Drift (4 page)

I read him the number of the license plate in front of me. “Can you run that for me?”

“Has it been twenty days already?”

“Fuck you again.”

“Seriously, Doyle. You’re off the job right now.”

“Danny, it’s a license plate.”

He sighed. “All right. What’s the make and model?”

“Big-ass Lincoln Escalade.”

“Of course it is. I’m in the middle of something. I’ll call you later.”

“Thanks.”

“Maybe you could work on your golf game or something, try to stay out of trouble for the next twenty days.”

“I’ll look into that.”

Moose was staring at me as I put down the phone.

“So the guy cuts you off and you call in his plates?” he asked.

I shrugged. “Something like that. Guy looks suspicious. Out of place. Call it a hunch. Why?”

He shrugged back at me. “I don’t know. It’s kind of cool. Kind of creepy.” As he said it, he turned away from me and stiffened. He immediately started to close his window. “Speaking of creepy, that’s scary as shit. Close your window.”

“Why?” I asked, but I already saw it.

I couldn’t tell if it was the same guy or even the same spot, but there was a hazmat suit, spraying away in the middle of a field.

I closed my window.

Moose growled. “See? That pisses me off. We’re driving along, out in the country, we shouldn’t have to close our windows because they’re spraying poison all over the place. And the worst part is, in a few minutes, when that guy is gone, we’re going to open our windows, but whatever he is spraying will still be in the air. And in the water, and on our food, and in the kids.”

“How do you know what they’re spraying? It’s probably harmless.”

“If it was harmless would he be dressed like that? But that’s just it: I don’t know what it is. No one knows. And even if they think they know, they don’t. Twenty years from now, they’ll say, ‘Well, we didn’t know it then, but now we know that shit’ll kill you.’”

He went on for a while after that, about pesticides and global warming and biodiversity. After a few miles of uninterrupted cornfields, we passed a small tract of identical new houses and he started in about how developers were buying up all the land and building on the farms, and about the run-off, and on and on.

I didn’t completely disagree with anything he was saying, but I was tired and hungover and I just wanted food.

*   *   *

With its tree-lined streets and planters full of petunias, Main Street in Dunston had a small-town feel that was quaint but claustrophobic. After Moose’s rant, I half-expected to see people in hazmat suits walking down the street, but it was a beautiful sunny day and the few people that were out looked normal enough.

Moose directed me to a dark brick building with
BRANSON’S
painted across the front window. I parked a couple of spots down from it, and as we got out, he said, “You go on in. I gotta run around the corner for a second. If the waitress comes, I’ll have the meatloaf and an iced tea.”

Before I could say anything, he was jogging down the street. I shook my head, determined not to let it bother me, and pulled open the heavy glass door.

8

Bright sunlight streamed through the big front window, but it was quickly absorbed by all the dark wood and deep-red vinyl. The place was half full, tables in the front and booths along the left-hand side. The bar was in the back. A couple of old guys were sitting next to the beer taps, talking to the bartender, a solid-looking guy in his early sixties with a buzz cut and a bar towel over his shoulder. There was a picture of him on the wall by the front door, twenty years younger, balancing a laughing toddler on his knee.

There were no photos of me and Frank like that. He didn’t come into the picture until later, when I had already learned how to be surly.

The bartender laughed at something one of the old boys said, but his eyes scanned the room every few seconds.

I scanned the room, too. At the first table was an elderly couple dressed in the same pale blue. The husband coughed and the wife rolled her eyes and told him to cover his mouth. At the second table two guys in denim and plaid were eating in silence. When I got to the third table, I stopped scanning and stared.

She was sitting alone, reading a book and absentmindedly playing with her tousled, shoulder-length blond hair. In front of her was a tall glass of iced tea, full to the brim, sitting in a pool of condensation. On the plate next to it was an untouched turkey club and a pile of chips. She hadn’t started eating, and I liked the idea that she would be there for a while.

