Shoofly Pie & Chop Shop (31 page)

You must be Nick,” a tired voice said. “I’m Vincent—Vincent Arranzio.”

Nick looked up from his lukewarm tea to see a tall, gaunt figure wearing an open fatigue jacket over a sagging gray T-shirt. His clothing seemed loose and ill fitted, as though he had lost a
considerable amount of weight. Nick extended his hand and then motioned for the man to sit down opposite him. The man slid into the booth and sat quietly, moving only occasionally to scratch at both arms.

“I wish I could offer you something”—Nick gestured to his tea—“but the place closed down a long time ago.”

The man shrugged. “Looks like you don’t sleep any better than I do.”

Nick glanced at his watch—2:45 a.m. “I appreciate you meeting me here. I know it’s a bit late.”

“It was either this or stare at the ceiling for another couple of hours.” The man leaned forward. “How did you say you got my name?”

“From a marine I met in the lobby a couple of hours ago. He was with the 4th Marine Expeditionary Brigade in the Gulf. Said he knew you from a group you were in together a couple of years ago. He said we might have a friend in common—Jim McAllister.”

The man nodded. “How is Jim?”

Nick paused. “He’s dead, Mr. Arranzio.”

The man slumped back against the booth. “How?”

“I was hoping you could help me find out.”

The man glanced at Nick’s 82d Airborne T-shirt again, then glared at him suspiciously.

“You were never in the Airborne,” he said, nodding at Nick’s enormous spectacles. “Not with those. Now what’s this all about?”

“Mr. Arranzio, I am a forensic entomologist—a kind of investigator—and I am helping a very dear friend of Mr. McAllister look into the circumstances surrounding his death.”

“How did he die?”

“According to the coroner’s report, he shot himself in the right temple with his own service sidearm. Do you believe that?”

“What do you mean do I believe it? If that’s what happened, I believe it.”

Nick looked at him. “I understand you knew Mr. McAllister quite well.”

“We were in a couple of groups here together. He was with the 82d Airborne—I was with the 101st. The 82d attacked on foot with
the French at Al Salman—we went in by air in Apaches on their right flank. You could say we had a lot to talk about.”

“Mr. Arranzio, do you believe Jim McAllister was capable of taking his own life?”

The man paused and scratched at both arms again. “How much do you know about Gulf War Syndrome?”

“A little. In the Gulf our forces were subjected to a series of potentially toxic substances—petroleum smoke, depleted uranium, nerve agents—no one knows what long-range effects those substances might have, especially in combination.”

The man leaned toward Nick.

“Want to hear an interesting fact? Since the Gulf War ended, about three-quarters of 1 percent of all Gulf War veterans have died. If you compare that to all the troops who didn’t deploy to the Gulf, it’s less. The vets are doing better than everyone else! We’re not dying from Gulf War Syndrome—we’re just going nuts.” He stopped scratching at his arm and pulled up his sleeve. “Look. I’ve got a rash that never goes away. Why? I get headaches, night sweats, swollen glands. From what? I forget things—and I don’t know whether I was gassed by the Iraqis or I’m just getting old. It can get you down, Nick—it got Jimmy down—and believe me, it gets pretty dark always looking up from the bottom of the well.”

“Mr. Arranzio, did you ever talk with Mr. McAllister about his experiences in the Gulf? I don’t mean actions and troop movements—I mean the way things affected him.”

“That was a big part of the group. Some people think the Gulf was a cakewalk just because our side didn’t suffer many casualties. I saw men starved, fried, shot to pieces, and blown all over the countryside. It was no picnic.”

“Did Mr. McAllister ever single out any special event—anything that seemed to cause him special anguish or remorse?”

The man dropped his head and began to rub his temples in slow circles as if he were trying to coax an elusive thought up to the surface of his mind.

