Stranger in the Room: A Novel (46 page)

I headed back down the side of the house. The front door opened as I turned the corner. I stopped cold. Movement is what pops out at you at night. The eye catches it when it misses everything else. I stood dead still in the shadows. Jeremy was on the front porch locking up with a fat, jingly key ring. He was still wearing his work clothes, navy blue pants and shirt, mechanic-style with a name patch over the left breast pocket. I watched him get in his car. As soon as the engine started, I hightailed it through the yard and up the sidewalk to my car, a dingy Plymouth Neon with a dent in the hood—wholly unremarkable and perfect for surveillance. You don’t want to spy on a guy who restores vehicles for a living in something flashy. So my white-on-white 1969 Impala convertible was at home in the parking garage. Missing me, I thought warmly. I’d had the car since high school. And my mother says I can’t commit.

Jeremy was near the stop sign at the end of the block when I pulled out. I kept the headlights off until he turned. And then I kept my distance. An old orange-and-black Charger allows you that luxury. The tail-lights are distinctive—two long, red bars. Also this guy was about as unpredictable as the Golf Channel. Mostly he watched television in a recliner with a take-out carton in his lap he’d brought home after work. But tonight it looked like my diligence was going to pay off. He drove right past the liquor store on the corner, the bar up the street, and the grocery store—the only places he’d been outside work and his own living room all week.

I tailed him to a convenience store and watched him buy a carton of cigarettes. Jeremy didn’t smoke. My hopes were high. I followed him down Ponce de Leon to a Wendy’s on Scott Boulevard and watched him go through the drive-thru. Next stop; a hotel off Church Street sandwiched between car dealerships. He got out with the cigarettes under his arm and a bag of fast food and climbed concrete steps at the corner of the building. It was the kind of place the Bureau put their agents on assignment—stucco facade, two levels of crappy carpeting, and a great view of the parking lot. He stopped at the fourth door. I picked up binoculars and checked the number. Two-twenty-eight. Maybe I’d play that one in the lottery tonight.

I couldn’t see who was behind the door when it opened, but I was feeling fairly confident it was Jeremy’s fast-food-eating brother, Ronald. I slipped into a Kevlar vest and a lightweight black jacket that identified me as bond enforcement in big yellow letters and walked into the management office.

“My name’s Keye Street. Bond enforcement.” I slapped my identification on the counter. “Mind telling me who’s in two-twenty-eight?”

“I don’t want any trouble.”

I smiled, took my ID back. “That makes two of us.”

“We just renovated.”

“Understood,” I said. We exchanged a long look. I waited him out. Finally, he fingered his keyboard.

“Coleman,” he said. “Jeremy.”

Just as I thought. Jeremy had gotten the room for his brother and now he was delivering food and cigarettes. A lot of cigarettes. Either Ronald was a chain smoker or he was about to take off. “When’s he checking out?”

“Tomorrow,” the clerk told me. “You’re not going to shoot up the place, right?”

“Right,” I said, and left the office, followed the concrete steps to the second level, and went down the breezeway to Room 228. I pressed my ear against the door. A noise got my attention a couple of rooms down. A tall, scrawny guy with a scruffy goatee came out. I hoped he’d go the other way but some people just cannot mind their own business.

“Can I help you with something?” he asked.

“Bond enforcement,” I whispered. “Keep moving.” He hesitated. He was going to be trouble. “You been hanging out with Ron?”

“I don’t know no Ron,” he said. He was lying. Paranoid eyes darted from me to the parking lot.

I could hear the television inside, the occasional murmur of male voices. I reached for my Glock and made sure he got a good look at it. “Get him to the door.”

He glanced at my gun, knocked lightly, raised an unsteady voice. “Hey, Ron, wanna hang out, man?”

“I’m busy,” a voice yelled from inside.

I gave him the signal to keep talking. “Um … Ron, man. It’s kinda important,” he said, talking into the closed door.

“Go fuck yourself,” Coleman yelled.

“Okay, just go,” I told him, and looked over my shoulder to make sure he was leaving, then tried the door. Locked. I knocked loudly.

“
Goddamnit
, Trevor!” Coleman yelled. I felt the vibration of heavy footsteps. The door swung open and Ronald Coleman stood there shirtless in jeans with a half-eaten chicken sandwich.

“Bond enforcement, Mr. Coleman. Put your hands behind your head and step out of the room, please.”

