by S. J. Rozan
Marie passed, looking harried, carrying plates of burgers and a bowl of chili. I winked at her and she smiled ruefully.
There was an empty stool at the end of the bar and I put myself on it. Tony spotted me, nodded. I waited for him to finish mixing two 7&7s that Marie came back and snatched up off the bar. She called, “Scotch rocks, two Buds, and a Fog Cutter.”
Tony stared. “An’ a what?”
Marie lifted her shoulders helplessly.
Tony looked at me. “Grenadine, mixed fruit juice, one-fifty-one rum,” I said.
“Figures you’d know.” Tony reached the Buds up onto the bar. “Can I charge ’em five bucks for it?”
“Charge them whatever you want. Most people you’d have to pay to drink it. What’s going on here?”
“Vultures,” he shrugged. “Same as yesterday.” He dropped ice into a glass, poured Jim Beam over it. The ice cracked under the bourbon.
“You got the ice machine fixed,” I said as he handed the glass to me.
“Did it myself.”
I drank. “I need to talk to you.”
He started to answer, then looked at me. After a moment he turned, pushed open the door to the kitchen. “Ray!” he called to the short-order cook. “Take over here a minute.”
He swung the gate up, stepped out to the customers’ side of the bar. I took another swig of bourbon, left it sitting on its cardboard coaster, waiting for me. Tony and I walked out together into the parking lot.
We stopped at the same time, as if we’d reached some prearranged place, and turned to face each other. Tony hooked his thumbs into his belt and stood waiting.
“I’ve seen Jimmy,” I said. “I just left him.”
Tony spat in the dirt. “Where is he?”
“He says he didn’t kill anyone.”
“Where the hell is he?”
“He’s up at the quarry.”
“Alone?”
“Yes. He’s scared and he’s armed.”
“But he didn’t do it, huh?”
“He says not.”
“An’ you believe him.”
We looked at each other in the red neon glow. “Yes.”
Tony shook his head. “He say who did?”
“He says he doesn’t know.”
“An’ you believe that, too?”
“I’m not sure.”
“He’s so goddamn innocent, why’s he hidin’ out?”
“Come on, Tony. Last time he was in jail Brinkman beat the shit out of him. And guys have gone to prison before this on less than Brinkman and MacGregor have on Jimmy right now.”
A car swept down 30, the beams from its headlights brushing the trees, illuminating nothing.
“Shit,” Tony said. He kicked at a patch of gravel. “You gonna tell that trooper buddy of yours?”
“No.”
He rubbed at the back of his neck. “What do I do?” he asked, but I didn’t think he was really asking me.
“Maybe nothing, for now,” I said. “I wanted you to know he was all right. But maybe you don’t do anything.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, maybe.” He spun around, stalked back into the bar.
I watched him go, gave him a minute. Then I went too, back inside, picked up my drink from the bar, carried it to the phone in the back.
A pretty young girl with a lot of blue eyeshadow was on the phone, talking animatedly with the receiver pressed to one ear and her index finger in the other. I waited, drinking bourbon.
Finally she was through. She hung up and sashayed across the room to a table where a skinny boy with a skinny mustache was waiting. I picked up the receiver, to which the scent of her perfume still clung. It was nice perfume. I fed the phone, dialed Eve Colgate. When she answered there was Schubert in the background again.
“I just wanted to make sure you were home,” I told her. “There’s something I want to talk to you about. Can I come over?”
“Yes. When?”
“Soon. After I get something to eat.”
“Where are you?”
“At Tony’s, but I’m not staying. Too many people here for me.”
I could hear the small smile in her voice. “I know how that feels.” A hesitant pause; then, “Why don’t you come here?”
As she spoke the jukebox started up, filling the room with Charlie Daniels. “Sorry?” I said.
“For dinner. Come here. I have beef stew. There’s plenty.”
“Well, I—” I stopped myself. “Thanks. I’d like that.”