“Sometimes the group would swap stories about what we saw. One guy kept talking about Khafji. The Iraqi tanks rolled in with their turrets backward like they were going to surrender—we lost twelve marines that day. Another fella lost a buddy to friendly
fire. Remember the Apache that fired a Hellfire at one of our own trucks? Another guy kept talking about Highway 8, where we trapped the Iraqis retreating from Kuwait and it turned into a shooting gallery. They called it the Highway of Death.”

“And Jim?”

“Jim had a few stories, too, but he kept coming back to this one. There was this guy—what was his name? Something happened with this one fella. His name was … Man, I’ve got holes in my head like a Swiss cheese.”

“Did he say what happened?”

“Funny thing. It got pretty nasty over there, but Jim could always talk about it, he could describe it—except when it came to his problem with this one guy. He’d always start into it and just shut down. I figured whatever it was, it must have been a pretty serious business.”

“You said he would ‘start into it,’ as if he wanted to talk about it, but couldn’t. What did he say at those times? Did he give you any idea what had happened between them?”

The man continued to massage his temples in long, slow circles.

“Mr. Arranzio, did he ever mention anyone named Andy?”

Arranzio squinted hard.

Nick looked down into his teacup and noticed the small flecks of black leaf resting on the bottom. The Chinese believed that the remains of tea leaves formed symbols that could reveal hidden knowledge. The rim of the cup foretold the immediate future, the sides of the cup revealed more distant knowledge, and the bottom of the cup contained the darkest secrets of all.

“Mr. Arranzio,” Nick said without looking up, “did you know that Jim McAllister used cocaine?”

Silence.

Nick leaned forward. “I’m not with the DEA, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

The man shook his head slowly. “You must think I’m some kind of idiot to ask me a question like that.”

Nick raised both hands. “You’re right—I apologize. Let me put it another way. I know Jim McAllister used cocaine—I examined his body shortly after death. And I know his cocaine use started in
the Gulf. What I want to know is, do you think it had anything to do with this problem he kept talking about?”

Mr. Arranzio sat quietly for a moment, glaring at Nick. He took a long, slow, backward glance over both shoulders, then leaned in again.

“It was part of it,” he said quietly, and when Nick opened his mouth to speak again the man added sharply, “and that’s all I’m going to say about it. Clear?”

Both men sat back in their seats and studied each other for a moment. Mr. Arranzio shook his head and made a kind of snorting sound.

“What kind of an investigator did you say you are?”

“A forensic entomologist.”

He sneered. “Seems to me you’re asking the wrong questions.”

“I’m listening.”

“When did Jim die?”

“Less than two weeks ago.”

“And Desert Storm was over eight years ago. You keep asking about what happened in the Gulf. I’d be a lot more interested in what happened after.”

“Go on.”

“What’s the street price of cocaine these days?”

Nick shrugged. “I suppose a hundred, a hundred-and-fifty bucks a gram. Why?”

“What do you suppose a moderate user like Jim would consume in a week—four, five grams? Well, the last time I saw Jim he was flat busted—not a dime to his name, no job, no prospects. Now where does a guy like that come up with seven-hundred-and-fifty bucks a week for flake?”

“You tell me.”

“You beg, you borrow, or you steal. It’s as simple as that.”

Mr. Arranzio slid to the edge of the booth and stood up. “I hope you find what you’re looking for. Answers are pretty scarce these days.”

Nick handed him his card. “That guy you mentioned—the one that Jim McAllister had the big problem with. If his name ever comes back to you, drop me a line, will you?”

Nick looked down once again at his teacup and the random bits
of stem and leaf that still clung to the bottom. He stared long and hard—and then a pattern began to emerge.

Kathryn heard the key in the lock and opened her eyes. The door opened and Nick entered, stopping to observe her motionless form before stepping into the bathroom.

“Too much tea,” he said. “Did you get any sleep?”

Kathryn raised her head and looked at the clock—4 a.m. She lay diagonally across the queen-sized bed with the bedspread pulled roughly over her, exactly as she lay down three short hours ago. She heard the sound of rushing water, and Nick stepped out, wiping his hands on a coarse white towel. He dropped it on the carpet and looked at her again. He stepped slowly to the bed and sat down, his hip touching hers. He said nothing for a moment, watching, then leaned forward and gently straightened the bedspread stretched across her. His eyes were truly enormous at this distance, and they hung above her like chestnut moons.

