Crow's Landing (24 page)

“Isn't welfare a wonderful thing?” Hoffman asked. He ate a couple more cashews and then looked around, checking to see who might be within earshot. “I'm looking for Soup. You seen him?”

“I don't know no Soup.”

“Don't you fucking lie to me,” Hoffman said casually, still looking away.

She fell silent, admitting nothing. Her breathing was heavy, like she'd just climbed five flights of stairs.

“Okay, maybe you don't know him,” Hoffman said, turning back to her now. “I just remembered you're not from here originally, are you? You're from Jamaica or the Dominican, one of those shitholes that sends us their criminals by the
boatload.” Hoffman popped another cashew into his mouth. “Tell me, Shell. How's your status these days? Did our government decide that a woman selling peanuts in a cesspool of a city park is providing an essential service and therefore issue you a green card? Is that what they decided?”

“My husband an American,” Shell said quietly, her voice so soft Hoffman had to lean closer to hear.

“That a fact?” he said. “And this marriage—is it for real? You didn't just marry some junkie friend of yours from the hood in order to stay in the country, did you? Are you living with this
husband,
Shell? Because I can check it out. And while I'm checking it out, I'm pretty sure I can shut off your methadone until you can prove you actually belong in this country. That program is not for foreigners. That methadone is for honest-to-God red, white, and blue American junkies. You good with that—you okay to do without your daily shot for a week, or maybe two?” Shell blinked quickly, in an effort to stop the tears that were forming in the corners of her eyes. She took a breath, then exhaled. “I ain't seen Soup for some time, maybe a week or more. That the truth.”

“Where would you find him, if you were looking?”

“I can't say. That ain't my world no more.”

“Bullshit,” Hoffman said. “Look where you're standing, smack in the middle of it. So I'll ask you once more and if you can't come up with an answer, then I'll just head over to the station and do what I need to do.”

She wouldn't look at him. She picked up a cloth and wiped the glass on the cart, working the rag vigorously, as if trying to wipe away Hoffman's very presence. She stopped, as if realizing the futility of it, and tossed the cloth aside. “His sister Janelle live over on Delaware. The walk-up beside the
drugstore. I know sometime he crashes there. But that's all I know.”

“Well, well,” Hoffman said. “That wasn't too hard, was it?” He reached in and helped himself to more cashews. “Can I pay you for the nuts, Shell?”

“You can leave me the fuck alone.”

She had said she was framing town houses over in Rensselaer. At least that's how Virgil remembered it anyway. He'd been fresh out of surgery and loaded up on painkillers when she told him, sitting in her truck in the hospital parking lot. Even if his memory was accurate, it wasn't going to make it easy to find her. Virgil didn't know the area east of the Hudson all that well.

Virgil would have called Dusty but he couldn't find the scrap of paper with her phone number on it. He was pretty sure it was still on the nightstand at the hospital when he'd left. If he could remember the number he wouldn't have to make the trip; he simply needed to tell her that Brownie had been killed, and a phone call would suffice for that. She at least deserved a heads-up on that account. What she chose to do with the information was up to her. Virgil would finally be done with it.

It was after four thirty when he crossed the Dunn Memorial Bridge to drive into Rensselaer. It was a town of maybe ten thousand, the houses spread scattershot along the bank of the river, the roads running up and down steep inclines. Virgil promptly got lost in the meandering backstreets, came out of the maze, got lost again. He knew what her truck looked like, but that was all he had to go on.

After a half hour, he came upon a couple of new subdivisions on the north edge of town, close to
where Inter-state 90 dipped down, heading east. The developments were, typically, pushing out into the countryside, eating up what appeared to be good farmland.

He was driving past the second site when he spotted the familiar blue Ford 150 parked in a mud lot across the road to his left. To his right was the work site itself, a number of half-constructed town houses with a large sign out front that read
Murphy Construction.

