“I think you’d be more fun.”
She kept the smile where it was.
“You’d have to ask my boyfriend.”
“Is he in here?”
Sherry had been schooled about answering a question like that. She ignored it.
“What can I get you?”
He glanced at his buddy, then shook his head.
“I think we’re done for tonight.”
He produced a ten dollar bill from somewhere and gave it to her. Sherry looked at him, going blank for a second.
“What’s that for?”
The guy grinned back.
“You’re the best looking thing in here, that’s what it’s for.”
They were already shrugging into their coats. She managed to murmur a thank-you, not knowing whether to be insulted or not.
Kenny was still watching, got caught off guard when the two men put their coats on. He looked around, saw Darryl hanging around a few seats away. He had a beer in front of him, was staring vacantly into the mirror behind the bar. It took a couple of tries but Kenny managed to catch his eye, motioned him over. Darryl – big, shaggy, not that smart but smart enough for this – dragged himself out of his seat and shambled over. This is what I’ve got to work with, Langdon thought.
“Do me a favor, okay? Those two guys,” he gestured toward the heavies. They were still at the pool table, scanning the interior of the bar one last time, apparently for dramatic effect, “I want to know what they’re driving. Get a plate number.”
This was a lot for Darryl to take in all at once. Kenny gave him a gentle shove toward the door.
“Get out there before they do.”
• • •
It wasn’t cold but the falling snow was a pain in the butt. Darryl glanced back toward the door, wondering if he had time to go back and get his coat. If anybody but Kenny had asked him to do this he would have told him to shove it up his ass. Darryl remembered to light up as soon as he got inside, like Kenny had told him, so he had a reason to be out here. It annoyed him, like he couldn’t have thought of that himself.
The vehicles in the parking lot were already shrouded in a thick layer of snow. Darryl took a drag on the cigarette, walked down the few steps to the parking lot and leaned against the wall. He heard the front door open, the music inside swelling in volume for a few moments, and by then the two guys Kenny had flagged were already down the stairs and lumbering toward their car, wherever it was. Darryl let them get a little ahead of him, then went down the next row of parked cars. He kept his head down, fished in his pocket for his own keys, thinking he could at least make it look good, like he was leaving too. Then he remembered his keys were in his coat pocket, back in the bar. He never saw it coming.
• • •
“Why the fuck did you do that?” Hendricks demanded, “last thing we need is somebody calling the cops.”
Nason spun the wheels pulling out. The Beemer’s rear end slewed sideways and then found some grip. Hendricks swore to himself, looked back in the direction of the parking lot.
“Nobody’s gonna do shit,” Nason growled, “they don’t know who the fuck we are. That kid got sent out there.”
Bullshit, Hendricks thought, but he kept it to himself. He’d seen Nason go off on people before, didn’t want to be next. Their partnership was shaky at best, based only on expedience and mutual need. Hendricks was the front man, the talker, somebody who cleaned up pretty well when the occasion required. Tonight hadn’t been one of those times.
“Sent?” Hendricks laughed, as much as he dared, “fuck, man. It looked to me like he was just going to his car, like we were.”
“You didn’t see him talking to that guy at the bar?”
“There were a lot of guys at the bar.”
Nason cut his eyes toward Hendricks, just for a moment.
“Well, the guy he was talking to was the guy who sent him out. He was watching us all night,” Nason bared his teeth in a smile, glanced at Hendricks again, “thought we were too stupid to notice.”
Hendricks decided to let that little shot go, as if there was an option.
“You sure about that?’ he asked.
“Yeah, I’m sure about that. Every small town I’ve ever been in, there’s always one guy who runs the place,” Nason said, “and that was the guy.”
10
Somebody was grabbing at Darryl’s arm and he didn’t like it, tried to swat the hand away. He felt like he was coming back from somewhere and he shivered, realized he was lying on his back and looking up at a young guy he didn’t recognize. The kid looked scared and pissed off all at the same time. There was a girl with him and her worried glances just kept bouncing between Darryl and the guy she was with.
“I nearly ran over you, man!” the young guy was saying.
The kid was trying to put some anger into his voice but it wasn’t working, came out hysterical instead. Darryl could feel the snow, cold and wet on the back of his shirt and soaking right through to his skin. Big, fluffy snowflakes were still drifting downward straight into his eyes. Pretty, Darryl thought, like he was a ten year old kid. He wanted to go back to wherever he’d just come from, because wherever it was had felt warm and nobody had been yelling at him. The young guy and his girlfriend were alternately yammering at him and then at each other and Darryl decided the best way to get rid of them was to just get up, show he was all right so they’d go away. His first try at that didn’t work so well, a wave of dizziness forcing him back down on one knee.
He gave himself a few seconds, let his head settle down, and this time the young guy slung a hand under his armpit, tried to help. That pissed Darryl off because he wasn’t any help at all – Darryl was way over two hundred pounds and the kid was skinny, just along for the ride. The girl was tiny, but she went around behind Darryl, scrunched herself under his other arm, and this time she and her boyfriend both heaved and they got him upright. She was stronger than the kid was, Darryl thought, and then swayed as he got dizzy all over again.
