Making the question: Who was likely to show?
Any minute a car could pull up with goombahs inside.
Or maybe, just maybe, the bosses would quietly suggest, the way it sometimes worked, that Cook clean up after himself.
Nine-forty a.m. on the third day, every breeze in the state gone severely south and blacktop already blistering, arm hanging from his shoulder like a hot anvil, Driver thought: Okay then, Plan B, as he watched Cook in a Crown Vic circle twice on the outer ring and pull into the lot just past the Chevy. Watched him get out, look around, amble toward the parked car with key in hand.
Cook opened the driver-side door, slid in. Soon he emerged, went around back and popped the trunk. Half his body disappeared beneath the lid.
“Shotgun’s not much good anymore,” Driver said.
Cook’s head banged against the trunk as he tried to straighten and turn at the same time.
“Sorry about that. Blanche isn’t much good either. But I thought a few props might put you in a nostalgic mood, help you remember what went down. Show and tell.”
Cook’s hand rose towards the hoop in his right ear. Driver intercepted it halfway and struck with one knuckle just above the wrist, at a nerve center that shut down sensation and scrambled incoming messages. He’d picked that up on breaks from a stunt man he’d worked with on a Jackie Chan movie. Then, just like a dance step, right foot forward, slide the left, pivot on the heels, he had Cook in a choke hold. Same stuntman taught him that.
“Hey, relax. Guy I learned this from told me the hold’s absolutely safe on a short-term basis,” he said. “After four minutes, the brain starts shutting down, but up till then-”
Loosening his hold, he let Cook drop to the ground. Man’s tongue was extended and he didn’t seem to be breathing. M.E. would call the skin tone blue, but it was really gray. Tiny stars of burst blood vessels about the face.
“Always a chance I didn’t get it quite right, of course. Been a while, after all.”
Shafts of pain shot along Driver’s arm as he fished out Cook’s wallet. Nothing much of use or note there.
Check the chariot, then.
In the Crown Vic he found a clutch of gas-station receipts jammed into the glove compartment, all of them from the downtown area, Seventh Street, McDowell, Central. Four or five pages of scrawled directions, mostly unreadable, to various spots in and around Phoenix. Half a torn ticket from something called Paco Paco, a matchbook from “a gentleman’s cabaret,” Philthy Phil’s. An Arizona roadmap. And a sheaf of coupons bound together with crossed rubber bands.
NINO’S PIZZA (RESTAURANT IN BACK)
719 E. Lynwood (480) 258-1433 WE DELIVER
Chapter Seventeen
He always had his first few drinks of the day away from the house. There were two choices, Rosie’s up on Main, a long haul without a car, or The Rusty Nail at the corner. He had a car but the driver’s license had gone south years ago and he didn’t like to take unwarranted chances. Rosie’s was a workingman’s bar, open at six a.m. You asked for bourbon or whisky here, the barkeep didn’t have to come back with what flavor, there was only one bottle of each. Man didn’t have to put up with troublesome things like windows, either, since the place was a cave. The Rusty Nail, basically a titty bar, opened at nine. From then till three or so, when the girls started straggling in and the clientele changed (he’d got caught unaware more than once), it was inhabited by mechanics from a truck garage down the street and butchers from the meat-packing house directly across, many of them wearing their blood-spotted aprons. So mostly, those days his legs weren’t too wobbly or his shakes too bad anyway, Rosie’s won out.
All the early morning drinkers were regulars, but no one spoke. Most days the door was propped open with a chair, and whenever someone came through it, heads would swivel that way and occasionally one or another nodded a silent greeting before returning to his drink. Benny would have a double waiting by the time he reached the bar. Missed you yesterday, he might say. Benny’d serve up the first couple of drinks in a highball glass-till his hands steadied. This morning he was later than usual. Bad night? Benny asked. Couldn’t sleep. My old man always blamed that on a bad conscience, Benny said. Well there you go, he figures it’s a bad conscience, I’m thinking it’s got a lot more to do with a bad chicken-fried steak.
Someone tapped his shoulder.
“Doc? You’re Doc, aren’t you?”
Ignore him.
“Of course you are. Buy you a drink?”
Maybe not ignore him.
Benny brings the guy another Bud and pours another double for Doc.
“Thing is, I know you, man. I’m from Tucson. You used to take care of the vatos from the racetrack. Few years back, you patched up my brother after a bank job. Noel Guzman? Wiry and tall? Bleached hair?”
No way he remembered. He’d treated dozens of them in his day. Back in the day, as they said now-and found himself wondering again where that came from. Back in the day. Up in here. You’d never heard these phrases before, then suddenly everyone was using them.
“I don’t do that anymore.”
“Neither does my brother, now that he’s dead.”
Doc threw back his scotch. “I’m sorry.”
“He wasn’t much, mind you-just family.”
Benny was there with the bottle. Be hard for the young man to do other than approve a pour. He watched with something akin to horror as the six-dollar charge came up on the register, then with a shake of his head accepted it. Benny tucked the tab under an ashtray on the bar by them.
“Went down trying to knock off some gook mom-and-pop store. Little guy was over the counter before he knew it, the police said, had him on the floor half a second later, blood supply to his brain shut off. Not the end he imagined for himself.”
“When’s it ever?”
“Not that anyone else was surprised.” He drained his beer and obviously wanted another. Hesitant because that might imply another six-dollar scotch as well.
“This round’s on me,” Doc told him. Benny took away the highball glass and set a shot glass before him, poured. Doc’s hand was steady as he lifted it.
“Same?” Benny asked the kid.
“Whatever you want,” Doc said.
“Bud’s good.”
Benny brought him a can. Doc bumped his empty shot glass against it and the kid drank.
“So…You living up this way now?”
Doc nodded.
“Doing what?”
“Retired.”
“Man, you were retired when I first met you.”
Shrugging, Doc signaled for a drink. Got a little extra in this one, since it was the end of a bottle. It reminded Doc of Sterno. Once as a kid he’d gone out behind the house, into the wilds of pecan trees and hedges and, following a night zipped into an army-surplus unsleeping bag, had attempted to fry bacon over a Sterno can, managing only to cook his thumb.
“Thing is, I have this sweet deal.”
Of course he did. Guys like this, came up to you at a bar, knew you or claimed to, they always had a sweet deal, wanted to tell you about it.
“Not following in your brother’s footsteps, I hope.”
“Hey, you know how it is. Some families turn out doctors, some produce lawyers…”
The kid took off his shoe, pulled back the insole and fished out two hundred-dollar bills, which he laid on the bar. Part of the stash he’d use to make bail, as proof against vagrancy charges, for bribes, or just to get by-an old convict’s habit.