The Barkeep (21 page)

“Really? Now why would that be? Maybe because I’m not dead yet?”

“I understand your skepticism.”

“Do you,” she said. “Because you don’t seem to. Junior, I hate to break it to you, but you’re not dead yet, either.”

“I guess it’s all in your point of view.”

“Should I get you a doctor’s note?”

“I felt the same way before I started to read it. And it doesn’t get any better once you start. It’s like a treatise on gibberish by an addled professor, written in Greek. But I kept with it, and a pattern started to emerge, and the whole thing worked on me in a peculiar but liberating way. I hope it works the same way on you.”

“You mean you hope I die too.”

“I hope you find your way.”

She looked at the book. “To tell you the truth, Junior, I don’t think this is going to work. It seems like utter bullshit to me, no offense and all.”

“No offense taken.”

“Here,” she said, handing it back to him. “It means a lot to
you, I can tell, and I’d rather just keep self-medicating.”

“No, you hold on to it,” said Justin, “because if that’s how you intend to continue solving your problems, you’ll be needing it sooner rather than later.”

She looked at him for a moment and then laughed. And he laughed with her.

“Okay,” she said. “For future reference. Thank you. And I mean it. But if that’s all you got, then it’s getting a little late and I better be moseying on.” She pushed herself to standing while clutching her robe closed. “Thanks for the…shower? The tea? The whole
Book of the Dead
thing? It was almost, I don’t know, karmic.”

“Don’t leave yet,” he said, reaching out and gently taking hold of her hand to stop her from walking away, and he noted a line of suspicion marking her features.

He let go, and she hunched her shoulders as she pulled her hand back. The small bone of her wrist was lost in the fold of her sleeve. And just that quick he understood. She thought he was on the make. A lothario trying to score. He considered it a bit. The shower, the robes—all to keep his third-floor sanctuary as pure as possible—would look like nothing more genuine than a cheap pickup line.
Hey, want to come up and wrestle on my tatami mats?
And yet, she had come, and showered, and put on the robe. And in a way, his heart opened to her a bit just then, because he knew, in her way, she was as much a seeker as was he.

“It’s not what you think,” he said. “I just have something else to give you. Something that might help in a…less metaphysical way.”

She looked at him, the suspicion still there.

“It’s not sexual, Annie. This is my sanctuary from the wretched universe of desire. This is my place of nonattachment. There isn’t a safer place for you in the world.”

She stared at him a bit more and then sat down again, a little farther away than before, perhaps, but she sat. And she opened her eyes wide, despite the furrow of suspicion still on her pretty brow.

“Remember when you said you thought my parents had an arrangement?” said Justin.

“That’s what your father told me.”

“But you never really believed it, did you?”

“I figured it might just be a line. ‘She doesn’t understand me. We have an arrangement. I’m leaving her, but the time’s not right.’ I’ve heard them all before. Sometimes all at once.”

“Here,” he said, lifting from the tray the copies of the letters Frank had given him and handing them to her. “My brother found these in my mother’s closet.”

He watched as Annie read them, her face reflecting first the puzzlement of trying to figure out what the letters were all about and then the rapt concentration that came from trying to follow the flow of words and ideas. He liked the way she read, immersing herself fully, as if losing awareness of where she was or who she was with. He seemed to remember that she was an accountant, and he could imagine her losing herself in the figures that danced like hard truths across her computer screen. It was a sort of meditation, with the numbers as a mantra, because, really, what could be more meaningless than an unending stream of numbers.

When she finished, she looked up at Justin with eyes that surprised him, because they were moist.

“She was in love with someone else at the end.”

“So it seems.”

“But was it an affair?”

“Apparently.”

“Do you have anything other than these letters to prove it?”

“Just my father’s word, but otherwise, no. But isn’t it clear from the letters?”

“There’s love, yes, but there’s no sex.”

“It’s there between the lines.”

“Sex is never between the lines. Between the sheets, yes, but not between the lines.”

“Shakespeare’s sonnets?”

“Drenched with sex.”