“You gonna be all right?” the boy asked.
Darryl looked down at him, then back at where they’d stopped the car, only a couple of feet away from where he’d been lying in the parking lot. He could see from the tire tracks where it had slewed sideways when the kid hit the brakes. Darryl was still pissed off, embarrassed, but they weren’t anybody he knew and at least they hadn’t run over him.
“Yeah – yeah, I’ll be fine,” he stepped back, leaned against the trunk of a parked car, felt cold snow all over his backside. The couple hovered uncertainly but he waved them away.
“I’m alright. Thanks.”
They looked dubious but finally they got back into their car, the girl looking out at him as they drove away. He thought she looked sorry for him.
• • •
Kenny was thinking about going out after Darryl when he saw him come back into the bar. Darryl stomped the snow off his boots and shambled over to where Kenny was sitting. Darryl’s face was flushed and his eyes were glazed, unfocused. He didn’t say anything.
“So?” Kenny asked.
Darryl was acting even more out of it than usual. Finally he turned toward Kenny, an accusing look on his face.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you what?”
“I got out there, did like you said, waited for them to come out, then tried to get a look at their car. Next thing I know I’m waking up in the parking lot.”
There was something in Darryl’s voice that Kenny had never heard from him before – he was pissed off, angry, and he wasn’t making any effort to hide it.
“You should have told me,” he said again.
“Look,” Kenny said, “there wasn’t anything to tell. I never saw them before. All I asked you to do was get a look at their car.”
“Yeah, well, it was a bad idea. Who are those guys?”
Good question, Kenny thought.
11
Kenny Langdon didn’t like uncertainty, and ri
ght now he was surrounded by it. He especially didn’t like the feeling it gave him, something approaching fear.
He stood at the bedroom window overlooking the dirt road and the river beyond. He could feel the cold radiating inward from the glass, see the tendrils of blowing snow that scudded over the river. The gusts left smooth, bluish-grey patches of bare ice in some places, small ebony patches of open water in others. The ice had already stayed much later than usual, but it wouldn’t last much longer. After that the first boats would be out on the river again. Sooner or later conditions would be just right and somebody would look down into the water and see what he’d tried to hide.
It was too late to run. Nobody seemed to give much of a shit that Jimmy Nesbitt was missing but if Kenny took off now somebody might make the connection. He’d done a lot of work in the farmhouse over the winter, hopefully enough to get rid of any vestiges of Jimmy Nesbitt. He wasn’t exactly the DIY type and that made things a little tricky with Sherry – she’d never seen him pick up as much as a screwdriver, let alone tackle a reno. He got around that with some bullshit about how he wanted to fix the place up for the nights when she stayed over. He’d knocked out most of the wall between the living room at the front and the kitchen at the back. Once he stopped fucking around with the wall he’d started in on replacing the flooring, which was what really mattered.
That was what he should have done in the first place, and he’d been lucky that Stallings had gotten himself shot and then screwed over by the city. That left the second team in charge and Jimmy Nesbitt’s disappearance had fallen through the cracks. Even after all the work Kenny wasn’t sure if it would be enough, and he hoped he’d never have to find out.
He still didn’t know why the hell Nesbitt had been at his place to begin with. Kenny had always used the farmhouse, along with drugs and money, as a lever to assert some kind of control over Jimmy Nesbitt and the two or three other wannabe hoods he used as errand boys and salesmen, a protective layer between himself and the law. They were just smart enough to do what he told them to do, didn’t cost him much, and sometimes he let them use the place as a fuck pad, a perk.
He knew Nesbitt had called him on his cell phone that day – he’d seen the number come up – but occasionally Langdon got fed up with some of the mindless conversations he got into with these kids so he just ignored it.
Now Langdon wondered if Nesbitt had actually been trying to warn him about something. He’d thought about that for a while, long enough that he’d finally reached out, sent a carefully worded snail mail letter to someone who could put the odds back where they should be. No reply so far, so he could only do what he was doing now. Nothing.
He heard bedclothes rustle behind him.
“What’s wrong?” Sherry asked.
He turned away from the window, looked at her. She was propped on one elbow, staring at him.
“Nothing.”
She wasn’t buying it.
“They weren’t anybody, Kenny. You’re reading too much into it.”
“Tell that to Darryl.”
He heard something outside, turned back to the window. A car was coming down the dirt road that fronted the river. It was moving slowly, as if its driver was looking for something.
“Keep the light off.”
He could hear Sherry sigh heavily but the bedside light stayed off. He stepped to the off side of the window frame, watched the car go by. It was a nondescript sedan, late model, rolling very slowly. Darryl had been no help at all, hadn’t seen a damn thing before he got blindsided, so Kenny couldn’t tell if these were the same guys or not. He tried to get a look at the driver but the car’s interior was too dark, and he couldn’t tell if anybody else was in there.
The car couldn’t go much farther anyway – the road was a dead end, and Kenny watched the car come to a stop and then turn into the driveway of the last cottage on the side of the road closest to the river. He thought of going back to the nightstand and getting the old Colt automatic out of the drawer, but decided to stay where he was. It would only take a few seconds for the car to drop a couple of men off, then keep going. Better to keep watching.
