Vengeance (17 page)

Once his steps bounced down the porch steps, I made tracks across the room to the window, again lurching in giant, exaggerated steps like a silent movie villain. I wasn’t sure my footsteps wouldn’t make enough noise to catch his notice if I just bounded over there. Through a sliver of open curtain, I watched him get into his car and, after a delay about long enough to load a CD into a car stereo, dash away.

Jesus! I plopped down on the edge of the bed and let my legs kick up in the air as I flopped back, arms over my head. My heels landed on the floor and the mattress recoiled a few times. Once I was at rest, I took a few deep breaths, sat up, and let go of the flashlight that had been in my left hand through the whole episode. I wiped my sweaty palm on the bedspread. Then I pulled up the edge of the spread and dried the flashlight grip. I stood up and shook out all my loose nerves. After taking a precautionary peek out the front window, I retrieved the light and pulled at the corners of the bedspread and brushed my palm over its surface to smooth it out again.

The closet was the last place I needed to look before moving on to the other bedroom. Upon opening the door, a cloud of mothball vapor assaulted me. It had been present throughout the room, I now realized, but in a concentration like a single candle in comparison to the noonday sun. I recoiled and stepped into the hall to catch some fresh air. I flipped on the flashlight and pulled my shirt over my mouth and nose before venturing back into the closet.

Several shoeboxes lined the width of the closet floor in two neat layers. Above them hung a pea coat, a rain coat, dresses, and a few suits. A military uniform hung amidst some jackets. I felt ashamed to be rifling through a veteran’s belongings. But I had no idea whose things these were. D-Bag might have amassed all those clothes from garage sales or thrift shops as Halloween costumes for all I knew. Anyway, aside from the bedspread that I probably hadn’t smoothened to its pristine state, I had no intention of upsetting any of these things.

Still, a shoebox was a hiding place. So I knelt down on the floor, breathing through the ineffective filter of my shirt, and started opening the boxes. They held nothing more exciting than old shoes. I restored everything to its place, closed the doors behind me, and moved to D-Bag’s room. It was more lived-in than the rest of the house, but still not the mess I expected. I checked the dresser drawers, but found only clothes. His bed was unmade, so I didn’t hesitate to search under the mattress. D-Bag’s room held its own olfactory booby-traps, more pungent than the moth balls, but still no ledger. I had been in the guy’s house for well over half an hour and realized if I didn’t find it soon I was going to have to rethink my approach. I didn’t have time to act like I was curating a museum display.

I headed back downstairs. I took a long look out at the street to make sure there was no motion, and no one standing out on their porches or hovering behind their windows watching D-Bag’s house. The upstairs had been covered. I didn’t see any reason to think I had missed anything. I could have rummaged through all the pockets in all the clothes in the closets, but that would remain a last resort.

Back in the dining room, I checked the three drawers and the cabinets underneath the sideboard. I even pulled the bottom of the large painting from the wall to check for a safe behind it. The kitchen was all that was left. I remembered hearing something about criminals keeping large rolls of cash in their freezers. Some joke about cold cash. So that’s where I started. All it held were, ironically, a few frozen pizzas, and some parcels wrapped in white butcher paper. They were frozen solid, giving me no reason to think anything but ground beef and pork chops were wrapped up in there.

The kitchen was noticeably cooler than the rest of the house, thanks to my means of entry. I zipped up my jacket while I took a trip to check the front window again. I wasn’t sure if I would hear D-Bag’s car door if he swung by again, especially now that the furnace had kicked on.

The thrill of the search was giving way to a sense of desperation. Where else could the ledger be? I didn’t want to take a steak knife and disembowel all of the upholstery. And that wouldn’t make any sense. He wasn’t hiding a microchip from Russian spies. This was a drug dealer. He needed to keep the ledger somewhere accessible. It had to be right under my nose. If I couldn’t find it without gutting the place, maybe it wasn’t there to be found.

It was possible D-Bag kept the ledger with him at all times and going through his house was pointless. If that was the case, was I going to have to wait from him there and jump him when he came home? And what if he didn’t have it on him? I’d have mugged him for nothing. Then what? Tie him up to a chair and go through that whole routine again?

