A Dead Issue (7 page)

Dusty pulled into Easton where Route 611 becomes Larry Holmes Drive and we sat at a red light looking down an empty street while no one came through the intersection.

“It's late,” I said glancing at the time on the dashboard clock.

Dusty gave me a look. “Trust me,” he said. “The night is young.”

We turned right on Northampton Street, which ran through the heart of the city, from a bridge crossing the Delaware, over a hill, and into the suburbs. At the top of the hill there was an intersection where a cluster of neon signs marked the presence of three taprooms, each staking out its territory on a corner. The doors of all three were propped open and the crowds spilled out onto the sidewalk and milled about—taking advantage of a warm fall night to catch a smoke outside.

Dusty pulled up to a place called the Down Draft and searched the crowd for a familiar face. When he found one, he shouted, “Pooch! Hey, Pooch!”

A gaunt, bony giant with skin like black leather stopped and turned. He stooped down until he could see into the car and stooped lower still to get a look at me. “Hey! Dusty,” he smiled, showing white horse-like teeth, evenly spaced. He placed a hand on the door, and his long fingers draped inside the car. A gold death's head ring covered the first section of his index finger. “What's up?”

“I'm looking for Stemcell. He around?”

“Stemmy must be popular,” Pooch said. “You're about the third person asked about him tonight.”

“Must be running a special,” Dusty said with a laugh.

Pooch laughed, too, and took another peek at me. “Don't know nothin' about that,” he paused. “He left ten or fifteen minutes ago. Might be across the street.” He aimed his index finger at the Belmont Hotel with its basement bar. Pooch bent down and checked me out again, “Said he had some business to take care of.”

I felt out of place and tried not to act like a “squeaky-clean doofus.” I ended up feeling like one anyway. Dusty pulled away from the curb, and we found a parking spot halfway down the block. We parked and walked back, angling across the street to the Belmont.

“Listen,” Dusty said without breaking stride. “Chances are good we're going to run into Stomp.”

“Who's Stomp?”

“He's the unofficial bouncer. Lives at the Belmont. What you want to do is—if he's looking at you—concentrate on the spot where his eyebrows meet. He can be a little sensitive.”

We entered the Belmont, and my first impression was that the cast from
The Road Warrior
was having a reunion party. Dusty walked in like it was McDonald's and went up to a hulking guy with bare arms sticking out of a leather vest. His head was shaved except for a thick queue of braided hair hanging halfway down his back. It was tied off with a leather strap and a hawk's feather. This, I assumed, was Stomp.

Dusty backhanded the meaty upper arm with its tattooed tourniquet of barbed wire, and the guy swung around slowly. His left eye was lazy and came around to join the other a second later.

“You see Stemcell?” Dusty asked.

Before Stomp answered, his left eye settled on me. He was actually making eye contact with both of us at the same time. I concentrated on the place where his eyebrows met like my life depended on it.

“Who wants to know?” he asked in a low rumbling voice, and, with his left eye boring into me, I wasn't sure if he was asking me or Dusty.

“Me,” Dusty said with an easy smile. “He said he might have something for me.”

Stomp seemed to shift focus, now concentrating on looking at me out of his left eye. It was that same feeling I had with Pooch out at the curb. I was being eyed suspiciously for a police academy diploma sticking out of my pocket. I tried to show no emotion.

Stomp's eyes seemed to coordinate for a second, and he thrust his chin in my direction. The left eye drifted off.

“This is Mark,” Dusty said in answer to Stomp's eloquent question. “He's my brother—along for the ride.”

“Twins, huh?”

“Two peas in a pod.”

Stomp leaned his head toward the back of the bar where two guys were shooting pool. I thought one of them must be Stemcell, but I was wrong. Stomp was telling Dusty that Stemcell had just left by the rear exit.

There was a parking lot behind the Belmont, and a white Cadillac convertible pulled out, top down, wind blowing the through the dirty blond hair of the driver.

Dusty yelled, “Stemmy!” but the car wheeled out of the lot and sped away heading north.

