Bad Things Page 23

  “Yeah, you did,” he said. He was looking me straight in the eye and for a moment the air between us was tense and clear. “Who else did you think she was married to?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, subsiding. “I did a very bad thing, and I’m sorry.”

  “Okay.”

  “That’s it?”

  “What do you want from me? If you’d been here the day I found out, then yeah, I might have gone old school on you. Now? I have slept on it many times, John. It’s done. It’s your problem, not mine.”

  “You seemed less sanguine about it last night.”

  “Yeah, and look what that got me.” He sighed. “That only happened because you were implying that I might have hurt her, which was too fucking much.”

  “I was kind of mixed up.”

  “Understood. But I’m not anymore, John. And I don’t want to burst your bubble but you weren’t the only one, okay? After you left town there was at least one other guy. Not that it seemed to make her any happier.”

  For an instant this information actually stung, and I realized that if you have woken up next to someone but once, you are never truly disconnected again. Then I laughed, briefly, and shook my head.

  “My point exactly,” Bill said.

  We didn’t say anything for a few minutes, but stood drinking coffee in vague attitudes of cautious affability.

  “So what are you doing these days?”

  “I’m a waiter,” I said, daring him to make something of it.

  “Good deal. The world needs waiters. I imagine you carry a very efficient plate. That what you’re going back to?”

  “Yes.”

  “Today?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “Sounds like a good one.”

  “I’m very glad you approve.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “We’re not going down that road again, are we? It’s just, my fists hurt enough as it is.”

  I smiled. “No, we’re not.”

  And that seemed to be that. Bill turned toward the hallway, and I understood that this was over.

  Outside the sky was low and hard and cold, with a matte texture I recognized from when I’d lived around here. The weather was considering getting serious. As I stepped into the wind Bill spoke again. “That other thing get straightened out?”

  “What thing?”

  “Something about Ellen Robertson. It got lost in the undertow last night.”

  “It’s done with,” I said. “Or at least, I’m walking away from it. Ellen’s gone AWOL anyhow.”

  “Sounds wise to let it go.”

  “Yep. I’m growing up all over the place.”

  “Let me give you a piece of advice, John. Okay?”

  “I’m listening,” I said, assuming it would be along the lines of letting the past be the past, letting go and moving on, stepping on the stones of tarnished yesterdays toward brighter tomorrows. I was prepared to hear him out. It was counsel I needed to hear, as many times as necessary.

  “Don’t fuck with Brooke Robertson.”

  Not what I was expecting. “I’m leaving today,” I said. “But as a matter of interest, why?”

  “Back at school, I knew those two passing well. I even stepped out with Brooke for a few weeks, back when we were, like, fourteen. But you know me—I’m just a big, straightforward lunk.”

  “No one thinks that.”

  “Yeah, they do, and they’re pretty much right and I don’t mind the hand I got dealt in terms of personality. There are worse guys to be, most of the time. I’m just saying Brooke got her cards from a whole different deck.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “She’s real smart, but broken. We stopped hanging out and it was me who ended it, though she was cute, gave every indication she might put out, and was actually interesting to talk to. A couple years later there was a rumor of something between her and one of the English teachers. She got a huge crush, he wouldn’t play along, something like that.”

  “And?”

  “He died.”

  I laughed. “What, with Brooke’s hairbrush found stabbed through his heart? Come on, Bill.”

  “He got sick. One day he’s the fittest guy in the place and second in command of the basketball team. Six weeks later, he’s dead from a stroke. Brain just blew his lights out.”

  “Which happens. And what would Brooke possibly have to do with it? Jesus, Bill.”

  “I guess you’re right. But what was that other thing you always used to say? Dots freak people out. So they join them with lines that aren’t there.”

  “I was right.”

  “Statistically everyone’s bound to be right, once in a while. Even a fuckwad like you.”

  I smiled. “You were Brooke Robertson’s sweetheart? Really?”

  “No,” he said patiently. “That’s my point, John. I don’t see her often these days, and when I do, I don’t enjoy it. I don’t know if there was ever a heart there to be sweet over, but there sure as hell isn’t now. She’s got it into her head that she has to hold the fort against the Mongol hordes, and whatever girl once lived in her head has been taken out and buried in the woods—by Brooke herself. She’s a Robertson now. The Robertson. Nothing else.”

  “It’s certainly clear who wears the pants.”

  “Yes and no. Cory may like it round the back, but he’s not a complete pushover, either.”

  “Cory’s gay?”

  “Christ, John, ain’t no closet deep enough,” Bill said, as if pained. “I admit, he’s kept a tight lid on it, and you’d need your ear close to the ground to have heard anything, but . . . well, yeah. Funny you didn’t get that. You’re normally pretty sharp.”

  “I try not to make simplistic judgments on people these days. Especially over matters as trivial as where they hang their sexual hat.”

  “One day we may all be so evolved,” Bill said. “Until then, well, fuck you, Gandhi.”

  I laughed, looked at his big, open face, and wished a lot of things had not happened.

  He stuck out his hand, and I shook it.

  “You take care,” he said, went back inside.