Virgil missed the entrance to the lot and had to drive past. At the next intersection he turned around in a little strip mall, approached the parking lot again, and saw Dusty as she walked out of the half-constructed town house complex and crossed the street to where her truck was parked. She was wearing khaki pants and a T-shirt and a blue hard hat. Over her shoulder she carried a carpenter's apron and in her right hand she held an air nailer. As Virgil approached, behind a line of cars, she got into her truck and drove away.

Virgil followed, watching as she drove through the town and crossed over the bridge back into Albany, where she made a right on Broadway and drove over to Clinton Street, turning left. Virgil was well back in the heavy traffic and he had trouble keeping the old pickup in sight. Once he was forced to stop at a stoplight and he thought he'd lost her but he spotted her a couple of minutes later, waiting at the next light. A few blocks farther along the F150 turned left onto Lark Street. By the time Virgil got there and made the turn, the truck was parked alongside the curb a hundred yards away and Dusty was walking into a building that looked like a community center, with a playground alongside and a small soccer field.

Virgil pulled up behind the pickup. Dusty was gone only a few minutes and when she returned she was leading a boy of
about six or seven, a cute kid with dark skin and a mound of wild curls tucked beneath an Orioles cap. He was carrying a new baseball glove and a ball.

Virgil got out of his truck and Dusty saw him. She should have been surprised but if she was, she didn't show it.

“Hey,” she said, looking past him. Checking to see if he was alone.

“Hello.”

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Following you.”

“I figured that. What's going on?”

Instead of replying, Virgil looked at the boy. The kid probably didn't need to hear the details of Brownie's demise. “Hi,” Virgil said.

“This is Travis,” Dusty said.

Virgil put his hand out and the little boy put the ball in the glove so he could free his right hand. “I'm Virgil.”

The boy said hello quite seriously; he didn't seem at all shy of the stranger. He was looking with interest at the cast on Virgil's left arm. Dusty regarded the busy traffic, then told Travis to get into the truck. She watched as he did, and it seemed she was deciding what to do next. She would know that Virgil hadn't been looking for her without a reason.

“We'll go to my place,” she told him, and before he could answer she got into her truck and drove away.

It was easier keeping up now, although she made no particular effort to help Virgil in that regard, twice running yellow lights. She hadn't seemed all that pleased to see him, but why would she be?

Below North Swan she took a left onto a narrow side street, turned again after a short block, and parked along the curb behind a clapboard five-story walk-up. She and the boy
got out as Virgil pulled up behind her. She indicated a sign between her truck and Virgil's.

“They'll ticket you,” she said.

Virgil looked around. There were no other parking spots along the street.

“Well, you won't be here long,” she said.

The apartment was small and somewhat messy, with toys and clothes strewn here and there. But it was clean enough in general, and felt very much like a home. Dusty removed her work boots when she entered but told Virgil he could leave his on, her tone again suggesting that he wouldn't be staying. That fit into his line of thinking too. She went down a hallway and into a bedroom, leaving Virgil alone with Travis, who had removed his ball cap and was now tugging at the laces of his glove.

“So you're an Orioles fan?” Virgil asked.

“Not really. My aunt Julie bought me this cap.”

“Who do you like?”

“I don't have a favorite,” Travis said. “You want to see my glove?”

Virgil took it from him. “You need to loosen this up,” he said. “The leather is stiff because it's new.”

“I know,” the boy said, his eyes on Virgil's cast again. “The ball keeps popping out when I play catch.”

“You need to get some neatsfoot oil,” Virgil told him. “Work it into the leather and when you go to bed at night, put the ball in the glove and tie it there with string.” He took the ball from the boy and demonstrated. “Wrap it tight like that. Do that every night and it'll make a good pocket.”

Virgil heard a step and glanced up to see Dusty watching from the hall. She'd changed into clean jeans and a loose cotton shirt, the sleeves rolled up.

“Mom, we have to buy some neats oil,” Travis told her.

“So I hear,” she said as she walked past.

