The Barkeep (32 page)

And, shockingly, at least to Annie Overmeyer, she did. Trust it, because he told her to trust it, and somehow, for some
strange reason, she trusted him. And feel it, because finding herself back in that place, that hellhole of blood and death, she couldn’t help but feel the pain and fear, the sadness, the despair.

And it was new, in a strange way, all this trust and feeling, because she had spent so much of her past self-medicating with drink and tawdry sex to desperately avoid those very two things. The emotions felt thick, and red, like a scratchy Hudson’s Bay blanket, and they wrapped around her tightly, suffocatingly. She could sense her tears squeezing out beneath her lids and something rippling through her chest, which she realized were sobs. And it should have been unbearable, all of this emotion spilling out as she hovered before the dead body of Janet Moss, mourning the dead woman, mourning her own spoiled life and dead future, it should have been the darkest of pain.

And yet it wasn’t. It wasn’t. And she couldn’t figure why. The more she felt, the less it hurt. The more she cried, the warmer became the swathing blanket around her. And in her mystified state, she turned and saw him, next to her like he promised, his hard, gentle face, his long hair, his solid body wrapped in silk. She saw him floating next to her, and suddenly she knew why she wasn’t choking on it all. It was him, his kindness, his gentleness, the way he took her more seriously than she took herself.

Still floating there, before the dead body of Janet Moss, she reached out a hand to him.

Justin had thought this whole exercise was only about helping her exorcise her own emotions. But when he found himself once again face-to-face with the bloody suicide, a spectacle Detective Scott had showed him only briefly upon their arrival at the Moss house, he found a flood pouring into his
own sterile pool. The only corpse he had ever before seen was that of his mother, and so the blood of one brought back the pain of the other. And the guilt. The anguished loss. The hatred and impotence. The love, spilled carelessly onto the floor along with the blood. And the certainty he had held then that his father had done this brutal thing. And the uncertainty he held now, facing this horror, about the very same fact. Because maybe this was all a result of what he had told Detective Scott. Maybe Scott had called this woman about the suspicions. And maybe this woman had killed herself out of guilt at what she had done, hiring someone named Preacher to hire someone named Birdie Grackle to kill Justin’s mother.

And as all these emotions rose from some hidden chamber in his mummified heart, rising up to fill his throat and nostrils, he felt something else, something he had felt quite recently, an emotion that scared him more than all the others. Yes, hope. He felt the dark song of hope stirring his blood once more, and he assumed, logically, it was once again about his father maybe leaving that prison and entering again his life. But then, with his eyes still closed as he floated in that room of death, he turned his head and there she was, Annie Overmeyer, tears streaming down her pretty face, her hand held out to him like a gift, and he knew he was wrong. The song of hope he was feeling was not being sung about his father just then, it was being sung about her, about Annie Overmeyer.

And he took hold of her hand.

And she squeezed his palm.

And he squeezed back.

And then it just happened, as simple as that.

Holding hands they pulled themselves one toward the other, twisted their necks so that even with their lids still closed, their eyes stared one pair into the other, and they
kissed. They kissed. And for both of them it was sweet and soft, slippery and electric, and frightening in the best of ways. Frightening like a shattering work of art, like a glimpse into the future, like a choice. And, strangely, in a way that neither understood, for both Annie Overmeyer and Justin Chase, that kiss was like coming home.

48.

BRAMBLE

D
erek is in the small park off Lombard Street, sitting cross-legged within the boughs of a prickly bush. He is not far from the wooden bench that faces the now-empty basketball court where Cody knows to look for him, but he is far enough away that he can stay concealed in the shadows if he must. Derek senses the danger in his position, this tense moment between arrangements, and so he knows to stay hidden. And yet he needs to be able to be found too. So now it is only about waiting. Derek is good at waiting, even if he is waiting for nothing other than one hour to pass into the next. Waiting is one of his great talents, along with picking locks and death. But tonight he is not waiting on the hours, he is waiting on his future.

