Jesse shook his head. “Don’t like that old shit.”
“You should try it. The Stones are really just repackaged R amp;B.”
“The Stones are rockers, Louis.”
“You know their song ‘Time Is on My Side’?”
“Sure. 12 X 5, fifth cut, first side. Great album.”
“It’s an old blues song by Irma Thomas.” Louis smiled. “Your boy Mick is rock’s blackest white boy.”
Jesse frowned, digesting the information as Louis laughed.
Louis reached for the computer printout on the seat between them. It listed the seventy-one red Ford pickups in the tri-county area but when cross-referenced with felons they still had eight names to check out. They had already done two with no results.
“Who’s next?” Jesse asked.
Louis read off the address, and Jesse took a right at the next corner and they headed out of town. They passed the Sunoco station and rounded a curve. Ahead of them was a log building set down in thick pines. Louis had seen Jo-Jo’s Tavern once before on a drive during a sleepless night. He had considered stopping in for a drink but the place had such a foreboding aura that he had passed it by and gone home. He scanned its exterior now. It seemed more benign in the daylight, with its red Budweiser signs in the windows, smoke curling from the chimney and scattering of cars in the muddy lot.
Jesse hit the brakes.
“What the — ” Louis spat out, bracing against the dash.
Jesse slammed the cruiser into reverse, backed onto the shoulder and turned around. “There’s a red Ford. An old one.”
As Jesse swung in the parking lot, Louis squinted at the truck. It was an older model, the paint fading, the lower sides pocked with rust. They parked behind the truck and got out. Louis circled the truck, peering in the dirty windows while Jesse ran the plate.
“It returns to a Mildred Cronk of Dollar Bay, Houghton County,” Jesse said, coming up to his side.
“Where’s that?” Louis asked.
“Upper Peninsula.”
“Long way from home.”
“No warrants.”
Louis looked at the bar. “Well, guess we better go find Millie.”
Inside Jo-Jo’s, a fetid brew of smells greeted them — beer, cigarettes, fried fish and urine. From a dark corner came Freddie Fender’s twangy basso singing “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights.” Jesse plunged into the murk, heading toward the bar. Louis stood just inside the door, blinking to get his pupils dilated enough to see.
At first, he saw only spots of color. A flicker of purple neon over the bar. The green glow of the pool table lighted by the plastic stained-glass Stroh’s sign above. The rainbow of the jukebox. Shadows gradually turned into men. The burly bartender, three men standing around the pool table, a cluster huddled at a table. They were all standing motionless and mute, watching, waiting. He felt his heart quicken. Something felt weird about this.
“Turn off the music,” Jesse called out.
The shadow behind the bar didn’t move.
“Turn off the damn music,” Jesse repeated.
The bartender still didn’t move. Jesse went to the jukebox and gave it a sharp kick. The needle ripped across the record and stopped, plunging the tavern into silence.
“Who’s driving the red Ford pickup outside?” Jesse demanded.
No one moved.
“Look, you stupid motherfuckers, I asked you a question.”
A soft rumbling came from the men at the pool table. Jesse started slowly toward them and Louis suppressed a sigh, his muscles tightening in anticipation. A crazy image flashed into his head: Dean Martin in “Rio Bravo”, just before he shot a guy hiding in the rafters.
“Anyone in here named Cronk?” Jesse asked, his voice rising. When no one answered Jesse turned to Louis and started to say something but he stopped. Louis saw Jesse’s eyes flick to something behind him.
Suddenly, Jesse bolted past him and disappeared into a dark hallway.
“What’s down there?” Louis yelled to the bartender.
“Just the can,” the man said. “And the back door!”
Louis ran down the hall. He heard a crash and knew Jesse had kicked open a door. He came to a stop as a rush of cold air hit him in the face. The rear door hung open. Jesse and a man were slogging through drifts, heading toward the woods. Louis ran after them, grabbing his radio from his belt.
“Central! Central! This is L-11. We are in a foot pursuit of a white male — ”
The suspect was heading toward a barbed-wire fence that ran the length of the field. No way the man could get away now. But then Louis watched in dismay as the man hurdled the fence and kept going toward the woods. Jesse tried to jump the fence, caught his pant leg and tumbled to the snow on the other side, his feet tangled in the wire.
Louis caught up, grabbed the top wire and swung his legs over. The man was almost to the woods. Louis drew his gun.
“Stop!” he shouted. “Stop or I’ll shoot!”
The suspect froze and threw his hands in the air. Louis hurried over to the man. “Don’t move,” Louis ordered.
Jesse trotted up, limping and panting.When he grabbed the man’s hand to cuff him and the man started to struggle.
“Don’t fight me, asshole,” Jesse said, twisting his arm.
“I’m not.”
An army jacket hung loosely on the man’s small frame. He had stringy yellow hair and tight leathery skin lined with fine wrinkles. Narrow, pale gray eyes stared back at Louis.
Jesse shoved him and the man fell. “Who are you?”
The man stared up at Jesse coolly.
“Answer me!”
“Jess, check for a wallet,” Louis said.
Jesse patted him down. He pulled out a paper and a set of keys but no wallet. He handed them to Louis.
Louis unfolded the paper. It looked to be a letter. Louis stuck it in his back pocket with the keys.
“Where’s your ID?” Louis asked.
“Don’t got one,” The man mumbled.
“What’s your name?” Louis asked.
“Maybe I ain’t got one of those either.”
“Don’t play games!” Jesse said, reaching for the man’s collar.
Louis quickly stepped between them. Louis’s radio went off. Florence calling for a status check. “Jess, answer that,” Louis said.
Jesse reluctantly called back that they had the subject in custody and clicked off. Louis had the man firmly by his arm and was guiding him toward the cruiser. He noticed Jesse’s ripped pants.
“You’re bleeding,” Louis said, nodding toward Jesse’s thigh.
Jesse looked down at the six-inch gash in his pants. It was soaked dark red. Suddenly, he hit the man’s shoulder, sending him stumbling forward out of Louis’s grasp and down into the snow.
“You asshole! See what you did?”
“Jess!” Louis grabbed the suspect’s arm and pulled him to his feet. He could feel the man’s arm through the jacket, sinewy with muscle.
“What’s your name, you stinkin’ piece of shit?” Jess demanded.
“Harrison!” Louis said sharply.
Jesse glared at Louis.
“You’re bleeding.” Louis said slowly, enunciating each syllable. “Go back to the car.”
Jesse didn’t move.
“Now,” Louis said.
Jesse held Louis’s eyes for a second longer then he turned and limped off through the snow.
Louis gave the man’s arm a jerk. “Name,” he demanded.
“John Smith.”
Louis sighed and shoved the man toward the parking lot. “Okay, John Smith. Let’s go.”
Jesse was in the cruiser, trying to wrap his leg with a roll of gauze from the first-aid kit. Louis put the suspect in the back and got in, starting the car. He looked down at Jesse’s leg. The barbed wire had left a deep gash several inches long in his thigh. Jesse was sweating.
“You want me to call EMS?” Louis asked.
“Fuck, no,” Jesse said, not looking up. “Just get me to the damn emergency room.”
Louis pulled out of the lot, radioing they were coming back with the suspect. Jesse sat stone-faced, occasionally pulling off new sections of gauze to dab at his cut. Louis looked in the rearview mirror and caught the eyes of the suspect. The man’s face was dirty, his hair was wet from the snow.