The Hunger of Crows, page 1
THE HUNGER OF CROWS
A NOVEL
RICHARD CHIAPPONE
For absent friends, Sherry Simpson and Geffrey Von Gerlach.
Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster …
—Friedrich Nietzsche
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
SOME PORTIONS OF the story previously appeared in Opening Days, published by Barclay Creek Press (2010).
I’d like thank the many people too numerous to name who read (and re-read) and advised on this novel over the past ten years: friends and colleagues here in Alaska, and across the country. With special thanks to the patient folks at Folio Literary Agency and at Crooked Lane Books. And of course my wife, Lin, who never stops believing in me.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Although the town of Homer, Alaska, is a very real place, numerous liberties have been taken for the sake of storytelling and in the interest of privacy. Some of the geographical details of the land and the sea, most of the business names and their relative locations on the Homer Spit or around the town, and all the characters in this work of fiction are entirely made-up. Any resemblance to real places or people—living or dead—is pure dumb luck.
—Richard Chiappone
PROLOGUE
Homer, Alaska
LIKE ALMOST EVERY other divorced—or nearly divorced—guy in Homer, Scott Crockett has been coming into the Orca Grill after work a lot lately. He seems to be leaving the jobsite earlier every day. It’s only four in the afternoon now, and he’s drinking his second IPA. The door to the bar is open, and in the sunlit doorway the owner, George Volker, is firing yet another waitress. The girl, a redhead who doesn’t look old enough to work in a bar, is crying, pleading, hanging on Volker’s arm with unmistakable intimacy.
Scott exchanges glances with the bartender, Shire Kiminsky. “Shire, what the hell? That kid’s only been here a week, and Volker’s already hooked up with her? How old is she?”
Shire rolls her eyes and sets some clean glasses on the bar. “She’s twenty-one. I checked.”
The girl whines, “George, don’t do this to me!”
Volker hugs her and looks their way, shrugs like it’s out of his control.
“The man is amazing,” Scott says. “I gotta borrow his aftershave.”
George Volker is short, ordinary looking, and must be close to sixty. The only physical exercise Scott has ever seen him attempt was bending over one time to pick up a nickel off the floor of the bar. Yet he somehow attracts a steady stream of young, incompetent waitresses who get romantically involved with him before he inevitably fires them. It must be the aging hippie look. The silver ponytail, the earrings. The guy goes through women like a king salmon in a school of candlefish. This latest one—Scott thinks her name is Tammy—may be one of the loveliest yet, if not the best waitress anyone’s ever seen.
At the doorway, Tammy buries her face in Volker’s chest and wails, “I said I was sorry about the deep fryer!”
“Take it easy.” Volker pries her off, eases her out the door. “I’ll give you a good reference.”
“How can you fire me after five days and give me a good reference?”
“I’ll say a fishermen’s bar is not a suitable environment for a young woman of your refined temperament.”
Shire scoffs. In a low voice she says to Scott, “Do you believe the bullshit this guy can sling?”
Scott sighs. “He does get the ladies.”
“Oh, Scottie, so lonely, and not even completely divorced yet?” she says with playful mock sympathy. “Seriously, do you really want a wingnut like Tammy? She told me she thought the deep fryer needed more water. Volker has to drain the whole thing.”
“Water.” Scott laughs.
Volker finally sends the girl off. He walks back into the bar, groaning. “Shire, you’re gonna have to work more hours. The first Princess cruise lands next week. We’ll be swamped.”
“No way.” Shire shakes her very blond head. “I told you, George, my kids get off school on Memorial Day. I’m spending more time with them this summer. I leased my boat out to one of the Golovin brothers for the whole season.”
“You’re not going to fish?” Scott asks, astonished. He’s known Shire Kiminsky since high school. Took her to their prom nearly thirty years ago. She’s been a highliner—one of the best commercial fishermen on the bay—since she got her salmon permit and her own boat in her early twenties.
“I’m going to crew for a couple weeks on my brother’s boat out west. Other than that, I’m spending the summer with my girls.” She turns back to Volker. “Part-time, George. That was the deal. I’ll help you out a couple times a week until you find a competent server with more than a room-temperature IQ.”
“Shit.” Volker collapses onto a barstool and reaches for his laptop. “I have to run a new ad. But all I get are ditzes!”
“No, George,” Shire says, with authority, “all you hire are ditzes. If you based your decision on their experience instead of their tits, this wouldn’t be a problem.”
Volker looks at Scott. “Crockett, you ever consider a job in the exciting field of food services?”
“Thanks, George, but I’m too old for you.”
“No more young ones, I swear,” Volker says. He raises his right hand.
Shire snorts. “Right.”
“I’m serious.” Volker opens the laptop. “From now on, I’m looking for a smart, good-looking, unmarried, middle-aged woman who wants to live in the most beautiful place in Alaska. That’s all I want.”
“Yeah, me too,” Scott says, and looks down into his empty glass.
“You had your chance.” Shire reaches across the bar and pats his hand. She smiles fondly. “But no, the girl next door wasn’t exotic enough for Scott Crockett. He had to marry the dark and mysterious Trina Malkovian.” She winks at him. “Big mistake, my friend. Huge.”
