The Drifter (18 page)

T
he light was on at Lewis’s place. Walking to the door, Peter looked up at the security camera. The door opened before he got there.

Lewis wore the same tilted smile, the world and its inhabitants a source of endless amusement. “You come to sign your ass up? Could make you some serious money. I know you need it.”

“Come outside and we’ll talk about it.”

“Man, what I want to come out there for? It fucking November in fucking Wisconsin.”

“Put on a coat.”

Lewis looked at Peter a little closer. “Why don’t you want to come in here? I know you ain’t scared of me.” The tilted smile grew wider and reached his eyes. “Oh, I get it. You don’t like to be inside. Maybe you had too many of those door-knocks over there. Little too much house-to-house.” He shook his head with genuine amusement. “This just get better and better. How bad?”

Peter wasn’t going to talk about it. “Listen, how much would you make on this job you’ve got coming up?”

Lewis let it go. “Anywhere from fifty to three-fifty. ’Less we get real lucky.”

“And what are the odds you make nothing?”

Lewis looked at him. As if to say, Man, who you think you talking to?

“Come on,” said Peter. “If you don’t even know what the payday is, your intel is incomplete. What if there’s more resistance than you expect? Or some teller trips the silent alarm?”

Lewis smiled at that, too. “Robbing banks is for chumps.”

Peter smiled back. “Isn’t that where they keep the money?”

“Oh, there money all over, you know where to look,” said Lewis. “I don’t steal from nobody in a position to call the police. Takes all the fun out of it. But I do need another body. Ray’s hurtin’ bad. You in for a share?”

“I have a better idea. Let me buy you a beer and explain it to you.”

“Have a beer right here.” Lewis angled his head at the bar next door. “Ain’t nobody listening.”

“Outside is better,” said Peter. He turned to get in his truck. “Come on.”

Lewis shook his head. “Ain’t riding in that damn antique,” he said. “I be right behind you.” The locks chirped on the Yukon.

—

Getting out at Kern Park off Humboldt, Lewis looked around at the empty parking area; the long, curving walkway; the big old trees looming skeletal and dark. He stood easily, unconcerned, the mountain lion ready for anything.

“You not gonna try and shoot me, are you? This be a nice quiet place for it.”

Peter took two beers out of the little cooler he kept behind his seat. “Not right now,” he said, popping the caps with the handle of his knife and handing Lewis a bottle. “Right now, I want to hire you.”

Lewis raised his eyebrows and took a sip. Then tilted the bottle to look at the label. “This pretty good.”

“Goose Island,” said Peter. “Chicago.”

Lewis nodded. “First place,” he said, “I ain’t for hire.” He took another sip of beer. “Might discuss a limited partnership, though.”

“Call it what you want,” said Peter. “I don’t care.”

Lewis nodded again. “Tell me.”

“It’s a little hard to explain,” said Peter. “But the pay is an eighty-twenty split after expenses. And it doesn’t count the money I found at Dinah’s, that’s hers regardless.”

“Twenty percent ain’t enough for a guy with my résumé.”

Peter snorted. “You don’t have a résumé. But your end is eighty. Twenty goes to Dinah and the boys.”

Lewis drank more beer without expression. “So what’s your end?”

“Jimmy,” said Peter. “I get the guy who killed Jimmy. And Dinah stays safe.”

That was the most important part. Dinah. Dinah and the boys.

Lewis pointed the bottle at him. “You an idealist. I don’t like idealists. They dangerous.”

Peter shrugged. “Jimmy was my friend.”

Lewis looked at him steadily. “You don’t want money?”

“Past putting gas in that truck, I don’t much care. Most of what I want, money can’t buy.”

Lewis watched Peter’s face for another moment. Then nodded. “How much is the payout?”

Peter shook his head. “I don’t know yet. So far, it’s all on spec. I have all these pieces, but I don’t know what they add up to. It already turned up serious money at Dinah’s. Maybe that’s all there is. But there could be more. A lot more.”

“But I might be workin’ for nothin’.”

Peter looked at him. He figured Lewis for a career criminal who made his living with his brain, his nerve, and a shotgun. The only paycheck Lewis had ever gotten was from his time in the Army, and that was for killing people. He’d probably never had a straight job in his life.

