Carmen paused and Wayne said, “Yeah ...?”
“That’s the part that bothers me.”
“What part?”
“They talked to people on Walpole Island who said Armand came to visit his grandmother. That seems pretty weird, a man who kills for a living comes all the way from Toronto to visit his grandmother?”
“It’s not that far.”
“That’s not what I mean”—Carmen shaking her head—“I’m thinking if he was in Detroit anyway, last Friday ...He didn’t even know the grandmother had died, he stopped by.” Carmen made a face, frowning. “I just have a feeling he wasn’t around here before Friday, or someone would’ve seen him, his car. But Richie Nix was here, he’s the one who called Nelson. Ten thousand dollars or I’ll kill you—and that’s who I think started the whole thing. Richie. Why not?”
Wayne shrugged, not appearing to give it much thought. “What difference does it make who started it? We’re deep in it either way.”
“Well, you think Armand’s the one to look out for,” Carmen said. “I think Richie’s a lot scarier than Armand.” After a moment she said, “I can just see his handwriting. I’ll bet it’s a mess, full of things that show poor mental health.”
Richie had crept up on the gas station, let the van coast into the drive with the passenger-side window down, shotgun ready, and found the place closed for the night. Dark except for a low-watt light in the front part. Shit. He was going to do this one for the Bird. Hack off some of the gas-station guy’s hair, if he had any under that hunting cap, and bring it back. See, Bird? This’s how you do it. He could still mess the place up, blow out the plate-glass window. Or do it on the way back, with the new car. He could see the Bird shaking his head as he told him, recalled the Bird tapping the side of his head with a finger and then his forehead and Richie thought, Hey, shit. All of a sudden having a better idea than shooting up a gas station.
It took him ten minutes to run down the river road almost to Algonac before cutting inland through a residential part, slowed down coming to the 7-Eleven, open and doing business, braked—it was an idea—and took off again grinning. The Bird’d have a shit fit. “You went back there?” The Bird not appreciating spur-of-the-moment moves. No sense of humor, never smiled or nothing.
The road the Colsons lived on was becoming familiar, even in the dark of night with only a halfassed moon, he’d run it enough times. Headlights were coming at him and he slowed to fifty; getting close anyway. It was a cop car. Richie didn’t see what kind, either county or township; it wasn’t state, all dark blue. And there coming up was the house. There was the ironworker’s pickup in the drive, no other cars around, least that he could see. Lights on in a couple of downstairs front windows, probably the living room. Richie drove past, followed a bend in the road, went up about a hundred yards and took his time U-turning, thinking it didn’t look like any cops were around. Thinking yeah, but they could be hiding. Thinking, Hey, are you pussy or what? Went back around the bend and stopped in the road in front of the house.
Richie aimed the shotgun out his side of the van, fired at one of the lit-up windows and heard glass shatter as he pumped, aimed, fired at the other one, blew it out, threw the shotgun behind him inside the van and took off, tires screaming. He might not’ve hit anybody, but at least they’d know the truth of that old saying, shit happens. When you least expect, too.
10
THE WALKING BOSS on the One-Fifty Jefferson project was reading blueprints in the front part of the steel-company trailer. He didn’t move or look up when the raising-gang foreman came in and said, “We got a man froze-up.”
The walking boss, still bent over the print board, said, “Shit. Who is it?”
“Colson.”
Now the walking boss straightened in a hurry, turned to the raising-gang foreman standing there in his tan coveralls and hard hat on backward, said, “You’re kidding me,” and went over to the big window facing the job.
“Where is he?”
“Up on top. That far section toward the river. See?”
They both gazed up at the structure, at the network of columns and beams and girders, a tower crane rising out of the center, the building skeleton exposed, no outside curtain walls up yet, but dark in there with every other level floored to ten, open
iron above that.
“I see him,” the walking boss said.
A figure on the crossbar of a goalpost, that’s what it looked like. Way up on the highest section, standing on a girder between two columns that stuck up against the sky.
“He’s not moving.”
“That’s what I’m telling you,” the raising-gang foreman said. “He’s froze-up.”
“Wayne never froze in his life.”
“Well, he’s been sitting there, I don’t know how long.”
“He’s standing now.”
“He was sitting before, like he was paralyzed.”
“You yell at him?”
“Sure, I yelled at him. He heard me.”
“He look down?”
“Yeah, he looked down. Maybe he’s trying to move is why he stood up.”
“Shit,” the walking boss said. “There’s something wrong with him. He was off a few days, he come back—Wayne ordinarily connects, you know that.”
“I know it.”
“He come back I had to put him on bolting up.”
“I know it, but he didn’t seem to mind. He didn’t say nothing.”
“No, that’s what I mean, there’s something wrong with him.”
“Maybe it’s that girl was shot he’s having some trouble with.”
“I heard guys talking about it,” the walking boss said. “I didn’t see it in the paper.”
“Yeah, it was in, but way in the back. It didn’t mention Wayne. I guess it was in the paper up where he lives one of the guys saw, had more about it.”
“You think he’s eating his lunch?”
“You can see he isn’t doing nothing but standing there,” the raising-gang foreman said. “He’s froze-up. He wouldn’t stand there like that if he wasn’t froze-up. Would he?”
“I don’t know, it never happened to me.”
“It never happened to me either, but I’ve seen it enough. We got to talk him down.”
“Who was he working with?”
“I think Kenny. Yeah, Wayne had the yo-yo, so Kenny was holding the roll for him. I saw Kenny come down. I think he went someplace to eat.”
The raising-gang foreman followed the walking boss through a doorway to the back half of the trailer where some of the crew were eating their lunch at a wooden table. The walking boss was a young guy about thirty-five. His hard hat was cleaner than most, but he wore it backward like everybody else. He said to the guys at the table, “Anybody talk to Kenny?” They were all looking up at him, but didn’t know what he meant.
“Wayne hasn’t come down. He’s up there like he might’ve froze.” The walking boss raised both hands. “Wait a minute now, sit still. Did Kenny mention to anybody Wayne was acting strange?”
“He didn’t say nothing ’cause he wouldn’t, not to anybody else,” one of the ironworkers said, “but he almost got pitched off. Kenny did.”