Justice Read online

  “Sorry.” He managed to look apologetic and embarrassed at the same time. “I guess it was kind of an impulse thing. Besides, it’s kind of rundown. Just didn’t think you’d want to handle it.”

  That was an outright lie. Getting a real estate agent hadn’t crossed his mind at all.

  “Forget it, Frank,” she waved it away. “You’ve had a lot going on lately. But you don’t think you’re going to sell it all on your own, do you? I can’t picture you showing prospective buyers around and talking about color schemes.”

  “It isn’t a color scheme kind of house.”

  “Gee, what a surprise,” she smiled, “Well, I’ll forgive you as long as you give me the listing and let me worry about all that. I’m sure you have better things to do. Tell you what–are you going to be home tomorrow? Say around two o’clock? ”

  “I think so—”

  “Great!” she beamed, “I’ll bring some papers with me and we’ll get things started. In the meantime take that awful sign of yours down and I’ll bring you something better.”

  Frank just nodded, watched her hurry across the street to her car. It occurred to him that it was the longest conversation he’d had with her in months, since before all the trouble with Adrienne.

  Hell with it, he thought. If she didn’t think there was a commission in it she would have just walked on by. She’d done it often enough before.

  14

  At first Frank thought it was something on the television. He hardly ever slept in his bed anymore, for some reason just couldn’t be bothered to go upstairs. Instead he usually just fell asleep on the couch with the television on. Wherever the sound was coming from, the phone just kept ringing, shrill and insistent. He didn’t feel like waking up so he just lay there for a moment and hoped it would go away. It didn’t, and finally all the years of conditioning kicked in and he groped around on the coffee table and found it.

  “Yeah.”

  “Took you long enough,” Ted Saunders growled.

  “What?”

  “Nice to hear your voice too. You drinking, Frank?”

  Frank could hear the usual tumult of music and drunken bar conversation in the background. He glanced over at the glass on the coffee table. There was still some left at the bottom. He wasted a lot of scotch that way.

  “I’m not the one in the bar.”

  “I’ve got an excuse,” Saunders told him. “I work here. I asked if you were drinking.”

  “You taking a survey?”

  “No, I’m asking if you’re okay to drive. I need you to come down and get that big stupid fucker out of here.”

  “You’ll have to be more specific.”

  “How many big stupid fuckers do you know? Billy Dancer’s down here and he’s drunk.”

  That didn’t sound right. Billy Dancer didn’t like bars.

  “I thought you had bouncers for that.”

  “Yeah, we tried that.” A disgusted edge came into Saunders’ voice. “Didn’t work. Besides, I thought you’d want to take care of him. I don’t want to get the cops involved, Frank. Dancer’s big but he isn’t bulletproof. ”

  Billy Dancer was somewhere over six-five and weighed close to three hundred pounds, not that anyone had ever dared get close enough to check. Saunders had guys almost as big, but size didn’t have much to do with it. Billy Dancer in a bad state of mind and drunk would be light years out of their league.

  “You coming or not?” Saunders asked, “If you’re not I have to call the cops.”

  Frank knew it wasn’t meant as a threat. Saunders didn’t have many options to choose from.

  “Unlock the back door,” Frank sighed. “I’m coming.”

  • • •

  Saunders’ place was still standing, so that was a good sign. Didn’t mean he wouldn’t find something pretty ugly when he got in there. A lot could happen in ten minutes, which was the amount of time it took Frank to get from his house to the bar. He had to watch how he drove. Saunders’ call had put Frank in a bad position. He’d had a few drinks to get himself to sleep and there was a pretty good chance he was over the limit. If he got stopped on the way a lot depended on who stopped him. When he was still chief he’d made a point of keeping a personal firewall between himself and his officers, and as a result he couldn’t count on a Strothwood cop to give him a break for auld lang syne. With some of them it would be quite the opposite, and that was all right because that was the way he’d trained them. Frank had already heard about Brent Williams’ two new hires, and they wouldn’t know or care who Frank Stallings was or used to be. All they’d care about would be impressing Brent. A Frank Stallings DUI would make Brent’s day.