“Kenny, for Christ’s sake…..”
Sherry sounded exasperated but he didn’t turn around, kept his eyes fixed on the car. It had turned in just far enough so it could back out and turn around. It didn’t look like any doors had opened, and there was no telltale movement in the driveway after it pulled away. He watched it leave, kept his eyes on it all the way down the road, watched its brake lights come on just before the right hand curve that led up and out toward the highway. He stayed at the window for a minute, waited to see if it was coming back. Sherry exhaled loudly, fluffed the pillows harder than she had to.
“Kenny, you’ve got to stop this. You’re being paranoid.”
He ignored her. Ever since he’d found what was left of Jimmy Nesbitt in his living room paranoia seemed like a reasonable way to live.
12
Brent was friendly enough, if understandably wary. Frank hadn’t talked to him in a long time, not since shortly after coming out of the hospital. He was sitting in Brent’s office – Frank’s old office – and he was a little surprised to find himself there. He even felt a little guilty for taking up Brent’s time on short notice – Frank of all people knew how busy things could get around there. A few years ago Ed Cunningham, in a misguided attempt to increase municipal tax revenue, had shoved through a proposal that extended Strothwood’s town limits well beyond where they needed to be. The move had backfired–the expected real estate developments hadn’t happened, and now the Strothwood PD was stuck with a jurisdiction that took in a larger area than it could handle. They’d been stretched thin for a long time, and the strain of coping with it was one part of the chief’s job Frank didn’t miss.
He still wanted it back, though, and both of them knew it. Frank felt disoriented with the reversal in seating positions, and he suspected Brent might feel the same way. If he was he seemed determined not to show it.
“How are you feeling, Frank?”
“Better.”
Frank didn’t want to get into it, aware that anything he said to indicate otherwise would just give Brent and Ed Cunningham something to use against him, more reason to delay or prevent his reinstatement. Brent had never struck Frank as being particularly ambitious, but people changed. He looked pretty comfortable right now, sitting behind Frank’s old desk in Frank’s old chair. He was a big man, a few years older than Frank with the easy authority big men often have.
Frank looked around the office. During his time as chief he’d never bothered to personalize it, never put up a ‘Me’display, so there hadn’t been anything for Brent to take down. Brent had a family photo on the credenza behind his chair – his wife and two kids, a teenage boy and girl – and a couple of framed certificates up on the wall, but that was it. Brent’s name was on the office door, too, but Frank noticed there was no indication of rank.
Yet, Frank thought. The way things were going that was only a matter of time.
“I heard you went to see Cunningham,” Brent said.
“He wasn’t there.”
Brent nodded, as if that wasn’t a surprise. He sighed, leaned forward, his arms on the desk.
“This whole thing is out of my hands, Frank – you know that.”
“I know that, Brent. Not why I’m here. I just had a visit from Jimmy Nesbitt’s parents.”
Frank could tell it took a moment for the name to register. Brent’s expression didn’t change but his eyes went opaque.
“Yeah?”
“They were wondering about their boy, that’s all. They came to the door and asked me if there was anything I could do, if there was anyone I could talk to.”
“What did you tell them?”
“I didn’t tell them much of anything. Not much I could tell them. That’s why I’m here.”
Brent Williams was famously even-tempered, even placid, but Frank could see that he was taking
offence.
“Checking up on us, Frank?” Brent managed a smile but there was no humor in it.
“No, I’m not. The Nesbitts are nice people and they’re pretty torn up,” Frank inclined his head toward the picture of Brent’s family, “hell, Brent, you’ve got kids. You can understand that.”
“Of course I can understand that. I just don’t understand why they came to you instead of me.”
“They said they’d come to you already.”
“Frank, I told them the same thing that you would have told them.”
Frank spread his hands.
“Brent, I know how these things go. I’m not here to point fingers and you’re right – I probably wouldn’t have done things any differently. All I’m telling you is that it wouldn’t hurt to check in with them, give them an update. Did anybody talk to Langdon? He and Jimmy Nesbitt knew each other pretty well.”
That was clumsy, the obvious question Frank didn’t want to ask but had to. He had to be sure. Brent gave him a ‘how fucking stupid do you think we are?’ look.
“Well, yeah. You know Langdon. ‘Nope, I’ve got nothing to say, see ya later.’ Even if he did know anything he sure as hell wouldn’t tell us.”
Frank just nodded, thought about whether it would be worthwhile to bring Emily Simmonds into the conversation, decided it was pointless. She conceivably could have had some idea what had happened with Nesbitt, but nobody could blame Brent for not pushing her. In Brent’s place he wouldn’t have pushed her either, would have left it a few days to let her recover. By then it would have been too late, but there was no way Brent could have anticipated that.
Brent was already on his way out of the chair, a busy man, things to do, a department to run. He was halfway around the desk and extending a hand by the time Frank stood up.
“Thanks for the heads-up, Frank – there isn’t much I can tell them, but I’ll call the Nesbitts today, give them an update.”
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