  CHAPTER 34

  About halfway back to the motel I became aware that I was being followed. In the rearview mirror I saw a large black SUV maintaining a consistent distance about eighty yards behind me.

  I cut my speed in half. It did the same.

  I took a turn off the road into Black Ridge, onto one that ran by itself with forest either side. The black car followed.

  So I took my foot off the pedal and let my car roll to a halt, right in the middle of the lane. The SUV dropped its speed, too, stopping twenty yards behind me. I gave it a minute for the driver to start leaning on the horn, but it didn’t happen. Whoever was in the vehicle was not on his way anywhere other than to a conversation with me.

  I got out of the car, leaving the engine running, both hands out and empty by my sides.

  The windows of what I now confirmed was a large GMC were heavily tinted, giving no clue as to who or how many were inside. I walked around to the rear end of my own car, leaned back against it, and lit a cigarette, looking straight at the windshield.

  After about two minutes the doors opened.

  A guy got out either side. Both black. One had the bunched shoulders and neck of someone who’d punched a lot of bag, and a wide, impassive face. The other was wiry, his skin a little paler and his hair sticking up. Their Nikes were very clean indeed.

  “Boy, are you lost,” I said.

  They came and stood at the front of their car. The big guy glanced me up and down. The thinner one just looked me in the eye.

  “Know who we are?”

  “I can guess.”

  “So don’t fuck with us, yo.”

  “Not considering it. You’re serious people, I can see that. Soldiers, right? Professionals.”

  Both watched me without saying anything.

  “Otherwise you wouldn’t have stopped at beating up on the girl. That wa
s you two, yes? Righteous job you did. You beat up a woman, she looks beat.”

  Something flickered across the face of the heavier one, and for maybe a nanosecond he looked uncomfortable. Most of these people have declared boundaries, however flimsy and/or subject to negotiation. For some it’s refusing to kill on a Sunday, for others it’s not breaking the limbs of anyone over seventy. It’s how the ones who still care prove to themselves they have their actions under control, that they’re not animals who do whatever they’re told. For the bigger guy, it looked like beating up a woman wasn’t business as usual. The thinner guy’s face didn’t change at all.

  “You know how she be, means you seen her since.”

  “Sharp,” I said. “Your boss evidently put this matter in good hands.”

  “No doubt. So where they at?”

  “Even assuming I knew where they were, I’m not just going to hand them both up to you.”

  “Don’t care about the girl. It’s your boy we have to talk to.”

  “He’s not my boy.”

  “Whatever. We talking to him one way or another.”

  “Your boss—” I started to say.

  “He ain’t our boss.”

  “The man who contracted you. What does he want? The money, or to show the world he’s tough?”

  The larger one spoke. “You a cop?”

  I shook my head. “Don’t give a shit about you or your business, except how it relates to my girl. Whom you have mistreated. But ten thousand isn’t shit, and so basically you’re set to drop Kyle, right?” The smaller guy moved his shoulders about a quarter of an inch, looking back at me with the calm surety of someone who’d committed all his worst deeds on purpose.

  “In which case I can’t help you,” I said. “If it was just about the cash, maybe we could do something. Maybe I could do something. But if you’re going to whack the kid regardless, there’s nothing in it for me.” The smaller guy started to reach a hand around his back, presumably to where he had a weapon stashed down the back of his jeans, under his baggy shirt.

  “There’s something in it for you,” he said tightly. “Like you could not get your fucking—”

  “You’re not from Portland, right? He hired you from over east?” The guy kept his hand where it was, but nodded.

  “And what are you getting? A couple thousand each? Five between you?” No response, which meant I was in the ballpark. “There’s another way of handling this. Call your boss, tell him you got the money off the kid, how about you just leave it at that. See what he says.”

  “He’s—”

  “—still going to want him dead. Right. So instead you say you couldn’t find him, and you don’t take the man’s money, but you split ten thousand dollars between you.”

  “Where’s the ten come from?”

  “Me.”

  The two guys glanced at each other.

  “That ain’t going to play,” said the small guy, when he looked back. “Our job is to drop people, yo. We don’t do it, where we at?”

  “So, what? Guy who hired you—he pay enough for you to be the Terminator? Are you supposed to drive around the whole of the United fucking States until you find this kid? For how long? A week? Two weeks? A month?”

  The smaller guy kept looking at me.

  “Right. So instead you tell him he disappeared in the woods up here, maybe he got some friends or something, he’s gone. You scared the crap out of his white ass anyway, and he isn’t coming back. You tell your boss that if the kid ever does show his face in Portland, you’ll come back and do it for free. Otherwise . . . you’re soldiers and grownups and you got other business to attend to.”

  A thoughtful head shake. “The guy’s real pissed behind this boy. He ain’t going to let it go at that.”

  “He’s pissed this week. Next week something else will mess with his head and he’ll be all over that instead. You know what these people are like.”

  The larger guy sniffed. “What if the kid talks up how he got away with this shit, when he back at the beach?”

  “He won’t. There’s a line to teach that little asshole how to behave, and I’m way ahead of you. Ten thousand ahead, which the fuck will now owe me.”