  Trouble was that everybody in town knew his big white F150 on sight. If it deviated offline a fraction of an inch and the wrong cop saw it things would be even worse than they already were. Frank blew out an involuntary sigh of relief when he got off the street and into Saunders’ parking lot, kept on going around the far corner toward the back. If things with Billy went sideways it would be easier and less public to get him out the back door.

  All of that assumed Billy would be willing to go. Frank couldn’t imagine Billy giving him trouble but if being a cop had taught him anything it was to never assume what another person would do or how far they would go. Frank had survived a lot of violent encounters but with Billy he’d be giving away at least six inches and over a hundred pounds.

  Under normal circumstances Billy didn’t have a mean bone in his body, but from the way Saunders sounded on the phone these weren’t normal circumstances. Billy liked a drink now and then, but as far as Frank knew he hardly ever went into bars. He was too shy, for one thing, although obviously he must have overcome that tonight. To get yourself thrown out of Saunders’ place for drunkenness you had to be a legend in your own time.

  Frank got out from behind the wheel and walked the few steps to the back door of the bar, pulled it open and stepped inside. At first everything looked normal, or as normal as Saunders’ place ever got, but Frank was looking from back to front and that meant his view was dominated by the double ranks of pool tables and the players clustered around them. No sign of Billy, so Frank kept going past the pool tables and dance floor and headed for the bar itself.

  Saunders lifted the pass-through at the near end of the bar and came out to meet him.

  “Where is he?” Frank asked.

  Saunders waved a hand toward a table in the far corner. Frank followed the gesture and saw a cordon of four bouncers arrayed around the last table. Billy was sitting with his back to the wall staring benignly out at the room. There were four beer pitchers in front of him and three of them were empty. Even sitting down Billy looked huge, like he was sitting in the kiddies’ section. Frank glanced back at Saunders.

  “So what’s the problem? He looks pretty quiet to me.”

  “He is now. I gave him a few more jugs of beer to keep him occupied,” Saunders said, “but about an hour ago a couple of the local steroid boys started pushing him around. At first they were all smiles and friendly and they were giving him a little shove here and there and you know Billy, he thought he’d made some new friends and he just let them do it.”

  “So where were your guys?”

  “Probably hiding under a table.” Saunders looked disgusted. “Meanwhile these greaseballs keep bugging Billy, working themselves up to it, and it starts to turn mean. Finally one of them bitch slaps him and Billy said enough already and just flattened the guy. Brought his fist right down on the top of his head and that was it. Looked like one of those videos where a building gets imploded. Straight down.”

  “What about the other one?”

  “Billy gave him a flying lesson.” Saunders waved a negligent hand behind him. “He landed about two tables over.”

  Normally, even in Saunders’ place, all of that would have resulted in a 911 call.

  “I owe you one,” Frank said.

  “Yeah, you do, but it wasn’t Billy’s fault. I was getting sick o
f those assholes anyway. The bouncers were scared shitless of them and they were getting on my nerves.”

  “You need new bouncers.”

  “No shit,” Saunders said. “When can you start?”

  There was sudden movement in Billy’s corner and both of them glanced over, saw Billy rise unsteadily to his feet. He towered over even the biggest bouncer, an ex-high school football hero named Jason somebody, and they all glanced nervously at each other and actually backed off a little to give him room. Billy ignored them and started over toward Frank and Saunders. When they saw Billy heading for the man who signed their pay checks Jason and one of the other guys finally snapped out of it and caught up to Billy, splitting up and grabbing an arm on each side. Billy didn’t seem to notice. The bouncers just hung on and Billy kept coming.

  “Isn’t that cute,” Frank said. “They think they’re throwing him out.”

  Billy finally realized he was dragging a lot of unnecessary weight around and casually shook off the bouncers like he was shrugging his way out of an overcoat.

  “Uh-oh,” Saunders said.

  Billy was headed for Frank, not Saunders. The only thing that saved him was the difference in height. Billy came in with a loose sweeping overhand right that was half-hearted and slow enough to avoid. Frank only had to drop his head a couple of inches to duck under it and then he came up again and punched low and straight into Billy’s midsection. It doubled him over and he fought for breath. Frank knew that wouldn’t last long and he was right. Billy started to come up again, but Frank just held up a hand.

  “Knock it off, Billy.”

