Crow's Landing

by Brad Smith

  But he did. The receipt listed the boat’s serial number and it was signed by the previous owner, a man named Bill Chamberlain.

  “I’m not sure what good it’s going to do you,” Woodbine said.

  “Me, either,” Virgil said. “But if you can give me a bill of sale, I can at least prove chain of title. Then maybe the cops will stop pretending I invented the damn thing.”

  Woodbine used the same invoice book he’d used when Virgil bought the baler, and he made out a bill of sale. He was very meticulous with the document, checking and double-checking the serial number before handing Virgil the invoice.

  “You got time for a beer?” the old man asked suddenly.

  Virgil began to beg off but he hesitated, using a moment to look at his watch to consider. It occurred to him that Woodbine didn’t have many visitors and he wondered just how often the old man’s children came to see him. Virgil said yes to the beer.

  They sat at the kitchen table and drank and talked about farming, which meant that they talked mainly about the weather. How there was always too much rain, or too little rain, or no rain. But never just enough rain. Woodbine told Virgil he’d raised four kids on the farm, just a hundred acres, and that his wife had never worked out of the home. Those days were gone, he noted, and Virgil agreed. Woodbine said that a man would have to be a fool to try to make a living off a hundred acres nowadays, and Virgil had agreed with that as well. When his beer was finished he got to his feet and said he had to get back to his own farm. He might have mentioned that it was a hundred acres, but he didn’t.

  The two men walked outside together.

  “I didn’t know if I’d still find you here,” Virgil said.

  “You figure I kicked the bucket?”

  “No, but you were selling the equipment last year, thought maybe you sold the farm too. I had a look in the shed, I see you sold the Ferguson, and the old Ford.”

  “I sold the tractor,” Woodbine said. “I gave the Ford away.”

  “Gave it away?”

  “Not on purpose. Some guy came up from the city to look at it, right around the time you were here, I believe. Showed up with a big pickup truck and a fancy trailer. Looked the car over for maybe two minutes and wrote me a check for ten thousand dollars. Now, as a rule, I wouldn’t take a check but everything looked on the up-and-up. He didn’t appear to be a deadbeat, the truck and trailer had to be worth five times that. It was a Friday and he said he couldn’t get to the bank until Monday and he had the trailer here and all. So I took the check.”

  “And it bounced.”

  “Like an Indian rubber ball. But I got nobody but myself to blame. I ain’t hurting for money, but it galls me that I let it happen. Same with you and your boat, I guess.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Maybe I’ll run into the sonofabitch someday,” Woodbine said. “I won’t forget him. Big colored guy, with a shaved head like a bowling ball.”

  Virgil opened the truck door and got in. “Thanks for the receipt.”

  “I hope you get your boat back,” Woodbine said.

  “So do I,” Virgil said, and he drove off.

  NINE

  After thinking about it overnight, Hoffman drove to the airport early the next morning with the cylinder in the back of the car. Pulling up to the no-parking zone, he flashed his badge to a skycap and told him to load the thing onto a luggage cart. The cap looked at the badge unhappily but did as he was told, getting another porter to help him with the cylinder when he discovered how heavy it was.

  Hoffman thanked the cap and said he would take it from there himself. He pushed the cart into departures and over to the first luggage drop he saw. He had to show his badge three more times before a security guard finally led him and the cart to the office of a man named Cowan, who was apparently the head honcho. Cowan was tall and lean, maybe sixty, with a hawk’s eyes and a brush cut cropped close. He had a faded tattoo on his forearm that suggested he’d been a marine.

  “So what is this?” he asked, looking at the cylinder.

  “We seized it last night,” Hoffman told him. “In the trunk of a rented Lincoln from Canada full of ragheads. We don’t know what’s in it and we want to X-ray it to find out. You know, before we cut it open.”

  “What’s that got to do with us?” Cowan asked. “Get your drug squad to do it.”

  “They got two machines and they’re both down,” Hoffman said. “MIFC.”

  “What does that mean?” Cowan asked.

  “Made In Fucking China.”