She had on jeans and a T-shirt, and even sitting, I could tell she had a trim, athletic body. If she was wearing a bra, it wasn’t much of one, because her nipples were poking, just a bit. I might have lingered there a moment too long, because when I looked back up, her cool blue eyes were looking right at mine.

Normally, I would have looked away fast and pretended nothing had happened. This time I smiled, and I was pretty sure she smiled back.

When I finally did look away, I noticed the
PLEASE SEAT YOURSELF
sign right in front of me. I took a seat a couple of tables away and snuck a few peeks while I was waiting, made eye contact once and got another little smile. I don’t always know when something is there, but I usually know when absolutely nothing is, and I was not getting the absolutely nothing vibe.

The waitress was a stocky older woman with a pleasant expression that disappeared behind an appraising look when she got to my table. She gave me a menu, and I asked for another one because I couldn’t remember what Moose wanted.

The front door opened as I was trying to decide between the Reuben and the BLT. I looked over, expecting Moose. Instead, I saw my pig-faced drag-racing opponent. He looked bigger up close.

He stopped just inside the front door and looked around, nodding to one of the guys at the bar, who nodded back warily. I was giving him a hard stare, but he didn’t see me.

He walked up to the blonde in the T-shirt and said something quiet.

If she had looked up with a smile or given him a kiss, I would have had to end it all right then and there. Fortunately, she made a point of ignoring him, framing her face between her thumb and her forefinger and turning her head away to concentrate on her book.

He spoke again, louder, like he was repeating whatever he had said. She continued to ignore him, until he reached down and grabbed a potato chip from her plate. Then her head snapped around. “Back off, Cooney,” she said through gritted teeth.

He popped the chip into his mouth, looking down at her for a moment as he crunched it. When he reached out again, she slapped his hand. It was not a playful slap, and the look on her face wasn’t playful, either.

With surprising quickness, he grabbed her wrist, bending it back slightly while the other hand reached for another chip. I can be surprisingly quick myself, and before she could wince, I was out of my seat and over there, grabbing a fistful of his greasy hair and poking my foot into the back of his knee.

He spun as I took him down, his eyes wide, but his mean smile returned when he saw my face. The iced tea went over, and I glanced past him and paused, mesmerized as the beverage splashed across the blonde’s T-shirt. I’m familiar with a number of martial arts and fighting styles, and none of them recommends pausing in the middle of a fight to ogle. The next thing I saw was stars, as some kind of cross between a fist and a cinder block slammed into my head.

I stayed on my feet, suddenly back at my own table with my new friend closing fast and grinning like he wanted to play some more. I acted dazed, partly to give him a false sense of security and partly because I was dazed. When he swung another right, I ducked and caught his arm, twisting it around behind him and slamming his head down onto my table.

My ears were still fuzzy from the punch, and it took a second for the noise I was hearing to resolve into the sound of the blonde shrieking, “Stop it, both of you! For God’s sake!”

It occurred to me then that maybe I should have started by clearing my throat and saying something like, “Excuse me, sir, but I believe the lady would like you to stop eating her lunch.” But thoughts like that only come to me after the damage has been done.

I had the big guy immobilized enough that I could look over as she picked up her book and threw a ten on the table. She stormed out, shaking her head and mumbling something about “animals.”

In the moment of quiet after she left, I realized everyone in the place was staring at me. I took a step back and released the big guy, giving him enough of a shove that he’d be out of arm’s reach in case he hadn’t had enough. Judging from the way he came back at me, he hadn’t, but by then the guy from behind the bar had stepped in between us.

“Enough, goddamn it!” he boomed, shoving us in opposite directions. “For Chrissakes, Cooney, how many times I got to tell you?”

Then he turned and gave me a glare.

As I headed for the door, my stomach rumbled loudly, letting me know that while it might not have decided between the Reuben or the BLT, it had definitely been counting on one of them.

9

When I opened the door, I almost laughed at the twin images of my face, red where it had been hit, reflected in the lenses of Chief Pruitt’s aviators. Instead, I slipped past him as he reached out to hold the door.

Out on the sidewalk, I looked down the street as the blonde disappeared around one end of the block, then looked up the street as Moose appeared around the other end.