  The smaller guy finally brought his hand back out from behind his back, and folded his arms.

  “I’m thinking,” he said.

  “Do that. I’m leaving town in about an hour,” I said. “Call me before then and we’ll organize how you get the money. You don’t, I’ll assume you want to take the loss.” I reeled off my cell number. “And now,” I said. “It would be necessary for you guys to leave first.”

  “You run out on us, and we’ll come for you,” the thinner guy said. “And we’ll sure as shit be doing that for free.”

  “Understood. Matter of interest,” I asked, “who pointed you in my direction?”

  “A police.” The guy smiled. “Who else?”

  They walked away and got into their car.

  Right, I thought. Who else.

  On the way back through town I made my final stop, parking outside the Mountain View. I hadn’t banked on it being open, but it was, so I went inside.

  The young bartender I’d seen before was behind the counter, cleaning down the surface in a tight white T-shirt and covertly enjoying the way this made his biceps move. I asked him if Kristina was in, and he shook his head.

  “Supposed to be, but she hasn’t arrived yet.”

  “Any chance of you giving me a phone number for her?”

  He looked at me with both eyebrows raised, and I realized from the skin around his eyes that he was a little older than I’d thought. “Yeah, right.”

  I found a scrap of paper in my wallet, wrote my name and number on it. I folded this over and held it out. “Will you give this to her instead?”

  “Look, sir, aren’t you kind of—”

  I stepped up to the counter and smiled.

  “Here’s the thing, muscles. I don’t know Kristina that well, but I suspect if she wanted to be dating you then she already would be. I also believe that if it came to a fight, she could absolutely kick your ass. I know I could.”

  He blinked at me.

  “So how about you drop the attitude and answer my question in two words or less? Will you give her this note, or what?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good man. Something else. Yesterday morning, when the thing happened opposite? There was a guy drinking in here. In his fifties. You came out together.”

  The man nodded cautiously.

  “He a regular?”

  “Never seen him in here before.”

  “See him talking with anyone?”

  “Not in the bar.” He hesitated. “But I noticed him up the other end of the street, fifteen minutes before, about. Talking with Jassie.”

  “You’re sure it was her?”

  “Her hair was kind of blue, dude.”

  “Did it look friendly? The conversation?”

  “Too far away to tell. Guy drank two large Bushmills in half an hour afterward, though.”

  “You mention this to the police?”

  He shrugged, and I realized he probably wasn’t so bad a bartender after all.

  “Remember to pass on that note,” I said.

  Back in my car I sat for five minutes and watched two men replacing the window of the Write Sisters. By lunchtime it would be open for business again, though you could still make out a stain on the sidewalk where repeated cleanings had not yet removed all vestiges of the blood of someone who had formerly worked there. Eventually it would disappear, soaking down into the paving stones and then into the earth beneath, and life in Black Ridge would go on as it always had.

  Wouldn’t most places think about shutting for a few days, after something like that happened? Wouldn’t most towns feel different, in the wake of an event like that, whereas Black Ridge felt exactly the same? I didn’t know why it picked at me, and there was nothing I could do about it.

  I drove away, making su
re there was no sign of any large, black SUVs in the rearview mirror.

  I parked in the bank lot where the coffee guy plied his bad-tempered trade, stashing the car on the far side of a large white truck, and walked the rest of the way. The motel parking lot was empty, and there was no one in the office, though the presence of the maid’s cart, run aground outside room 2 like an abandoned ship, said I could probably deal with her when it came to checking out, arduous though the transaction would likely be.

  When I knocked on the door to room 10 there was silence for a moment. Then the door was yanked open.

  “Becki,” I said. “You’re supposed to . . .”

  I saw the wreckage of the bathroom door behind her, and pushed past.

  “Oh, crap. When did this happen?”

  “Half an hour ago. He’d been banging for like, two hours, saying how he was okay and stuff and he just wanted something to eat. I didn’t know what to do, but I thought you’d probably say to leave him there until he calmed down.”

  “Yes, I would have.”

  “But eventually he just, fucking, kicks the door out. I had no idea he’d even be able to do that. And he’s all ‘Where’s the fucking car?’ and I know what he’s really asking, but I don’t even know where the car is, and . . .”

  I realized she was standing with her back not quite straight, one hand over her ribs on the lower left side. “Did he hit you?”

  “No. No. He just—it was an accident.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “It was. We were shouting, and there was kind of a pushing thing . . . John, he’s not who he used to be. I’m serious. He’s been fucked up the last few days, for sure, but it was like a whole new level. He came out that bathroom like he’d been fucking possessed.”

  “Do you have any idea where he is?”

  She laughed, a short jagged sound. “I was lying on the floor at the time, and he was not in a plan-discussing place. He just booked. He’s probably running around town like a fucking dog, sniffing for the car and his fucking dope.”

  “Okay,” I said. “That’s not good. I ran into the guys who’re looking for you.”

  “No,” she said. “Please no. They’re here?”

  “I have them half interested in taking a deal but if they happen to see Kyle on the streets then their life will be a lot simpler—and they will go back to Plan A. You have to stay here.”