“Don’t I know it.” He stands, stretches. “See you later.”
He walks out of the bar into the afternoon light. It’s April, a month after the equinox, and the days are getting longer quickly now. The bay is calm, the tide rip at the end of the spit creating only the slightest chop. A sport boat cuts through the sparkling wave tips, trolling for salmon. Further out, a herring seiner heads for the fishing grounds. Blue-white glaciers cling to the old volcanoes on the other side of the bay. Crows and eagles and gulls pitch across the spotless sky.
Volker is wrong. This isn’t the most beautiful place in Alaska.
It’s the most beautiful place in the world.
PART I
PHOENIX, ARIZONA
CHAPTER
1
THE GUY SEEMS safe enough to Carla. Or maybe she just wants him to be. She’s waitressed at the Sierra Vista for over a year, and she’s met a few men here. More than a few. It’s a cop hangout, and in her experience most cops are decent guys. Not that there aren’t exceptions. She’s been here long enough to know which regulars are likely to be trouble and which aren’t. But there’s something more to this stranger. He’s harder to read.
It’s late on a slow Tuesday night, and Carla’s waiting for the kitchen to fill what’ll be the last food order of the shift: chimichangas for the three twentysomething regulars huddled around a pitcher of Coors like they expect to hear it speak to them. Even out of uniform, the young guys have rookie patrolmen written all over them. They’re polite, and that’s nice. But she knows it’s because she’s got ten years on them. She could do without being reminded of that.
A very slow night. So she’s free to watch a good-looking new guy when he walks in.
He’s big, broad in the shoulders and very tall. Midforties maybe, but fit. None of the worn-out-cop paunch most of the regulars his age carry. Handsome and clean-shaven, with a short, expensive-looking haircut. The effect is ex–law enforcement meets pro football star with looks. She knows that type all too well: men who’ve been too attractive for their own good—or anyone else’s—all their lives.
But there’s more to this one. She’s seen a thousand guys walk into every bar she’s ever worked in intent on forgetting their jobs, their lives. Especially police. That’s more or less why cop bars exist. With this new guy, it’s not just the weary I’ve been through all the shit cops have to deal with in this world and you haven’t attitude. It’s more serious than that. He’s trying hard to shed himself of something unpleasant. She can see that from across the room.
She sets a tray of glasses on the bar and watches him. He’s wearing a cheery face, but she can tell he’s forcing it. He glances at the TV, and the trouble coalesces around his eyes again.
Carla looks at the TV.
Manny, the owner of the Sierra, has turned off the relentless sports channel and is watching CNN. Like most news in the past few weeks, it’s about Gordon McKint, military contractor and billionaire asshole of the highest order, now running for president—independently. Neither party will touch him. Congress has launched yet another investigation into McKint’s company, Sidewinder Security. This one involves the murder of civilians somewhere in the Middle East. Carla can’t keep track of it all. Doesn’t want to.
McKint’s on the screen. There’s his signature eye patch. Manny’s got the sound down too low for her to hear the megalomaniac, thank God. She can’t stand his voice. Can’t stand the news at all these days.
Apparently, the handsome stranger feels the same way. He shakes his head almost imperceptibly and turns away from the TV. As tall and straight-backed as he is, Carla pictu
That thought goes out the window when he makes eye contact with her across the room. Now he seems to genuinely brighten. It’s not the carnivorous, pussy-crazed leer she’s learned to steer clear of, but hungry in a pleasant, more appealing way. “Horndog optimism,” her best girlfriend Sally calls it.
She motions that she’ll be right over. He nods.
“Order up!” the cook calls to her from behind her. She delivers the plates of bulging chimichangas to the three young guys, then walks over to the stranger’s table.
“Will there be others joining you?” she asks, handing him a menu.
“Just me,” he says, and a shadow moves across his face. Sadness of some kind?
“Something to drink?”
The shadow vanishes again, and he smiles. The change happens so fast she’s a little startled. But the smile is brilliant. “Ketel One, rocks, please. A splash of club soda, not tonic. Lemon wedge, not lime.”
“Ooh, fussy,” she says, and grins so he knows she’s teasing.
“I’ve heard it said.” He chuckles.
“Ketel. Rocks. Soda. Lemon.” She leaves him reading the menu.
He’s still absorbed in the thing when she returns with his drink. He doesn’t even look up at her approach.
“Spoiler alert.” She sets the vodka on the table. “The hero dies before the dessert list.”
He looks up from his reading. That smile again. “You’re right. The plot’s a little obvious.” He hands her the menu. “Just the drink, then.”
Carla turns and walks away, resisting the urge to joke again. Leave ’em wanting more, her mother always says. Drives men crazy. She ought to know.
Carla goes about her job, feeling his eyes on her. She resists the urge to look his way.
Manny announces last call. The rookies ask for another pitcher. The complicated stranger orders a second vodka and makes it clear he’s looking for company. When she delivers the new drink, he holds out his hand to her and says, “D’Angelo.” He makes a show of reading her name tag, as though he hasn’t already done that. “Uh, Carla.”
They shake. The manicured nails finish her off.