When I left, the bar’s door swung closed behind me, as though, if allowed to drift out, the light and the music, the talk, the taste of bourbon and gin would dissipate like woodsmoke in the vast darkness, and Antonelli’s would be as empty and desolate as the night.
I crunched up through the gravel of Tony’s lot toward the road, hearing nothing but my own footsteps and the hissing of the wind, seeing nothing but the shadowy forms of trees moving restlessly. In those trees, patient and alert, owls waited.
My car, up by the road, was a mound of flat, featureless black in the surrounding murk. No moon or stars threw careless light to be reflected off it; no cars rushed past it to emphasize by their motion its own stillness. Dark, and still, and silent, full of things I could only sense, not see: the night up here was always like that, and in that sense, comforting.
But here, now, in this night, something moved. Beyond my car, a red glow, the tip of a cigarette drifting lazily through the air.
Such a small thing, an everyday thing.
My skin sizzled. All my senses were instantly alert and bare. I reached, but there was nothing else, no sound, scent, nothing more I could see from that place.
But the night had changed completely.
I eased the zipper of my jacket down, slid my .38 out as the red glow vanished. If this was someone just finishing off a last smoke out in the night before driving home, he’d get in his car now and pull out. It didn’t happen. Or if he’d just wanted a few moments of peace before heading down to Antonelli’s, his footsteps would start soon, and he’d pass me, nodding a greeting, going on.
That didn’t happen either. The smoker, quiet as the night, didn’t move. Up by my car, he waited for me.
I didn’t slow my steps. I could be walking into a setup, but it wasn’t likely. If he’d wanted me dead without fuss he could have picked me off as I stood framed in Tony’s doorway. This was someone who wanted to talk, just us two.
Still, I slipped the safety off the gun as I covered the last few yards.
He was on the far side of my car, a dark form between it and another I could now see parked beyond it. On this side of my car, nothing, no one else visible. A few more steps. Then I swung the gun up sharply, the car still between us, and snapped, “All right, don’t move!”
The stillness changed; I could feel the smoker’s body go stiff, maybe with surprise, maybe obedience. But not that, because although there was no movement, a girl’s soft voice breathed, “Wow! Are you going to shoot me?”
I was at my car now, facing her across it. At this distance we could see each other, though shadowed and indistinct. She was small, her face pale, her clothes dark; I was large, and I was armed. For a moment nothing moved. The entire night was waiting for us. Then slowly she lifted her hands. She wore gloves without fingertips, the gloves you need if you’re hammering nails or selling apples by the side of the road; and I could just make out her mocking smile as she wiggled her fingers like a child saying bye-bye, showing me they were empty.
I held the gun steady. She hesitated, then shrugged. Reaching up, she pulled her knit cap off, shook out her thick, golden hair.
“Fuck this hat. I fucking hate hats.” The words were spoken with a careful casualness, the way you’d try out a phrase when you found yourself among native speakers of a language you’d been studying. “But it worked.” Her voice held a self-satisfied tone. “You didn’t see me until you got close.”
A dark turtleneck sweater, much too bi
g for her, engulfed her tiny frame in soft folds. Her tight jeans were tucked into high leather boots; even with the heel on the boot, she was barely five feet tall. Without looking, she tossed the unwanted cap onto the hood of her car.
“The cigarette was a big mistake,” I told her.
“Well, shit, I’ve been freezing my ass off out here for a fucking hour! Guys keep coming in and out of that stupid bar. How was I supposed to know this time it was you?”
“Doesn’t matter. If you don’t keep your focus, you lose.”
“Oh, is that detective stuff?” she asked archly. “Well, if you have to stand around in the cold all the time waiting for some asshole you don’t even know to show up, it’s a pretty shitty job.” She started to move around the car toward me.
“Stay where you are.”
“Oh, give me a fucking break,” she snapped, but she stopped.
Gun still on her, I walked around, peered into the car that wasn’t mine. It was as empty as the night around us.
“You’re afraid I brought somebody?” Close enough now to read each other’s faces, I could see amused contempt in her smile. “Is that what real detectives do?”