Peter said, “Think of it as pro bono, with a possible upside. Good for your image. You can put it on your résumé.”

Lewis snorted and stared out into the darkness of the park. But he didn’t say no.

Peter let him think. The wind came up, whispering through the tree branches and underbrush. It carried the fermented smell of the river and the cold flavor of the coming winter. Beer always tasted better in the wind.

Lewis turned to face him. His tilted smile wide. “What the hell,” he said. “I’m in. Where we start?”

“Nothing heavy,” said Peter. “At least not yet. Right now, we need to find a guy. All I have is a license plate. You know any cops?”

“I know a guy can run me a plate.”

Peter told him the number. “I got a pen in the truck, you want to write it down.”

“Don’t need to,” said Lewis.

Peter nodded. He hadn’t needed to write it down, either.

“It’s the Ford Excursion,” he said. “The guy with the scars.”

“That same guy from outside Dinah’s house? Followed you to my place?”

“Same guy. Black, late thirties to mid-forties. Big but not huge. Scars on his cheeks, here.” Peter put his fingers on his face. “Missing his right earlobe. Wears a Kangol cap and a black leather car coat, thinks he’s Samuel L. Jackson.”

“That ain’t right, man. I’m Samuel L. Jackson.”

“In your dreams. Anyway, the Ford’s all torn up on the driver’s side now. You might check the body shops.”

“Why we want him?”

“I think he’s the one who sent that kid to shoot me. And I think he’s probably an explosives guy.”

Lewis raised his eyebrows. “And why the fuck is that?”

“The scars, for one thing. And with the money under Dinah’s porch? I found four chunks of C-4.”

The tilted smile got as wide as Peter had yet seen it. “This ain’t gonna be boring, I can tell already.”

Peter clapped him on the shoulder. “That’s why I need a guy with your résumé.”

“Yeah, yeah. So tell me the rest of it.”

“Jimmy didn’t kill himself.”

“No shit?”

“No shit. I think Jimmy took the money and the C-4 and hid it under Dinah’s porch, and someone killed him for it. Made it look like suicide. Jimmy was looking for a young Marine gone missing. There’s our explosives guy with the scars. And also the head of a hedge fund, but I don’t know how he connects to anything.”

“You just making this up as you go,” said Lewis.

“Absolutely,” said Peter. “But the scarred man keeps showing up. Somebody already tried to kill me once. I’m getting closer. Maybe someone else will take a run at me and we’ll find a crack in this thing.”

“You know that a seriously fucked-up thing to say, right?”

“Like you’re so goddamn normal,” said Peter. “Anyway, I’m hoping you can find this guy with the scars. Maybe he can help us connect the dots.”

—

Peter went to the cooler for two more beers, then broached the next topic of conversation. “What about Nino and Ray? Are they gunning for me?”

Lewis shook his head. “They won’t sign on to this thing, if that what you asking. Especially not for no pro fucking bono. But I don’t think you got anything to worry about. Neither one of them got an ass-whipping in five years of crime like they got from you the other night, and they still hurting. Ray’s balls are swollen up like grapefruit to hear him tell it, and Nino probably gonna need surgery on his trachea.”

“I didn’t start that fight, remember.”

“I know it, and they know it, too. Anyway, they not so bad off. They been making noises about getting out for a while, but now I think they serious. I made them too damn much money. Nino got his eye on some land up north, spend the rest of his days drinking beer and fishing. Ray going back to Tulsa, he got a girl down there.”

“But not you,” said Peter.

Lewis moved his shoulders. “My number a little bigger than theirs.”

“I can’t see you retired,” said Peter. “What would you do? Buy some apartment buildings and collect the rent every month? Drink yourself to death?”

Lewis looked off into the trees. “Build a house. On the water. In the islands.”

“That’s a much bigger number.”

“Well,” said Lewis. The tilted smile came back. “I got a new business partner. Just might win the jackpot.”

The Man in the Black Canvas Chore Coat

“You don’t want me in the basement?” said the tank truck driver, talking loud over the gravelly rattle of the big diesel. He had a bushy black beard that hung down over his oil-stained coveralls, and a green-and-gold-striped winter hat with the Packers G front and center.

“The tank is fine,” said Midden. He stood on the parking strip in front of the house, illuminated by a single streetlight and the work lights of the tanker.

