The Drifter (6 page)

Peter said, “Hey. Your accent is driving me nuts. I can’t pin it down. Where the hell are you from? Texas or Oklahoma?”

The lean man looked at Peter like he’d grown a third eye. “I’m from Norman, originally. But I grew up near Midland.”

Nino said, “Jarhead, shut the fuck up. Ray, stay focused. Honey, give us the money. Or else we take it.”

“I beg your goddamn pardon,” said Dinah, “but you may not.”

Nino laughed. Barefoot Ray from Oklahoma smiled slightly and began to bend his knees. Peter put his hand on the .45.

“No,” said Lewis.

He spoke clearly, but not loudly.

Nino and Ray turned their heads to look at him.

“This is not who we are,” said Lewis. His voice cut through the room like a Randall knife. “We do a lot. But not this. Not taking money from the widow of a U.S. Marine.”

Nino made a face like he smelled sour milk, but he took a step back. Ray from Oklahoma unbent his knees.

Dinah looked at Lewis standing across the room. If something passed between them, Peter couldn’t see it. She said, “Thank you, Lewis.” Then put her hand on Peter’s arm. “It’s time to leave.”

Peter didn’t move. He wanted to get outside. After only a few minutes, he was sweating under his coat as the rising sparks heated him up. But he wasn’t done.

“Actually,” he said. “There’s one other thing.”

—

Lewis watched Peter without speaking. Even in stillness he had that lethal grace.

Nino snorted. “Oh, I can’t wait for this,” he said.

“It’s not your money,” said Peter, talking only to Lewis. “We know that now. But it’s somebody’s money. Odds are he wants it back.”

Lewis produced an elaborate shrug. “Not my problem.”

Peter smiled pleasantly. “Do you know a guy with a kind of starburst of scars on his right cheek?” He drew the marks with his fingers on his own cheek. “Right earlobe missing? Big black guy, late thirties to early forties, a lot of self-confidence? Carries a chrome .32? Watching Dinah’s house?”

Peter kept his eyes on their faces. Not a flicker from Lewis or Nino or barefoot Ray from Oklahoma.

Dinah just stared at him.

“Nobody I know,” said Lewis. “Still not my problem. Call the cops.”

“This guy stopped at Dinah’s house this morning,” said Peter. “In a big black Ford SUV. He wanted to know how she was paying for the porch.” He looked at Lewis. “He followed us here.”

Lewis frowned. “You brought him to my place of business?”

“I didn’t bring him anywhere,” said Peter. “He followed me. What does it matter? It’s not your money, right?”

Lewis shook his head. “You brought him, jarhead. Now get rid of him.”

It was Peter’s turn to shrug. He made it elaborate, too. “Not my problem,” he said. “Besides, what if he’s a cop?”

“Get rid of him,” said Lewis again. Each word crisp and clear.

“I tried,” said Peter. “But he showed me his gun and I got scared.”

Lewis gave him a look. Peter raised his hands in a show of helplessness.

“Hey, I’m only one guy. And I’m just a carpenter now. This guy knows my truck. You have this crack team of trained killers. Maybe Nino and Ray could discourage the guy a little.”

Lewis didn’t like that. But he couldn’t see an acceptable way out of it, so he said, “Fine. They’ll keep an eye out. Right, guys?”

Nino made the sour face again. “Sure.”

Ray from Oklahoma actually seemed to cheer up at the prospect. Maybe he’d get to kick somebody after all.

“Short-term only,” warned Lewis. “A few days. We got business coming up.”

“I’ll take what I can get,” said Peter. “You want to trade cell numbers?” Peter didn’t even have a phone.

“Get the fuck out of here.” Lewis turned away. Over his shoulder, he said, “Nino, next time make sure you lock the fucking door.”

—

Outside, Dinah hissed, “Peter, are you crazy?”

Peter smiled. “Only a little.”

It was the first time she’d called him Peter, not Lieutenant Ash. He liked it. He was starting to think she’d let him help her.

They walked across the sidewalk and the cold autumn wind filled his lungs and blew through his coat, washing away the tension and cooling the sparks back to a pale hum.

Across the street, a black Ford SUV pulled away from the curb and disappeared into the traffic.

Dinah said, “We need to talk.”

“Yes,” said Peter. “We do.”

I
t’s not your friend Lewis,” said Peter. “Whatever he is, I don’t think he knew about the money.” He drove a roundabout path toward her house, the big pickup rumbling through the streets.

“I know that now,” said Dinah. “And he’s not my friend. Who is this man with the scars on his face?”

“Showed up this morning, when I was putting your porch back together. He asked if you were rich.”