“That was Stemcell,” Dusty explained the obvious. “He must be heading to the Britz. We can catch him there.”

“Do we need to?” I asked.

“I'd like to,” Dusty said. “As long as we're running around, it might be nice to pick up a little something.”

“It might be nice to get home without being arrested—that would be something.”

We went back through the Belmont and gave Stomp a nod. One of his eyes tracked us as we passed.

“That is one scary dude,” I said as we headed back to Dusty's car.

“It's that eye,” Dusty explained. “When he talks to you it's like he's looking for someplace to hide your body.”

CHAPTER 14

When Dusty started his car, I looked at the time on his dashboard and closed my eyes. Ten after two. The bars were closing, but I knew there were dozens of private social clubs that stayed open almost to dawn.

The Britz was the kind of place my father could join, if he were so inclined. Stomp and Dusty Bates, however, would not be offered a membership unless they struck oil. It made me wonder why a guy like Stemcell would go there at two in the morning.

“Everybody needs a source,” Dusty explained. “It may come as a shock to you, but some of the wealthiest people in town sometimes like to . . .” he paused and smiled, “participate.”

He glanced over at me and winked. “Plus, Stemcell's dad is a member, which gives him access. I don't think he ever goes in. Does business in the parking lot mostly.”

We cruised up to the stately
building that was a hotel at one time. Unlike the other social clubs that dotted the city, this one was not tucked away in some back alley, but sat regally at the top of a hill in the moneyed section of town. The driveway curved up through ancient oak trees to the front entrance where it passed under a canopy and dipped around to the rear of the building; the parking lot was hidden from view. Dusty stopped, and I could feel his hesitation about driving up this grand entrance in his rusted-out Chevy. Dusty pulled out and went down the street.

“There's a back way,” he said without going into details.

We went around the block turning right on Avoca. Another right brought us to a dimly lit parking lot with a half dozen cars in it. We waited for a car to pull out before we pulled in.

Stemcell's white Cadillac was parked way off by itself in the corner.

“There he is,” Dusty said with some satisfaction. Our headlights swept across the empty Cadillac. “He must be in the club,” Dusty said uncertainly. “We'll wait for him.” He pulled up to Stemcell's Cadillac and backed his car in next to it and cut the engine.

“How long we going to wait?” I asked. “I have that lunch tomorrow.” Thoughts about being questioned by the police had, for some reason, taken a backseat to my luncheon date with my father. Maybe our talk would lead me out of this insanity.

“Hey, maybe your old man is getting married,” Dusty said. “You get to meet the new Mrs. Cameron.”

I hadn't considered that possibility. I didn't think my father was dating, but that proved nothing. We hardly talked anymore. Maybe my father wasn't so much setting me free as he was removing the clutter from his life.

“You can be the best man,” Dusty continued. He looked over at me and ran the tip of his finger along the metal in his eyebrow. “I'll be the ring bearer.”

Dusty gave me a weak smile. His message was clear. Neither of us was likely to be part of my father's marriage—if there was a marriage. Things change in life. Nothing is certain. My father could have a new family, leaving me with Dusty—in the same boat.

“I don't think it's about marriage,” I said. “I think he's just tired of the fight. He's through with me.”

“And that's a bad thing?”

I shook my head. “It depends on how it all turns out.”

We sat in silence for a while. The night air grew a little chilly, and I rolled up my window. I glanced at the Cadillac, top down. Stemcell was going to freeze his ass off when he finally drove off.

“Family's a funny thing,” Dusty said. “The way it works, I mean. You're like Stemcell and his old man. They don't much get along, but the old man actually pays Stomp to watch out for him—keep him out of trouble. Maybe it's money.”

Dusty was talking to fill the void until Stemcell showed up. I knew that, but every comment seemed to hit a nerve—or a truth.

“My old man was always on the run. Always out of money. But we got along—with each other, I mean. Being
poor brought us together. And then when he died . . .”

