“That’s a thief,” Fritz said. “And that’s a thief’s wife.”
Tony, his mouth tight, shot me a menacing look. He’d put it all together in a second.
“Get out,” Fritz said to him. “Get out and don’t come back. I’ll mail you your last check.”
Tony took his eyes off me and focused them on his former boss. “You docked me,” he said.
“What?”
“The day my kid was sick. She had that fever, a hunnert and four, we thought she was gonna die, we took her to the hospital. I couldn’t come in and you docked me a day’s pay.” Tony shook his head. “I’m just paying back what you owe me.”
And he raised the cleaver over his right shoulder, getting ready to put some power into it.
“Don’t even think about it,” I said, my voice firm but calm.
Tony glanced my way. A lot had happened in the few seconds since he’d last looked at me. I had a pistol in my hands now, the Glock 19 for which I had a concealed carry permit. The weapon was pointed directly at Tony’s chest.
“Don’t be a part of history,” I said.
“Huh?”
“I’ve never shot anyone before. You’d be a first.” We sized each other up for a full five seconds. Finally, I said, “We all need to catch our breath.”
His arms frozen, he stared straight into the barrel. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Fritz retreat a couple of steps.
“Put the cleaver down,” I said.
Tony nodded at me with his eyes, telling me he was going to do what I asked. But he brought that cleaver down a hell of a lot faster than I was expecting, driving the blade into the top of Fritz’s desk. When Tony took his hand off the handle, the cleaver was still standing.
Tony looked at me and said, “I don’t forget.” Then he turned and walked out of the room, his hands going around his back to undo the knotted apron strings.
Fritz was dumbfounded, his mouth hanging open so wide I could have shoved a pot roast in there. His eyes went from my gun to the door and back to the gun. He’d just had the shit scared out of him.
I was feeling a little rattled myself. I holstered my weapon.
“I thought it was bullshit,” he said, his voice cracking. “About his girl being sick. I thought he was making it up.”
I had a hell of headache on the drive home. Tension, most likely. I usually have some pain reliever in the glove box, but there was nothing there, so as I was coming into Griffon I wheeled into a gas station that was also a convenience store and went inside.
They had small bottles of Tylenol, so I grabbed one of those, along with a bottle of water, and reached into my back pocket for my wallet as I approached the counter.
“Hey, how ya doin’,” the kid at the cash register said, not really asking, just saying what he felt he had to say to everyone. He was about Scott’s age, fifteen to seventeen. Face ravaged by acne, hair hanging over one eye that he brushed away every three seconds.
“Great,” I mumbled. I handed him a ten and he rang up the two items.
“Bag?”
“Hmm?”
“You want a bag?”
“No.” I glanced at the counter. There was a clipboard there, with what looked like a petition attached to it, as well as a pen on a string.
But the people who had signed, a considerable number, were not opposed to something, but in support. It was headlined:.
“You can sign it if you want,” the kid said without enthusiasm. “Manager says I’m supposed to ask everyone.”
I worked my nail under the plastic wrapping that hugged the top of the pill container as I scanned the form’s preamble, which sat below the headline, and above the names. It read: “We the undersigned are 100 percent behind the good men and woman of the Griffon Police Force and appreciate the terrific job they do! Our cops are tops!”
I peeled away the plastic, popped the lid, struggled to remove the cotton. If I’d had only ten seconds to live, and one of these pills could have saved me, I’d have been a goner. Getting the cotton out of the way took the better part of half a minute. Then I shook out three red pills, cracked the cap on the water bottle, and washed them down.
“You must have some headache,” the boy said.
Holding the clipboard, I looked over the names of those who’d signed the top sheet, which was about half full, but didn’t see any I immediately recognized. There was a spot, alongside an individual’s name, where people were supposed to write down their home and/or their e-mail addresses. Not everyone had included this information.
I flipped to the second page, which was full, as were the three behind it. About seventy percent had put down information other than their names, thereby making it easier for someone to authenticate the signatures, should they want to.
“How many people who come in sign this?” I asked.
The boy shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s mostly just the old people, anyway.”
I smiled. “People like me.”
“No offense,” he said. “When you’re my age, cops around here stop you all the time for doing nothing.”
Scott had said the same thing, the last year or so. Not more than a week before we lost him, he’d come home telling us he’d seen a Griffon cop doing a pat-down body search of a girl behind Patchett’s. “She hadn’t done anything wrong,” he’d said. “Cop just wanted to feel her up.”
I’d asked Scott at the time whether the girl was going to make a complaint. “She won’t do anything,” he’d said. “You can’t do anything about these guys. I don’t think he thought anyone saw him, so I shouted, ‘I know who you are, dickface.’ Scared him pretty bad. And then I ran like hell.”
“You gonna sign it or what?” the kid behind the counter asked, bringing me back to the present.
I saw a signature I recognized. “Donna Weaver.” I studied it a moment, even ran my finger along the page where my wife had taken this pen and signed her name.
“No need,” I said.
“You know what I think?” the kid asked.
“Tell me.”
“I think the cops are collecting these, and checking the names and the addresses, and figuring out which people who live here have signed and which ones haven’t.”
“You don’t say.”
He nodded wisely. “Oh yeah. That’s how they work.”
“So I guess you’ve signed it, too? Just to be safe?”
He grinned and shook his head. “Manager told me to, and watched me when I did it. But I wrote down ‘Dougie Douche.’ No way I’d ever sign something supporting these clowns.”
“You’re not a fan?”
“You ever had someone spray paint down your throat?”
“Excuse me?”
“I wasn’t even the one doing the tagging. It was my friend, but he took off, leaving me with the spray cans, when the local cops showed up. One of them decided to do some graffiti in my throat.”
“That could have killed you,” I said.
“Yeah, well, she just did a couple quick shots. Lost my breath for a few seconds. My teeth and lips were yellow.”
“She?”
Someone else came in to pay for gas. The kid grabbed the clipboard, told me to have a nice day, and turned his attention to the new customer.
I got back in the Honda, drank half the bottle of water, then put the car in drive.
It was only three or four minutes to home from there, but the pulsing in my temples and above my eyes was already starting to fade when I turned down our street.
And then, just like that, the headache was back.
It probably had something to do with the fact that a Griffon police cruiser was parked across the end of our driveway.
I was thinking they’d find out pretty damn fast that I hadn’t signed the petition.
Six