The Drifter (5 page)

E
xpensive condos lined the river two miles away, but development had stalled out at MLK Drive and hadn’t even been imagined on Center Street, where the blocks of peeling-frame storefronts leaned on one another like worn-out drunks sharing a skin disease.

Dinah pointed at a three-story corner building, maybe ninety years old but in better shape than the rest of the block with freshly painted trim and new tuckpointing on the brick. “There,” she said. “That’s Lewis’s place.”

Apartments filled the top floors. The ground floor was divided in half. The front had a tavern called Shorty’s, the name spelled out in dim neon letters over a faded Pabst Blue Ribbon logo. The big tavern windows were covered with heavy steel security grates. The rear was a storefront with a sign, black with flaking white letters, reading
CENTER CITY REAL ESTATE
. It looked vacant now, the storefront windows replaced with neatly painted plywood. Except for the small modern security camera mounted high with a view of the whole street.

A gleaming black Escalade was parked on the side street, ahead
of a crisp silver Jeep with polished chrome trim and an older but immaculate tan GMC Yukon with a tubular steel bumper.

Nice cars for the neighborhood, he thought. Nobody was out there watching them. Just the security camera.

“This Lewis guy—do you know what he drives?” asked Peter.

“I haven’t spoken with him in years,” she said. “But I have seen him in that tan truck with the big bumper.”

Peter cruised past without slowing. The black Ford was two cars back.

“You missed it,” said Dinah.

“Just checking out the area,” said Peter, his head on a swivel as he took in the building layout, the alleys and exits. “Old habit.” One that he wasn’t going to break. Especially not when a man with a gun was watching Dinah’s house.

He drove in an outward spiral, checking the surrounding area. The neighborhood was seriously beaten down. More businesses were closed than open. Graffiti was everywhere, from basic tags on the crumbling houses and bullet-pocked road signs to elaborate multicolor displays on boarded-up corner stores. But Lewis’s building, whose neat brick and clean paint should have been prime canvas, was oddly pristine.

He looked in the rearview. The Ford had disappeared.

Peter swung around the block and parked at the curb.

Before Dinah could open the door, Peter put a hand on her arm.

“Wait,” he said. “Tell me about this Lewis.”

“We were friends once,” she said. “Lewis and James and I. But things ended badly.” She didn’t elaborate.

“Okay,” said Peter. “But why do you think the money is his?”

“Lewis has his fingers in a lot of things,” said Dinah. “They’re all about money.” She angled her head toward Shorty’s. “And James worked at his bar.”

She pulled her arm away, set the paper bag on the floor, and slipped out of the truck. She walked not toward the bar entrance but toward the side door, the boarded-up section with the security camera.

Peter took the Army .45 from under the seat, tucked it into the back of his pants where his coat would hide it, and jogged after her. The heavy steel door was already closing behind her when he got there.

He felt the flare of the white static as he reached for the knob.

The space inside was bigger than Peter had expected, a big rectangular room. The outer walls were brick, probably a foot thick, and still showed pale patches where stubborn plaster remained. It looked like someone had taken out most of the interior walls. The oak floor was patched in places, the old finish turned orange with age. Once it had been an office. Now it was something else that wasn’t quite clear.

The jittery pressure of the static reminded him to look for the exits. The windows were covered with plywood, so that was no help. There was a door in the back that likely led to another way out, along with a bathroom and maybe stairs to the basement.

In the center of the room stood a walnut trestle table, at least ten feet long and probably custom-made, but only three rickety mismatched chairs. At the head of the table, atop an oil-stained towel, a shotgun lay in its component pieces, broken down for cleaning. It looked like a 10-gauge autoloader, with a fat bore and a shortened barrel. It would clear a room like a hand grenade.

Behind the table was a secondhand bar, worn smooth by thousands of hands. Peter could see the severed end where it had been torn from the wall of some defunct tavern or hotel. A bank of four small security monitors was set on top, and a stainless-steel fridge stood in the corner. At the far end of the room, a U-shaped
formation of black leather couches faced an enormous television tuned to ESPN with the sound off.

Two men sat on the couches, feet up, newspapers spread open in their hands, staring at Dinah like they’d never seen a woman before. Dinah fixed them with a regal look that carried all the natural authority of an ER nurse and the mother of willful boys. Now Peter understood why she had changed her clothes.