Her eyebrows climbed skyward. “He asked if I was rich?”

Peter nodded. “He started by asking where the dog came from. I wondered if the dog knew him. It sure didn’t like him. It wouldn’t stop growling.”

She opened her mouth, then shut it again. He watched her hand close on the door handle, looking for something solid, anything, to hang on to. Of course, the truck was still moving, so even that solidity was an illusion.

“You’re done now,” she said. “The porch is finished, you’re going to your next project.”

He waited for her to ask, knowing already that she wouldn’t. Dinah was so much like the women he had known growing up. His mother, his mother’s friends. She would ask a relative for help.
She’d ask her husband, her brother, or her father. That’s what family was for. But Dinah’s husband was dead. Her sons were far too young. And she would never ask a stranger.

He didn’t make her wait long. He swung the truck to the curb in front of her house. “If you don’t mind,” he said, “I’ll stick around. The house could use a few more repairs. The Marines aren’t expecting me for a few weeks.”

Not ever, actually. But he didn’t say that.

He waited for her to say something. The dog shifted in the back and the truck rocked on its springs. He hadn’t been this close to such a vivid, lovely woman for a long time. He suddenly wanted to touch her. But he wouldn’t, of course. She was Jimmy’s wife. Even if Jimmy was dead.

He kept his hands on the steering wheel, feeling the faint vibration from the big V-8, a slow, gentle thrum as it idled, perfectly tuned. You’d never know the power in that engine until you stepped on the gas.

Peter felt his own heart beat, slow and patient.

He said, “Dinah, this is serious. Four hundred thousand dollars’ worth of serious. Let me help. Jimmy would do the same, if it was me who died over there. You know he would.”

She looked at him then, her eyes suddenly direct. He was aware of the grace in her long neck, the strength of her capable hands. The curves of the lines bracketing her mouth. She nodded once. “All right,” she said. “Thank you, Peter.”

“It’s my pleasure,” he said. The truck rocked again as the dog moved restlessly. “I need to let the dog out.”

—

The beast was waiting for him at the door, gently nosing his face, then bonking his head with the piece of wood still tied into its
mouth. It whined softly and pushed against his shoulder. The wood was chewed down even farther now. He let the leash go and stepped away to see what would happen.

The dog jumped down and made a leisurely tour of the neighboring yards, peeing on the stunted trees and a chain-link fence, trailing the rope behind. Peter took a cured sausage from the cooler, then sat on Dinah’s new porch steps with a knife and cut pieces into a small paper bag. He made sure they were small enough for the dog to swallow without having to chew.

Dinah sat beside him, their shoulders almost touching. Peter could feel her proximity like something tangible.

She said, “Are you trying to rehabilitate that ugly dog?”

Peter shrugged. “He’s not that bad.”

She said, “Maybe some things are too bad to save.”

He looked at her. “We’re not still talking about the dog,” he said. “Are we?”

She looked at the ground for a moment, then right back at him.

“My mama was the steady one,” she said. “She taught fourth grade for thirty years, and ran her life like a Swiss watch. My dad was the opposite.” A thin smile. “He never seemed to have a job, but he always had money in his pocket. He came and went without warning. He taught me to ride a bike and throw a baseball. One night, just after my thirteenth birthday, he went on an errand and came home covered with blood that wasn’t his. He burned his clothes in a barrel in the backyard. Then he left. We waited, but he never came home again. Finally we just gave up. And I knew that I would not marry a man like my father.”

She wiped her face. “James was different. A good man. Maybe the war did something to him. Damaged him. But at least he was a working man, not a crook, not a killer. Then I find that he’s left a suitcase full of money under my porch. And I don’t know what to think.”

Peter watched the dog water a tree.

People changed, he thought. Made mistakes. Did things they weren’t proud of, maybe things they were ashamed of. Peter certainly had. Jimmy had been one of the best people he had ever known. A better person than Peter, that’s for sure. He didn’t know what to think, either.

“Dinah,” he said, “you’re a nurse, raising two great kids and working your way forward. You have nothing to be ashamed of.”

She shook her head. “We shouldn’t have bought this house,” she said. “Do you know what an adjustable-rate mortgage is?”

Peter nodded. He’d studied economics, and even if he hadn’t, the financial crisis had given everyone a crash course in mortgage basics.

Dinah kept talking. “We got one seven years ago, and now it’s coming due. I have to pay the house off or refinance. Everyone thought their houses would be worth more, so it wouldn’t be a problem. Well, now it’s worth half what I owe on it. I can’t pay the house off. And I can’t qualify for a new loan, not without James’s income. If they’d even give me a loan. I have a good job, but it’s not enough. Do you know how much those boys eat?” She shook her head again. “We should not have bought this house.”