Derek hasn’t seen Cody since that last break-in, where they took hold of the big flatscreen and the paintings and all that silver stuff. The very next night, Derek was waiting right there on the bench, expecting Cody to show up like he had the night before and the night before that. But Cody did not show. Each night after that, Derek sat in that park until it was so late he was sure that Vern was back from the bar and already passed out on the bed. Then Derek slipped into the hotel room
and lay stiffly on the floor at the bed’s foot, trying to figure out what happened to Cody.

At first he thought that Cody simply forgot, but Cody was too organized to forget about Derek. And then he thought that Cody sold the stuff for so much money he did not need Derek anymore. But even though Derek himself does not understand much about money, he has never seen anyone who ever had enough, not his father or Sammy D or Rodney or Vern or even Tree, after he was riddled with the cancer and had no use for it anymore. Then he worried that maybe Cody was arrested with the stuff. But then, if Cody talked, it would have been the police instead of Cody coming to the park for Derek. Yet still no one came. So for the longest time, he could not figure out why Cody disappeared. And then, on the third night, he had a frightening thought.

Could it possibly be the nice girl who came unexpectedly into the last house they robbed together? Cody moved so swiftly and decisively that Derek figured what happened was no big thing to Cody, but now he wonders. Is Cody upset about knocking the girl to the ground with the candlestick? That would be a strange thing, to be so upset about something that came so naturally and that had already happened. For Derek, the things he does in these houses just sort of disappear. Nothing that Derek does ever lasts much beyond the doing.

But once, he and Rodney stayed a few days in Cincinnati after doing a job and Rodney grew more and more nervous reading the newspapers until they were forced to slip out of the city in the dark of night, stealing a car to take them into Kentucky before grabbing a bus that was going west. That memory is enough to strike a note of worry in Derek’s heart. Because if what happened to the girl appeared in the newspapers, and that is why Cody did not show, then Derek is in serious trouble.

It is never a sure thing for Derek to find someone new to take care of him, someone who can appreciate and put to use his talents. The only thing that is sure about Derek’s life is that after one of his special friends disappears for whatever reason, it is up to Derek to find another. At first it just happened. Sammy D found him when he was still a kid, running from his father. And after Sammy D died from the drugs, Rodney swooped in like he had been waiting for the opportunity all along. But after Rodney, a number of possibilities fell through until Tree stepped up. And then it was only in prison that he met Vern. It is always hard for Derek to get someone to understand exactly what Derek needs, and what Derek can do in return.

It would have been smarter for Derek just to stay away from the park, from the street, to hide in the room until the final job is done and he and Vern can get out of the city and start someplace fresh. But he does not want to get out of the city with Vern. He does not want to go anywhere anymore with Vern, not after what happened tonight. He and Vern are through for good, the only thing is that Vern does not know it yet.

Derek has been hit before, sure. Rodney, when pressed by fear, sometimes would slap Derek hard on the back of his head if Rodney thought Derek was making too much noise or even breathing too loudly, which Derek, with his asthma, could not ever help. And Sammy D, by the end, would smash away at anything that stood between him and his fix, including Derek. Yet nothing either of them could do to him would ever approach the beatings given to Derek by his father after his father’s blind bouts of drinking. He would treat Derek worse than the dog, and it was a crime, really, the way Derek’s father treated that dog.

So Derek has been hit before, plenty of times, and he can take it better than almost anyone, but that does not mean he likes it. Soon enough Vern is going to learn exactly that.

Vern hit Derek when Derek, breathless from his race away from the house with the old lady inside, tried telling Vern what happened. Derek ran from the house, across a couple of backyards, and jumped a fence to get to a street that was not connected to the street with the house. It was a hard sprint, and Derek’s heart and lungs were still sprinting even after Derek reached the car and climbed inside. Vern grew angry, not just at what Derek was trying to tell him but because the words became lost in Derek’s loud asthmatic gasps for breath. And when Derek tried to tell about the part where the girl walked right past the bathroom where he had been hiding on the second floor, and Vern wasn’t sure what he was saying because of the loud breathing, he cuffed Derek hard right above the ear.