When he asks what time she gets off work, she says, “Soon.”
* * *
At closing time, Manny stops her as she punches out. He’s a portly, avuncular second-generation Latino who treats her—and all the servers and cooks—like family. A former murder cop himself, his face is creased with concern. “Carla, you don’t get in his car with him. You take your own truck. You hear? And call my phone if anything happens. You got my number on one-touch, right?”
Carla scoffs. “Come on, Manny.”
“Hey, I’m serious,” he says. “I don’t know this guy, and I can’t get a read on him. There’s something hinky about him.”
“Jesus, I’m thirty-eight years old. You can’t make me stay in my room.”
“The way you live.” He shakes his head, puffs up his cheeks, and blows out a long breath. “You should talk to my pal Carmine from Sex Crimes. He’ll tell you what happens when these things go bad.”
“I have talked to Carmine from Sex Crimes. I’d rather stick my hand in the garbage grinder than do that again.”
Manny sags, defeated.
“You’re sweet, Manny. Someday I’m going to marry a man just like you.”
“Good,” he says. “Then he can worry about you.”
She kisses him on the cheek and heads for the door.
* * *
Carla follows D’Angelo in her truck to his house, a perfectly refurbished Paradise Valley midcentury multilevel. It has staggered flat roofs and a terrazzo walkway. A water feature made from a stock tank is the centerpiece of the gated courtyard leading to the enormous heavy glass front door. This isn’t the first time she’s gone home with guys to expensive houses. She was a social worker at Maricopa County Hospital for years before burning out and going to work waiting tables, and she dated enough doctors to staff a clinic of her own. But this is classier in an understated way you just don’t get with radiologists or, God forbid, surgeons.
She doesn’t ask what he does for work, and he doesn’t volunteer. But he clearly makes more money than any police job pays. An enormous window-wall in the living room looks out onto some kind of undeveloped land. No lights of any kind. An arroyo veers away in the desert darkness, his patio floodlights fading off into ghostly saguaros and brittlebush.
Against one wall in the front entryway is a long, narrow table. Propped on it is a framed picture of him with his arm around the shoulder of a teenage girl. She’s clearly going to be tall and dark, like D’Angelo. Something about her handsome face resembles his.
“Your daughter?”
He nods, a forced smile tight across his lips.
On the other side of the girl in the photo, another man about D’Angelo’s age has his arm around her waist. He’s Latin looking and wearing a Mexican wedding shirt, a white linen guayabera.
Carla doesn’t ask, but D’Angelo seems to want to explain. “My best friend from the Army. He was her godfather. That picture was taken at his family’s place in Juárez. They gave her a quasi quinceañera. Simplified for Anglos.” He looks at the picture with obvious fondness, and something else. “That was a very good day.”
Carla knows enough not to ask any more questions. She looks away at a heap of mail on the tabletop. Something from the American Cancer Society, something else from Arizona Oncology Associates.
He sees her looking at that. He attempts to recover with alacrity. “Just got back from a trip.” He takes her elbow. “Come on.” He leads her into a huge kitchen that looks like acres of stainless steel. The stove and range hood, the dishwasher, the side-by-side freezer and fridge.
“Drink?”
She nods, taking in the jumble of copper pots and pans hanging from a rack of hooks over the big granite-topped island.
“Vodka okay?”
She nods again and watches this extremely tall and powerful-looking guy slice a lemon with surprising delicateness.
He hands her the drink. He holds up a small carry-on bag. “I’m going to throw this in my room. Why don’t you sit out back?” He opens the sliders to a Saltillo tile patio. The night air is warm, but comfortable. “It’s a nice time of year for it, before it gets so hot.”
“Sure,” she says, and sits on a love seat with thick red cushions. “They say the longer you live in Phoenix, the less the heat affects you. But I’ve been here all my life, and the summers are starting to get to me too.”
He turns to walk back into the house. Over his shoulder he says, “The longer you live anywhere, the older you get. Maybe that makes it harder to take the heat.”
“Yeah,” she mutters to herself. She has a birthday coming in a couple months. “Maybe.”
The patio is mobbed with pots of aloe and other desert succulents. A bougainvillea bush the size of a tree. Mexican sun and moon plaques, brightly painted plaster geckos on the posts supporting the patio cover. A big clay wood-burning chiminea. The place smells like Mexico. She feels like she’s on vacation.
When he comes back out, they sit and talk about the weather, the lack of rain. A good waitress can make small talk about things she neither knows nor cares about. She gets a sense that he’s doing it too, but she doesn’t complain or even comment. In spite of the lingering feeling that he’s holding something back, she’s content to believe he’s just trying to be sociable. It’s a nice change from the pants-around-the-ankles opening gambit these kinds of hookups start with all too frequently.
She’s been divorced ten years now. How many one-night stands have there been? She’s not counting. But the real question is, how much longer can she live like this? Shit. She doesn’t even want to think about that right now. This is too nice. It’s such a great house, and a beautiful evening. The cloying smell of creosote bushes clings to everything. Somewhere nearby in the dark, a mockingbird is singing its ass off like somebody forgot to mention it’s the middle of the night.