“It sometimes helps.” I holstered the gun; I felt stupid, alone out there in the huge night, holding a gun on a tiny fifteen-year-old girl. “Did you know I was looking for you? Is that why you’re here?”
She frowned up at me. Although there were no stars, no moon, the gold of her hair seemed to shine. “Looking for me? How do you know who I am?”
“Detective stuff,” I told her. “You’re Ginny Sanderson, and your father’s worried about you.”
“Oh, him.” Impatience and disappointment equally filled her words. “You work for him?” The idea didn’t seem at all to surprise her. She slouched against my car and scowled.
“He wanted me to,” I said, “but I don’t.”
She glanced up at that, and I saw her eyes glow, like the sparkling of the stars and the snow and the air itself on the coldest of winter nights.
“You crossed my dad? You won’t last long up here. What did he want you to do?”
“Find you. Where’s Jimmy Antonelli’s truck?”
With a laugh she pushed herself up to sit on the hood of my car. As she moved she brushed close to me, and I caught the scent of her perfume, a heady, complicated fragrance, rich and old-fashioned, not what I might have expected of such a young girl.
“I get it,” she said, swinging her legs against the wheel well. “That’s a dumb detective trick, right? You say something out of nowhere to confuse me?”
“Do you have it?”
She pointed to the Trans-Am parked between my car and the road. “That’s my car. I’m not supposed to drive at night until I’m sixteen, but it’s mine.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Sure it is. Besides, you should like that car. My dad gave it to me. But he won’t give you one. He’s not that nice to his employees.”
“I told you I don’t work for him.”
“Maybe you think you don’t. Everyone around here does, whether they know it or not.”
I pulled a cigarette out of my jacket. She held out her hand automatically, unthinkingly. I gave her that one, took out another for myself. She waited for a light; I did that, too.
The match was a brief flare in the darkness, reflected in her hair, her eyes. I shook it out, threw it away. “A man was killed Monday night by someone with the keys to that truck.”
“Yeah. Wally.” She pulled deeply on the cigarette. “Dumb little shit.”
“You knew him?”
“Oh, sure. I know all those guys.” She tossed her head, elaborately uninterested. “What kind of stupid cigarettes are these?” She looked at the Kent I’d given her, threw it away. She reached under the baggy sweater, brought out a filterless Camel, waited without speaking for another light.
The still-burning cigarette she’d abandoned lay among gravel and dry leaves. I crushed it with the toe of my boot, then lit for her the one she was holding.
“Shit!” she snapped, brushing ash from my own cigarette off her sweater, where it had fallen. “Watch it! This is my mom’s.”
“Your mom’s?” I said, then stopped myself. Her family’s troubles weren’t my business.
“Yeah, you know all about it, right?” she said scornfully. “Everybody around here knows all about it. So she walked out on my dad, so what? Who wouldn’t? Fucking jerk-off. Anyway, when she comes back, she’s gonna want her stuff.” She hugged the soft black sweater around her, looked away as she smoked.
I watched her in the empty night. She brushed again at the spot where ash had fallen. I said, “I’m sorry.”
“Oh, don’t be an asshole!” she hissed. She might have been about to say something else, but the bar’s door opened, spilling light, music, and four laughing people out into the night. They stood briefly in the lot, ending the evening together, the men’s voices loud, the women’s harder to hear. Car doors opened and closed, engines growled, and two sets of headlights swept past us onto 30.
Ginny Sanderson jumped lightly off my car, moved beyond it to where the headlights didn’t reach. “Nobody better see me here,” she said.
“Why not?”
She looked at me with a nasty smile. “Because if my dad knows you found me and didn’t bring me home you’ll be in really deep shit. He’ll probably fuck you up anyway if you don’t find me, but this would really piss him off. He said that, right? That he’d fuck you up?”
I didn’t answer, but whatever she saw in my face made her nod. “That’s him,” she said. “He never just asks you to do something. Like it never occurs to him you might want to anyway, or you don’t but if he paid you or something you would. He always has to tell you how bad he’s going to fuck you up. That’s why my mom ran away. You know,” she said, fast, as though to prevent me from speaking, “you’re some dumb detective. You never even asked me what I’m doing here.”