“Really?”

“Read them again. If you’re bumping knees, you can’t hide it.”

“You’re overanalyzing this, Annie. Maybe the sex hadn’t happened yet, but my mother was in love with this A. And my father was in love with you. So there was an arrangement, like he told you. Whatever guilt you might have been feeling is misplaced. You were a piece of their puzzle, not the cause of anything.”

She thought about it for a while and then took a deep breath and smiled in a way that he felt, viscerally. “That was so sweet of you. Really sweet. Surprising, actually.”

“Why?”

“Well, your father said you were an asshole.”

“Dear old Dad.”

“Who’s A?”

“No one knows for sure, but I have an idea. My mother had a high-school boyfriend named Austin. My aunt thinks I’m named for him. I figure they might have hooked up again. I’m going to pay him a visit.”

“Why would you want to do that?”

“I’m not as certain as I was about my dad’s guilt. I’m trying to find out what I can about my mother’s last days to see who else might have wanted to do her harm. And I have some
information, however unreliable, that the person might have been a woman.”

“That’s why you found me?”

“Yes.”

“So, do you think I did it?”

“No. But if I had thought your relationship with my father might have been the cause of her death, it’s only fair that I try to find out if her relationship with this Austin might have been the cause instead. Maybe this Austin’s wife got a whiff and decided to do something about it. It’s just a shot in the dark, but it’s worth taking.”

“But that’s not all, is it? You’re not just out to clear your father.”

“No. And this might sound a little weird, but in the book I gave you, there are prayers to whisper into the ear of the newly deceased to help them on their way in the land of the dead. I didn’t know enough to recite them to my mother when I found her that night. But maybe, if I know what was going on in her life, I might gain a sense she didn’t need those words, that she had enough of a sense of herself to know all the stuff in the book on her own.”

Annie nodded at him as he spoke, as if she understood what he was saying even though he knew she understood not a word. How could she? He had only given her the book a moment before. But she seemed to emotionally understand, and he liked that.

“So,” she said, even as she kept nodding, “when are we going to meet this Austin guy?”

“We?”

“I have to go with you.”

“That’s not a good idea, Annie. I don’t know what he’ll be like or what will happen. And I think, considering the
circumstances, we’ve about maxed out our appropriate amount of time together. I gave you what I felt I needed to give you, and now it’s time for our ships to sail in different directions.”

“I’m going with you, Junior.”

“Oh you are, are you?”

“If everything you suspect is true, then he’s me, don’t you see? He’s the other side of the equation. Whatever I went through, am still going through, he went through it too. And whatever he’s going through, I might be able to help him, like you tried to help me. So don’t even attempt to convince me otherwise. I’m going with you.”

“You free Saturday afternoon?” he said, not quite knowing why he was saying it.

“I can get free.”

“Good,” said Justin. “Then why don’t we catch up to Austin Moss while he’s mowing the lawn at home.”

31.

STINGER

V
ern told Derek to be patient. They needed to wait for the right moment. Timing was everything. “Just keep yourself busy is all, until the clock strikes,” Vern said before he went out drinking. And so Derek is following orders, like he always follows orders, and keeping himself busy.

They are now in their third house of the night. From the streetlight that bleeds through the front windows, he can see it is a really nice house. Comfortable. It reminds him of a hotel that Tree had conned their way into one night in Chicago, with fancy beds and paintings of the ocean on the walls. This was when Tree could still con anyone into anything, before he lost his breath from the cancer. Derek is hauling the flatscreen into the kitchen, while Cody cruises around upstairs looking for the smaller stuff.

Cody made all the plans for the night. He scouted out the houses, made sure they were empty, picked up the van, made arrangements for the stuff to be sold, and worked out the cut. He did all this even before he picked up Derek from the park off Lombard Street, near the basketball court, where Cody told Derek to wait for him. Derek can spend hours at the park unnoticed, which is much better than standing on the street while
the crowd of addicts and drunks mill before the hotel. Cody came up with the idea of the park. Cody has a lot of good ideas.