I had to stop thinking about what-ifs and hope it didn’t come to that. I doubled back to the kitchen. It seemed the least likely place to find anything, but it was the one room I hadn’t searched thoroughly. I had already been through the drawers and the cabinets with dishes were easy to check. Anything not in the shape of the dishes would have stuck out in the glare of the point-blank range flashlight. After confirming the cabinets with food, pots and pans, and cleaning supplies under the sink held nothing of interest, I dragged a chair over so I could reach the cabinets above the stove and fridge. Above the fridge were various nearly-empty alcohol bottles that I suspected even D-Bag was unaware of and a goose-shaped cookie jar. And above the stove was the portly box of a candle-making kit. As I closed the cabinet, I realized the knob didn’t feel dusty as the others had. I touched the knob on the adjoining cabinet. Sure enough, that one had a fuzzy coating of dust that had stuck to the grease that inevitably coats an entire kitchen.

I pulled the candle-making kit down to the table. It didn’t contain the ledger, but I was pleased with what I had found. It must have been D-Bag’s inventory – freshly stocked, judging by how full the box was. I wasn’t exactly sure of what I was looking at, except maybe a few decades in an orange jump suit if I got caught with it.

Chapter 19

“You couldn’t find the ledger, so you took his product?” Casey asked.

“I need leverage,” I said. “His stash is full. Has to be worth some information.”

“He’ll have to pay to replace the product. But that might not be worth turning snitch.”

I had paged Casey from a pay phone inside a Laundromat not far from D-Bag’s house. A couple of old bachelors looked over the top of their newspapers at the TV news. The air was pleasantly warm and fragrant from the dryers, despite the cold front wall of windows and the bleak Linoleum floor.

“Hang on,” Casey said. I could hear what sounded like him tapping a pen on a desk on his end of the line. “Let me call you back.”

I gave him the number of the pay phone, hung up, and took the molded plastic seat nearest the phone from which I could keep an eye on the car. No one could know I had thousands of dollars of drugs in a box in the trunk, and no one looking to boost a ride was going to pick that Buick. Still, the contents of the box promised to unlock the riddle I had been working on for days. I wasn’t going to let it out of my sight. I had over three hours to kill before D-Bag was due home. Too long to spend in the tropical comfort of the Laundromat. But I was stuck there until Casey called back. If I had known that was where I’d be waiting, I would’ve brought my dirty clothes. I had only packed for a short trip, so I was wearing the same clothes day to day. My eyes turned from the car to the men inside. The bachelors looked like vets. Buzzed hair, forearm tattoos, skin weathered by the sun. One of them methodically folded his laundry. The scene was somehow depressing. So I turned my thoughts to how I could kill a few hours. It seemed like I should have plenty of old haunts to visit in my hometown, or at least friends, but nothing came to mind. I had been a teenager when I left. The kind of places I used to go weren’t my scene anymore. Suddenly, the vet and his underwear didn’t seem as depressing.

Mercifully, the phone rang in less than ten minutes.

“You done good,” Casey said. “You got him by the balls.”

It turns out, as Casey had made a few calls to confirm, that D-Bag had lost product several months back. He’d paid it off, but the business wasn’t just about money. “You have to be reliable,” Casey explained. “You can’t be unpredictable. Even if he could pay for a new delivery tonight, that’s not how his supplier works. D-Bag can’t call this in. If he doesn’t get his stash back, he’s out.”

“I don’t even have to threaten him with violence,” I joked.

“No,” Casey said, soberly. “He already knows what’ll happen.”

I realized that being out of the business probably meant more than just losing a stream of income. I hadn’t intended to put D-Bag into this predicament, but why should I care? All he had to do was feed me some information and no one had to know.

I told Casey I’d get back to him when it was all over. Then I resigned myself to heading to my flop in the meantime. As I shifted from reverse and prepared to pull away, I saluted casually toward the veterans, who were oblivious through the windshield and wall of glass. Despite the military presence at the Laundromat, the neighborhood hardly felt secure. It was a stretch I hadn’t crossed much as a kid. Every building seemed to have a vacant lot on either side. There was a derelict used car lot occupying an acre of asphalt with a heavily vandalized office trailer set on the back half of its expanse. Faded and tattered strings of triangle pennants were still strung from light posts at the front corners of the lot, converging on a single pole just behind the trailer.

