said. There was blood on her cheek, Tony’s blood.
As I started the car, I called back to Eve, on the seat beside Tony. “You sure?” I asked.
“Yes.”
I wound up the engine, let the clutch up fast. The front tires spat gravel. The car started to slither across the parking lot. I cursed, stopped, closed my eyes. I breathed deeply, forced my shoulders to relax, my fingers to loosen on the wheel, focused the electric current sizzling on my skin into a thin beam I could draw on, in my gut. I started the car again, accele
rated quickly and quietly out onto 30.
30 was easy. I knew every inch of it, the bends, the dips, the places where dirt would have washed onto the road from last night’s rain. I knew the turns where I could let the steering go light, where there was room to catch it on the far side. It helped that it was dark. I drove the whole road, dipping my headlights at each curve to check for the swell of oncoming light that would warn me I wasn’t alone. The rhythm of the road was bad but my rhythm was good, and I snaked through at seventy, faster in short bursts.
When we hit 145 it got harder. More people lived along it, and I knew it less well. There were hidden driveways, there were potholes I wasn’t prepared for. I was deep into turns before I knew they were there. Trees grew thickly, close to the road. I had to come down to sixty, which was still too fast for the road, but not fast enough to keep the adrenaline of anger and frustration from pushing through to my fingertips. My hands began to sweat. The steering wheel, sticky with Tony’s blood, now became a slimy, slithery thing on which my grip was not sure. I pressed my fingers into the ridges at the back of the wheel to keep my hands from slipping. I wished for my gloves, but I didn’t know where they were. At Antonelli’s, on a back table, by a half-finished drink, a half-started conversation.
Ahead, from the right, lights swung onto the road. A hulking truck body followed, filled my vision, my world. I didn’t slow because I couldn’t have stopped. I flicked the wheel left, flew out past him, and eased right. I felt the left front wheel search for the road, then claw its way back onto it. The rear wheel hung in the soft shoulder another second, then followed. We dug up dirt as we thudded back onto the asphalt. Then we were running smoothly, except for the staccato hammering of my heart. Sounds came from behind me, soft words, but I didn’t pay attention. I’d lost my focus, thinking about gloves; we were lucky to have made it through that, and you don’t get two of those.
My world became a moving, headlight-lit band and the shadows on either side of it. The texture of the road, the car’s banked angle, the sound of the engine as we headed into a curve were all I cared about. My breathing became as regular as a metronome. My heart slowed again, and I had no purpose and there was nothing I wanted but to push this car down this road and onto Route 1 as fast as it was willing to go.
