by Brad Smith
Virgil followed, watching as she drove through the town and crossed over the bridge back into Albany, where she made a right on Broadway and drove over to Clinton Street, turning left. Virgil was well back in the heavy traffic and he had trouble keeping the old pickup in sight. Once he was forced to stop at a stoplight and he thought he’d lost her but he spotted her a couple of minutes later, waiting at the next light. A few blocks farther along the F150 turned left onto Lark Street. By the time Virgil got there and made the turn, the truck was parked alongside the curb a hundred yards away and Dusty was walking into a building that looked like a community center, with a playground alongside and a small soccer field.
Virgil pulled up behind the pickup. Dusty was gone only a few minutes and when she returned she was leading a boy of about six or seven, a cute kid with dark skin and a mound of wild curls tucked beneath an Orioles cap. He was carrying a new baseball glove and a ball.
Virgil got out of his truck and Dusty saw him. She should have been surprised but if she was, she didn’t show it.
“Hey,” she said, looking past him. Checking to see if he was alone.
“Hello.”
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Following you.”
“I figured that. What’s going on?”
Instead of replying, Virgil looked at the boy. The kid probably didn’t need to hear the details of Brownie’s demise. “Hi,” Virgil said.
“This is Travis,” Dusty said.
Virgil put his hand out and the little boy put the ball in the glove so he could free his right hand. “I’m Virgil.”
The boy said hello quite seriously; he didn’t seem at all shy of the stranger. He was looking with interest at the cast on Virgil’s left arm. Dusty regarded the busy traffic, then told Travis to get into the truck. She watched as he did, and it seemed she was deciding what to do next. She would know that Virgil hadn’t been looking for her without a reason.
“We’ll go to my place,” she told him, and before he could answer she got into her truck and drove away.
It was easier keeping up now, although she made no particular effort to help Virgil in that regard, twice running yellow lights. She hadn’t seemed all that pleased to see him, but why would she be?
Below North Swan she took a left onto a narrow side street, turned again after a short block, and parked along the curb behind a clapboard five-story walk-up. She and the boy got out as Virgil pulled up behind her. She indicated a sign between her truck and Virgil’s.
“They’ll ticket you,” she said.
Virgil looked around. There were no other parking spots along the street.
“Well, you won’t be here long,” she said.
The apartment was small and somewhat messy, with toys and clothes strewn here and there. But it was clean enough in general, and felt very much like a home. Dusty removed her work boots when she entered but told Virgil he could leave his on, her tone again suggesting that he wouldn’t be staying. That fit into his line of thinking too. She went down a hallway and into a bedroom, leaving Virgil alone with Travis, who had removed his ball cap and was now tugging at the laces of his glove.
“So you’re an Orioles fan?” Virgil asked.
“Not really. My aunt Julie bought me this cap.”
“Who do you like?”
“I don’t have a favorite,” Travis said. “You want to see my glove?”
Virgil took it from him. “You need to loosen this up,” he said. “The leather is stiff because it’s new.”
“I know,” the boy said, his eyes on Virgil’s cast again. “The ball keeps popping out when I play catch.”
“You need to get some neatsfoot oil,” Virgil told him. “Work it into the leather and when you go to bed at night, put the ball in the glove and tie it there with string.” He took the ball from the boy and demonstrated. “Wrap it tight like that. Do that every night and it’ll make a good pocket.”
Virgil heard a step and glanced up to see Dusty watching from the hall. She’d changed into clean jeans and a loose cotton shirt, the sleeves rolled up.
“Mom, we have to buy some neats oil,” Travis told her.
“So I hear,” she said as she walked past.
She set Travis up in front of the television with a glass of juice and some crackers, and told Virgil they could talk out on the tiny balcony off the back of the apartment, where there was a steel table and a couple of lawn chairs. The balcony overlooked the side street where they had parked. Without asking, Dusty brought out two cans of Sam Adams and gave one to Virgil.
“So?” she asked.
“Somebody killed our friend Brownie last night,” Virgil said.
She didn’t say anything for a while. She pulled back the tab of the beer can, glancing inside the apartment, where the boy was sitting on the floor with his back against the couch, out of earshot, watching cartoons.
“How?” she asked.
“Strangled him with some fishing line.”
She nodded. “Something ironic about that.”
“I guess so.”
She fell quiet again after that, sipping at the can while she considered the information. Virgil drank the cold beer and watched her. She had strong arms and hands, her fingers banged up from her work, her nails lined with dirt. Her face and neck and arms were deeply tanned. It appeared she wore no makeup, at least to go to work.
“Was it a robbery or something?”
“Apparently not,” Virgil told her. “Somebody had it in for him.”
“Might have nothing to do with the other,” she said after a moment. “Guy like that probably had a few enemies.”
“That’s what I told the cops.”
“You talked to the cops?”
“Yeah,” Virgil said. “They heard that I had a little problem with Brownie. You know, because of my boat.”
“But you didn’t kill him.”
“Nope.”
She smiled, balancing the beer can on her knee. “I didn’t think so. You don’t look the type. And if you did kill him, I kind of doubt you would go to all the bother of tracking me down to tell me he’s dead.”