The Buick was running on empty, so I pulled into a gas station. There was a patrol car pulled in alongside the cinder-block building. I couldn’t tell if the cop was keeping the peace or if the building was shielding him as he caught up on his sports page reading.

I was low on cash and my cards were close to maxed out. But that box of D-Bag’s held more than drugs. It was also his cash drawer. On top of the pill jars and Zip-locks there was a roll of cash held together by a rubber band. So I popped the trunk and ducked under to peel a few twenties from his roll. But I felt vulnerable standing there like that, like someone could jump me from behind and toss me in the trunk, or as if that cop might take a stroll to see what was so interesting in the trunk of my car. Acting suspicious in a neighborhood where everyone was considered a suspect by the police wasn’t going to work to my advantage.

So I decided, “Fuck it.” D-Bag should feel lucky to get the drugs back. The cash was my finder’s fee. I stuffed the roll into my coat pocket and kept my fist tight around it, closed the trunk, and went inside to give the cashier twenty bucks so I could fill up. The pump slowed down as it approached the twenty dollar mark, then trickled out the last few cents’ worth of gas so cautiously I almost pulled the hose out before it was done.

I pulled out and headed in the direction I had been going in, though I realized I was going to need to turn up the streets and double back toward my place. The road had been barren, but headlights immediately filled my rear view mirror. The cop had left right behind me. I confirmed that my seat-belt was latched and checked the speedometer. My hands were poised at ten and two and I aimed the car perfectly between the curb and the double yellow lines. I was the textbook example of proper driving. Still, I always got a pull in my gut when a cop was behind me.

I intentionally took a right on a lazy street one block before the avenue that most people rode up that side of town, thinking he’d have no excuse to follow me. But he not only rounded the corner hot on my tail, he lit me up as soon as he made the turn. I calmly pulled over, turned off the ignition, and left my hands high on the steering wheel. I’d only been pulled over twice in my life. Once there in Cedar Rapids, on the other side of town, just as near the river. And that was the drill, as far as I knew. Just cooperate and don’t give the cop any reason to worry. Whatever he thought he was pulling me over for, I wasn’t going to escalate the situation.

As he took his time behind me, I realized I hadn’t gotten a good look at him back at the store. Could it have been George pulling me over to check in? I knew that was a slim chance. Sure enough, I didn’t recognize the cop as he tapped on my window. I rolled it down and let the cold flood in so we could get the formalities out of the way.

“License and registration,” he said.

I leaned toward the glove box and made a wish as I opened it. But the damned thing was as bare as a freshly looted safe.

“Was I speeding, or something?” I asked, stalling. Without those documents, I was sure the car was going to be impounded. And I don’t think he was going to let me retrieve my “candle-making kit” out of the trunk, first.

When he didn’t reply, I turned my head toward him, my body still reached to the glove box, as if I were searching inside for the right papers. “You know, I’m actually borrowing the car,” I said. “I never even checked if—”

“Sir, please step out of the vehicle,” he said in a definitively more commanding tone. He took a step back and placed a hand on the handle of his sidearm. I might have imagined George doing this in the dark in the cemetery, but this time I could clearly see the danger.

“Officer—”

“Step out of the vehicle!” he repeated, barking the words. I thought I may have heard the snap of his holster pop open.

I raised my hands as if to catch a chest-passed basketball, then eased one hand down to release my seat-belt and open the door, moving quickly enough that he knew I was complying but deliberately enough to not spook him into drawing the weapon. I kept my hands raised shoulder-high as I emerged from the car.

“I need you to walk to the front of your vehicle,” he said, intoning each word evenly as if he were stomping out a sentence. “Place your hands on the hood!”

As I followed his orders, he maintained a set distance and kept his hips and shoulders squared to mine. It was somehow like we were moving an invisible sofa together.

“Officer, I really – this isn’t even my car!”

“Sir! Please stay where you are and remain quiet.” Having reached in and fetched the keys, he backed around to the trunk, hand on that revolver. “I’m going to search your vehicle. I’m opening your trunk.”

In a second, that box of drugs was going to be staring this cop in the face. I didn’t know if he had the right to open the trunk or to open the box, but I didn’t want it to get that far.