She set Travis up in front of the television with a glass of juice and some crackers, and told Virgil they could talk out on the tiny balcony off the back of the apartment, where there was a steel table and a couple of lawn chairs. The balcony overlooked the side street where they had parked. Without asking, Dusty brought out two cans of Sam Adams and gave one to Virgil.

“So?” she asked.

“Somebody killed our friend Brownie last night,” Virgil said.

She didn't say anything for a while. She pulled back the tab of the beer can, glancing inside the apartment, where the boy was sitting on the floor with his back against the couch, out of earshot, watching cartoons.

“How?” she asked.

“Strangled him with some fishing line.”

She nodded. “Something ironic about that.”

“I guess so.”

She fell quiet again after that, sipping at the can while she considered the information. Virgil drank the cold beer and watched her. She had strong arms and hands, her fingers banged up from her work, her nails lined with dirt. Her face and neck and arms were deeply tanned. It appeared she wore no makeup, at least to go to work.

“Was it a robbery or something?”

“Apparently not,” Virgil told her. “Somebody had it in for him.”

“Might have nothing to do with the other,” she said after a moment. “Guy like that probably had a few enemies.”

“That's what I told the cops.”

“You talked to the cops?”

“Yeah,” Virgil said. “They heard that I had a little problem with Brownie. You know, because of my boat.”

“But you didn't kill him.”

“Nope.”

She smiled, balancing the beer can on her knee. “I didn't think so. You don't look the type. And if you did kill him, I kind of doubt you would go to all the bother of tracking me down to tell me he's dead.”

“Probably not. I can't say for sure, seeing as this is all hypothetical.”

“So why did you track me down?”

“Because I thought you should know. I would have called you but I lost your number. But I think you need to consider whether or not Brownie told anybody that it was you who remodeled his ear last week. The cops might want to talk to you.”

“What makes you think that was me?”

“I'm pretty smart for a farmer.”

“Right.” She tilted the can back. She was feigning nonchalance but her eyes wouldn't rest, darting one way then the other, as they had done the first time he'd met her, the first time they'd had a beer together.

“So the cops figure you for a suspect?” she asked at length.

“I don't think so,” Virgil replied. “As much as they'd like to.”

She nodded, not looking at him. Virgil watched as she drew a deep breath and then took a long pull from the can of beer before setting it aside.

“Well, thanks for letting me know,” she said and stood up.

Virgil knew he was being dismissed and he was fine with that. He'd felt some odd obligation to her and now that he'd
honored it, he could go home. And stay there. He got to his feet. Turning toward the sliding door to the apartment, though, he remembered something.

“You know a guy drives a blue Mercedes convertible?” he asked. “Dark hair, maybe in love with his own image?”

She almost pulled it off. Her hesitation was so slight, so nearly indiscernible, that Virgil could have missed it. If he hadn't been standing so close to her, he was sure he wouldn't have seen it. But her eyes betrayed her. There was something in the instant she heard what he had asked, a flash of recognition—and quite possibly fear—that gave her away.

“No, I don't,” she said. “What about him?”

“He was drinking at Scallywags last night.”

“Wouldn't there be a lot of people drinking at Scallywags last night?”

“Good point,” Virgil said.

They went into the apartment. Travis, in front of the TV, was wrapping his baseball in the glove, the way Virgil had shown him, his tongue clenched between his teeth as he concentrated on the task. Virgil drained the beer and turned to Dusty, handing her his empty can.

“Mind if I use your bathroom?”

She told him where it was and he went down the hallway. He had a leak and as he was washing his hands, he could hear Dusty talking to someone on the telephone. He heard her say she'd be there shortly. There was a sense of quiet urgency in her voice. After she hung up, she told the boy he was going to his aunt's for the weekend. She stopped talking when Virgil came back.

She was scared.

“Well, I'll see you around,” Virgil said.

“Sure.”

Virgil pointed his finger at Travis. “Neatsfoot oil.”