“Probably not. I can’t say for sure, seeing as this is all hypothetical.”
“So why did you track me down?”
“Because I thought you should know. I would have called you but I lost your number. But I think you need to consider whether or not Brownie told anybody that it was you who remodeled his ear last week. The cops might want to talk to you.”
“What makes you think that was me?”
“I’m pretty smart for a farmer.”
“Right.” She tilted the can back. She was feigning nonchalance but her eyes wouldn’t rest, darting one way then the other, as they had done the first time he’d met her, the first time they’d had a beer together.
“So the cops figure you for a suspect?” she asked at length.
“I don’t think so,” Virgil replied. “As much as they’d like to.”
She nodded, not looking at him. Virgil watched as she drew a deep breath and then took a long pull from the can of beer before setting it aside.
“Well, thanks for letting me know,” she said and stood up.
Virgil knew he was being dismissed and he was fine with that. He’d felt some odd obligation to her and now that he’d honored it, he could go home. And stay there. He got to his feet. Turning toward the sliding door to the apartment, though, he remembered something.
“You know a guy drives a blue Mercedes convertible?” he asked. “Dark hair, maybe in love with his own image?”
She almost pulled it off. Her hesitation was so slight, so nearly indiscernible, that Virgil could have missed it. If he hadn’t been standing so close to her, he was sure he wouldn’t have seen it. But her eyes betrayed her. There was something in the instant she heard what he had asked, a flash of recognition—and quite possibly fear—that gave her away.
“No, I don’t,” she said. “What about him?”
&n
bsp; “He was drinking at Scallywags last night.”
“Wouldn’t there be a lot of people drinking at Scallywags last night?”
“Good point,” Virgil said.
They went into the apartment. Travis, in front of the TV, was wrapping his baseball in the glove, the way Virgil had shown him, his tongue clenched between his teeth as he concentrated on the task. Virgil drained the beer and turned to Dusty, handing her his empty can.
“Mind if I use your bathroom?”
She told him where it was and he went down the hallway. He had a leak and as he was washing his hands, he could hear Dusty talking to someone on the telephone. He heard her say she’d be there shortly. There was a sense of quiet urgency in her voice. After she hung up, she told the boy he was going to his aunt’s for the weekend. She stopped talking when Virgil came back.
She was scared.
“Well, I’ll see you around,” Virgil said.
“Sure.”
Virgil pointed his finger at Travis. “Neatsfoot oil.”
“I’ll remember. Bye.”
Dusty opened the door to let him out. Virgil hesitated there, and turned back to her. Not wanting to, but doing it anyway.
“So what are you going to do now?”
“What am I going to do about what?”
“You said you needed to find the cylinder.”
“No,” she said. “That was before. These people are playing too rough for me. I’m done with it.”
The first day he had met her, Virgil had told her she was a lousy liar. She hadn’t gotten any better at it.
But it had nothing to do with him.
“Me too,” he said.
He went down the steps to the sidewalk out front, and as he walked around the block to his truck, he knew he was doing the right thing in getting the hell out of there. Only a damn fool would involve himself in a situation with crooked cops and sadistic Russian thugs and stone-cold killers. Only a damn fool would even consider it.
But of course, only a damn fool would walk over to Dusty’s truck and open the hood. And only a damn fool would remove the rotor from the distributor and stash it beneath the front seat of his own truck.
Only the most foolish of damn fools would do a thing like that.
When Dusty and Travis walked around the corner ten minutes later, with Travis carrying a backpack, Virgil was sitting behind the wheel of his own truck, his arm out the open window, listening to Patsy Cline on the radio. Dusty gave him a look of warning as they walked by, just enough to let him know once more that she didn’t want him around. By her wary expression, though, she knew that something wasn’t right.
She turned the truck over for maybe a minute and she got out and popped open the hood. She apparently knew a little about engines because in very short order she slammed the hood shut. She stood looking at him for a moment, and then she opened the passenger door and got Travis out of her truck and brought him over to Virgil’s passenger side. They both got in. She was so angry she wouldn’t look at Virgil.
“So much for you being smart,” she said. “Where’s my rotor?”
“Threw it in the storm sewer.”
“Fuck,” she said.
“You said a bad word,” Travis told her.
“Sometimes it’s okay to use a bad word,” she told him. “Me … not you.”
“Hey, I just want my boat back,” Virgil said.
“Your boat,” she repeated. She sat fuming for a moment longer, then gestured out the windshield with the back of her hand. “Drive on, Galahad.”
TWENTY-ONE
After talking to Shell, Hoffman did a walking tour of the park, asking here and there if anybody had seen Soup. Nobody was talking, of course, and he knew he was wasting his time. Soup could have been standing five feet behind him, and the dregs he was asking would deny having seen him. Just the way it was down here. Garbage protecting garbage.
