So Cold the River

That seemed to put Danny’s mind at ease. He’d had a buddy, a guy they all called Tommy Thunder for no reason Josiah could ever recall, who blew up his trailer and killed himself while attempting to fine-tune a batch of meth. Danny, who’d sampled the drug as a user and mover prior to that occasion, had steered clear of it since. Only took one explosion to get his attention.

“All right. Good. But what is it you’re thinkin’ of?”

Josiah went up the porch and into the kitchen, came back out with two Keystones and handed one to Danny and cracked the other open for himself.

“You ever lift your head up when you’re pulling weeds down at that damn hotel?” he asked. Danny also worked on the grounds crew; he had, in fact, gotten Josiah the job.

“Every day,” Danny said cautiously. He hadn’t opened his beer yet.

“You noticed any signs up lately?”

“Always signs up.”

“Uh-huh. I’m talking ’bout one in particular. List of things going on down there, conventions and tours and shit.”

“I know it.”

“You noticed what convention’s heading in next month?”

Danny shook his head.

“Gemstones,” Josiah said. “Gonna have an exhibit down in the lobby, cases of diamonds and rubies and shit. A pile of stones worth millions, Danny. Millions.”

Danny’s face went sour and he took a few steps to the side, started to lean on the railing, then remembered it was wet and stopped himself.

“A thing like that comes rolling into your town,” Josiah said, “you’d be fool not to capitalize on it.”

“You got to be kidding,” Danny said.

“Kidding hell. We’re going to get those stones. Won’t be all that hard either. See, the way I got it figured, a fire clears that building out, and fast. With all the liabilities and shit they got to consider? Man, first flame goes up, that place empties out.”

“Josiah… you don’t think them guys who own the stones have thought of that?”

“They can think of it all they want, point is they can’t stop it. You have any idea the sort of scene you’d have down there with a fire going? They call that chaos, son, and you know what happens during chaos? Shit gets lost.”

“You think they’re not going to notice—”

“’Course they’re going to notice, numb nuts, what I’m saying is by the time they do, it’ll be too late. We get a fire going, get the building empty and the sprinklers on and then hit those cases fast and get out. You don’t got to worry about alarms because there’ll already be a thousand going off, a few more ain’t gonna mean a damn thing.”

“All them stones is, like, registered or whatever,” Danny said. “You can’t sell them. Where we gonna sell them? Go on up to the pawnshop and sell stones like that?”

“We won’t sell them here.”

“Well, I know that, but where do you think we’re going to do it? We could go all the way across the country —”

“Won’t sell them in this country,” Josiah said, voice soft, and that brought Danny up, his version of a thoughtful expression coming on.

“I’m getting out,” Josiah said. “You can come or not, it ain’t my concern. But I am getting out of this place.”

“It’s a dumb idea,” Danny said, and the audacity of that blew Josiah away. Danny Hastings calling him dumb? He should’ve swung on him, knocked the red hair right off the top of his head. He didn’t, though. Instead he just stood there and stared. Something was odd about what Danny had just said, and it took a minute but then Josiah figured out what the odd quality was—Danny had been right. It was a dumb idea.

Dumb, but not impossible. And Josiah Bradford was just about ready to take those odds, like one of the fools who went down to the casino on Friday night knowing they’d get cleaned out but not giving a shit. Worse came to worst, they’d remember Josiah in this town. They’d damn sure do that.

“It can be done,” he said, but there wasn’t much vigor in his voice. “If you don’t have the balls, all right. But don’t you tell me it can’t be done.”

Danny was quiet. After a time he opened his beer and then they drank in silence for a while, standing there awkwardly because they couldn’t lean on the rail. Josiah went over and sat on one of the chairs and Danny followed and took the other.

“Story I had to tell you is that I spoke to my grandpa today. He said a man’s in town asking about old Campbell.”

Josiah frowned and lowered his beer. “That same son of a bitch I told you about?”

“The black kid? No. Said there’s another one now. This one is doing some kind of movie. Black kid is helping him.”

“A movie about Campbell?”

This was some kind of strange. Josiah’s great-grandfather had been the subject of plenty of old Edgar’s rants over the years, but who in the hell would want to make a movie about him?

“Edgar’s addled,” he said. “A movie?”

“What he told me,” Danny said, “was that some guy was down from Chicago working on a movie and wanted to ask about Campbell today.”

“Well, I don’t know why anybody would want to waste their time on him. Campbell left a lot of nothing behind, and I’m still living off that today.”

Danny said, “Well, that’s what I was wondering. If what this guy told Grandpa is true, and he’s making a movie about somebody in your family, don’t he owe you something?”

It was a fine question. A fine question. What right did strangers have to go wandering around asking about Josiah’s own blood? Let alone turn a profit from it?

“You said these guys are headed down to see Edgar today?”

“That’s right. I was going to go down there myself, make sure they wasn’t running some sort of scam like the ones you hear about with older folks, but you’d told me to come by…”

Josiah finished his beer, crushed the can, and tossed it aside.

“We’ll take my truck.”

21

ERIC LEFT ANNE IN the rotunda when Kellen called to say he was nearing the hotel, took the bottle back to his room, and then went outside to wait. He was feeling better after having the elderly woman confirm all of the things he’d seen in the bottle.

Kellen pulled up outside the hotel in his Cayenne with the windows down and hip-hop music thumping from the speakers, old stuff, Gang Starr that had probably come out when Eric was in high school and Kellen was, what, seven? Eric had to suppress a smile as he got inside the car. A midthirties white guy like him sitting in a Porsche listening to rap—ah, this was almost like being back in L.A.

“You feeling all right?” Kellen asked when Eric climbed in.

“Yeah. Why?”

“Look pale.”

“I’m white.”

“Knew there was something funny about you.” Kellen pulled away from the hotel. He was wearing jeans and a shiny white T-shirt made from one of those fabrics that were supposed to wick moisture, along with sunglasses and a silver watch.

“Are you close to your brother?” Eric asked, looking around the Porsche and thinking about the source of it.

“Oh, yeah. We talk about three, four times a week.”