Sendoff for a Snitch (23 page)

They were all wearing shoes. My feet felt very naked and vulnerable in nothing but socks. It took an effort not to keep them curled up under the bench where no one could step on them.

The guy next to me was crying. That wasn’t going to do much good. His nose started to run. He tried to wipe it on his sleeve, but that wasn’t very effective. His breath came in big gulps.

“Waiting to be processed?” I asked him, trying to get him to calm down a bit.

“I guess. They get you looting, too?” he asked, his voice strained.

I considered. “They may think they did. But I doubt that charge would stick.”

“What’s going to happen to us?” the guy, hardly more than a kid, wailed.

“I dunno. Just got to wait and see. It’s not like we got a whole hell of a lot of control over it right now.”

He nodded. That couldn’t have been much comfort, but it did seem to settle down his panic.

Every once in a while, a uniformed officer would come out, get one of the men off the bench, and they would disappear through the doorway.

My turn would come. Eventually. I shifted on the bench, trying to ease the strain on my arms and shoulders.

“Jesse Damon?”

My turn came sooner than I’d expected. “Yes, sir?”

The officer came over and unlocked the chain. “Come on.”

I stood up. He just held onto the chain, not slapping it back around my waist. That made it a bit awkward for me to move ahead of him as he escorted me out the door. It slammed shut behind us, and the lock clicked.

We stood in front of the desk at intake. He unlocked the cuffs. “Go pick up your stuff from the property room,” he said.

I stood there stupidly. “What?”

He shook his head. “Get your stuff from the property room and leave.”

“I’m free to go?”

Eyeing me, he said, “We sure don’t want to keep you if we don’t have to. We don’t have any beds, the food supply’s low, and any staff that lives across the river is having trouble getting to work, so we’re shorthanded. Yes, you’re free to go.”

He didn’t have to tell me that another time. I got my stuff—it was all there, minus the cat collar. I hadn’t expected that to be there, and I’d be just as happy if I never heard anything about it again.

Chapter 19

M
y boots laced up tight and my possessions back in my pocket, I walked away from the county complex, fighting the urge to break into a run. That was likely to get me back sitting on that bench again.

As I passed by the church that only offered sanctuary to its members, I had to step around some boxes strewn across the sidewalk. Each box was exactly the same, with a picture of a little girl spooning something into her mouth. A box truck with big letters that said “Food Bank—Until Hunger Ends” on its side was parked next to the curb.

A few teenagers were struggling with boxes. One girl had a slipshod pile stacked up on a hand truck and tried to push it over the curb. All the boxes tumbled off.

I went over and took the hand truck. “You can’t go frontwards like that,” I said, restacking the boxes, this time in a more stable arrangement, on it.

“Watch,” I said, as I pushed the hand truck forward a bit, put my foot on the brace, tipped the handles back toward me, and eased it backward up over the curb. “Where do you want these boxes?”

She indicated a side door. “We’re setting up an emergency food bank.”

Under the circumstances, that was a good idea. I wondered if they’d let me take some for Kelly. They’d be more likely to if I helped out. And I didn’t really have anything better to do.

The truck driver was taking pallets off the truck and setting them on the street. A gangly teenage boy was using a box cutter to slice open the shrink wrap.

I stacked another bunch of boxes on the hand truck and took it inside. Since it was obvious to everyone, including the old guy in charge, that I could handle it much more efficiently than anyone else, they set about sorting the boxes and cleaning up the debris.

We hefted the unloaded wooden pallets into the back of the truck. The driver slammed the door shut and drove off.

When the truck was gone, I glanced across the street. There was an all too familiar black Lincoln sitting next to the curb, with Detective Montgomery in the driver’s seat, watching me.

My gut clenched into a knot, I loaded up the hand truck one last time and took it inside.

“Look, I got to go,” I said to the guy in charge. “Any way I could get some food for my girlfriend and her kids?”

The guy looked at me. “I don’t see why not. Each box has a fairly balanced diet for one day for two people. But a lot of it has to be cooked.”

“When I was over at her place, her power was on.”

