Paul gave two knuckle raps and came in. The door opened with a rush of air, though it wasn’t windy out, Rick didn’t think.
Dad said, loud—too loud—apparently to Paul, “Tell your mother I paid the property tax. Not like she’ll know what the hell that is. Not like you know what the hell that is. You two got a pretty good deal going on, you and your mother living free on my dime.”
Paul let out a burst of breath. Like something was funny.
Rick let out a breath, too, meant to sound like No kidding, but it came out too hard and quick and loud. Everything was too loud.
“Something funny there?” Dad eyed Rick.
“No, no—just—I know it,” Rick said to make his intention clear. “Kid don’t know how good he’s got it.”
Paul pulled up a chair.
“Yeah?” Dad said. “Maybe she can move in with you, then. Save me on property taxes.”
“Nah, no.” Rick’s voice rang in his ears.
“Didn’t think so,” Dad said. “You try living with that woman.”
From where he sat, Paul stared at Dad with that dead-eyed look of his. It was deader than usual. He didn’t blink. Rick didn’t know how Paul went that long without blinking.
“No, I know it.” Rick laughed a short laugh, but it didn’t sound right. Two quick hehs. Heh-heh. Did he always laugh like that?
Dad’s eyes rose to meet Rick’s again, though his head stayed put. “Something wrong with you?”
“No?”
“Thought earlier he looked like he was coming down off something. Coming down with something, I mean,” Paul said, loud and steady.
Dad stared. “Sweating bullets and look like you seen a ghost.”
“No? I don’t know. Just tired is all.”
Dad went back to his notebook. “Any rate, she’s your mother. A man don’t speak of his mother that way.” He scrawled and muttered, “You know. You think you know. Losing Dell Junior might’ve knocked the screw out of the hole, but it was pert-near stripped to begin with.” He turned to a clean page. He carved the fresh sheet with his ballpoint, writing big enough Rick knew it was directions to get to a job. “All the same, she’s your mother.”
Paul was looking long and hard at Dad again. Rick had seen the look. Not on Paul, but it was just as familiar. It reminded Rick of something he couldn’t place.
Dad’s words echoed in his head. Pert-near stripped. Losing Dell. He stuck on that. Losing Dell. Dell Junior: pair of needle-nose pliers set someplace nobody could remember. Dell Junior: putty knife misplaced so long everybody eventually quit looking. Now Mom was the putty knife. Misplaced.
Mom. That was the look Paul was giving Dad. Their eyes were different, Paul’s and Mom’s. His were silver, hers were blue. But that was Mom’s look coming straight from Paul’s eyes.
Rick rubbed the dull tips of his fingers against his scalp, quick. Too quick. Everything was to and fro. Slow and quick. Quick and slow. He needed some sleep. What with the heat, the job, the crick in his neck—Pam and Mom—Rick needed some sleep.
“Picked up a single out by Seneca. Old ranch hand’s place. Fire job,” Dad said. The guy he’d bought it from said first it was the wiring, then slipped it might’ve been a cigarette-in-bed deal. “Salvage it if you can. Otherwise, we’ll part it out.” He tore the page from the notebook, metal rings tearing through each hole like a lit string of Black Cats. He slid the paper across the tabletop with a loud shh.
Rick pulled the page down into his lap to fold it.
Dad’s eyes were on him. The whites and irises were swollen big, bug-eyed. From the bifocals. Rick could see the veins—the little red—they were capillaries, Rick thought.
“Boy, you look like shit,” Dad said.
Seneca. Dad wanted them in Seneca now. Another job more than three hours out. Rick would ask if they could wait till Monday. If they could wait till Monday, he’d get a couple days home with Pam. Pam couldn’t take all this out-of-town work. She needed some decent sleep, too.
“Monday might be good,” he told Dad. “For this one. Monday would give Pam a break. She could use the break. From the out-of-town jobs.”
Rick felt Paul looking at him now. He’d had enough of Paul’s looking. Rick glared back, was about to ask him what the hell he was staring at.
But Paul wasn’t looking like Paul. Or Mom. Paul wasn’t angry or bored or dead-eyed, for once. For once he was just looking. If he hadn’t been Paul, Rick would’ve thought the look was concern. Or pity. Paul stared like somebody who’d seen a deer hit and flung from the van grille, now lying on its side in the ditch, still trying to run.