“Where is Lewis?” she said.

They stared at her for a moment before they saw Peter, who was standing right beside her.

That got them off the couch.

They were big men in worn T-shirts and faded jeans. Their hair was cropped short, their faces lined from sun and wind. Peter watched them come around the couch, flanking him automatically.

They moved like they knew what they were doing and had been doing it together for a while.

The static flared up higher, tension now in his shoulders and arms. This was useful static, making him ready.

The men glanced at Dinah from time to time—they probably couldn’t help themselves; Peter had the same problem—but mostly they watched Peter. He was a big man, too, in worn work clothes and sand-colored combat boots, with the same air of semi-domestication.

Peter figured they had all been to the same finishing school. The one where the dress code called for camouflage, desert brown.

“Lewis ain’t here,” said the first man. He had plump cheeks and fair skin, like he’d been raised on milk and cheese. His red T-shirt advertised Miller High Life, which suited him, because he was built like a beer keg. But he walked lightly, almost on his toes, as if approaching a tango partner. He had a large eagle tattoo wrapping one arm, and a Green Bay Packers tattoo on the other.

The second man had a long, angular face in a deep, gleaming black. “And who might y’all be?” The slow drawl sounded like Texas, or maybe Oklahoma. His T-shirt was blue and read
MAXIE’S SOUTHERN COMFORT
. His skin seemed a little too tight on his body, every muscle group clearly defined. He wore no shoes or socks, and Peter could see the hard calluses on his feet that came from kicking a heavy bag very hard over a long period of time.

Dinah didn’t seem to notice any of those things. She put her hands on her hips, back straight and strong. A formidable woman.

“Gentlemen,” she said. “I know he’s here. His truck is parked right outside.”

Behind the salvaged bar, the door opened and a man walked through carrying a can of Remington gun oil. His skin was coffee-brown, his head shaved. His ancestors could have been from anywhere and everywhere.

He stopped moving when he saw Dinah.

It was not a voluntary pause.

It was total stillness, abrupt and automatic. As if his sensory system had overloaded.

He wore crisp black jeans, a starched white dress shirt with the cuffs rolled exactly twice, and a carefully blank expression that did nothing to hide the hollow eyes of a man who was just punched hard in the stomach.

Dinah said, “Hello, Lewis.”

Only two quiet words, but in them Peter could guess their entire history.

—

It lasted for only a moment, the space of a breath. Then Lewis closed his eyes and opened them again, somehow a different person. Older, maybe, and harder.

“Hey, Dee,” he said. “Been a long time, girl.” His voice was like heating oil, slippery and dark. The heat and combustion latent within.

Watching Lewis cross the room, Peter thought of a mountain lion he had once seen in the North Cascades. Lewis had the same elemental precision and economy of motion. A predatory indifference. Peter was sure the two men in T-shirts were strong and capable. But compared to Lewis, they were bunny rabbits.

Lewis didn’t acknowledge Peter in any way, as if he weren’t even there. But Peter knew that if he did anything unexpected, Lewis would be ready. Because Lewis was always ready.

Peter was the same way.

Lewis stopped at the table and looked down at the disassembled shotgun. His hands twitched restlessly at the ends of corded arms. He said, “What you doing here, Dee?”

She tapped her toe twice. It was loud on the hard oak floor. “It’s about James,” she said. “You know he’s dead.”

Lewis didn’t look up. “Yeah,” he said. He contemplated the shotgun’s component parts, laid out neatly on the cloth. “I was real sorry to hear.”

Dinah said, “I need to know what he was doing for you.”

A faint smile tilted the side of Lewis’s mouth. “You always was direct.” He picked up the barrel and peered down the bore. “I used to like that about you.”

“Lewis,” she said. “I need to know. Was he working for you?”

Lewis didn’t look at her. “I don’t run the day-to-day,” he said. He put some gun oil on a bore swab and ran it through the barrel. “I went in one night and there was Jimmy, washing glasses.” He sprayed a hand swab and wiped down the action, the stock, and the barrel. The simple movements carried the grace of long practice. His shoulders lifted in a shrug. “Man did his job. I let him be.”