“Okay. I do have to get some information from you for the agency.” He reached for a clipboard.

My gut twisted further. What kind of information would he need? What would happen if I lied?

“How many in the family?” he asked.

“Three. Four, if you include me.”

“How many children under the age of eighteen?”

“Two.”

“Anyone over the age of sixty?”

“No.”

“Male or female-headed household?”

“Female, I guess.”

“Race white?”

That question again. I didn’t have any better an answer than I’d had before. So I said, “Yeah.”

He nodded. “Standard distribution is four boxes, then. Two days’ food for the family.”

“Is that all you need to know?” I asked.

“Yes. The agency isn’t concerned with individual identities, just the demographics.”

One of the girls found a couple of sturdy plastic shopping bags. I put two boxes in each bag and said, “Thanks.”

I saw no way to leave that wouldn’t send me out on the street in front of where Montgomery was waiting. Taking a deep breath, I picked up the bags and left.

Avoiding looking toward the car, I headed down the street.

The car pulled up next to me. The window rolled down. “Jesse, get in.”

What had I expected?

The door lock clicked.

“Put your bags in the back seat and get in.”

The passenger seat was empty. At least Belkins wasn’t with him.

“Up front?” I asked. Putting a detainee in the front seat wasn’t safe. On the other hand, he wasn’t searching me and putting me in handcuffs.

He reached over and opened the door. “Yes, up front.”

Maybe I wasn’t a detainee.

I did as he said. He locked the doors and nosed the car away from the curb.

“So,” he said. “What have you got in the bags?”

“Emergency food boxes from that food bank. For Kelly and the kids.”

“I thought Kelly was mad at you.”

“She is. And she don’t like to take help. Charity, she says. But the kids need to eat.”

He looked thoughtful. “Suppose we go through the McDonald’s drive-through and get some coffee?” he said.

We both knew he didn’t have to do that, or ask me if he did want to do it, but I appreciated the gesture. “Okay.”

When we had the coffee, he pulled the car into a parking space at the empty back of the lot. “I’ve got a few things I’d like to ask you,” he said.

I took a sip of my coffee.

“You know Aaron’s brothers?” he asked.

“His little brother Benji? Yeah. I told you about him. Do you know if he’s making out okay?”

“I talked to him. He confirmed pretty much what you told us. He’s back with his mother.”

I wasn’t sure that was “making out okay,” but it was the best he was likely to do.

Montgomery hadn’t touched his coffee. “What about his older brothers?”

“I might know them a little.”

“Do you know their names?”

“Jumbo George and Nick is all I know.”

He nodded. “And do you know if they were up to anything with Aaron?”

“Not really.”

“Have you heard anything about the father dying and leaving a substantial amount of money?”

“Something about that.”

“A lot of it to Aaron?”

“Yeah, well, the old man bought Jumbo George that building he’s got his head shop in and Nick his Peterbilt Cabover. So I guess he figured Aaron was due something, too.”

“Really? I hadn’t known about the building and the truck.”

I shrugged.

“Do you know who runs the amphetamine trade around here?” Montgomery asked me.

“Bikers.”

“Yep. Predators. Aaron hang around them much?”

I didn’t know what to say. I settled on: “Some.”

“Truckers use a lot of that, when they’re trying to make time. Keeps them awake. Aaron have anything to do with that?”

I considered possible responses and said, “Might have.”

“His older brothers?”

“Might have.”

Montgomery’s hands tightened on the wheel. “Especially the one who’s a trucker?”

“Yeah.”

He started the car. “Shall I run you over to Kelly’s?”

“If you don’t mind.”

“Just so you know,” Montgomery said as he drove, “I don’t think you were responsible for Aaron’s death. I don’t know yet whether it’s a coincidence he ended up in your stairwell—that doesn’t seem possible—or an attempt to set you up. You got any enemies?”

I chuckled. “Which set?”

“At work, especially.”

I thought about Diffy. “You mean like somebody who might be trying to get me in trouble?”

“That, and trying to divert attention from what they’re doing.”

“Like wrecking the lift that’s signed out to me so everybody’s paying attention to that?”