“Pam,” Dad cut in like a duck call, and Paul snapped out of it. “All I hear out of you. Pam. Want to do something for your wife, take good work when you can get it.” Dad muttered, “Monday. Must think you’re a banker.”
Rick made a windy grunt. “Shit, no. Banker.”
Paul said, “My guess is a banker wouldn’t be living in a trailer.” Paul looked like Paul again, and he was staring down Dad.
Dad didn’t care for it. He stared right back. “You’re sitting in a trailer, son.”
“Well, now,” Paul said. “This here’s a double-wide. Double-wide’s the mark of a whole different rank of people.”
Rick didn’t know what Paul was doing. Why he was trying to piss off Dad, who’d planted his bulbous eyeballs on him. The old man’s snakeskin boots grazed the Berber carpet as he leaned into the table. “This double-wide’s where your bread and butter come from, in case you forgot.”
“Even got a spare room,” Paul said. “Instead of paying taxes on that place in town, how about I get an apartment? Bring your old lady up here.” He threaded his hands together behind his head. Leaned back in his chair like he was getting comfortable. “Could save you a pretty penny.”
Across the table’s veneer, Dad stared hard at him.
“I can head over, pick her up right now, if you want,” Paul said.
Rick shot him a look.
Dad’s mouth drew tight. He leaned back in his own chair. “Touché, kid.”
Paul asked about pay on the Wilton job.
From the back of the notebook, Dad pulled two envelopes. One for Rick, one for Paul. He slid each across the tabletop with another pair of loud hisses. He said not to spend it all in one place. And he wasn’t fronting any money to get there this time, since he didn’t know what the hell he’d bought. No idea how long it would take. He was counting on Rick, he said, to call him tomorrow and let him know how it looked.
That had to mean something, Rick thought. That their old man trusted Rick’s judgment. Rick appreciated that. He stood and yawned. He tried to, anyway. He needed some air. He needed a dip, too. He’d left it in the van’s console.
Outside, Paul walked with him down to the van and asked to see the directions.
Rick dug the paper from his pocket and unfolded it. “Meet up here, what? Four? Four-thirty?”
Paul was reading. He said he’d drive separate again. Had some shit to take care of tonight. Might run him a little late in the morning.
It sounded like bad news. “Don’t go tailing that cop again. You need to stay away from that cop.”
Paul didn’t look up. He was still reading, though there weren’t more than four lines on the paper. Rick’s sense of time must’ve been getting sludgy again. “Go get some sleep,” Paul said, folding the paper and handing it back. “Ol’ Dell Senior’s right about one thing. You look like shit.”
Paul patted Rick on the shoulder, once. He gripped it, then let it go. That wasn’t like Paul, that pat. But it was a good sign. It was a good sign he’d calmed down. He must’ve figured out they couldn’t let this Mom thing get to them. He must’ve finally figured out family needed to stick together.
16
A QUARTER TILL ELEVEN THAT NIGHT, Harley was driving around Junco in circles, trying to spot a dog at large in the four hundred block of Jefferson. Driving anywhere in Junco wasn’t his favorite. The town was like a s
hirttail relative at a reunion, a cousin everybody avoided because he stared a little too long or had an uncontrollable habit of flicking his tongue in and out of his wet mouth. Why Junco was like that was anyone’s guess. It was small, and it was poor, and it was “country,” as some put it. But all those things could be said for Wanahee, not thirty miles north. Different. Junco was different.
Carol sputtered across the radio. There was a disturbance at the Avark, she said. Harley took the spur north to the highway and turned east. After he passed the trailer park and the blind intersection at County Road K, he glanced at the home place, for once his thoughts not on Paul or stolen clothes or any burn barrels.
All he’d hoped last night was that Pam being there would make a walk-through easier. He’d see what he’d see, spray paint, kicked-in plaster, and he’d keep his head because someone else was there, watching. That was what made his job a decent fit. He’d signed on for a steady paycheck, no staunch beliefs in upholding the law. The job fit because he’d had a lifetime’s practice at keeping his head in the company of others. It had never felt like a weakness, since it took a fair amount of work to cultivate. Now, though, he wondered.
