Sendoff for a Snitch (16 page)

Sounded like Carissa. That was something she’d do without it even occurring to her that maybe it was more than a trifle insensitive.

“I thought she meant my other brother, Nick. He’s a trucker. He had a pickup scheduled. When he heard the new bridge was closed, he said he was gonna try to find another way over the river. I thought maybe he was on a bridge that wasn’t rated for his rig, and it collapsed or something.”

“So how’d you find out it was Aaron, not Nick?”

“She said he’d been found in a flooded stairwell across town. That didn’t sound like anywhere Nick would be. I said that, and she said no, it was my brother Aaron.”

“What did you say then?”

“Not a word. I grabbed the damn camera and threw it in the water. What right does she have, coming around, telling me crap like that, whether it’s true or not, just so she can get a picture for her paper? Damn bitch.”

“How’d she react?”

“Started fussing about her camera getting all wet. Said it might not work right.”

I was fascinated. I’d been tempted myself to do something to that camera, but I’d never quite dared. “Did the water ruin it?” I asked.

He snorted. “That I don’t know. But it didn’t work real good after I stomped it.”

Despite the seriousness of the situation, I laughed. “Too bad you couldn’t get a picture of her face when you did that.”

He grinned. “Yeah. That’d be a picture worth having.”

I looked around. “What needs to be done first?”

“I was trying to get the wet stuff on the floor sorted out and the stuff that’s no good in garbage bags and out to the curb. Sooner or later, they’re gonna come around with trucks and take it all. For free. But if you don’t got it out in time, you’re gonna have to pay a trash hauler later on.”

The “wet stuff” was mostly mud, papers, and cardboard boxes.

“Suppose you get the stuff out of the boxes you want to keep, and I start shoveling the mud into garbage bags.”

He looked at me. “So you are gonna help?”

“Yeah. I got a little time.”

“I can’t pay you much.”

“Tell you what,” I said. “You got rooms upstairs?”

“Yeah. It’s, like, a little apartment. Nick stays there when he’s in town.”

“Well, my apartment’s in a basement. It’s flooded out.” I didn’t tell him it was where Aaron’s body was found. “You let me stay here a few days, until I get some stuff straightened out about where I’m gonna stay, I’ll help you clean up.”

Jumbo George looked at me and scratched under his beard. “Deal.” He held out his hand.

I shook it. “Deal.”

I lifted boxes that threatened to fall apart onto the counter. Jumbo George sat on a stool and unpacked them. His huge butt covered the entire top of the stool and overlapped it all around.

Most of the boxes had hard goods like hookahs and key chains with little coke spoons on them. That kind of stuff could be washed off and sold. A few had items like rolling papers and postcards that would never dry off and be salable. I showed them to Jumbo George, and he agreed that I should just toss them into the garbage bag.

We worked most of the afternoon. Finally, Jumbo George sat back and looked out the display window into the gathering gloom. “Ya hungry?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

He fished in his pocket for his wallet and took out two twenties. “Wanna go see if they got Mickey D’s up and running?” he asked. “You know they’re gonna have their electric on soon’s anybody. Wouldn’t be surprised if corporate didn’t send them a big generator.”

“True, that,” I agreed, taking the twenties. “I can go see. What’d ya want?”

“I got a case of root beer in the back, so nothing to drink,” he said. “And by the time you get back here, the fries’d be greasy. I like those quarter pounder things, but the stuff off the dollar menu is a better deal. So get some of those dollar burgers.”

“How many do you want?”

He cocked his head and looked at me like I didn’t have good sense. “Forty, of course,” he said. “Or thirty-eight, or however many you can get with the sales tax.”

I hiked the couple of blocks over to McDonalds. Sure enough, it had power. So did the buildings lining the street toward the courthouse for as far as I could see. I got two big bags of burgers and headed back to Jumbo George’s.

He was dozing in his recliner. As far as I could determine, that had to be where he slept. If he didn’t go upstairs, I saw nowhere else.

He opened his eyes. “You’re back,” he said.

“Of course I’m back. Where’d you expect me to go?”

He shrugged his mighty shoulders. “I dunno. Just take the forty bucks and take off, I guess.”

“I wouldn’t do that. Then you wouldn’t have anything decent to eat.” I wasn’t sure forty dollars of fast food burgers was
decent
, but that’s what he wanted.

“Yeah. Well.” He heaved himself to his feet and lumbered to the back room.

“Can you get that fridge pack of root beer back there and put it on the table?” he asked me.

I set the bags of burgers down and lifted the cardboard case onto the table. It was covered with mud. The wet packaging fell away.

