The Drifter, page 12
Would he still be sleeping in the truck when it snowed?
It was the kind of thing that might limit a guy’s female relationships.
He wondered again how long he would live like this. Or if he even minded.
—
Peter got himself dressed, which wasn’t easy in the cab of a pickup truck, then let Mingus out, amazed again at the dog’s evolving stench. The pepper spray added a certain eye-watering richness, like snorting habañero sauce deep into your sinuses. He had to do something about that. But washing the dog was further down the list.
Finding the scarred man was at the top.
If he was the one who’d sent the shooter, he’d know by now that things had not gone as planned. Peter figured he’d give the scarred man another shot at it.
And use himself as bait.
But first, breakfast. He unfolded his chair on the parking strip, started the little backpacking stove, and filled his battered tin percolator. Coffee before work, whenever possible.
Halfway through his first cup, twelve-year-old Charlie and eight-year-old Miles came out the front door. They stomped around on the new porch deck for a few minutes, testing its strength against their school shoes. Then they saw the dog roaming off the leash, without the stick tied up in its mouth.
The dog grinned at them, tongue lolling to one side through the murderous gate of its teeth.
“Dang! What are you doin’?” Charlie pushed his little brother back inside the house. Then came out with his baseball bat held at the ready, like an impossibly skinny Barry Bonds, and called out to Peter from the top of the steps. “You set that dog loose? What are you, some kinda crazy?”
“Probably,” said Peter. “Charlie, who are you named for?”
The boy straightened up. “Charlie Parker, alto sax.”
“And your brother?”
“Miles Davis. Trumpet.”
Peter nodded. “Well, yesterday I found out this dog’s name is Charles Mingus. Named after a bass player. Turns out he’s your father’s dog. Come on down, you can give him something to eat. Make friends.”
“No dang way.” Charlie caught himself. “I mean no, sir. I’ll stay right here.”
“How are you going to get your little brother to school?”
Charlie considered for a minute. He still stood on the porch steps. “Go out the back, sir, and run like heck through the alley.”
“You think I’d let that dog hurt you?” Peter took the coffeepot off the stove and put on the big frying pan, set some butter to melt.
“No offense, sir, but you’re still sitting down and that dog’s got four-wheel drive. And he looks real hungry.”
“He is hungry,” said Peter, assembling supplies from his cooler and laying them out in the pan. “I haven’t fed him anything yet. What about you? You hungry?”
“I already had my cereal this morning, sir.”
The bread sizzled in the hot butter. The dog sniffed the air and came over. Peter pushed the dog away. “You mean you don’t want a grilled ham-and-cheese sandwich? Nice and hot? I might have a few doughnuts in the cooler, too.”
Charlie crept down the steps, bat held at the ready. “Sir, you are a mean bastard, sir.”
Peter grinned. “Courage, Charlie.” He flipped the sandwiches. “Courage is doing something that scares the hell out of you. But you do it anyway. Your dad taught me that.”
Mingus stuck his nose in the pan. When Peter whacked it with the spatula, Charlie’s eyes got even wider, if that was possible. The dog backed away, focused on the pan, just the tip of his tongue showing now, and the white serration of his teeth. A string of drool hung from one jowl.
Charlie choked up on the bat so he could hold it with one hand, and tiptoed closer. Mingus ignored him, his gaze locked on the food. Then Charlie glanced at Peter’s face and saw the bruise.
“Sir? What happened to you?”
“A misunderstanding,” said Peter. “Don’t worry about it.”
He wanted to say that the other two guys went to the hospital. But that probably wasn’t the right message to send to the boy.
Instead he laid out the four sandwiches on the wide cedar plank he used as a cutting board, and chopped each sandwich into quarters. Charlie stood with the chair and stove between him and the dog, still poised to flee. Peter handed him a section of sandwich. Mingus’s massive head turned as if on a swivel, following the sandwich. The string of drool hung longer.
“Hold it on the palm of your hand,” said Peter. “Like this.”
He held another section on his own hand, fingers fully open and outstretched. Mingus took it with surprising delicacy, like a little old lady nibbling a cucumber sandwich, except for the slick of saliva left behind. Mingus licked his chops, the white teeth flashing, then went over to Charlie and nosed his elbow as if to say, “You gonna eat that?”
Charlie blinked at high speed, and a slight but rapid vibration ran through his entire body. But he lowered his hand, fingers carefully spread.
Mingus took the food with just the tips of his teeth and wolfed it down without seeming to chew. Then sniffed the hand thoroughly and licked the remaining butter off with several swipes of his huge tongue.
Charlie smiled so wide Peter thought his face would split. “Can I do it again?”
“Sure,” said Peter. “But get your brother first, so he can meet Mingus, too.” Peter busied himself making more sandwiches, wishing with everything he had that Big Jimmy was there to see his boys growing up.
In the end, he wrapped up a hot sandwich and a pair of doughnuts in a paper towel for each boy to eat on the way to school.
“Sir,” said Charlie, “Mingus really smells bad.”