Coleman made a backward dive for the bed, rolling over a white paper sack that had a blob of ketchup and some oily fries spilled out like he’d been using it for a plate. But he held on to his sandwich. I heard him hit the floor with a thud on the other side. The bathroom door slammed.

Oh, boy
. I was clearly dealing with another genius. The chemical smell in the room was undeniable. I saw a tiny piece of foil with a crack rock about half the size of a marble on a table at the window. I looked at Jeremy. “He still carrying that thirty-eight he used in the carjacking?”

Jeremy shrugged.

I looked at the drugs, the small brass pipe, and a cigarette lighter. “Are you smoking that shit too? You need to get a grip, Jeremy. Or you’re going to lose more than the fourteen grand.”

Jeremy’s glassy eyes looked away.

“Get out,” I told him. He didn’t hesitate. He headed for the door while I moved slowly into the room and around the bed, weapon trained on the bathroom. The unpredictability factor is pretty high with these guys anyway, but when there’s a crack pipe in the room, it goes into orbit. “Hey, Ronald, you missed your court date. We need to get this straightened out.”

“Screw you,” he yelled. His mouth full, so
screw
sounded like
sque woo
. He was actually finishing his sandwich while being pursued by a bail recovery agent. You have to admire that on some level.

I pressed into the wall on the other side of the door in case he wanted to do to me what he’d done to the guy in the Krystal parking lot, and double-checked my vest. “Open the door and kick the gun out. I want to see your hands on your head. I’ll give you to three. One …”

“Leave me alone or I swear I’ll fuck you up.”

“Two …”

Bang
. Ronald discharged his weapon. The bullet tore through the cheap hollow-core door and shattered the mirror over an oak veneer dresser. So much for the renovation.

“Still here,” I told him.

Bang, bang, bang
.

“Jesus.”
I pressed in hard against the wall and squinted my eyes. “You realize how stupid this is, right?” I yelled through the door. “You’ve trapped yourself in the bathroom. Now just come on out.”

I heard shouting and fast shoes hitting the concrete breezeway. The manager/clerk showed up at the open door, red-faced and raving.

“You need to stay back,” I ordered the manager, loudly.

“I called the cops,” he said. “You’re gonna pay for the damage.”

In that case, I aimed for the space between the bathroom doorknob and frame and fired. One solid crack and the door swung open. I pressed back into the wall and waited. The hotel manager looked at me like I’d just dropped his ice cream in the sand.

“You need to clear out,” I told him again.

Bang
. Shot number five was followed by a guttural yell, the kind you imagine coming out of someone who’d just thrown himself off a cliff. Ronald Coleman came blasting out of the bathroom with his head down like a defensive lineman. He rushed right past me, leveled the manager at the door with one shoulder, and sailed over the balcony.

I rushed out the door and peered over the railing. Coleman was spread-eagle on the hood of a Buick, facedown. I leapt over the manager and took the wide concrete steps two at a time. A Decatur Police car was pulling into the lot. I holstered my weapon, grabbed Coleman’s arms. He was groaning, trying to move. I cuffed him and ran a zip-tie through the cuffs to his belt loop.

The officer approached. I held up my ID. “Bond enforcement,” I announced. “And this is Ronald Coleman. Jumped on aggravated assault with intent, armed robbery, and carjacking.” I handed him the paperwork. “I think we need an EMT.”

The officer eyed me skeptically. “Ya think?” Cops don’t like to see criminals get away. But they don’t have a lot of affection for bail recovery agents either. At least not in their jurisdiction. He looked over the paperwork, then at Coleman, whose cheek was pushed into the hood of the car like it was a really soft pillow.

“He threw himself off,” I said.

“Uh-huh.”

“Seriously. He’s high as a kite.”

“You see drugs upstairs?”

I nodded. “Crack.”

“Anyone with him?”

“Nope. Just Ron and the crack pipe,” I lied, and glanced at the orange Charger sitting in the parking lot. I thought Jeremy must be behind the wheel, though it was too dark to know. Maybe he’d been waiting for his brother to make a run for it. Maybe he was ready to mire up even deeper in his brother’s crash-and-burn life. Maybe he just wanted to be sure Ronald was okay. Maybe he just needed to sober up before he drove. Whatever it was, I decided Jeremy had had enough trouble already. He’d veered off the path. Who hadn’t? This is what happens when you watch someone for a few days. Empathy kicks in. You begin to feel their life. I’d seen Jeremy spend long days at work and come home with a take-out carton to an empty house. I’d been there. I’d watched him risk too much for family. I’d been there too.