Killshot

job.

“Where is he?”

“Up on top. That far section toward the river. See?”

They both gazed up at the structure, at the network of columns and beams and girders, a tower crane rising out of the center, the building skeleton exposed, no outside curtain walls up yet, but dark in there with every other level floored to ten, open

iron above that.

“I see him,” the walking boss said.

A figure on the crossbar of a goalpost, that’s what it looked like. Way up on the highest section, standing on a girder between two columns that stuck up against the sky.

“He’s not moving.”

“That’s what I’m telling you,” the raising-gang foreman said. “He’s froze-up.”

“Wayne never froze in his life.”

“Well, he’s been sitting there, I don’t know how long.”

“He’s standing now.”

“He was sitting before, like he was paralyzed.”

“You yell at him?”

“Sure, I yelled at him. He heard me.”

“He look down?”

“Yeah, he looked down. Maybe he’s trying to move is why he stood up.”

“Shit,” the walking boss said. “There’s something wrong with him. He was off a few days, he come back— Wayne ordinarily connects, you know that.”

“I know it.”

“He come back I had to put him on bolting up.”

“I know it, but he didn’t seem to mind. He didn’t say nothing.”

“No, that’s what I mean, there’s something wrong with him.”

“Maybe it’s that girl was shot he’s having some trouble with.”

“I heard guys talking about it,” the walking boss said. “I didn’t see it in the paper.”

“Yeah, it was in, but way in the back. It didn’t mention Wayne. I guess it was in the paper up where he lives one of the guys saw, had more about it.”

“You think he’s eating his lunch?”

“You can see he isn’t doing nothing but standing there,” the raising-gang foreman said. “He’s froze-up. He wouldn’t stand there like that if he wasn’t froze-up. Would he?”

“I don’t know, it never happened to me.”

“It never happened to me either, but I’ve seen it enough. We got to talk him down.”

“Who was he working with?”

“I think Kenny. Yeah, Wayne had the yo-yo, so Kenny was holding the roll for him. I saw Kenny come down. I think he went someplace to eat.”

The raising-gang foreman followed the walking boss through a doorway to the back half of the trailer where some of the crew were eating their lunch at a wooden table. The walking boss was a young guy about thirty-five. His hard hat was cleaner than most, but he wore it backward like everybody else. He said to the guys at the table, “Anybody talk to Kenny?” They were all looking up at him, but didn’t know what he meant.

“Wayne hasn’t come down. He’s up there like he might’ve froze.” The walking boss raised both hands. “Wait a minute now, sit still. Did Kenny mention to anybody Wayne was acting strange?”

“He didn’t say nothing ’cause he wouldn’t, not to anybody else,” one of the ironworkers said, “but he almost got pitched off. Kenny did.”

“You saw it?”

“I was below. I saw him and Wayne moving positions. I think Wayne had just put another fifty feet of hose on his yo-yo. What must’ve happened, he throws it out to get some slack, not looking what he’s doing, and the rubber trips Kenny coming along behind him. I heard Kenny yell—that’s when I looked up, I see him grab hold of the beam, he’s okay, but he lets go of the beater he’s carrying. I’m looking up, shit, I see this ten-pound sledge coming at me. It hits the deck plate, bang, missed me by only about a foot. I see Kenny, he’s down flat on the beam now, the rubber hanging over it right there—you could see it must’ve tripped him. And here’s Wayne looking at him like, the hell are you doing hugging that beam? He doesn’t even know he almost killed his partner. I wasn’t gonna say nothing,” the ironworker said to the walking boss, “but you asked.”

***

Last summer when they came downtown to one of the P’Jazz concerts at the Pontchartrain Hotel, it was to see Lonnie Liston Smith, this whole block was a parking lot. They drove past a month ago, it was excavated and the piers laid, the foundation. A big sign said it would become One-Fifty Jefferson West.

Now here he was sitting a hundred and something feet above it on a ten-inch girder. Sitting again, straddling it, feet resting on the girder’s lower flange. Get tired of sitting he’d stand up, still looking out at the Detroit River, feeling the sun and a breeze that would become wind as the job rose higher. If he looked at the city skyline he’d think of work. The same if he looked down, he’d see the iron they’d shaken out, ready to hook on to the crane, and he’d be distracted by the job, all the equipment down there, the stacks of floor deck, the compressors, kegs of bolts on pallets, the steel-company trailer, knowing the guys were in there eating their lunch . . .

This was what he needed, to be by himself high up on the iron, after two days of cops everywhere he looked, different police groups coming and going, their presence bringing people out from Algonac to creep their cars past the house. He’d watched cops digging buckshot out of the livingroom wall, cops poking around in the bushes along the road and in the woods. Their neighbor across the street, the sod farmer, called to ask if there was some kind of problem. Wayne said, “If I find out what they’re looking for I’ll let you know.” He hung up and Carmen said, “Evidence,” gritting her teeth, irritated because he made remarks loud enough to be overheard.

Like when he said, “A glass eye in a duck’s ass can see they don’t know what they’re doing,” and a couple of cops gave him their deadpan don’tfuck-with-me cop look.

One thing led to another. Carmen mentioned the framed duck prints that had been shot off the living-room wall and wrecked, saying that was one way to get rid of them.

“If you didn’t like the duck prints,” Wayne asked her, “what’d you put them up for?”

“If I didn’t, who would? Think about it. What do you do around here?”

“I brush-hog the field.”

“So you can watch for deer. That’s like saying you clean your shotgun.”

“I thought you liked those duck prints. They been hanging there for five years.”

“Don’t tell me.”

“You should’ve said something.”

“Who swept up the broken glass?”

Getting picky. He should’ve told her he didn’t give a shit about the duck prints. The only reason they were up, her mom had given them as a present. He was more irritated than ever by then, though not at Carmen. This had nothing to do with the goddamn duck prints. Carmen knew it too.

She said, “This is dumb.”

So he eased back saying, “Okay, I won’t make any more observations or remarks.”

She said, “How much you want to bet?”

He tried, he kept quiet, made coffee for the cops and referred to them as Deputy or Officer when they came up on the side porch for a cup. He even tried to be cordial to the tight-assed county deputy who had asked him in the real estate office if he had an attitude problem. Wayne said to him on the porch, “Well, at least we know those two guys are still around.”

“How do we know that?” the deputy said.

“They shot our windows out, didn’t they?”

“We don’t know it was the same guys,” the deputy said.

“If you don’t, then I was right,” Wayne said, “you don’t know shit.”

Carmen got him upstairs, faced him with her arms folded and said, “You having fun? Why do you like to