“Officer, the paperwork is probably just missing because I borrowed this car from a dealer.” Maybe not the best choice of words, I decided, considering what was waiting in the trunk. The cop was already turning the key in the trunk lock as I spoke. Just as the trunk sprung up, he caught it with his left hand.

“What dealer?” he called back, his eyes locked on mine. Everything about his body language said he was pausing his search until I answered.

“I—I don’t know,” I said, the fleeting hope dissipating like my breath cloud. “My friend Casey arranged it.”

“Casey who?” he called. “Casey Porter?”

“Yeah!”

The cop shoved the trunk back shut and brought me the keys. I stood upright when I saw how casual his approach was.

He said, “Maybe you’re new to this, but start with that information next time. Save everyone a lot of trouble.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And tell Casey they need to watch the plates they put on these cars. These came off a stolen vehicle. You never know who’s going to pull you over.”

He left abruptly, which was fine by me. If he had lingered I would have thought he was expecting a tip on top of the bribe someone had obviously already taken care of. My pulse was still coming down as I pulled away. I couldn’t help but be taken back by how much influence Casey wielded.

Back at the flop, I counted the cash roll. Almost twelve hundred dollars. More than enough to cover my monthly living expenses as a rice-and-bean-eating grad student who lived in a one-stall garage that had been converted into a studio apartment.

I didn’t worry about leaving the drugs in the trunk. Even if it was a bad neighborhood, no one had any reason to suspect my car held anything worth stealing. Anyway, I realized I only needed the promise of returning the drugs to get D-Bag to talk. If they were stolen and he told me what I needed to know before he found out, I’d still have what I needed.

I lay down to recharge from the last few days. My head was reposing on the arm of the sofa and I became instantly drowsy, but something was nagging at me. Of course! I still hadn’t called Natalie. I sat up and checked the time. There was only a one-hour difference from Iowa to Arizona that time of year, which meant I had a good chance of catching her at home. I wished I had thought of it when I was right next to a change machine and a pay phone in the laundry. I peeled some twenties off the cash roll to fill my wallet, stashed the rest in my coat pocket, and went down to the street.

There was a bar on the opposite corner of the next block up from the river. The windows were painted black, so I couldn’t tell if it was even open for business. But it was the only likely candidate in sight for having a pay phone and the chance of breaking a twenty.

It was dark inside, but not pitch black like Andy’s. I waited at the end of the bar until the bartender came over and I asked if she could make change for the phone.

“Only if you buy something,” she said, like she was running a corner store. But from the looks of the scraggly few customers she had, I couldn’t begrudge her guarding her bottom line. Besides, I was flush with ill-gotten gains, so I ordered a bottled beer, which I let stand on the bar as I went to the pay phone in the back.

I plugged my free ear and pressed the receiver hard against the other. The bar wasn’t at all loud, but the connection seemed to be coming through a concrete wall. Just when I figured her machine would pick up, Natalie answered, breathless.

“Why aren’t you on your plane?” she asked once we had said hello.

“I had to change my flight,” I said.

“Did something happen?”

I couldn’t tell her the truth. Yet, I hadn’t thought up a lie in advance. I’d been more open with her than anyone, but she’d be justified in calling me crazy if I told her I was investigating Aiden’s possible murder. I was no private eye, she could remind me. If I said one word about how I’d spent the past forty-eight hours, she’d go ballistic, saying she didn’t know who I was anymore.

“Just some unexpected complications,” I said.

I wanted so badly to tell her everything. Partly, I just needed to tell someone, if only to make sense of the improbable events I had delved into. She might have been able to help me see the situation more clearly.

“Nat,” I said. “I’m just… I’m spending all this time around these people I moved across the country to get away from. You know? I guess I needed to hear a reassuring voice.”

“Ethan,” she exhaled, as if to comfort and reproach me at once. It sounded like she was giving me her ear for the last time.

“I know,” I said. “I know.”

For a few seconds, I strained to hear anything at all through the line.

“I’ve got to get ready,” she finally said. “I’m going out, but… just don’t forget who you are.”

Don’t forget who I am. Sound wisdom. But it held opposite meanings, depending on which people in my life were offering the advice.