  If Hoffman thought that he might get a chuckle out of Cowan over that, he was mistaken. “So you’re under the impression that we’re here to provide you with this kind of service?” Cowan asked.

  “I’m under the impression that you have an interest in our nation’s security,” Hoffman said. “Did I mention the rental car full of ragheads?”

  Cowan took a moment to think it over. There really wasn’t any way for him to say no. He turned to the guard. “Go ahead. We’ll accommodate the detective.” He looked at Hoffman, like a falcon eyeing a mouse. “But we won’t make a habit of it.”

  * * *

  When he left the airport, Hoffman went back downtown, parked in an alley near the intersection of South Pearl and Alexander, and waited. He didn’t know where he might find his man, but he knew he was in the right neighborhood. After a fidgety twenty minutes or so, he got out of the car and walked over to the Quik Mart tucked between two tenements and bought a USA Today and a pack of Camels. He continued down the block and picked up a pint bottle of bourbon at the package store on the corner. Thus fortified, he went back to the SUV and waited.

  He spotted Soup wandering down Alexander shortly after eleven, blinking into the bright sunlight while he fumbled in his pants for his shades. He’d obviously just gotten up, and emerged from whatever rathole he’d inhabited for the night. He stood on the corner for a time, taking in the day, before starting out north along Morton.

  Hoffman had another nip of the mash and got out of the SUV and started walking, catching up to Soup at the corner. He grabbed the skinny man by the forearm and muscled him into the wall of the building there.

  “Hey, Soup. Where you heading?”

  Soup turned a bad eye Hoffman’s way and tried to wriggle free. “Get me some breakfast, it any of your business. I’m clean as a hound’s tooth, you best let me be.”

  “Breakfast at fucking noon,” Hoffman said, relaxing his grip but just slightly. “The life of Riley.”

  “I don’t know no Riley.”

  Hoffman looked down the block and saw a diner with specials plastered on white placards on the plate glass window in front. He pulled Soup along. “Come on, I’ll buy you lunch.”

  “Pass on that.”

  “You don’t get to pass on anything,” Hoffman said.

  Inside the diner they sat at a booth against the back wall, Hoffman joking and smiling, trying to be a regular guy, while Soup was sullen and suspicious, waiting to see what this was about. Hoffman didn’t get into it until after their meals had arrived.

  “I need the name of a dealer,” he said when the waitress was gone. “And I don’t mean one of your baggy-assed homeboys selling that stepped-on shit in the alley. I need a real guy. With real coin. You understand?”

  Soup had ordered a cheeseburger and fries. He was spreading ketchup on the burger as he listened. Now he put the bottle aside and stared over at Hoffman.

  “I understand,” he said. “I understand you out of your fucking mind. Even if I know a dude like that, I give him up to you and my black ass be in the cemetery by morning. So fuck you and your I-need-a-name shit.”

  Hoffman, watching as Soup took a bite out of his cheese-burger, glanced around quickly. “It’s not like that. This is a business proposition.”

  Soup chewed and swallowed. “It’s a dyin’ proposition for me, what I’m saying here. What the fuck you think you get, buying somebody lunch?”

  Hoffman leaned forward over the table
and dropped his voice. “Listen up, you little shit,” he snapped. “This is not a police thing, Soup. I have some serious weight to move. And you’re going to help me move it.”

  “No chance, Hoffman. You settin’ me up.”

  “Funny you should mention that,” Hoffman said. He leaned back and smiled across the table, stirring a couple of heaping tablespoons of sugar into his coffee before continuing. “Because that’s exactly what I’m going to do if you don’t sign up for this. I’ll plant about a pound of this shit on your skinny fucking person and haul you in. That makes it trafficking, and if my memory’s right, that makes you a three-time loser, Soup. So you tell me what you’re going to be today—a dumb fucking crackhead on his way back to stir or a savvy businessman?”

  Soup sat staring at his fries for a long moment. “You a motherfucker, Hoffman.”