  Billy straightened up slowly and stared down at him, anger and shame fighting for position on his face. Frank knew that, drunk or not, Billy’s heart really hadn’t been in it. If it had been he would have taken Frank’s head off.

  There was something going on, though, and Frank knew it could still go either way. He stayed in close and kept his voice low.

  “Come on, Billy, you’re gonna feel like shit in the morning. I’ll give you a drive.”

  “You didn’t tell me, Frank.”

  “Tell you what?”

  “I saw the sign.”

  • • •

  “You’re going away, Frank,” Billy sounded reproachful, childishly plaintive.

  “Billy, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, not yet.”

  Billy had meekly followed Frank out of Saunders’ place and gotten into the truck, let Frank drive him back to his house. He hadn’t said a word until Frank had pulled up in the driveway.

  “You’re selling your house,” Billy said, “That means you’re going away.”

  “It’s not sold yet, Billy.”

  “I saw the sign. You should have told me.”

  Frank couldn’t argue with that. Billy was right. He suddenly realized that from Billy’s standpoint he’d been abandoned. Frank had been back for a few days and he’d hardly given him a thought. Treating Jeff Wagner that way was bad enough, but Billy… it was a cruel, selfish way to behave. Now it was Frank’s turn to look ashamed.

  “I’m sorry, Billy – I should have said something.”

  “Are you mad at me, Frank?”

  “No, Billy, I’m not mad at you.”

  I’m mad at something, Frank thought, pissed off as hell. I don’t know what the fuck it is but there’s no fucking reason in the world to take it out on Billy.

  “Everything’s okay, Billy. Go on in and get some sleep.”

  “Are we still friends, Frank?”

  “Yeah, Billy. We’re still friends.”

  Billy looked at him dubiously but he planted a huge paw on the door handle and got out, then swung the door closed. Frank watched as he shambled disconsolately across the driveway and up the rickety wooden steps of the old farmhouse.

  Now that I’ve done that, he thought, maybe I should go somewhere and kick a puppy.

  15

  Jed Hopkins wasn’t a deep thinker but he spent so much time alone in the back room of the motel office that inevitably things crossed his mind, although they didn’t so much cross it as meander through until they eventually found their way out through one of his ears or a nostril or something. Usually they didn’t come back. There just wasn’t much to occupy his time, although thoughts about money and his immediate future tended to stick around a little longer than the others. Even in the summer the little motel only averaged something like two or three room rentals a day, so it wasn’t like he was out of his mind busy trying to manage things. The new guest—he’d registered as Rick Daniels, yeah sure—had been one of Jed’s very sporadic windfalls, paying for the month in cash. That had been a few days ago, and even though Jed knew enough to mind his own business he couldn’t help but be curious.

  Jed didn’t own the motel. It still belonged to his mom and dad, but they were retired and they’d made enough money over the years with other ventures that they didn’t give much of a shit what he did. Jed had never full-on admitted it to himself, but the only reason they’d kept the motel at all was to give him something like gainful employment. Both his parents had worked hard all their lives and neither of them had any idea how they’d managed to spawn a kid devoid of any discernible ambition and little particular talent other than wishful thinking.

  Thing was Jed was no kid, not anymore, even though he still lived with them. The motel had stopped being a money maker with the advent of the chain motels on the other side of town near the highway, but instead of selling the place off when they retired they put Jed in charge of it. It gave him something to do, a place to be, and they still clung to the hope that eventually he’d turn things around and take an interest in it, maybe even start acting his age.

  So far that hadn’t happened, probably never would. Jed didn’t need it to happen, knew that his parents had made sure he’d be all right after they were gone. In the meantime they paid him enough to ‘manage’ the place and when he needed more money for beer or dope or whatever he could skim what he needed from his little cash deals with people like the Daniels guy.

  It hadn’t been a promising start. It had been raining like hell, the only reason Jed was there that late. He usually closed the office around midnight, because it would cost more than it was worth to hire a night clerk. His parents’ place was just down the road, close enough that he usually just walked from the motel to the house and back again. This night he didn’t want to get soaked so he was still in the office when he saw headlights sweep across the office windows. After what had happened a few months ago Jed had gotten a little paranoid about people looking for a room that late at night but even he realized that was a bad attitude to take for someone who ran a motel.

