Crow's Landing (25 page)

“I'll remember. Bye.”

Dusty opened the door to let him out. Virgil hesitated there, and turned back to her. Not wanting to, but doing it anyway.

“So what are you going to do now?”

“What am I going to do about what?”

“You said you needed to find the cylinder.”

“No,” she said. “That was before. These people are playing too rough for me. I'm done with it.”

The first day he had met her, Virgil had told her she was a lousy liar. She hadn't gotten any better at it.

But it had nothing to do with him.

“Me too,” he said.

He went down the steps to the sidewalk out front, and as he walked around the block to his truck, he knew he was doing the right thing in getting the hell out of there. Only a damn fool would involve himself in a situation with crooked cops and sadistic Russian thugs and stone-cold killers. Only a damn fool would even consider it.

But of course, only a damn fool would walk over to Dusty's truck and open the hood. And only a damn fool would remove the rotor from the distributor and stash it beneath the front seat of his own truck.

Only the most foolish of damn fools would do a thing like that.

When Dusty and Travis walked around the corner ten minutes later, with Travis carrying a backpack, Virgil was sitting behind the wheel of his own truck, his arm out the open window, listening to Patsy Cline on the radio. Dusty gave him a look of warning as they walked by, just enough to let him know once more that she didn't want him around.
By her wary expression, though, she knew that something wasn't right.

She turned the truck over for maybe a minute and she got out and popped open the hood. She apparently knew a little about engines because in very short order she slammed the hood shut. She stood looking at him for a moment, and then she opened the passenger door and got Travis out of her truck and brought him over to Virgil's passenger side. They both got in. She was so angry she wouldn't look at Virgil.

“So much for you being smart,” she said. “Where's my rotor?”

“Threw it in the storm sewer.”

“Fuck,” she said.

“You said a bad word,” Travis told her.

“Sometimes it's okay to use a bad word,” she told him. “Me … not you.”

“Hey, I just want my boat back,” Virgil said.

“Your boat,” she repeated. She sat fuming for a moment longer, then gestured out the windshield with the back of her hand. “Drive on, Galahad.”

After talking to Shell, Hoffman did a walking tour of the park, asking here and there if anybody had seen Soup. Nobody was talking, of course, and he knew he was wasting his time. Soup could have been standing five feet behind him, and the dregs he was asking would deny having seen him. Just the way it was down here. Garbage protecting garbage.

But at least he had one lead, and that was one more than he'd had an hour ago. He went looking for Yuri and found him at the north end of the park. In his bright red shirt and his cowboy hat, the Russian wasn't hard to spot, behind the remains of a screen that surrounded a basketball court, smoking dope with some of the players, a rag-ass bunch of teenagers and other assorted stoners, dressed in baggy shorts and torn NBA jerseys. Yuri was sitting on a picnic table and they were gathered around him like he was the Pied-fucking-Piper, due to the fact that he was passing around a couple of joints the size of Cuban cigars.

Hoffman stopped when he saw what was going on. If he walked over, the kids would make him at once and disappear into the streets. Whatever Yuri was working, Hoffman decided to leave him to it. He did stand there long enough for the Russian to notice him; he wanted him to know that he was still in the picture. He saw Yuri smile and nod his head as if agreeing with Hoffman on something, and Hoffman
turned and headed out of the park. It was after five o'clock; if Soup's sister was a working woman, she should be home by now. He could walk to Delaware Street from there.

He knew the building, and he knew that Soup had some sort of connection to the neighborhood, simply because he'd seen him there often enough. On his rap sheet Soup was usually listed as no known address, but that was true of most of these skids. They had their welfare checks mailed to their friends or their aunts or a post office box, but they themselves never had anything like a home address. They were no better than hoboes, which was why it was always hard to track them down.