Pruitt’s cruiser was parked right in front of my car. I wondered if he was there for lunch or if he had seen my car and was checking up.

“Did you order?” Moose called out. He had a brown shopping bag in his arms.

“Get in the car,” I said briskly. There was still time to make a relatively clean getaway.

“What?” Moose called back, slowing a step, confused.

“Hurry up. We’re out of here.”

He still looked confused, but to his credit, he scurried up to the car and got in fast. His bag clinked when he put it on the floor.

“What’s going on?” he asked as I pulled around Chief Pruitt’s car and drove away at the posted speed limit.

I told him what had happened.

“Damn, Doyle.” He grinned, shaking his head. “Frank said you were a people person.”

“Is there anywhere else to eat in this town?”

He put a hand over his stomach, and his face grew sad. “I was going to have the meatloaf.”

“So where else can we go?”

He shook his head. “Nearest place that’s any good is like ten miles away, and it’s closed Sundays. There’s probably some soup back at the house.”

“Isn’t there a McDonald’s or something?”

Moose looked stricken. “Dude, tell me you don’t.”

“What?”

“Eat at McDonald’s.”

“Well, not all the time, but—”

He actually changed color. “Do you know what they put in that stuff? Have you ever seen what they put in a chicken nugget?”

I laughed. “I don’t want to know what they put in a chicken nugget. That’s why I ask them to cover it in that delicious breading.”

“Doyle, seriously, you need to think about what you’re eating.”

“I think about it all the time. Hell, right now I’m thinking, ‘What am I going to eat?’”

“I’m serious, man. This isn’t just about dinner, this is about everything.”

“Everything?”

“Damn right. You eat that chicken nugget, it’s not just about the factory-farmed chicken and the hormones and antibiotics and the GMOs, it’s about the people that work with those chemicals and the folks who have to live next to it.”

“GMOs?”

“Genetically Modified Organisms, meaning genetically engineered foods. It’s crazy what they’re doing with all the Frankenfoods these days.”

I laughed. “Frankenfoods?”

“You know, like tomatoes spliced with jellyfish genes, or lettuce with firefly DNA.”

I shrugged. “It’s still just food. It’s not like it’s going to kill you.”

“Don’t be so sure of that.”

Moose went on for a while like that, but I wasn’t listening, distracted by the image of the blonde from the diner. When I noticed it was quiet, I looked over to see Moose staring at me expectantly. I figured I’d rather ignore his stories than be telling ones of my own.

“So, how’d you end up working for my folks?”

He sighed. “I came out here to work for Miss Watkins, like an apprentice. When your mom got sick, your dad needed help keeping the garden going. Then he needed help around the house.” Moose shook his head. “They were great people.”

He was an annoying little guy, but I found myself liking him. He went quiet again after that, a sad quiet that dragged on until his cell phone went off, as if it had decided that someone had to say something.

Moose looked at the display. “It’s Miss Watkins,” he said, whispering even though he hadn’t answered it yet.

“You’re back,” he said brightly into the phone. “How’d it go with the garden club?” He listened again, nodding into the phone. “Yeah, I just got back a little while ago … No, the workshop was great, but, you know … Yeah, I guess it just broke his heart.… I’m here with Doyle right now.… When, now? Sounds just great. I’m sure we’d love to.” He cupped the phone with his hand and leaned over toward me. “She’s inviting us over for dinner.”

“Inviting us over?” I repeated, unable to think of anything else to say.

“Yes, and she’s a great cook. You’re going to love Miss Watkins. She reminds me of my Aunt Sylvia.”

I had no desire to eat dinner with Moose’s Aunt Sylvia, and could think of at least seventeen different ways that having dinner with one of my mother’s friends would be suicidally depressing, but before I could say no, my stomach growled loudly and I paused just long enough for Moose to say into the phone, “He’d love to. See you then.”

10

Back at the house, Moose got out of the car first and went inside ahead of me. By the time I got inside, the shower was already running. “Make yourself at home why don’t you,” I muttered.