“Mrs. Guilford,” he said quietly. “I want to ask you something.”

“Yes?”

“Did your bank ever grant a substantial loan to Jim McAllister?”

Kathryn blinked hard and worked to clear her mind.

“Are you asking me if I ever approved a loan to Jimmy?”

Nick nodded.

“No. Never.”

“If I checked the bank’s records, is that what I would find?”

Kathryn paused. “Did you just ask me if I’m lying?”

“I’ve been wondering how your friend managed to come up with several hundred dollars a week to finance his drug habit.”

“I work in commercial lending,” she reminded him. “Jimmy would never have qualified for a personal loan either—he had no income, no collateral …”

“If you don’t beg, and you don’t borrow,” he said thoughtfully, “then you steal. Did your friend have any criminal record? Burglary, breaking and entering, assault?”

“Absolutely not.”

Nick raised one eyebrow and Kathryn rolled her eyes.

“None that I know of.” She sighed. “If he did, Peter would have to know.”

“Yes,” he said. “That’s what I keep telling myself—Peter would have to know.”

He sat for another minute staring straight ahead at the wall, then slapped his hands down on the mattress.

“Let’s go.”

“Go? Go where?”

“Home, of course.”

Kathryn glanced back at the clock. “Right now? It’s four o’clock in the morning!”

“Okay.” Nick shrugged. “Then roll over.”

Kathryn sat upright. “I’ll get my things.”

As Teddy turned his Camry down the secluded dirt road, his headlights flashed across a pickup truck half-hidden by a grove of trees, then onto a single-wide trailer a hundred yards ahead. The trailer was long and roomy enough but it was mud-ugly. Despite Teddy’s best efforts to add a touch of decoration or landscaping here and there, it was still essentially a tin shoebox with a propane tank attached. Its one redeeming virtue was that it was cheap, and that made it the perfect residence for a research assistant on temporary assignment.

He parked in front of the trash cans, which had been plundered for the third night in a row by the local raccoons—that was the problem with living so far from the main road. He tidied up and fastened the lids down securely, took two sacks of groceries from the backseat, and headed for the door. A single cinder block step led up to the doorway, which was covered by a twisted aluminum screen door that long ago ceased to serve any useful purpose. He went through the gesture of entering the key in the lock, though the door fit so loosely in its frame that all it really needed was a good push to open it. He stepped in and fumbled for the light switch.

He flicked it on.

Nothing.

He turned left into the shadows, feeling his way carefully toward the kitchen counter. The sagging plywood floor creaked with every step. He stopped to hoist the paper sacks higher, and the floor creaked behind him—a deep, groaning sigh—and Teddy stood erect, straining to extend his senses out into the darkness. He felt exactly like the Blattidae, the cockroaches that lined his
cupboards and pantry, whose tiny hairs search the air for the slightest vibration and allow them to react ten times faster than the human eye can blink. Teddy saw nothing, he heard nothing, but he sensed something—a weight, a presence, a shifting shape in the blackness behind him.

He felt something cold touch the base of his skull and through the back of his eyes saw a blinding white flash of fire.

We’re here.” Nick gently nudged Kathryn’s shoulder. “You slept like a brick.”

She shook her head and felt the deep mists of sleep begin to evaporate from her mind. They were back in Rayford, parked directly in front of her house. She looked at her watch: 9:30 a.m.

“I feel like I slept on a brick,” she groaned, stretching and rubbing her backside.

“I thought I’d drop you off.” He nodded toward the house.

“What are you going to do?”

“I’ve got one quick stop to make, then I’m headed to the lab to check in with Teddy. That last specimen should be ready to pop any time. I should have heard from him by now. I checked my cell phone just outside of Raleigh; it said One Call Missed from Teddy’s cell phone, but there was no message. I called the lab—no answer.”