“Guess maybe we ought to wash these off before we drink them,” Jumbo George said, eyeing a can streaked with the mud. He carried an armful to the sink.

I put the cardboard in a new garbage bag and put the rest of the cans in the sink. Then I helped him carry the rinsed-off cans back to the table.

He pulled out a very sturdy chair and dropped his bulk into it with a sigh. I sat down in an equally sturdy chair on the other side of the table. Jumbo George dumped the burgers out on the table and raked a pile of them over to him. Then he opened three cans of root beer and lined them up next to the burgers.

Glancing up at me, he said, “Ain’t you gonna eat?”

I opened a can of root beer and unwrapped a sandwich. For a buck, it wasn’t bad at all.

When I finished that one, I took another.

Jumbo George unwrapped two sandwiches and stuffed them into his mouth, washing them down with half a can of the root beer.

“What can you tell me about Aaron?” I asked him.

“What’s to tell?” Jumbo George stuffed another burger in his mouth and talked around it. “When my mom died, my dad started running around like a teenager. Then he showed up with a floozy and told us she was our new mama. Didn’t go over well. She was pretty, yeah, but she was only looking at his money.”

“Did your dad have a lot of money?”

“Oh, yeah. He started a printing business. It was doing okay, but then he figured out, you donate campaign crap to the politicians, they pay you back when the government’s bidding printing jobs.”

“If it’s bid, doesn’t everybody have an equal chance?”

“That’s what he thought at first. But then he realized the people who were the insiders got tips ahead of time, so they could bid smarter. Once he did that, his government work took off.”

“Which party did he donate to?”

Jumbo George took another burger. “Both of them. And any other little splinter group that showed up at election time.”

I blinked. “That meant no matter who got in, they kind of owed him?”

“That’s the idea. So he had a good business.”

“What’s that got to do with Aaron?”

“I’m getting to that. Gina, Aaron’s mom, got pregnant. Nick and I think it was before they got married, but maybe not. Aaron was a skinny little baby. Maybe he was just early. Don’t matter much, though.”

“Did you and Nick live with them?”

“Yeah. We was teenagers. As soon as we finished high school, we was out of there.”

“College?”

He threw back his enormous head and laughed. “Not college. Why’d you think that?”

“If your dad had enough money, I’d think he’d pay for college for you.”

“I suppose he might have. If he thought we was smart enough. He always said we was dumber than dirt.”

“So you just left?”

“Well, he did offer to help us start out. He paid for Nick to get his CDL. Then after he drove for a while and said he wanted to buy a truck, Dad bought him a brand spanking new Peterbilt Cabover with a thirty-six-inch sleeper. Bright red. He’s been contracting out as an owner-operator ever since.”

“And you?”

“I wasn’t as big as I am now, but I was pretty hefty. Dad said I disgusted him. But when I said I wanted to be a shopkeeper, he bought me this building and gave me enough to get inventory.” Jumbo George chuckled. “He didn’t know it was going to be the best-stocked head shop for four states around that he was financing.”

“Was he upset when he found out?”

He shrugged. “Not really. I mean, Nick and I’d both been in trouble, and he knew we smoked weed. I think he just wouldn’t have been quite as generous if he’d know what I was buying with his money.”

“And the cops leave you alone with the head shop?”

“Pretty much. I’m careful. I sell lots of neutral goods, like the plastic skulls and incense and shit. All kinds of trail mix. Some tobacco so I can justify the rolling papers and hookahs. Don’t sell much of that, though. And I keep an eye on what’s getting media attention. When something hits big, like bath salts or K-2 spice, I stop carrying it. Let the damn independent convenience stores take the heat.”

“Was he doing anything for Aaron?”

“Aside from paying for rehab a few times, I’m not sure. He thought he was disappointed in Nick and me, he just had to wait for Aaron. I mean, Aaron was in trouble from the get-go. First picked up for distributing CDS when he was fourteen. In school, no less.”

“Was he living with your dad by that time?”

“Hell, no. Gina started running around on Dad right after Aaron was born. He didn’t want to believe it, but he caught her red-handed, so to speak, in bed with the guy who cut the grass. So he got a divorce. And they both got married again. Dad was smart enough, though, not to have any more children.”

“But he still felt responsible for Aaron?”

“Yeah. He wrote up his will and got insurance and all so there’d be enough money for Aaron until he got to be eighteen. And then some to set him up, like Nick with the truck cab and me with the shop.”

“What happened when Aaron turned eighteen?”

