a toboggan. Tough.
“What can I get you?” he said.
“Your boss,” I answered, and he frowned.
“’Scuse me?”
“Scott Draper still own this place?”
A slow nod. “Uh, huh.”
“Well, go get him.”
He didn’t like the commanding quality of my tone, but he responded to it, walking out from behind the bar and toward the steps at the rear of the building. He paused on the first step and looked back at me.
“Who’s here for him?”
“Lincoln Perry.” The guys at the bar were watching the exchange, but my name didn’t seem to mean anything. It had been a while since I’d spent any time in the Hideaway.
The kid went up the stairs and I settled onto a stool with a split vinyl cover. The television above the bar had the Indians game on, the Tribe down two in the bottom of the seventh with bases loaded and the cleanup hitter at the plate. First pitch was low and away, but he swung and caught air. Second pitch, same location, same result. Third pitch a heater right down the middle and he sat on it for called strike three.
“Lincoln.”
I looked over my shoulder. Scott Draper was as I’d remembered—tall, thick, and bald. He had a natural sort of muscle; as far as I knew, he’d never set foot in a gym, but he could probably bench-press a Honda if he needed to. He’d been shaving his head since we were kids.
“Long time, brother,” he said, extending his hand. His voice was warm, but his eyes didn’t show anything one way or the other.
“Has been,” I said, shaking his hand, his palm rough and calloused against mine. “Good to see you’ve kept the place running.”
“Would’ve closed down a year ago, but I couldn’t convince these drunks to go home,” he said loudly. The men beside me laughed, one of them giving Draper the finger. Regulars.
I gave it a half smile, then said, “You heard about Ed?”
He let his eyes linger on mine for a moment, then looked up at the television, a beer commercial playing, and picked up a pack of cigarettes that lay on the bar. I didn’t think they were his, but nobody said anything. He shook one out, took a Zippo from one of the guys at the bar, and lit it.
“I heard,” he said when he’d taken his first drag.
“It doesn’t sound good,” I said.
He shook his head and blew smoke at me. “Not good. Some serious shit, is what it is. Murder. Plus arson, but at that point who cares?”
I nodded. “Cops come down here?”
“Not long ago, actually. Asked a lot of questions, I told ’em where they could stick it, they made some noise about building inspections and liquor licenses, you know, trying to be heavy about it. Then they left.”
“They caught up with him and he got away, is the way I hear it.”
“That’s the way they tell it, yes.” He put his eyes back on the television. After a brief period of silence he flicked them back at me. “And what’s it got to do with you, Perry?”
“Not a damn thing.”
“But you’re here?”
I nodded. “Figured if I could find him, I might be able to help him out.”
He raised an eyebrow, amused. “Help him?”
I wasn’t sure if he was entertained by the notion that I would try to help Ed, or that I thought I could.
“I don’t know how,” I said. “But he’s not doing himself any good taking off like this. They’ll catch up with him eventually, and then it’ll go harder than ever.”
The game was back on, taking the attention of the drinkers at the bar again, so we were alone even in the group. Draper put out his cigarette and frowned at me.
“You haven’t said a word to him in all these years, have you?”
I shook my head. “Tried once,” I said, and then, after a beat of silence, “but not very hard.”
“And yet you drive down here as soon as you hear about this shit? Feel the need to involve yourself?”
I understood his disbelief, because I was feeling it, too. But all I could do was nod.
“Well, I guess that’s a hell of a nice thing for you to do,” he said. “But I don’t know what to tell you, Lincoln. I don’t know where he is. If he shows, I’ll tell him the same thing you’d tell him—to go turn himself in.”
“If anybody can get in touch with him, Scott, it’s you. I’d like to talk to him.”
He kept his eyes on the television but I could see the muscles in his chest and shoulders tighten.
“Listen,” he said, “you already know how I feel about the way you dicked Ed over to help your career. But you’ve stayed out of the neighborhood and out my bar since then, and, shit, we were friends once. Because of that I thought I’d do my damnedest to be cordial when you showed up here. But you’re making that awfully hard, Lincoln.”
“I appreciate the attempt at cordiality,” I said, “however poorly executed.”
“Please don’t make me . . . ,” he began, but before he could get any further, Ed Gradduk came down the stairs that led up to the storeroom and shouldered his way past the crowd at the pool table.
CHAPTER 3
I watched Ed walk toward us, and when Draper saw my face, he turned and swore under his breath.
Ed was wearing jeans and a white T-shirt. There was blood on the shirt and a nasty gash over his right eye. His hair was tousled and long, and beneath it his face was tan and smooth. Not yet thirty, and facing life in prison, if the jury went easy.
“A friend in need,” he shouted as he approached, and it took only those four slurred words to let me know he was hammered. “Where does that put me, Lincoln? I’m in need, my man, that’s for damn sure. But you a friend? Shit.”
Draper put his hand out and caught Ed’s shoulder, trying to turn him and send him back up the steps, but Ed shrugged it off. His movements and his speech showed he was drunk, but his blue eyes were sharp and piercing. When we were kids, people used to take us for brothers, with the same dark blond hair and bright blue eyes.
“What are you doing here?” he said.
“I heard you were in some trouble.”
“Some trouble? You jerking me off, man? Some
“He’s taking a few hours to get himself together,” Draper said to me, eyes still on the door. “Had to get his mind in order, sober up, cool off. Maybe call an attorney, maybe get his hands on a car and bail.” Draper snapped his eyes back to me and now they were hard and unfriendly. “I’m not going to make the call, Lincoln. Wasn’t when he showed up, and I won’t now.”
“Nobody’s making any calls just yet,” I said. Ed was watching me with a leering grin, swaying like a sailor on board a pitching ship.
“The hell you doing here?” he said, and his voice was filled with wonder and not anger. “I mean,
I met his eyes, and I waited for my own response, waited for the words to form themselves into something that would get through to him, tell him how it had been for me, tell him why I’d had to do it. The words didn’t come, though. After eight years of waiting for them, I shouldn’t have been surprised.
“Good luck, Ed,” I told him, and then I turned and walked for the door.