“You’ve got a bag full of money,” said Peter. “Why not start over somewhere else? Move to Chicago. Or Seattle.”

“I can’t just leave,” she said. “I have obligations. My grandmother lives eight blocks from here.”

Peter nodded. He understood that. The dog ranged around, following its nose.

“So stay,” he said, “and be careful with it. Don’t attract attention. Anybody shows up, you say, What money? Do I look like I found four hundred grand?”

“I can’t—” She stood up and walked three steps, spun on her heel, and walked back. “I can’t take that money,” she said. “It’s bad money.”

Peter smiled gently. “No such thing as bad money. It’s just money. Comes in handy sometimes.”

“It’s not the money,” said Dinah. “It’s crossing that line.” She shook her head. “It was better when I didn’t know about it. But now I do, and I can’t have that money sitting around. Or I’ll spend it. Because I damn well do need it. And then where will I be?”

“Okay,” said Peter. “So we’ll find out whose money it is. And give it back, if that’s what you need to do. Maybe we can get a finders’ fee. Maybe get your house refinanced.”

“You would do that,” she said. “Wouldn’t you?”

Her shoulder was almost touching his. Almost, but not quite. He could feel it anyway, the way the earth feels the sun.

“Sure.” He said it casually, with a shrug.

As if he didn’t need it as badly as she did.

As if the ghost of Jimmy wasn’t standing right there staring at him.

The dog trotted over and knocked the bag of cut sausage from Peter’s hands. It tried to stick its nose into the bag, but with the length of oak in its mouth, the dog just pushed the bag across the sidewalk. Peter got up to help.

Dinah said, “I don’t want to be around when you take that stick out of its mouth.”

Peter pushed sausage bits past the fangs with the tips of his fingers while the beast’s throat worked. “Jeez, lady. Where’s your sense of adventure?”

I
t was late afternoon and starting to get dark. The wind blew hard through the bare trees. Thin plastic shopping bags caught in the branches rattled like distant machine-gun fire. Along the streets and sidewalks, paper trash skittered and danced as if alive and in a hurry.

“So what happens next?” she said.

Peter wiped his hands on his pants and collected the dog’s leash. “I’ll start with Jimmy. Look at his life. Talk to his friends. See what stands out.”

“I have a box,” she volunteered. “With some of his things.”

Peter put the dog in the truck and followed Dinah inside the house. He felt the walls and ceiling with jangled nerves, the static reminding him of all the time he’d spent inside already that day.

Because she was next of kin, the police had given Dinah the things Jimmy was carrying with him when he died. She’d put them into a cardboard box with things Jimmy left at the house and pushed the box under the bed. She pulled it out now and set it on the kitchen table with the lid still folded shut. As if she was afraid of reopening those memories.

Peter put his hand on the lid. “May I?”

Dinah nodded and Peter opened the flaps.

There was a musty smell, like time itself had been shut away. The box was too big for the contents, as if whoever had packed it was expecting more life to fill it.

Peter had a box like this in his parents’ house, and another from the war years tucked away in the back of his truck. The catchall box for things you wanted to remember, or couldn’t bring yourself to forget.

The house was getting to him. His chest was tight, his breath coming harder. The hairs prickled on the back of his neck.

“I’m going to do this outside,” he said. Dinah gave him a look as he picked up the box, but followed him out the door into the cool November air.

At the picnic table in the backyard, Peter excavated Jimmy’s box and laid out the things he found, attempting some sort of chronology. There was a scattering of old photographs. Jimmy and Dinah impossibly young. Jimmy in purple choir robes, looking like some kind of prince. Jimmy in his wedding suit with a thousand-watt smile. Jimmy with his boys at various ages, a baseball mitt on his hand or basketball under his arm. The family at a picnic, paper plates on a blanket.

The wind came up and tried to take the photos. Peter held them in place.

Jimmy trying to look cool on Manny Martinez’s motorcycle. Jimmy in uniform, looking deadly serious. Jimmy with the platoon, with his squad, with the other sergeants. Jimmy with an Iraqi goat, goofing for the camera. Jimmy trying to get a baseball out of the mouth of the stray dog he’d adopted in Baghdad. The dog got killed when someone shelled the compound. Jimmy was broken up for weeks.

A high school graduation tassel. A tall stack of letters in their
envelopes, tied up with string. An expired military ID, an old watch with a cracked face, a small wooden box. Inside were Jimmy’s medals.