He also wondered what Pam was after, since Ziske was right. Harley wasn’t exactly a young buck. And there’d been the wedding band she wore that first night. As likely as not, Harley was a brief distraction. He just didn’t know from what. He didn’t know if she was a recent divorcee on a tear or a bored young housewife. Not that he necessarily minded either way, so long as Babe Reinhardt didn’t find out. Babe Reinhardt would skin him.
After he crossed the county oil, he glanced at the Knudsen place and thought he caught a dim shine through the picture window. But before he could brake, the window was dark again. Likely a reflection from the headlamps.
Harley slowed as much as he needed to whip left on Main, blowing the stop sign. Streetlamps lit the business district like a stage set ready to be rolled away. Everything past the high facades was black. Even the shadows looked flat, painted on, where mortar dipped between brick and where names and dates were chiseled into storefronts. The one before him read 18 SCHMIDT 83.
He got out and passed the blue-and-red Old Style sign, the dim gold of a perforated lampshade glowing in the Avark’s window. The bar’s glass-and-steel door sent a wink across the pavement, and through the entryway, raspy syllables mingled with muted music. No shouting, nothing that sounded out of the ordinary. Loren Braasch emerged, waving farewell to someone inside. Harley thought to mention the home place to him, about locking it up. Harley could mention the Jipp fire, tell him there’d been signs of a transient holing up in empty farmhouses.
“You’re not the one I’m down here for, are you, Loren?”
“Depends,” Loren said, smiling beneath his horn-rims and his net-backed seed cap. He held out his hand for a shake. Like a church greeting, he planted the other on Harley’s arm, which gave a twitch. “Come to take me off to the poor farm?”
“Heard somebody was raising hell. Figured it fit your description.”
“That’s right. That’s right. Live fast, die young, leave a pretty corpse’s always been my motto. I’ll live up to it soon as I get the pretty part down.” His laugh trailed off on a high sigh. “No, you know, that youngest Reddick. Come in three sheets to the wind and rowdy, but he’s pretty well subdued now. Passed out cold in a booth. Never seen anybody drop that quick without a punch.” He said Frank, the Avark’s owner, must’ve called for the infantry. “Shouldn’t have no trouble with him, long as you got a wheelbarrow.”
Harley asked if he had one handy. Loren wished him luck and gave Harley’s arm another pat. Then he weaved toward his parked Chevy, not drunk, just favoring his bad knee.
Harley pulled a cigarette from his pocket, went for the lighter, then remembered he’d left it in the glove box. It needed fluid. He had matches. He bent one down around the edge of its book and flicked the flint. Between the strike and the shot of flame, he took a deep drag of fortification. He shook the book out and headed into the dimness. The place smelled like flat beer and stale smoke.
“Harley,” Frank said in terse greeting. He pulled the dish towel from his shoulder and shooed it toward the booth farthest back.
Paul’s long, dirt-colored hair spread wide across the table, but his head wasn’t turned. The forehead lay level. If anybody had ever passed out that way in the history of booze, Harley hadn’t seen it.
Frank skidded an ashtray across the bar and rested his forearms on the solid, round girth of his stomach. “Come in twenty minutes ago, blitzed out of his gourd, shouting nonsense.”
“Catch any of it?”
“Nah, gibberish. Just hollering.” With the stubs of his nails, Frank scraped at the raised and bled-together blotch of an old USMC tattoo. “I’d have thrown him out myself, been done with it, but that one, who knows? Might come back and Molotov-cocktail the place. Figured a night in the drunk tank wouldn’t be the worst thing.”
“Think he was just drunk?”
“Sure as hell hope he don’t go around sober talking gibberish and passing out on tables. Jackass.”
“No, I mean you sure he wasn’t high on something else?”
“Ah, hell if I know. All I care is you pay your rent before you pass out. Little shit didn’t buy one beer.”
Paul’s arms sprawled like a U around his head. Harley asked for a pitcher of water. Frank filled one, slid it to him, and busied himself wiping down the bar.