“Perfect example.”

I slumped in the seat. “So maybe there were a couple of reasons why somebody’d want Aaron dead.”

“Who do you have in mind?’

I found it hard to form the words. “Somebody who might inherit more money. And who was getting worried that the CDS distribution system he’d set up for his buddies, other truck drivers, was becoming too big to keep hidden anymore.”

I stared miserably at my hands. If I didn’t give him something, he’d stop playing the good cop. And I’d be on my way back to prison, maybe with a whole sheaf of serious new charges. Like murder. “Look,” I said. “Maybe it’s too late. But if I was you, I’d get a warrant to search Jumbo George’s place.”

“Jumbo George’s? Not Nick’s?”

“Nick stays there sometimes.”

“The head shop?”

“Not the head shop. The apartment upstairs.”

“That’s rented out.”

“There’s a front one and a back one. The back one you get to from some stairs inside the shop. That’s where Nick stays sometimes.”

“Really.”

I shrugged again. “Yep.”

“I’ll do that. You got anything else to tell me?”

I shook my head.

“That’s a beginning,” he said.

We pulled up in front of Kelly’s house. I waited for him to tell me I could get out.

“One more thing,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“That cat collar thing?”

I hoped this didn’t have anything to do with me. “Yeah?”

“You remember there was a reward?”

“Yeah.” Fat chance they’d consider giving it to me.

“I figure you get it.”

“You shitting me?”

“No. I filled in the form and put your name in as the one who turned it in to the police. Mind you, I may have been a little less than, shall we say, accurate in just how voluntary the return was, but you did get it back to us.”

“Wow. You think I’m gonna get anything?”

“I think you’re going to get five thousand dollars.”

I felt lightheaded. “Five thousand dollars?” That was an unimaginable sum. I paused. “How much is your cut?”

Montgomery laughed. “You’ve been hanging around those low-life buddies of yours too long. I don’t get a cut.”

I sat there. I wasn’t going to believe this until I cashed the check.

“Are you going to be where I can find you if I need to talk to you again?”

“I’m not going far.”

“You going to stay here at Kelly’s?”

“She’s probably still pretty mad. I don’t think she wants me to stay here.”

“So the food’s a first-step peace offering?”

“Kind of. She’ll take it for the kids.”

“So where will you stay?”

I didn’t want to let him in on the possible arrangement with Mandy and Nicole. If I did end up staying there, I’d have to tell the parole office, but until then, I wasn’t going to say anything. I thought for a minute.

“Well,” I said, “I’m not going over to Jumbo George’s for a while.”

He laughed. “Good plan. You stay there?”

“I did a few nights. But I’ll find someplace else for now.”

“When do you go back to work?”

“I’m hoping they start up midnight Sunday. For the Monday shift. That’s what they were supposed to do.”

“Between that and your appointment with Mr. Ramirez, I don’t think you’ll be too hard to find if I need you.”

“No, sir.”

“And if you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay away from the bikers.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Go ahead and see how mad Kelly is with you.”

I took the bags and went up on the front porch.

Before I even got to the door, Chris threw it open. “Jesse!” he shouted.

“Hi, there,” I said. “Something wrong?”

“Mom’s been trying to figure out how to get in touch with you.”

Uh-oh.

I heard Montgomery drive away.

“You know what your mom wants me for?” I asked Chris. I could just drop off the boxes and take off.

“Mom!” he called.

Too late.

Kelly came out of the kitchen. She didn’t look me in the face. “Just the person I wanted to see,” she said.

I tried to be noncommittal. “Yeah?”

“I wanted to know,” she said, “if you’d stay with the kids tonight? I found an AA meeting I’d like to go to.”

“Of course.” I reached out and gathered her into my arms. “Anytime.”

About the Author

KM Rockwood draws on a varied background for stories, among them working as a laborer in a steel fabrication plant, operating glass melters and related equipment in a fiberglass manufacturing facility, and supervising an inmate work crew in a medium security state prison. These jobs, as well as work as a special education teacher in an alternative high school and a GED teacher in county detention facilities, provide most of the background for novels and short stories.