Dusty's voice trailed off and I knew he was not going to finish. Dusty was right. It was the money. Money offers power and my father had plenty of it. We loved each other, on some level—I guess, but neither of us wanted to give up control over my life.

I looked at the time—2:35 and still no sign of Stemcell.

“What if he's not inside?” I asked. “Maybe somebody picked him up.”

“You're right,” Dusty said at length. “Tell you what. We'll leave a message on his windshield that we're looking for him.” He reached into his glove compartment and pulled out a yellow receipt and started writing, using his horn pad for a desk. “Slip this under his wiper blade,” he said handing me the note. It read simply
We've been looking all over for you. Dusty.

I slid out into the night air and took a step toward the Cadillac. As I reached for the wiper blade, a dark shap
e stretching across the front seat caught my eye. Stemcell was lying on his back staring up through the trees with eyes that didn't blink. And then I saw the spray of blood on the white leather upholstery and a small patch of hair and bone that once was part of his skull.

CHAPTER 15

I staggered back from the sight of Stemcell and hit the passenger door of Dusty's car hard enough to dent it. Dusty must have been watching me and knew in an instant that something wasn't right. He got out of the car and ran around to me. Instinctively, he peered into the Cadillac.

“Holy shitbird,” he exclaimed, emphasizing each syllable, backing away as he did until we both leaned against his car. We said nothing—did nothing for a long moment, and then Dusty raced around to the driver's side and jumped in. He started the engine, and, rather than being left behind in the parking lot of the Britz with a dead man, I jumped in and Dusty hit the gas.

Once on Northampton Street, Dusty slowed to a legal speed and headed back toward Route 611 and home. A mile or so up river from Easton, I said, “What happened?”

“He got shot is what happened.”

“I know that. I mean . . . what do you think? Drug deal gone bad?”

Dusty looked over at me. “Wouldn't doubt it. Probably sold oregano to the wrong guy.” He laughed uneasily at his little joke.

“Seriously.”

“Seriously? I don't know. He may have had a deal going down, and whoever it was decided it was easier just to shoot him.”

Dusty fell silent, and every time I glanced at him he seemed more and more troubled. Finally, he looked over at me like he had finally pieced it all together. “This isn't good,” he announced.

“Oh, really?” I said. “For a second there I thought it was my lucky day—thought I should go buy a lottery ticket.”

“Stemcell getting shot in the parking lot of the Britz is going to be big news. What's going to happen is that people
will want to know who's dirty in there. Do you know who
belongs to the Britz? The mayor, chief of police, doctors, lawyers, Indian chiefs. And they all stick together. They won't waste no time finding someone else to blame.”

“Like two guys in a rusted out Chevy looking for Stemcell?”

“You got it.”

“Holy Christ,” I shook my head in disbelief. The night was cursed. We were damned.

“Stemcell's going to look like an Eagle Scout in the paper. Town Council will start screaming about cleaning up the streets.”

He looked over—fear in his eyes for the first time. “And when the heat gets bad, everyone's going to remember we was looking for him.” Dusty paused and checked his rear view mirror. “Everybody's going to be covering their ass.”

“And there goes our alibi,” I added.

Dusty drove for a while in silence. “Looks like we'll need an alibi for this.” He threw me a weak smile. “Maybe we can tell them we was at Jonah's getting shot at.”

He pulled over into the empty parking lot of the River View Restaurant and made a long, slow circle and pulled back on 611 heading toward Easton again.

“We have to come clean on this one,” he explained. “We'll go back and find the body, report it to the police.”

“Dusty, that's not a good idea.”

“It's what you said at Jonah's. We tell the police. Then we go home and wait for the shit to hit the fan, but at least we still have an alibi.”

Dusty drove up Northampton St. and headed north on Biltmore, but before we got to the Britz, we saw the red lights flashing against the buildings on the next block.

“Too late,” I muttered. Relief washed over me.

“Maybe not,” Dusty said. “We pull in and tell them we was looking for Stemcell.”

“Are you nuts?”

“The best defense is a good offense.”