But at least he had one lead, and that was one more than he’d had an hour ago. He went looking for Yuri and found him at the north end of the park. In his bright red shirt and his cowboy hat, the Russian wasn’t hard to spot, behind the remains of a screen that surrounded a basketball court, smoking dope with some of the players, a rag-ass bunch of teenagers and other assorted stoners, dressed in baggy shorts and torn NBA jerseys. Yuri was sitting on a picnic table and they were gathered around him like he was the Pied-fucking-Piper, due to the fact that he was passing around a couple of joints the size of Cuban cigars.
Hoffman stopped when he saw what was going on. If he walked over, the kids would make him at once and disappear into the streets. Whatever Yuri was working, Hoffman decided to leave him to it. He did stand there long enough for the Russian to notice him; he wanted him to know that he was still in the picture. He saw Yuri smile and nod his head as if agreeing with Hoffman on something, and Hoffman turned and headed out of the park. It was after five o’clock; if Soup’s sister was a working woman, she should be home by now. He could walk to Delaware Street from there.
He knew the building, and he knew that Soup had some sort of connection to the neighborhood, simply because he’d seen him there often enough. On his rap sheet Soup was usually listed as no known address, but that was true of most of these skids. They had their welfare checks mailed to their friends or their aunts or a post office box, but they themselves never had anything like a home address. They were no better than hoboes, which was why it was always hard to track them down.
He went into the front foyer to check the names on the mailboxes, but he knew it would be an exercise in futility. The apartment numbers were listed, and a couple had names alongside, but most were blank. Just another quirk of a neighborhood where nobody wanted anybody else to know their business. The inner door to the lobby was locked. Hoffman could have rung the super’s number and shown his badge, but chances were pretty good that the super was tight with the tenants and in no time the entire building would know there was a cop on the premises. And Soup, if he was hunkered down somewhere inside, would be gone.
Hoffman went back outside and around to the alley at the rear of the walk-up. The back entrance was a steel fire door and it was locked, too. There was an overflowing Dumpster nearby and garbage scattered around the entranceway—fast-food wrappers, liquor bottles, condoms. The whole alley stunk of rotting food and piss.
Hoffman stood there for a couple of minutes, deciding what to do, and just as he resigned himself to going back out front and buzzing the super, the steel door opened and a chubby kid of about fifteen walked out. Hoffman collared him and pushed him back inside, against the brick wall of the stairwell. He flashed his badge and told the kid he was looking for Janelle’s apartment. When the kid, typically, feigned ignorance, Hoffman took the Glock from under his jacket and slammed the butt of the gun across the teenager’s face, opening up a cut on the bridge of his nose. The kid folded like a cheap tent and gave him the apartment number.
Hoffman went up the stairs to the second floor and made his way down the dim hallway to the apartment. He could hear a TV playing inside, what sounded like cartoons. Hoffman knocked and waited. The door opened a couple of inches, held there by the chain, and a woman’s face appeared. Hoffman showed the tin again and he heard the chain unlock and the door opened a little wider, but not much.
The woman resembled Soup slightly, although she was a hell of a lot healthier-looking. When he realized she wasn’t about to willingly let him in, Hoffman shoved the door with the flat of his hand and entered. The woman was forced backward a couple of steps.
“What do you want?” she demanded.
“Looking for Soup,” Hoffman said. “You’re Janelle, right?”
When the woman made no reply, Hoffman left her there and did a quick search of the apartment, moving through the living room, where a girl of about five was watching television, then in and out of the two bedrooms, checking the closets and under the beds. Last he had a look in the bathroom, pulling back the shower curtain, before returning to the kitchen. The
woman stood in the open doorway to the living room, anger clear on her face. The little girl was still on the couch, watching, her eyes wide. Hoffman took in the surroundings, looking for signs of a male presence—shoes, a jacket, anything. The apartment was clean, and there was the smell of something baking. Cookies maybe.
“Do you have a warrant to search my house?” the woman asked.
“I don’t need a warrant,” Hoffman told her. “I got some questions.”
“Since when you don’t need a warrant to barge into my house?”
“Listen to the lawyer here,” Hoffman said. “All right. I can make a fucking phone call and have a warrant here in twenty minutes. And you better believe I’ll find some reason to take you downtown, lady. And then that little girl goes to children’s services. Now tell me—is that how you want to play this?”
The woman looked at Hoffman with contempt. “No,” she said.
“Where’s your brother?” he asked.
“I haven’t seen him.”
“And you would tell me if you had?”
“I guess that would depend on what this is about,” the woman said.
Hoffman ignored the question. “When was he here last?”
“More than a month,” the woman said. “He knows not to come here if he’s using. Sets a bad example for my little girl.”
“Soup sets a bad example for the whole human race,” Hoffman said.
“I wouldn’t know about that. I guess you’d be the expert on that.”
“What?” Hoffman snapped.
The woman hesitated. “Nothing.”
Hoffman gave her a look of warning and went past her, his shoulder brushing her on the way by. There was mail on the kitchen table, a few bills and some magazines. He went through the letters, tossing everything carelessly aside when he didn’t find anything related to Soup. Some of the mail fell to the floor. When he walked back into the living room, the woman picked the letters up and put them on the table again. Hoffman turned to the little girl.