He went into the front foyer to check the names on the mailboxes, but he knew it would be an exercise in futility. The apartment numbers were listed, and a couple had names alongside, but most were blank. Just another quirk of a neighborhood where nobody wanted anybody else to know their business. The inner door to the lobby was locked. Hoffman could have rung the super's number and shown his badge, but chances were pretty good that the super was tight with the tenants and in no time the entire building would know there was a cop on the premises. And Soup, if he was hunkered down somewhere inside, would be gone.

Hoffman went back outside and around to the alley at the rear of the walk-up. The back entrance was a steel fire door and it was locked, too. There was an overflowing Dumpster nearby and garbage scattered around the entranceway—fast-food wrappers, liquor bottles, condoms. The whole alley stunk of rotting food and piss.

Hoffman stood there for a couple of minutes, deciding what to do, and just as he resigned himself to going back out front and buzzing the super, the steel door opened and
a chubby kid of about fifteen walked out. Hoffman collared him and pushed him back inside, against the brick wall of the stairwell. He flashed his badge and told the kid he was looking for Janelle's apartment. When the kid, typically, feigned ignorance, Hoffman took the Glock from under his jacket and slammed the butt of the gun across the teenager's face, opening up a cut on the bridge of his nose. The kid folded like a cheap tent and gave him the apartment number.

Hoffman went up the stairs to the second floor and made his way down the dim hallway to the apartment. He could hear a TV playing inside, what sounded like cartoons. Hoffman knocked and waited. The door opened a couple of inches, held there by the chain, and a woman's face appeared. Hoffman showed the tin again and he heard the chain unlock and the door opened a little wider, but not much.

The woman resembled Soup slightly, although she was a hell of a lot healthier-looking. When he realized she wasn't about to willingly let him in, Hoffman shoved the door with the flat of his hand and entered. The woman was forced backward a couple of steps.

“What do you want?” she demanded.

“Looking for Soup,” Hoffman said. “You're Janelle, right?”

When the woman made no reply, Hoffman left her there and did a quick search of the apartment, moving through the living room, where a girl of about five was watching television, then in and out of the two bedrooms, checking the closets and under the beds. Last he had a look in the bathroom, pulling back the shower curtain, before returning to the kitchen. The woman stood in the open doorway to the living room, anger clear on her face. The little girl was still on the couch, watching, her eyes wide. Hoffman took in the surroundings, looking for signs of a male presence—shoes, a
jacket, anything. The apartment was clean, and there was the smell of something baking. Cookies maybe.

“Do you have a warrant to search my house?” the woman asked.

“I don't need a warrant,” Hoffman told her. “I got some questions.”

“Since when you don't need a warrant to barge into my house?”

“Listen to the lawyer here,” Hoffman said. “All right. I can make a fucking phone call and have a warrant here in twenty minutes. And you better believe I'll find some reason to take you downtown, lady. And then that little girl goes to children's services. Now tell me—is that how you want to play this?”

The woman looked at Hoffman with contempt. “No,” she said.

“Where's your brother?” he asked.

“I haven't seen him.”

“And you would tell me if you had?”

“I guess that would depend on what this is about,” the woman said.

Hoffman ignored the question. “When was he here last?”

“More than a month,” the woman said. “He knows not to come here if he's using. Sets a bad example for my little girl.”

“Soup sets a bad example for the whole human race,” Hoffman said.

“I wouldn't know about that. I guess you'd be the expert on that.”

“What?” Hoffman snapped.

The woman hesitated. “Nothing.”

Hoffman gave her a look of warning and went past her, his shoulder brushing her on the way by. There was mail on the kitchen table, a few bills and some magazines. He went
through the letters, tossing everything carelessly aside when he didn't find anything related to Soup. Some of the mail fell to the floor. When he walked back into the living room, the woman picked the letters up and put them on the table again. Hoffman turned to the little girl.

“What's your name?”

The little girl hadn't taken her eyes off him since he'd arrived but now she looked away, her eyes on the cartoon show. “Maya,” she said.

“Please,” her mother said, but Hoffman held his hand up to silence her.

“Has your uncle been here?” Hoffman asked. “Has Soup been here? Do you call him Soup?”

