“Six months, maybe?” He shrugged. “Scott’s the one recommended him to me.” He gave Draper a look that had more bite than the whiskey in his glass.
Draper met it coolly. “I’d recommend him to you again, Jimmy.”
“Hell of a thing to say, considering.” Cancerno scowled.
“Pretty broken up about Ed, huh?” I said, the small booth feeling smaller to me with every word Cancerno said.
“I supposed to give a shit?” he said, eyes wide. “I hardly knew the guy. He was just a carpenter and a painter, same as a dozen other guys. ’Cept a dozen other guys don’t bring the cops to my door.”
“That bothers you,” I said, and his gaze narrowed.
“Yeah. It bothers me. I’m a guy that likes his distance from the cops, asshole. That’s all you need to know.”
“Easy, Jimmy, Lincoln’s not challenging you.” Draper’s tone made it clear that if I was challenging him, I’d better stop it.
We drank for a bit, none of us speaking. Draper finished his cigarette and took the pack out, but didn’t light another one.
“You guys were gone, what, ten minutes before he got hit by that car?” he asked.
“Not even that.”
“But enough time to talk a little, right?”
“We talked. He was pretty drunk. His mind was going places without taking me along.”
“What do you mean?”
“Seemed like he was talking to himself as much as he was talking to me,” I said. “He’d hint at some stuff but not get specific. When I asked questions, he jumped in new directions.”
Draper stared at the table, sliding the pack of cigarettes back and forth between his fingers.
“He was into some trouble,” I said, and Draper looked up. “You know anything about that? Who he was dealing with?”
“As far as I knew, he was clean and had been for years.” Draper stood up. “I’m going to grab another beer. Be right back.”
He slid out and then it was just me and Jimmy Cancerno in the booth. Cancerno worked on what was left of his whiskey and looked bored.
“Was he a good worker for you?” I asked.
He spoke over the glass. “Good as any of them. Showed up on time and went home on time and billed for the time he’d worked. We do things a little different on my projects, see. Not a lot of paperwork. Pay in cash. It was a good job for him.”
“What kind of projects was he working on?”
“Fixed houses, mostly. Was supposed to be fixing the one he burned down. It was a small job; I wouldn’t have made much off it. Now I’m likely to get sued thanks to the son of a bitch.”
“I thought the house was empty.”
“It was,” Cancerno said as if he were explaining something to a child. “But the property company that owned the place wanted it fixed. So they could sell it, right? Go figure.”
I leaned forward, suddenly glad Cancerno was here, after all. “But he had a reason to be on the property, then?”
Cancerno hacked something up and re-swallowed it. Attractive.
“We hadn’t started the work on that house yet, but he knew it was coming, and he had the keys. Could be he went over to get a look, maybe think about what materials would be needed.”
“Well, that’s pretty damn important,” I said. Cancerno looked as if he couldn’t care less.
“That’s better beer than I remembered,” Draper said, sliding a fresh Moosehead across the table to me and dropping back in the booth. “I sell it, but I don’t drink it much. Might have to change that.”
I didn’t touch the bottle. “I need to know what that girl was to Ed.”
Draper raised his eyebrows. “That’s what the cops said to me. I can only tell you what I told them—I have no clue. I asked him last night when he showed up here, and he ignored me. Just said he didn’t kill her and asked for a drink while he figured out what he needed to do next. Told me to get my ass back downstairs because the cops would be looking for him soon and he needed me to deal with them. I’d hardly sent them away before you showed up.”
“So you’ve got no ideas at all,” I said.
He shook his head, his eyes sad. “Wish I did, Lincoln. Wish I did.”
“Who else was he close with?” I said. “Was there a girlfriend, anything like that?”
“He wasn’t seeing anyone.” This time Draper’s answer was confident. “Worked a lot and came in here and drank and watched baseball. That was really about it. The last couple weeks, he hadn’t even been in here.”
“He told me he went to the prosecutor about something, Scott.”
He frowned. “He went to the prosecutor?”
“Yeah.”
He shook his head again. “Can’t help you. Like I said, he’d been out of sight for the last few weeks.”
I was frustrated with the lack of help. I’d counted on Draper knowing more. I wasn’t sure if he was really this clueless or if he just didn’t want to let me know anything, which was also quite possible. It would be foolish to assume his old bitterness had been washed clean in twenty-four hours.
“He hung around with a guy named Corbett a lot,” Draper said, thoughtful as he sipped his beer. “One of Jimmy’s guys.”
I looked at Cancerno, who nodded. His glass was empty and he’d been looking at his watch.
“Mitch Corbett,” he said. “He was Gradduk’s boss on the work sites. An old-timer. Mitch is a good guy. Between his opinion and Scott’s, I actually felt good enough about hiring that son of a bitch Gradduk that I gave him a raise.”
I took a long drink, letting the cold beer soothe the anger that had risen with Cancerno’s words, then said, “Would Corbett know if Ed had a reason to be in that house the day it burned?”
Cancerno nodded. “Probably. If he’d had a legitimate reason, Mitch would’ve given it to him.”
“I’d like to talk to him, then.”
“To who? Mitch?”
“Yes.”
Cancerno smiled humorlessly. “Me, too, kid.”
I frowned at him, not getting it.
“Corbett hasn’t shown up for work in two days. And the son of a bitch won’t answer his phone, either.” Cancerno got to his feet. “Do me a favor, right? You talk to Corbett, you tell him he better give me a call within the next forty-eight hours if he wants to keep his job. I don’t have the patience for his shit on top of this deal with Gradduk.”
Cancerno said something to Draper before he walked toward the door, but I wasn’t really paying attention. I was thinking about Mitch Corbett with a sense of unease. His boss had delivered the news of his absence casually enough, as if Corbett had been known to miss a few days of work before. I didn’t like it, though. It came too close to everything with Ed.
With Cancerno gone, Draper turned to me. “Sorry about that. He came down here just ahead of you, wanted to see what I knew about Ed. He’s pretty angry about it all, and blaming me because I was the guy who sent Ed to him in the first place.”
“This guy Corbett,” I said, “you think he was pretty tight with Ed? Might know something about whatever Ed got himself into?”
Draper shrugged. “Better chance Corbett will know something than anyone else I can think of.”
“And you don’t think it’s strange the guy’s missing?”
“A little early to say he’s missing, Lincoln. Dude blew off work, is all.”
I nodded, but by now I was convinced I wanted to look for Mitch Corbett. When I got up, Draper followed me to the door. “I appreciate you coming down here,” he said. “I felt bad about the way things happened out there. We were all friends, once.”
“Yes, we were.” Draper had never been as close to me as he was to Ed, but we’d spent enough time around each other growing up. I stepped onto the sidewalk and leaned back, looking up at the old brick building.