Dinah said, “I don’t know what else you’re doing, but I know you. What was James involved with? Was he handling money for you?”

Lewis looked at her now. The force of his full attention was tangible, like a hot desert wind. Dinah didn’t waver.

He said, “First place, girl, you don’t know me. Could be you never really did.” He began to reassemble the shotgun without looking at his hands. There was no trick to it, just practice. Sometimes, to calm himself when the static was particularly bad, Peter would close his eyes and field-strip his 1911.

“Second place,” said Lewis, “all the man did was tend bar. The only money he moved went in the till. I wouldn’t have asked him to do anything else. And he wouldn’t have done it.” He locked the barrel assembly into the stock, then thumbed massive shells into the magazine. “You knew anything about either of us, you’d have known that.”

Dinah stared him full in the face, deciding for herself.

“All right,” she said finally. “If James wasn’t carrying or keeping anything for you, then I have a problem. Someone left some money under my porch.”

The slight smile tilted Lewis’s mouth again. He spun the shotgun in one hand like a majorette’s baton. It was a show-off move. His hand wasn’t in full contact with the weapon. Of course, Peter was six long steps away, and Lewis could finish the spin and shoot Peter in the chest twice in the time it took him to close the distance. If it was loaded with buckshot, it would literally cut Peter in half.

Lewis turned to the man in the Miller High Life shirt. “Nino. Can you think of anything?”

“It ain’t from Shorty’s. That place is squared up and nailed down. I know everything comes in and goes out.” He assessed
Dinah from under raised eyebrows. The beer keg might be smarter than he looked. “How much we talking about?”

Time to step in. The static was rising, although he wasn’t sweating yet. Peter said, “Dinah, it’s not their money. We should go.”

Lewis moved just slightly.

Just enough to change the geometry between himself and Peter. Like that mountain lion getting its hind feet set right in the dirt before leaping on the deer.

He didn’t look like a show-off anymore.

Peter was grateful for the .45 shoved into the back of his pants.

He put his hands on his hips to get them closer to the butt. Not that it would be helpful to take out a gun right then. Nor was there any guarantee that he would be fast enough to be useful. Lewis’s trick with the shotgun had allowed him to see how very quick Lewis was with his hands. Maybe that was the point.

Lewis tilted his chin at Peter while looking at Dinah. “Who’s this?”

“This is Lieutenant Ash,” she said. “A friend of James’s from the Marines. He’s part of a government program, doing some repairs on the house.”

Appearing to notice Peter for the first time, Lewis looked him up and down, taking in the sawdust on his pants, the scuffed boots, the brown work jacket.

“Jarhead,” he said.

It was a term of pride for some Marines. From anyone else it was an insult. Especially the way Lewis said it.

Peter smiled pleasantly and leaned toward Dinah. “Some guys get jealous,” he explained. “Not everybody makes the grade.”

Nino said, “It sounds like he might want the money for himself.”

Dinah said, “Lieutenant Ash found the money. I wasn’t home. He could have kept it. Instead he brought it to me.”

Nino raised one hand, as if asking permission to speak. “The money,” he said. “How much was it again?”

Now Peter knew why Dinah wanted to leave the money in the truck. He shifted his hands under the waistband of his work jacket. He was left-handed. He mentally rehearsed the movement he would have to make to clear the .45. But he kept his eyes on Lewis.

“I didn’t say,” said Dinah, cool as a cucumber. “Nor will I. Perhaps it’s time for us to leave.”

“Perhaps y’all should give the money to us,” said the lean barefoot man from Texas, or maybe Oklahoma. He flexed his feet on the floorboards. “We could invest it for you. For your retirement. Is it in your pocket or in your car?”

If they thought it might be in her pocket, they really didn’t know how much money it was. The four hundred K took up a good part of that grocery bag, even neatly banded.

Lewis didn’t weigh in. Maybe he was waiting to see what happened. Peter began to slide his left hand toward his back. He’d flip the safety as he raised the pistol.

Nino’s weight was on his toes, but he was a few steps away. The barefoot man was no closer, but if he led with his feet he’d have a longer reach and get there first. Regardless of how it happened, there would be no confusion between Nino and the barefoot man. They’d done this before.