“It’s a safety check,” said the driver, tapping his clipboard. “I gotta do it. To make sure your oil tank is sound. The company requires it once a year for all tanks, and for new customers I really gotta. It’s free.”

Nothing is easy, thought Midden. “It’s a new tank,” he said. “We just had it installed.” He reached for his wallet and began counting out bills. “It’s two hundred gallons. I don’t need a receipt. What’s that, about a thousand bucks?”

The driver shook his head. “Sorry, man. Company rules. We had a tank with a rusted bottom three years ago; the driver pumped eight hundred gallons into the basement. That house had to be torn down. Your money isn’t worth my job.” He turned to walk back to his tanker.

Midden was very tired. “Please,” he said. “Hang on a minute. What will it take to make this work?”

The man with the clipboard had one foot on the running board. “It takes me inspecting that fuel tank in your basement. I seen too many bad installs and rusted bottoms and cracked fuel lines to take any man’s word for it.” He looked through the pale glow of the
streetlights at the dark house with the siding falling off, the yard littered with fallen roof shingles. “And I’m starting to wonder what you’re doing that you don’t want me down there.”

Midden sighed. This was not the way he wanted this to go. He liked the guy. He liked the way the guy knew his job, the way he refused the money. Nobody refused the money. Plus Midden had never run the controls on one of those big tanker trucks. But he could figure it out.

“Okay,” said Midden. “Tell you what. The basement’s a mess. We’re renovating, and there are some structural problems. We just want some heat so we can stay warm while we work. But why don’t you get your hose run, and I’ll make a path to the tank. Before you start pumping, I’ll walk you down for a look.”

The man with the clipboard nodded. “Fair enough,” he said. “I appreciate it. It’ll only take a minute.” He unclipped the fill nozzle and walked slowly backward toward the house as the hose began to unspool from its reel.

Midden went through the splintered side door and down the rotting basement stairs into the yellow light of a kerosene lantern. It hadn’t seemed worth the effort getting the power turned on. He had just found the vacant house the day before. There were a great many to choose from.

There was no new oil tank.

Instead there were ten white plastic drums that had once held fifty gallons of pickles in their brine. Each drum would hold twenty gallons of fuel oil and get filled the rest of the way with fertilizer.

It would be easiest to steal a tanker from the company yard, but stealing an oil truck would definitely get noticed. Even the UPS trucks had GPS trackers on them now. And nobody sold bulk fuel oil anymore, not to a walk-in customer. You couldn’t just show up with ten pickle barrels.

Boomer had wanted racing fuel originally, which was what McVeigh had used, but that was impossible now, too. And gas stations all had cameras. He’d considered kerosene or paint thinner, bought a gallon at a time, but that would have taken forever. Midden had used up his patience buying ten thousand pounds of fertilizer in fifty-pound bags. And time was getting short. Veterans Day was only two days away.

He saw the legs of the driver through the high foundation windows. It was hard work to pull that hose all the way to the back of the house. He wasn’t quite there yet.

In truth, thought Midden, this way would make things easier. He could put the empty drums in the van again and fill them right there, straight from the tanker. No heavy lifting.

But standing in the basement in the light of a lantern, thinking through each step as he always did, it weighed on him. It was almost too much to carry now.

It was one thing to kill a man in combat, to protect yourself. Or to kill a man who you knew would be a threat because of incompetence, like the man who had driven the van. He had proven himself unreliable. A danger.

But it was another thing entirely to kill an innocent man in cold blood. A man whose only fault was that he kept an evening appointment to fill an oil tank, and had the principles to do his job well. To not take the money.

It was wrong, Midden knew that. Midden had thought he’d done so many wrong things that it didn’t matter anymore. That nothing mattered.

He wasn’t sure that was true anymore.

He thought he might be starting to unravel.

He looked around the basement. The concrete blocks were cracked and buckling inward with the pressure of the soil. It
smelled musty and damp. That basement leaked every time it rained, and had for years. Black mold climbed the walls. How anyone had lived in that house was beyond him. But it hadn’t started out such a ruin. It had been like any other house once. Someone’s pride and joy. Now it was at the edge of collapse, and its owners had fled.

Midden had killed more people than he could remember. More than he could count.