“I know,” said Peter. “It’s on my list.”
—
He drove back to the lumberyard, keeping one eye on his rearview, and bought new steel entry doors and locks for Dinah’s house. The work would take him a good chunk of the day, and he’d be outside where anyone could see him.
Anyone at all.
Peter wasn’t quite sure what to think of the scarred man. The confident swagger was real enough, but he didn’t set off Peter’s radar like Lewis did, or Nino, or Oklahoma Ray. Still, Peter didn’t fool himself into thinking the scarred man wasn’t dangerous.
He set up his tools in Dinah’s narrow side yard. The nearby houses protected his flank, and the tall wooden fence at the alley shielded him somewhat from the rear. If they came from the front and back, he could always duck through the house.
He wondered how many there would be. Probably more than one.
The yard was a few steps above the street, so he could see over the parked cars up and down the block. High ground, somewhat protected. He’d had worse positions. And the dog was on sentry duty, pacing the sidewalk, trailing a plume of stink so powerful you could practically see it coming off him. A walking gas grenade with four legs and a tail.
A car came down the street. A red Kia. It didn’t stop.
Now a blue pickup. It didn’t stop, either. This could take all day.
He kept the new Sig Sauer in his jacket pocket, spare clip on the other side. He’d paid Lewis twice what it would have cost in any gun shop, but the serial number was ground down, and the gun was clearly otherwise unused, with traces of the heavy packing oil still in the checkered handgrip.
Peter didn’t mind the cost. He thought of it as health insurance.
Another car, a silver Toyota sedan. A big old Buick. A woman pushing a stroller, who crossed the street to avoid the dog. His awareness was raised to a watchful hum. Then a tan GMC Yukon with an elaborate tubular bumper. He couldn’t see the driver, but he figured it was Lewis, keeping his word to keep an eye out for Dinah.
He bounced on his toes. He might as well get some work done.
He started with the back door, the worst one, damaged in the break-in. The hundred-year-old glue had basically given up, and the jamb stops were so flimsy that little Miles could have kicked his way through. Peter pulled off the trim with a flat bar, used the Sawzall to cut the nails holding the jamb in place, and the whole assembly came out in one piece. It was a challenge getting the new door into the crooked old opening, especially with one eye on the dog and one hand on the .45, stopping to eyeball the street whenever a car drove by. A white minivan. A rusted-out Mustang.
He’d done harder work under more difficult conditions.
When he had the new doorknob and deadbolt in place, it was time for lunch. Cheese and crackers, a blueberry yogurt, and cold coffee.
Six cars drove by while he ate. No scarred man. No assault rifles.
Then the tan Yukon swung by again, and Peter was off the steps and into the street.
Lewis wore his suede jacket and starched white shirt and tilted smile.
Peter walked to the driver’s side. The window hummed down and a puff of heated air escaped. He said, “See anything?”
Lewis shook his head. “No guy with scars, no black Ford SUV. But I’ll keep driving. Give you another day, maybe two. After that I got paid work.”
“Thanks,” said Peter.
“Not doin’ it for you, jarhead.”
Peter nodded. “I know. But thanks, anyway.”
The window hummed back up and the Yukon rumbled away.
Peter gulped down his coffee and moved his tools to the new porch and took out the old front door. This one was a sixties retrofit with a rotten sill and a funky glass insert patched with tape. This replacement door went in more quickly than the last, and with no shots fired.
The last part a disappointment, really.
He put away his tools and went to buy a phone.
—
He’d gotten rid of all electronics when he went to the mountains. Cut up his credit card, too. It seemed symbolic at the time. But now it was just a pain in the ass.
He found a Best Buy store, where he broke the world’s record for fastest purchase of a prepaid phone and a cheap laptop, making it out before the white sparks flared too badly.
He didn’t have much cash left. Not after the Sig Sauer and Best Buy. He didn’t want to dip into Jimmy’s money unless he had to.
Best Buy needed a few hours to configure the laptop, so he sat in the suburban parking lot with the uncharged phone plugged into the cigarette lighter and called Dinah at work. The woman he spoke to at the nursing station told him Dinah was with a patient and she’d call him back, but it would probably be a while.
The wind blew cold through the broken window of his truck. He went into the cargo box and brought out the box of Jimmy’s things he’d gotten from Dinah. He found the yellow flier for the missing Marine, tapped in the grandmother’s number, and took out the stainless-steel Lake Capital Funds pen to take notes.
The phone rang six times before voicemail picked up.
A young man’s voice.
“Hello, you’ve reached Mrs. Aurelia Castellano, but she’s not home at the moment. Please leave a message and she will call you back.”
It was a good voice, quiet but confident. Peter looked at the flier, wondering if that was Felix Castellano’s voice. It probably was.
He wondered if the grandmother called her own number just to hear his voice. If she thought of her grandson every time she played her messages.
Peter thought of his own mother. He hadn’t spoken to her or his dad since he’d gotten off the plane.
At the beep, Peter opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out.