Peter set the box atop the pictures to keep them from blowing away.

“His military paperwork? VA paperwork?”

“In the file cabinet,” said Dinah. She had her arms wrapped around herself because of the cold. The wind smelled like rain. The bare trees waved overhead. “It takes up a whole drawer.”

Peter didn’t know what the paperwork might tell him. He certainly wasn’t going to go through it out here in the wind.

The last item was a bulky manila envelope with
JOHNSON, JAMES
written on it in neat black marker. A business card stapled onto the corner, with the Milwaukee police logo on it. A detective. Peter looked at Dinah, asking for permission. She nodded. Peter upended the envelope and slid the contents out on the table.

Keys, a wallet, a rolled leather belt. Nothing else.

Was this all Jimmy had with him when he died?

Peter picked up the keys. Four of them, on a plain ring. A Toyota key with a black plastic grip, a key printed with the Green Bay Packers logo, and two others, maybe for a padlock or a cheap door lock. He looked at Dinah.

“The black key is for the car,” she said. “The Packers key is for this house. I don’t know about the other two.”

The wallet was leather but cheap, the seams torn and peeling. It held a driver’s license, a library card with bent corners, six dollars in cash, a folded grocery-store receipt for canned soup and instant coffee, and a scrap of torn paper with words written in Jimmy’s easy hand:
worth more dead than alive.

Peter looked at the paper. It fluttered in the wind. Something
about it was familiar, but he couldn’t grab on to it. He held it up for Dinah.

“Yes,” said Dinah. “The police thought it was a suicide note.”

Something there didn’t sound quite right to Peter, but he couldn’t figure out why. He filed it in his mind for further thought.

He tapped the driver’s license. “This has your address. Where was Jimmy staying?”

Dinah shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“Jimmy never told me. He kept saying he wouldn’t be there long. He said he’d let the boys visit when he found a better place.”

“Didn’t the police look?”

“They didn’t find anything. I asked that detective. He was actually pretty helpful. The tavern where he worked didn’t have a different address for him, and the VA didn’t, either. He wasn’t listed with the phone or cable companies, or the power company. The detective couldn’t even find a bank account.”

Peter was surprised the man had tried that hard. “But you must have had some idea, right?”

“If there was an event with the kids, he’d meet me at the school, or come here and I’d drive.” She scratched her chin. “Once, maybe a month before he died, he called to say he was running late. He asked me to pick him up on the corner of Twentieth and Center. He must have lived nearby. It’s not the best neighborhood. I told the police, but they never did find it.” She shook her head. “I kept telling myself I’d go over there and look. You know, go knock on doors. But I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I think I was afraid of what I’d find.”

“Well,” said Peter. “It’s a good idea. And now there’s a better reason.”

Not that the man’s things were likely to be there anymore. But maybe Peter would find somebody who knew him.

He just had to find a crack, a fingerhold.

—

The last item in the police evidence envelope was a leather belt. Peter ran it through his hands and smiled.

Jimmy called it his traveling belt. It looked like nothing more than a sturdy leather belt, but a hidden flap on the inside opened to reveal a long, narrow compartment. It was a pickpocket-proof way to carry money, and very useful if you were a Marine on furlough intent on getting seriously drunk. He was willing to bet the police hadn’t realized what it was.

Peter opened the flap.

Inside were five crisp new hundreds, folded to fit.

Peter held up the bills. “This is how you knew the money came from Jimmy.”

Dinah nodded. “I knew when I saw it that something wrong was going on. He never kept that kind of money. If he had ten dollars extra when he came over for dinner, he’d sneak it into my desk drawer.”

Peter dug deeper into the belt. Past the hundreds was an accordioned piece of yellow paper. Peter opened it up. It was a flier for a missing person, the corners torn away like it had once been stapled to a telephone pole. It had a young man’s photo on it.
HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN? PLEASE CALL,
with a phone number.

Peter didn’t understand why Jimmy would stash the flier in the belt. Hiding the money made sense, but some flier from a telephone pole?

Peter ran the belt through his hands again. One section was still too stiff. He dug a long finger inside.

It was a folded business card for something called the Riverside Veterans’ Center. Green lettering, cream-colored card stock. The address put it near Dinah’s neighborhood. No name on the card, but on the back, written in a faded spidery black hand, was a phone number.

Who was Jimmy hiding this stuff from?

Peter thought for a moment. The coroner had turned over the belt with the wallet. “Dinah, did they give you anything else? Any clothing?”

Dinah nodded. “His pants and shirt were ruined. But they gave me his boots and his old field jacket. He didn’t like them, but they were warm, and he wouldn’t buy new stuff when we had so little money to spare. I’ll get them.”