Jumbo George drained another can of root beer and shrugged. “By then, Dad was pretty much losing it. He sold the business when he started to go downhill. Suzanne, his new wife, took pretty good care of him. But he was bonkers. And he’d get all paranoid whenever anybody tried to talk money with him. He was sure we were all trying to steal it. So I have no idea if he changed his will or anything.”

I finished a third hamburger. They were small, but three was all I wanted.

He eyed me. “That all you gonna eat?”

“Yeah. I had enough, thanks.”

“Suit yourself.” He finished the rest of the burgers and three more cans of root beer.

I gathered up the wrappings. Then I collected the cans. Under ordinary circumstances, I’d separate them and rinse them out for recycling, but I had a feeling the city sanitation department wasn’t going to be too concerned about recycling for a little while. I dumped them all on top of the wrappings in a garbage bag.

Jumbo George pushed himself back from the table and belched. “When you go to the top of the stairs, you’re in the main room. It’s got a sink and a stove and a refrigerator. The bathroom is right next to them. The room off to the right is Nick’s. The one on the other side of the room used to be mine, when I could still get up the stairs. That’s the one you can use if you want.”

“Thanks. Where do you sleep now?”

He gestured at the recliner. Just like I’d thought.

“That can’t be any too comfortable,” I said.

“Beats lying down flat. I can’t breathe then. And I can get up out of it. If I lie all the way down, I have a lot of trouble getting up.”

Without lights, the narrow long storefront was filling with shadows. Soon, it would be hard to make anything out.

“Might as well get some sleep,” Jumbo George said. “Flashlight batteries died last night.”

I pulled one of the tiny flashlights from my pocket. “Here. You can’t see a whole lot, but it’s better than nothing.”

He pushed the button on the front, and a tiny, but strong beam of light shot out. “Neat!” he said. “Can I use this?”

“You can keep it. I got a few more. They’re, like, five for two dollars. When the store has them.”

“Thanks. I’ll have to think about stocking them.” he said. “One more thing.”

“Yeah?”

“Do you think you could go upstairs and get me a blanket or two off of Nick’s bed? He’s probably not going to be back tonight, and I’ve been freezing at night.”

I could sympathize. I’d spent many a night in a cold cell with just one thin blanket, wearing all the clothes I owned and trying to get warm. Although “owned” was the wrong word. As a prison inmate, they might be mine to use, but I couldn’t really say I “owned” them. I had been a ward of the state, and the state owned everything.

“Sure,” I looked around and didn’t see any stairs. “How do I get upstairs?”

“Door in the backroom wall, next to the refrigerator. You might be glad you got the flashlight. Them stairs can be pretty dark.”

The door next to the refrigerator looked too narrow to be anything but a storage closet, but when I opened it, a rickety flight of equally narrow stairs led up into the gloom. I wondered how long ago it was that Jumbo George had been able to navigate those stairs.

The little apartment had two windows, both overlooking the alley behind the building. There must be another apartment up front, too. Probably bigger. Those stairs probably led up from a door in the front of the building.

The rooms here didn’t smell of patchouli, but they didn’t smell much better. At least the stuff up here should be dry.

I heard a dripping sound.

Unless the roof leaked.

It was coming from the center of the main room. As I watched, a big drop of water fell from the overhead light fixture and splashed into a puddle on the floor.

I went into Nick’s room. The smell here was stronger and worse. Cigarettes, marijuana, dirty clothes heaped on the floor.

Sweeping a grimy, but cozy-feeling quilt off the bed, I bundled it up and looked around. I also grabbed a knit afghan that Jumbo George could tuck around his shoulders. As I left the room, the edge of the quilt brushed a pile of papers off the nightstand. I kept going, figuring I could pick them up when I got back upstairs.

As I opened the narrow door to the kitchen, Jumbo George was coming out of the bathroom. He took a few pathetic blankets and a pillow from a shelf under the store counter and waddled over to the recliner. He spread one blanket on the recliner, then maneuvered himself into the chair, lying on top of the blanket. Struggling, he tried to spread the other blankets over his bulk.

I took the remaining blankets from him and flipped them over him. Then I laid the quilt on top, smoothing it evenly over him and making sure his feet were well covered. His body took up so much of the chair that there wasn’t room to tuck the edges in. Then I wrapped the afghan up around his upper body and neck. “You got a hat?” I asked him. “You ought to be wearing something on your head.”

He grinned. “Nope. No hat.” He flexed his shoulders. “This feels good. You sure you don’t want to move in here? I could use someone to put me to bed like this every night.”

I laughed. “I’m sure your brother Nick would love having somebody else move in.”