He looked at the Lake Capital Funds pen in his hand. It was a nice pen. An expensive pen.
Then he knew what the next step was.
He walked back into the store to use one of their demo computers as the white static flared and his shoulders cramped up. He needed to get online, just for a minute.
19
Peter pushed the truck hard toward downtown, the city roads rough with potholes, trying to get to Lake Capital before they closed the doors for the day.
One eye on the rearview, watching for the black Ford. But it would be easy to miss in heavy traffic. And Peter’s truck would be easy to follow. Unless he was willing to rent a beige sedan, he couldn’t do anything about it.
He didn’t have a plan for Lake Capital. But the principle wasn’t complicated. It was the same principle he’d operated under for years.
Poke a stick into something and see what happened.
The hedge fund’s headquarters was in the U.S. Bank building at the edge of downtown, overlooking Lake Michigan and the art museum. The tall, rectangular tower’s white aluminum cladding over the steel structural grid glowed in the pale autumn light. Peter remembered taking a tour of the building as part of a high school field trip, and the profound surprise that something like an office building could be beautiful. Designed in the late 1960s by Chicago’s Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, it stood forty-plus stories and was still, he was fairly sure, the tallest building in the state.
It seemed about a million miles from Dinah’s little house.
He parked at a meter and walked in through the high glass atrium that was transparent to the outside. He felt it again walking past the broad window panels that went directly to the ceiling. That sense of expansion, like anything might be possible.
A twin row of twenty-foot-tall trees in giant marble planters led to escalators running to the second-floor lobby, with more big plants and wide glass window panels and long views on three sides. The white-clad structure was visible as he passed from the exterior to the interior, which added to the feeling of transparency. It was enough to make you want to believe in something.
He watched the constant flow of men and women in suits and business casual, with access badges on cords around their necks or clipped to lapels. Peter automatically checked for the exits, but the feeling of openness, the remains of the daylight, and the outside views kept the white static down for the moment.
There were placards for the building’s bigger tenants, including U.S. Bank and several big national financial companies and a large law firm. But nothing for Lake Capital.
Peter walked up to the security desk. “What floor is Lake Capital on?”
The security man in his neat blue uniform checked his computer. “Fifth floor,” he said, and pointed Peter to a bank of elevators.
The static didn’t like elevators.
“Are there any stairs?” The static didn’t like stairs, either, but they were better than an elevator. Peter could run up and down.
The security man shook his head. “Fire stairs only. Not for the public.”
Shit.
But it was just three floors up, and the elevator was nearly empty. Peter closed his eyes and focused on his breathing to keep the static down. It took only a minute, but by the time the doors opened, his neck was tight and his shoulders were starting to clamp up.
Lake Capital was smaller than Peter expected, sharing the floor with three other companies. Its reception area was all glass and stainless steel done in sleek, streamlined curves, but no windows. Expensive conceptual art on the walls, bright plastic machined into corporate abstraction.
Sort of like what high finance had turned out to be, thought Peter, after the bubble burst in 2008. An expensive abstraction that made other people’s money disappear.
The woman at the desk wore a severe gray suit of some synthetic fiber that fit snugly over sculpted curves, her long fingernails polished to a high gloss. Her makeup was a thin sheen over flawless skin, her hair a lacquered black helmet. She looked so sleek that reality would slide right off her.
She kept her access badge on the desk to avoid ruining the effect of the suit, Peter was sure. The room smelled of acetone, hair spray, and carpet-cleaning chemicals. The white static climbed higher, began to fizz and pop. He could feel his heart beating faster, and he was starting to sweat. He wouldn’t last long at this rate.
“Can I help you?”
There was no rising inflection in her voice, as if the question were rhetorical. As if she knew in advance that the man standing before her with the purple bruise on his face and sawdust on his work clothes was in a category beyond her ability to help, and she was making no secret of it.
“I’d like to see Jonathan Skinner,” he said. The CEO, and the only name that was on the website.
She scanned him with an appraiser’s eye. A hint of what she might be like without the severe gray suit to constrain her. There was a quick gleam of interest, maybe from the width of his shoulders or the size of his hands. But not enough to be transactional, not with his substandard wardrobe and clearly inadequate income. She would sleep only above her level.
“You lack,” she said, “an appointment.”
“Well,” said Peter, breathing slow and deep to dampen his heart rate, “I’d like to make an appointment.”
“Hm,” she said. “And what is this regarding?” She made no move to write anything down.
“I’d like to engage the services of this firm.”
“Who referred you?”
The door opened silently behind her, pushed by a man walking out. Peter caught a glimpse of plush carpet, vacant cubicles, and empty chairs. There was no sound of conversation or business being done.
The man appeared to be near Peter’s age, with an aristocrat’s bloodless good looks and white-blond hair spilling carelessly down to his shoulders. He wore an elegant suit in a pale green that was the exact color of money. It fit like it was made for him, and it probably had been. He wore it with an elegant disregard, as if he didn’t particularly care for it, or someone else had paid for it, or he had a dozen more like it in his closet. Or all of the above.