  “That’s me. Now find me a guy and set up a meet. Use your brain and this could work out for you. This guy is going to be extremely grateful, trust me. He’s going to owe you. You know?”

  “All I know—ain’t no such thing as a free cheeseburger these days.”

  * * *

  By quitting time Monday afternoon, Dusty was on the common roof of the town houses, nailing the plywood sheeting to the trusses. At five o’clock she still had a few sheets to go and so, rather than quit and haul the hoses back up the next morning, she stayed an extra half hour and finished the job.

  She was the last to leave the site and, walking across the street to the parking lot, she pulled out her phone and checked her messages. She’d called the day camp at four-thirty to say she’d be running late. There was always someone there until six. Approaching her truck, she put her cell back in her pocket and looked up to see a vintage Camaro—’67 or ’68, she guessed—parked by the fence at the back of the lot. The car was cherry red, gleaming in the fading sun, with dark tinted windows concealing anyone inside. Dusty considered that the mud parking lot was an odd place for that particular car to be, but she didn’t give it much thought beyond that. She put her nailer in the back of the truck and as she did, she heard the rumble of the Camaro starting up and then approaching. She turned as it rolled to a stop a few feet away. The driver killed the engine and then sat there for a moment, obscured behind the tinted glass.

  The door opened and Parson got out.

  Dusty felt her heart rise into her throat. He was smiling, moving loose and easy, walking toward her. He didn’t look a day older. He was like a big cat, both lazy and dangerous at the same time, his muscular arms encased in a black T-shirt with Empire Restorations scripted above a caricature of a screaming hot rod.

  “Hello, Dusty.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Why, looking for you.”

  “I can’t imagine why,” Dusty told him.

  “Maybe I missed you.”

  “Goodbye.” Dusty unslung the tool belt from her shoulder and dropped it in the box of the truck.

  “Look at the carpenter here,” Parson said. “They teach you that inside?”

  “I learned a lot inside,” she told him. “Like who to trust. And who to run from like the fucking plague.”

  “Now, now,” he said. “I’m afraid I’m going to get my feelings hurt.” He smiled. “So how you doing, girl? Looks like you’re embracing the proletariat, getting it done, all that.”

  “Right.”

  “Although this truck doesn’t suggest great financial success,” he said, looking at the rust above the wheel wells.

  “I’m getting by.”

  “Good,” he said. “So tell me what else is new. You got a man these days?”

  “None of your business.” Dusty opened the door of the pickup.

  Parson took a step forward and when he did he glanced inside the truck. The Iron Man action figure was on the seat. Seeing it, he paused. Dusty stepped in front of him and closed the door quickly, knowing it was too late.

  “What the fuck do you want?” she demanded, upset he had seen the toy.

  “They found the cylinder.”

  Dusty took a moment. Whatever she was expecting from him after all this time, it sure as hell wasn’t this. “Who found it?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure yet.”

  “What’s it got to do with me?”

  “It could have a lot to do with you, Dusty. It’s a complicated situation. The people involved are acting cute.”

  “What does that mean?” she snapped. “Why don’t you ever just say what the fuck you mean?” She waited for an answer she knew wouldn’t come. “Sounds to me like some-body wants a lot of money for it. So pay it. And leave me out of it.”

  “It’s not that simple, Dusty. They say they want to deal but they’re pretty vague on the details. Like where it is, where it came from. You know I’m a details kind of guy. Apparently it turned up around Kimball’s Point. But I don’t know who found it, and I don’t know who’s holding it. I need somebody to go out there and finesse the situation. Somebody who knows the territory.” He smiled. “Somebody with charm. And a winning way.”

  “You are so full of shit,” she told him. “You think I’d help you after what you did to me? There’s an old saying—burn me once, shame on you. Burn me twice—go fuck yourself, Parson.”

  “You sure that’s how it goes?”

  “Close enough.”

  “I’m not looking for a favor, Dusty. I’ll pay you to scope this out.”

  “Do your own dirty work,” Dusty said. “For once in your life.” She opened the door and got in.

