I stared at this shooting gallery, this crack den, this drug house, this whatever the hell it was in the middle of nowhere, and steeled my nerves to open my eyes to a part of my brother’s life I would’ve preferred not to have seen. For years, I’d put up a hand over my face and blocked these views from sight. Now I had no choice but to peel back the blinders, willingly step inside, and have a good look around.
“What are you going to do?” Charlie asked. “Just knock on the door?”
“I don’t suggest sitting here,” I said. Another thing I knew about speed: that shit made you jumpy. “Liable to get a shotgun stuck in our faces.”
“I figured we were going to be dropping in on some druggies playing video games,” Charlie said. “This place ain’t right.” He swallowed hard.
I made for my door handle. “You can wait here, if you want.”
My work boots crunched snowy stone. I kept my hands out of my pockets. A moment later, I heard Charlie’s door slam behind me.
As we drew nearer, the music churned louder, grating and dissonant.
The door was ajar. I slowly pushed it open.
There was scarcely any light, just whatever natural gray filtered through the windows. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust. When they did, I found the big, bald-headed man with the tattoos and wife-beater waiting. He didn’t look happy to see us.
It was as cold inside as it was out, not even a space heater, but he didn’t wear a jacket, just the tank top, the word “Bowman” stretched across his broad chest in cracked vinyl letters. He had shoulders the size of bowling balls and the Star of David etched into his neck.
Behind him, three other men with the kind of inked-up bodies you get only from long stints in prison, matching flaming-wing-and-gun tattoos, glanced up from a card table where they sat. Workers on an assembly line, screwdrivers and solder in hand, huddled over a mound of squiggling computer innards. Tendrils of smoke slithered from ashtrays and melting wires. You could taste the chemicals burning. But it was what was beyond them that really caught my attention.
On the grimy floor, a half dozen malnourished girls and boys lay, their gangly arms and legs intertwined, blissed-out heads resting in each other’s laps or drooping in a nod. The girls appeared woefully underage and whorishly dressed, the boys all weak and thin. It was easy to see my brother was not among them.
The inside of the shop was gutted like a construction site. Sheet-rock had been kicked in, exposing two-by-fours, bands of electrical wires yanked out and dangling, the concrete floor covered in crumbly plaster and nails. The shrill metal music wrenched to an out-of-time beat.
The junkies lazily stirred, like cold-blooded lizards unable to reanimate for lack of sun, pawing, groping, grasping. They looked barely alive, fighting to keep their eyes open. I felt disdain for the whole sorry lot well inside me. Who chooses to live like this?
Then I saw the bruises. Up and down arms, around the wrists, deep blues and purples. My eyes darted to a dark corner and a wood chair. No one sat in it, but twine hung loose from the arms and legs. Liquid pooled underneath, as if someone had pissed himself.
“Can I help you?” Bowman said. It wasn’t really a question.
I’d been in a few bar fights over the years, and I had some weight on me, but at that moment I was really glad Charlie had agreed to come along. I was out of my element here.
“I’m looking for my brother,” I said, unable to think of anything better.
Maybe the honesty disarmed him, or maybe that was the whole sizing-up process and I didn’t pose a threat-I don’t know-but Bowman eased up, haunches and shoulders relaxing. He sniffed hard, grabbed his pack of Camels off what used to be the hostess station, struck a match, and took a long pull, tip glowing cherry red. He blew a ring of smoke in my direction.
“Who’s your brother?”
“Chris Porter,” I said. “I thought this was his computer shop?”
Bowman peered over his shoulder. The men at the table chuckled.
“He ain’t been around here lately,” Bowman said, before affecting the mannerisms of the world’s most unconvincing receptionist. “But if he stops in, who should I say was asking?”
Charlie and I looked at each other.
The guys behind Bowman laughed some more.
Then he turned to the boom box, a monstrosity from the ’80s, cranking the shrill noise louder, and went back to talking to his boys like we weren’t even there.
“Did you know Pete?” Charlie shouted above the grind. “Pete Naginis?”
I elbowed Charlie to shut up.
“Because the cops just found his body,” Charlie said, “over by the truck stop.”
That caught Bowman’s attention. He spun and stepped to Charlie, hard.
“The fuck, you say?”
“Nothing,” said Charlie, backing up.
“He means the police called to tell me one of my brother’s friends had died,” I said, wedging in front of Charlie. “They’re looking for my brother. It’s better if I’m the one to tell him.”
Bowman smirked. “Better for who?”
Trace flurries drifted from a silver sky, wipers swishing in a lullaby. Fast cars whisked past us going in the opposite direction, as the sounds of spinning wet tires on pavement echoed down the valley boulevard, lost to the menacing tower of Lamentation Mountain.
As we drove back to his place, Charlie and I didn’t speak. You grow up in a small town like ours and you develop a false sense of security; you forget that beyond county lines lurk predators much bigger than you. Bigger. Tougher. Meaner. And a helluva lot more dangerous.
“What are you going to do?” Charlie asked as I pulled up his driveway.
“I don’t know. Wait for my brother to call. Hope he does before the cops pick him up. Or maybe those guys at the shop will tell him I was looking for him.” I wanted to add, “if they don’t break his neck first,” but I was pretty sure that was implied.
“You going to call Turley? Y’know, about what we saw?”
“What did we see, Charlie? Nothing. A bunch of drug addicts and biker dudes.”
“What about the chair?”
“A chair with some rope? What do I say? There’s a bunch of junkies lying on the floor who aren’t looking so good? I told those guys my name. What’s going to happen when the cops show up half an hour after we left?”
I lit a cigarette and gazed over his yard, which connected to an old farm, which connected to another old farm and another old farm, until the mountain range rose up to define our borders, like the glass walls of a snow globe. That’s what it felt like too. As if some prankster god had scooped up my world and given it a hearty shake, and now was sitting back, laughing.
“I want to find my brother,” I said. “But going up there was a mistake. This really has nothing to do with me.”
“You remember I was telling you about Fisher?”
“What about him?”
“He’s an investigator now.”
“Fisher’s a cop?”
“No. Like, for a private company. I’m not sure, exactly, but he’s definitely an investigator. He stopped in the Dubliner for a drink a couple weeks back. I was pretty hammered. Maybe he can do something.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know,” Charlie said, exiting. “But I’ll give him a ring. Can’t hurt, right?”
I didn’t bother to mention that I hadn’t talked to Fisher in years, or that the last time I had, I vividly recalled the dude hated my guts. I could hardly refuse the offer.
Our trip to that shop had made one thing abundantly clear: my brother had sunk too deep into the muck this time for me to go wading in to pull out his ass on my own.