“Shut up that racket and tell me what it was you did, you little idyet,” said Vern after the hitting.

And Derek, surprised at the blow, because Vern only ever hit him before when he was drunk and did not know what he was doing, leaned back in that car and just stared for a moment, trying to catch his breath and work things out at the same time, which is really one thing too many for Derek to try to do at once.

And then Derek said, as slowly and clearly as he could, “You did not say there would be someone else.”

“What the hell you mean, boy?” said Vern.

“There was someone else.”

“If there was, I didn’t know.”

“It is your job to know.”

“Did you do it?”

“I did it.”

“Did you get the thing for me?”

“I did it.”

“Did the other person see you?”

“I was running too hard to find out.”

“He must have heard you. You might have ruined everything, you worthless cur. I should a known not to trust no fool cretin idyet with something this big,” said Vern, starting the car. “Should have done this one myself.”

And Derek said nothing more in return, but it was all pretty much decided right then, not just from the being hit but from the untidiness of it all. If Vern cannot be trusted on the most basic parts of a plan, how can Derek trust him at all? Which is why he is taking the risk, sitting in the shadows of that prickly bush, waiting for Cody. Though more and more, as time passes by, he is expecting Cody never to show. Which will be a problem, because Derek is done with Vern, and he needs someone new to take care of him, and he wants Cody to be the someone new. But it will not be the first time his plans for someone new have fallen through. It is always a dangerous moment, making the approach, and more dangerous still if the approach is rejected, and dangerous not just to Derek. Because if you learn about Derek, then one way or the other you have to be taken care of, one way or the other you have to be tidied up.

So he is sitting in the shadows, not on the bench, wondering who will come. Will it be Cody, ready to take Derek as his charge and shelter him on their path through the world? That would be so nice. Cody promised him a horse, and Derek wants that horse so badly. Or will it be the police, led by Cody to this very spot? That would be bad, that would be rough for someone, there would be shooting, violence, someone would
get hurt, maybe even Cody. Or, worst of all, will Derek wait there for night after night, and in the end no one would ever come? No Cody. No cops. No one. Nothing. Derek has not been alone in a long time, he does not know if he can make his way by himself. How do you find the jobs? How do you make the arrangements? How do you deal with the money? Derek is less frightened of the coming of the police than of the coming of no one.

But whatever shows up, something will change. He still is going to deal with Vern, though he would rather deal with Vern alongside Cody than after Cody.

“Derek?”

Derek hears the whisper from afar and slinks a bit farther into the shadows. He looks around and sees only a single familiar figure walking hesitantly to the bench. He scans behind the figure, scans the sides of the park, the street, looking for anything suspicious. Nothing.

“Derek?”

Derek rises to his haunches, readying an attack.

“Derek?”

“Where have you been?” whispers Derek, just loud enough to carry to Cody.

Cody spins around, trying to find him in the darkness. “Derek?”

“Are you alone?”

“Yes, yes. Of course.”

“Where have you been?”

“I’ve been…I’ve been…Derek?”

Derek crawls from under the bush, stands, takes a step forward. A stray bit of streetlight hits his face. He shies away from it even as he waits for the gunshots from the police, the gunshots that would end everything, the final kiss of death in
a life formed from that very thing. But there are no gunshots, there is nothing, only Cody, trying to say something, trying and failing.

But Cody does not really need to say anything more, does he? He knows about the girl, it is in his voice, it must have been in the newspapers after all. And still he has come, and he has come without the police, which means, well, which means everything.

49.

MAXWELL HOUSE

T
he knock on the door was loud and heedless. Just the kind of thing Justin Chase, out of principle, refused to heed.

Still floating within the lovely layers of slumber, he turned onto his side, buried his head into his pillow, and let himself drift down, down, deeper down. When the knocking came again, he simply wrapped the pillow more tightly around his head.