Derek likes working with Cody. Cody never yells, he asks Derek’s opinion even though Derek usually does not have one, and he does not like to linger. And Derek likes that Cody has taken the time to try to convince Derek that what they are doing is okay. Cody says that he is the one doing all the stealing. All Derek is doing is opening the doors and taking care of any alarms, like Tree had taught him. Tree had been a master of alarms, he had gotten his start installing them in Texas, before branching out. Working with Cody is like working with Tree before the cancer. None of the addict lies of Sammy D, none of Rodney’s powdery nervousness, none of Vern’s orneriness—just two guys working together. Like teammates on a baseball team. Derek has never played baseball, his mom would not let him play, afraid he would get laughed at or hurt, but Derek would have liked to play baseball with Cody.

The first two houses went smooth as a puppy dog’s tail. Open the door, grab the easiest stuff to find, load it in the van, be on their way. Bam bam bam. It was so easy that Derek started helping out with the taking and the van was filling up as if by itself. This third house is proving to be no different. When Derek puts the flatscreen on the kitchen table, he goes back for the paintings, like Cody had told him to. By the time Cody is coming down the stairs into the living room, the walls are stripped, the little statues of naked women that Cody had pointed out are set beside the flatscreen, and everything is waiting to be moved to the van.

“What about the silver?” says Cody softly.

“Silver?”

“In the dining room.”

“I did not know.”

“No sweat. Just wait here and stay quiet.”

Derek stands silently and still in the living room as Cody goes through the dining room, drawers sliding open and closed. Even when Derek hears something shuffling outside the front door, he does not move, does not say a word.

When Cody comes back to Derek in the living room, he has a small wooden case under his left arm, two long candlesticks, one in each hand, and a smile.

Derek points at the front door, and Cody’s smile freezes into a grimace.

The scraping of a key, the turning of the knob.

Derek is standing to the side, by the stairs. The door will open away from him. He will have plenty of time to jump on whoever is coming inside and take care of him. Cody stands now a few feet in front of the door. Derek trains his gaze on Cody, wondering what Cody will do. Derek has plans for Cody. Big plans. But there is still so much he does not know about Cody. Like how Cody handles tight situations. Derek has found that his job is almost all tight situations. Derek does not let them bother him. He is just dim enough to be impervious to pressure, which relies on a grave understanding of the big picture to do its dirty work. But pressure sometimes makes the smart guys pee in their pants. And now Cody, who is definitely one of the smart guys, is getting his first taste.

The door starts to open.

Cody moves sideways toward Derek, away from the opening, and then scurries forward, still holding the stuff from the dining room.

The door opens fully, a shadow slips in, turns on the light, closes the door. It is a girl, young and thin, no threat.

Derek is just about to jump the girl when Cody steps in his way.

The girl turns and catches sight of Cody and opens her mouth to scream. She is pretty, with blonde hair and blue eyes, and with her mouth open like it is, it makes Derek think of his sister singing her hymns. A cry comes out, and Derek is readying to grab her and hug her and press her face against his chest so that the sound stops. But before he can move, Cody steps forward and thumps her on the head with a candlestick.

The girl stands swaying silently for a moment before collapsing in a heap. Cody turns to stare at Derek, and there is a look on Cody’s face like he has done something terribly, terribly wrong and hopes Derek will not hate him for it.

“I didn’t have a choice,” says Cody.

“I know.”

“I had to do something.”

“I know.”

Cody looks at him again, the pleading still in his eyes, as if he is begging Derek for some sort of forgiveness. Derek just nods.

Cody stoops down, drops the case and the candlesticks, gently places one hand on the girl’s head and the other on her neck. There is some blood, but not much.

“She’s fine, thank God,” says Cody softly. “There’s a pulse.”

“What do we do?” says Derek.

“Let’s just load up and get out of here,” says Cody.

“Okay,” says Derek. “What about her?”

“I think she’ll be okay. She’ll wake up with a headache, but she’ll be okay.”

“Okay.”