  He came out from behind the battered front desk and walked the few steps to the front window, pulled aside one corner of the blinds. The pickup truck looked familiar, but in a place like Strothwood everybody and his dog owned one. When the passenger door opened the interior light came on and Jed saw Frank Stallings behind the wheel, so at least that was reassuring. The passenger got out and reached back into the cab for a big backpack. Stallings just nodded at something he’d said and then pulled out when he’d shut the door. Jed figured that if Stallings was driving him around the guy must be all right, so he’d reluctantly gone to the office door and opened it.

  It had turned out to be a good decision. In spite of appearances the guy had money, looked like a lot, and asked about where he could get his car towed in the morning.

  Windfalls didn’t come often. The last time had been with the two guys who’d ended up dead in his parking lot. They’d done the same thing, paid cash, scribbled names on the register that might or might not have been real. Jed had tucked some of it away and left enough on the books to make it look good.

  Even Jed Hopkins could see that the circumstances with this guy weren’t a whole lot different. Jed was pretty good at keeping shit like that out of his mind. His new guest was pretty big, not as tall as Jed’s six-two but heavier, looked to be somewhere in hi
s late thirties. If he’d turned up alone that time of night Jed probably would have just kept the office dark and waited for him to go away. A couple of days after he’d arrived Jed had walked out of the motel office and seen a late model Pontiac parked in front of the guy’s room. At least he’d been telling the truth about the car trouble.

  Whatever his name was, the man looked respectable enough and he hadn’t negotiated very hard about the price of the room. He’d said he was looking for work but he didn’t seem to be trying too hard. The few times Jed had actually seen him going in or out of his room he was wearing khakis and sport shirts, no denim or leather, no black t-shirts, no weird looking packages, no tattoos, nothing that indicated he was someone to be concerned about.

  Jed wasn’t exactly fanatical about cleaning the rooms and with his usual clientele it didn’t make much difference. Most of them were appearing for one night only, and all Jed had to do was keep two or three rooms in decent enough shape that when somebody checked in they wouldn’t turn around in disgust and go somewhere else. It was a little different with the few long-termers—a week or over—not that he got many of them. The ones he did get ran the gamut, but most of them just wanted to be left the hell alone, were happy enough to police up their rooms themselves once Jed had felt them out. He usually started that process by saying he respected their privacy, then gently steered things so that he wouldn’t have to knock himself out cleaning every day.

  This guy in particular was a little different. He looked like a real person, the name business aside, and real people liked things fairly clean and neat especially when they were paying cash money. Jed didn’t want to take the chance that he’d get pissed off and go somewhere else, so shortly after the guy moved in he’d let himself in and changed the sheets, vacuumed the carpet and emptied the waste cans.

  The first time he’d done it he made a point of going in when the guy was there, knocking politely on the door and asking if it was okay to come in and clean. Daniels had just shrugged and let him do it, didn’t act like he had anything to hide, but there wasn’t much cleaning to do anyway. The bed was already made, square corners, like he’d been in the army or something, no dirty plates or coffee cups or glasses on the kitchenette’s small counter or in the tiny sink, no chance of a bazooka stashed under the bed because the beds rested on plywood rectangles. Besides the back pack he’d shown up with the first night Daniels had one nylon suitcase that looked pretty new and a no-name gym bag that also looked new and a few clothes hung neatly in what passed for a closet. Maybe he had something stashed in the suitcase or the gym bag or the dresser drawers or maybe he just locked shit up in his car but from what Jed could see the guy lived like a monk. Daniels was pleasant enough, just sat on the bed reading an old paperback with his legs stretched out and his back against the headboard. There was a copy of the Strothwood Ledger spread out on the dresser, open to the classifieds, so maybe he was looking for work after all. That was the only sign of disarray in the room, a far cry from Jed’s usual tenants. At one time or another over the years Jed had come into different rooms and shaken used condoms out of the sheets, mopped piss off the floor in the bathroom or seen lumps of shit in the toilet bowl, scraped dried vomit off the rug. Compared to that this guy was a fucking walk in the park. He even thanked Jed when he was finished and on the way out, said not to worry too much about cleaning up every day, said it in a nice way that implied he didn’t want to put Jed to too much trouble.