  “Hold on,” he said, grabbing the door handle. “You’re not getting what I’m saying here. It looks as if the cops might be involved. On a certain level. Like I say, the guy’s being cute.”

  “You’re not getting what I’m saying here. I don’t give a shit.”

  “You should. The last time the cops saw that cylinder, it was being tossed off a boat that was registered in your name. All they need to do is make the claim that it’s the same cylinder and suddenly it’s your property. You already did a stretch for trafficking. This time it would be heavy duty. You could be looking at a dime. Unless you get the wrong judge and then you could be looking at more than a dime.”

  He reached into his pocket and produced a business card, which he placed on the dashboard in front of her. Dusty sat staring ahead, out the windshield, to the town houses across the road. She had been very content in the belief she would never see Parson again.

  “Why don’t you think about it and give me a call,” he said. “But maybe you’re okay going back to prison. Maybe it’s a better life than you have out here. Three squares a day and all that. Doesn’t look to me like you’re getting rich pounding nails.”

  “Stay the fuck away from me,” Dusty said, pulling the door shut. She started the truck and gunned it out of the lot.

  Driving to the day camp, she watched in her rearview, pulse pounding. Why would Parson show up now? Why would the goddamn cylinder surface? Dusty had trouble believing that it had. And maybe it hadn’t, maybe it was just Parson, playing head games, trying to get back into her life. Nothing was ever a straight line with Parson, and what wasn’t an angle was a curve. It wasn’t so much that he lied, although he did that as easily as he breathed, it was more that he was an expert at surrounding the truth with a thousand little falsehoods, so that in the end it was impossible to know one from the other. Nobody knew that better than Dusty, and she doubted that anybody had ever paid as heavily for it as she had.

  She spotted the police cars from a block away, parked in front of the day camp. Pulling up, she saw there was yellow tape stretched across the entrance to the alley beside the building. Dusty got out and went inside. Travis was in the first of the little classrooms, just him and one of the assistants who worked there, a girl of high school age. She was slumped in a chair, her legs stretched out, so fully engaged in entering a text into her cell phone that she never noticed Dusty’s arrival. Travis was flipping through a picture book, looking bored. At so
me point in the past nine hours, he had managed to remove his T-shirt and put it back on inside out.

  “Hey, buddy,” Dusty said when she walked in.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  Dusty turned to the girl. “What’s going on?”

  “What do you mean?” The girl had looked up briefly when she heard Dusty’s voice but now she was reading something, an incoming text probably, on her cell.

  “There’s a dozen cops outside and they’ve got the alley taped off,” Dusty said. “Are you fucking stupid?”

  The girl straightened up and put her phone in her jeans pocket. “They found a body in the alley.”

  “I found him!” Travis said.

  The girl hastened to explain. “The kids found him at lunch. They were outside—”

  “In the alley?” Dusty asked. “Who was it?”

  “A drug addict, I guess. Overdose. They found a syringe.” The girl shrugged, somewhat apologetically, although it was doubtful she knew why she might feel that way. A faint beep emitted from her pocket.

  “You got a text,” Dusty told her.

  On the way home she stopped at the pizza place down the block and grabbed a medium for her and Travis. She didn’t feel like cooking tonight. Travis was all in favor of the pizza idea.

  “That’s the first dead guy I ever saw,” he told her when they got back to the apartment.

  “Did it bother you?” she asked.

  “Nope. Not a bit.”

  Which bothered Dusty. Quite a bit.

  After putting Travis to bed, she took a shower and went out onto the fire escape with a can of Sam Adams. Inside the apartment the television was tuned to PBS; Travis had been watching Mister Rogers reruns earlier and Dusty hadn’t bothered to turn it off. She looked out over the city and drank the beer.

  It wasn’t all that far from where she sat to where she had grown up. Knock down a couple of the bigger buildings and she could practically see Jefferson Park from here. She could almost smell the park—the pot and the pachouli and the urine and the vomit. The place never changed. She heard a gunshot off in the distance, or maybe it was a vehicle backfiring. One seemed more likely than the other. Inside, on the television, a man was discussing art and artists.