“She calls him Trevor,” the woman said. “I told you he hasn't been here.”

“He hasn't been here,” the little girl said softly.

Hoffman stood watching her for a moment, wondering if she was lying, even at that age. It was inherent with these people. He turned back to the woman.

“Why do you want him?” she asked when he did.

“He took something that belongs to me. He
stole
from me.”

“Stole what?”

“None of your business,” Hoffman said. “Where would he go? I mean, say he was in trouble or something, and he needed a safe house. Where would he go?”

“I got no notion.”

“Yeah, you do. This isn't the first time Soup's been in the shit, major-league fuckup that he is. Where would he go?”

“Please watch your language.”

“Answer the question.”

“I have no idea,” the woman said. “I have no control over him. I'm just looking after my own.”

“Looking after your own,” Hoffman said. “What a fucking fantasy. You people couldn't look after a kitten. And the cycle just repeats itself, doesn't it?”

“Please don't use that language in front of my little girl. Please.”

“Yeah—like she never heard that word running in the park.”

“This isn't the park,” the woman said. “It's my home.”

“Yeah, whatever.” Hoffman took a pad from his pocket and wrote his cell number on it. “Listen—Soup shows here, you tell him to do the smart thing and give me a call. Tell him—” Hoffman hesitated as he formed the words in his head. “Tell him that him finding me is a much better situation than me finding him. You understand that?”

The woman took the number reluctantly, like she was touching an object of shame, something filthy beyond description. She put it on the table without looking at it.

“Yeah,” she said. “I understand that.”

 * * *

When Hoffman got back to the park, Yuri was no longer by the basketball court with his little circle of pothead friends. Hoffman did a walk-around and didn't see him anywhere. He was getting worried and then saw the black pickup, parked along a side street off South Pearl. It appeared at first that there was nobody in the truck, but as he drew near he could see the soles of a pair of cowboy boots above the passenger window.

Yuri was stretched out across the front seat, his hat pulled low over his eyes. The truck windows were down—it would have been sweltering in there otherwise—and Hoffman stood quietly by the passenger door for a moment, looking at the Russian, whom he assumed was sound asleep. Even with that, though, he aggravated Hoffman; there was something
arrogant about the fact that he was taking a nap in the midst of their search for Soup. And the cocaine.

“What are you staring at, copper?” Yuri said.

Hoffman started. He waited for Yuri to remove the hat from his eyes, but he didn't. He did smile, though, that same insinuating grin that infuriated Hoffman, although he wasn't sure why.

“I could smell you standing there,” Yuri said. The smile grew wider. “See? You even smell like copper.”

“Having a little snooze after dealing grass to the homeboys?” Hoffman asked.

Yuri sat up, thumbing the hat back. “I do not snooze. And I do not sell grass to those boys. Is free of charge. What—you are going to arrest me?”

“Let's just stick to the job at hand,” Hoffman said.

“Remind me—what job is that?”

“Funny man. Were you a comedian back in Russia?”

“Hey, I am funny man,” Yuri said. “I could have been stand-up comedian.”

Hoffman was sweating bullets in the jacket. He took it off, opened the truck door, and threw it on the seat.

“You need to relax,” Yuri told him.

“I'm relaxed.”

“You have not been relaxed since first we meet. I think you need vacation. You need to go to camp.”

“Yeah, right.”

“No, I am serious. I know of a camp where you should go. I will go with you.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“A camp that I have just heard of.”

“What camp?”

“Is called Pop's.”

Dusty's sister lived outside the town of Cairo, about forty miles southwest of the city, and Virgil took Route 32 south. Dusty rode silently, still angry with Virgil for disabling her truck. For Virgil, it was an indication of how worried she was that she'd even gotten in with him. It seemed she was going to get her son out of harm's way, first and foremost, and if that meant putting up with Virgil for a while, she'd do it. After that, Virgil wasn't sure. But he doubted she was done with it, as she'd claimed back at the apartment.