She went inside returned with the jacket and a pair of sand-colored desert boots. The boots were completely clapped out, the seams separating, one sole peeling loose. The field jacket was worn but holding. It had been a lot of places. There was a faint spray of dark stains across the front. Blood from when he’d shot himself, maybe. Peter found the hole in the upper-left sleeve where a bullet had barely missed Jimmy’s arm. He’d kept the jacket. He’d said it was good luck, like lightning not striking twice.

Some luck.

Peter dipped his hands into the pockets, looking for anything Jimmy had left behind. Something the police didn’t bother to look for.

A few things. A small spiral notebook in the sleeve pocket with half the pages torn out. A pair of beat-up cold-weather combat gloves in the side pocket. And beneath the gloves, a fat stainless-steel pen, a nice one. On the side of the pen were the words
LAKE CAPITAL FUNDS
. And a Web address.

Peter figured it was some kind of investment house. Jimmy
could have borrowed the pen from someone and stuck it in his own pocket when he was done. Jimmy was a notorious pen thief.

Peter held up the pen. “Do you know this place? Lake Capital Funds?”

Dinah shook her head. “We don’t have any investments, Peter. We never had enough extra money to invest.”

Peter looked at his watch. Lake Capital would be closed for the day.

—

He repacked the box and walked back to his truck, thinking he’d try to find the place where Jimmy was staying. He’d taken a single photo to show around the neighborhood. While the truck warmed up, he pulled it from his shirt pocket to look at it again.

Jimmy wore dusty desert camo and carried a beat-up M4. He stood in front of a half-demolished mud-brick house with Manny Martinez and Bert Coswell, the platoon’s two other squad leaders. Although Jimmy’s broad shoulders were slumped and his face was lined with fatigue, his eyes were lively and the smile was genuine. It was a photo of a happy warrior. But now Peter could also see the man who had sung his young sons to sleep.

Peter remembered the day clearly, because he had been there.

Peter had taken the picture.

But that was then.

Who was Big Jimmy in the weeks before he died?

What had he been doing that involved four hundred thousand dollars and four slabs of plastic explosive in a Samsonite suitcase?

The Man in the Black Canvas Chore Coat

He turned the old blue Ford pickup from the two-lane onto a gravel side road not found on maps. The wind had stripped the trees bare of leaves, and their branches mingled overhead like long, bony fingers. There were no houses in sight.

Past the first curve, a clean white Dodge cargo van idled at a wide spot in the road. The driver leaned against the fender, smoking a cigarette, nodding in time to the music coming through his earbuds. He wore jeans torn at the knees and a gray hooded sweatshirt with a plumbing company’s logo on the chest.

The van itself had no markings other than the make, model, and license plates.

The man in the black canvas chore coat parked the pickup next to the cargo van and killed the engine. The van driver pulled out his earbuds and hung them around his neck, then pushed himself off the fender and walked toward the back of the Dodge. He pinched out the cherry of his cigarette with a callused thumb and forefinger and tucked the butt in his pocket before opening the van’s rear doors.

There were no seats or toolboxes.

Just an old canvas tarp draped over the cargo.

The man in the black coat dropped the pickup’s tailgate and hoisted up one of the white fifty-pound bags of fertilizer into his arms. Fifty pounds wasn’t heavy, he thought. About as much as a small box of books, or a healthy six-year-old boy. He handled the weight easily enough. He’d carried heavier loads for far longer distances before this.

He carried the bag to the van, then held it momentarily in one
arm while he threw back the canvas tarp with the other. Then laid the bag down carefully. The bags would be moved multiple times, and it helped to keep the plastic intact. The van driver came behind him with the second bag and threw it beside the first.

“Careful with those,” said the man in the coat. “I’ve told you before.”

“Dude,” said the van driver. “They ain’t gonna go off on their own.”

The man in the coat allowed himself a small sigh.

“One more stop,” he said, looking up through the bare tree branches. “You have the rendezvous for tonight?”

“Yup.” The van driver nodded. Thrash rock came through the dangling earbuds, spoiling the quiet. “Hey, we’re about out of food. Definitely out of beer. Okay if I find a gas station or something?”

“Sure,” said the man in the coat. “Don’t make any new friends. I’ll be an hour or so.” He walked to the pickup.

The van driver leaned into the back of his vehicle to grab the corner of the tarp. The fading light shone weakly on the growing stacks of white fifty-pound bags.

Until the tarp covered them up again, and the doors slammed shut, and the van looked like any other white Dodge van in fifty states.