Harley went to the booth, knuckle poised to nudge Paul’s shoulder, which looked like it might rip the thin black T-shirt he wore. Instead he gave Paul’s boot a kick with his own. Limp as a rag doll. “Reddick,” he said, sharp. No response. Paul wasn’t passed out, Harley was certain. But he was bent on playing this whole thing out anyway.
Harley grabbed a fistful of hair, lifted, and splashed the cold water in Paul’s face to rouse him. His mouth chomped open and shut like a fish gulping at air. His lips formed a faint, shit-eating grin. He peeked through one eye like a kid cheating at hide-and-seek.
“Harley,” he said in greeting. His eyes were clear and clean, without even the slightest layer of lacquer. His pupils were the same little pits, not dilated. “Been meaning to bump into you.”
“Wish you’d get a new hobby.”
Harley kept Paul in front of him, where he could see him. Paul slid into the cruiser’s back seat with no trouble, and they drove the three blocks east to the courthouse, the tall square of brick on Third and Spruce. Harley pulled the Fury into the alley entrance. Before he got out, he finished his smoke and checked the time. He’d need it for the arrest report. The final digit of the dashboard clock, the 8 in 11:38, rolled into place with a thin electric hum and a dull click. He eyed Paul in the rearview. On the drive over, Paul had rested both arms along the back of the seat like it was his couch. Now he leaned in close to the window, fogged hot air on the glass with his breath, and drew a heart.
“Cute,” Harley said. He stubbed his cigarette out. “I don’t know what shit you’re trying to pull. I gather you’re after a night in a cell. Need an alibi or general distraction?”
“Any bail? Guess I should’ve checked rates in advance.”
“No bail.” Harley wondered where the truck was. He’d scanned Main when he first pulled in and hadn’t spotted the F-250. “You can call whoever you need to in the morning, unless you’re parked nearby.”
Paul didn’t offer up the Ford’s whereabouts. Harley walked him through the back door of the courthouse and down the steps to the basement. The holding cell was old and small. The brick room of the former sheriff’s office was mostly claimed by the assessor’s secretary for storage. Piles of brown cardboard boxes with scrawled-on dates and codes lined the walls and made the already small space smaller.
Harley saw to it Paul was bedded down in the narrow cell. He looked too at ease there, took too quickly to the shelf bed’s tick mattress.
Harley gripped the cell door. It was old-fashioned, wit
h thick steel bands riveted in a weave. The open squares between the strips were small. The place was claustrophobic as it was, so he left the cell open. That way Paul was in plain sight of the desk.
“Say, long as I got you here,” Paul called.
“Just full of cute.” Harley pulled an arrest report from the dusty paper tray on the desk and tried to remember the date. Too many shifts in a row was wearing on him.
“Didn’t get much chance to catch up the other night, back at your home place.”
Harley breathed deep to conjure some patience. If Paul could be counted on for one thing, it was that he’d talk, albeit cryptically. With any luck, maybe he’d drop a hint or two about why somebody would steal a dead man’s clothes and set fire to them in an abandoned house. Not that Harley wanted to sift through the chatter to get there.
“Any big cases you’re working on? Tracking down any hot leads?”
Harley filled out his personnel number. “Why? Anything you want to confess to? Long as you got me here?”
“Nope. You?”
“Those quaaludes were your mother’s.” Paul mentioned them a few months back, during one of the routine searches of the Ford’s glove box. He’d insinuated Harley must’ve enjoyed them, given no charges came of it. “That why you were at my folks’ place? Thought if I messed with yours, you’d mess with mine?”
“What? Eight ludes? Nah, I let that one go.”
“Thanks.”
“Besides, if I wanted to mess with yours, why pick that place? You wouldn’t care if somebody leveled it, I bet. Hell. After that search for Dell Junior, I bet you steer clear of all them houses right around the old Lucas place.”
Harley replayed last night’s sounds, the brushing grass and the distant engine. The roof sealant in the burn barrel. Trailers had flat roofs. Paul worked for his dad, repairing trailers. Harley pictured Paul peering from a window of the house again. Maybe the vision wasn’t all that paranoid.
“I heard about the Jipp place, up by the cemetery,” Paul said.
“Yeah, don’t suppose you know anything firsthand.”
Pickard County Atlas Page 12