“You want something,” I said.
“Well, duh! If you’re so smart, what do I want?”
“I don’t know. But I want something too: I want Jimmy’s truck, and I want the things that were stolen from Eve Colgate’s storeroom.”
Her eyes widened quickly; then she laughed. “You used that one already, saying something to confuse me. Are you supposed to be a good detective?”
“Probably not. But I get the feeling you’re not such a good kid, either.”
She snorted. “Different meanings of ‘good,’ Mr. Bigshot. Don’t do that shit with me. I’m in Honors English.”
“Not anymore this semester, from what I hear.”
“That was bullshit!” She glanced at me sharply.
“That’s what your father told me, too. Not his innocent little princess.”
“He’s an asshole,” she couldn’t help saying. “But anyway, now I can go somewhere else next year. Maybe Europe or something. I hated that dump anyway.”
“If I tell Sheriff Brinkman you’ve been fencing stolen property, you might not be going anywhere.”
“Who, Robocop?” She was scornful, unimpressed with my threat. “You think my dad would let him anywhere near me? Besides”—she leaned back against my car, blew a stream of smoke into the sky—“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
“I don’t believe you.”
She eyed me thoughtfully. With a well-bred, ladylike smile, she inquired, “Who fucking cares? Anyway, forget that crazy lady and her shit. I thought you wanted to know who killed Wally.”
I dropped my cigarette to the ground, crushed it. “Do you know?”
She shrugged. “Everyone says it was Jimmy.”
“Was it?”
“How the hell am I supposed to know? But Jimmy’s in deep shit, huh? Do you know where he is?”
“That’s what you were looking for me for? You want to know where Jimmy is?”
“Hey, you figured it out! You are a great detective!”
“Why do you
want him?”
Her voice became coy. “I can help him.” She waved her cigarette casually in the darkness. “You’re not the only one who knows smart lawyers and shit like that. I can help Jimmy more than you can. Only I bet you don’t even know where he is.”
“Why would you want to help him? You walked out on him.”
“He told you that?” she asked slyly.
“Everyone knows,” I countered.
She shrugged again, temporarily out of dumb detective tricks. “So what? I can still want to help him.”
“Then tell me who has the truck.”
“Okay,” she said teasingly, “if you tell me where he is.”
“Did you use the truck when you robbed Eve Colgate?”
As I spoke, a car cut around the curve of 30, swept us with headlights as it pulled into the lot. Ginny Sanderson stepped into the shadows again. When Antonelli’s door had shut behind the driver and the night was ours again, she threw her cigarette away, still burning, like the one before it. “Oh, fuck this shit,” she said. “I’m getting the fuck out of here. This is a drag.”
She brushed past me to her car, pulled open the door, slid behind the wheel. As the engine roared to life and the loud bass thump of the stereo began to pound, she lowered the black-glass window.
“If you want to know where the fucking truck is, just tell anyone at the Creekside you want to see me.”
She reversed hard, close to me, then tore onto the road. Her red tail lights whipped around the curve much too fast, and were gone.
The drive to Eve Colgate’s wasn’t long. The bare branches of the trees were being tossed violently now, and dead leaves scraped across the road in front of me. I drove carefully, my mind on other things.
Leo came charging to the doorbell, barking loudly. I heard Eve reassuring him as she shot the bolt and drew the door open.
She smiled, stood aside to let me pass. I walked through out of the cold wind into the warm, neat room, where the odor of damp earth was replaced by a rich confusion of herbs, garlic, tomatoes, meat. Steam fogged the windows. The table was set with woven mats, wineglasses, white china. There was music, not Schubert anymore, but Chopin, a nocturne I used to play. Hearing it now, I couldn’t remember why I’d stopped.
Leo followed me, wagging, looking up; I reached down to pet him and he sniffed my hand expectantly. “Oh,” I said. “Sorry, old buddy. Nothing for you.”