Mormons, but something crazy like that. It wasn’t even a town, it was a fucking wasteland. He got shot, and he died, and some other bandits buried him there and put a marker over him. Decades later, a legitimate town started up near the grave, and when they found that grave, the weather had eaten half of it away, and the only words left on the marker that anyone could fucking read were ‘Marshall Falls.’ And that’s what they named the town. Some historian pieced that shit together. Ain’t that great?”
“Yeah, kid, it’s the greatest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Every town has a story. Even a shitty little flyspeck like Marshall Falls. This place seems to have a few. That’s why I’ve stuck around so long.”
“Well, ain’t we the lucky ones.”
“Damn right,” he said.
When the girls started blowing out the candles, we left. Anthony and I were both extremely drunk, but my supernatural metabolism had me in a little better shape than him. I took the keys to his Mach 1 and drove us back to where my truck was parked. When we got there I was ready to get myself home, but he stopped me.
“Let me show you something,” he said, and he led me around to the trunk of his car. There were about a half a dozen cameras back there in the trunk, rolls and rolls of film, and a bunch of wires, batteries, and boxes, all kinds of crap. All kinds of crap were stacked up in the backseat of his car too, but I couldn’t see what any of it was because of the poor lighting. I figured it had to be his clothes.
He started moving shit around, and then opened this one box. It was full of eight-by-ten photographs of places around Evelyn. He started flipping through them, and then pulled a few out. They were the pictures of Pearce and me, the ones he had taken at the restaurant.
“Here,” he said, “you can have them if you like.”
I took them and flipped through them slowly. The shots were taken in rapid succession, and going through them was like going through a small flip-book. Pearce and I slowly giving the finger to the prettyboy cameraman. One of the last times either of us had smiled. “Thank you,” I said, meaning it.
“Don’t worry. I have doubles.”
I switched the pictures to my left hand, took a deep breath, and decked Anthony with my right hook. The shot sent him back into the side of the car, and he fell on his ass. A tear of blood leaked from his lower lip.
He shook his head, then looked up at me with an expression of pure rage. He looked like a different person, but the look was soon pacified, because he knew in that moment that anything he could possibly do would be futile.
I shook out my knuckles, then said, “Thanks for the drinks, but you had that one coming for those pictures no matter what.”
“Fuck you,” he grunted.
I lit a cigarette and walked back to my truck. I put the pictures on the passenger seat.
“We all have a job to do,” he shouted. “It’s nothing personal.”
I took off.
“We all have a job to do, nothing personal,” I said to myself. It sounded true, I thought, plowing into someone’s mailbox.
TWENTY
A loud banging woke me from my deep, drunken sleep. That was another reason I used to love to drink so much—it made the bad dreams go away. I was so out of it, my head went back down to the warm pillow, and I was out again.
Seconds or years later, I wasn’t sure which, the banging came back, and it was anger more than anything that gave me the motivation to get out of bed. Some motherfucker was at the door, and they were going to suffer for it. The skull-and-crossbones sticker wasn’t on my mailbox for nothing.
On the other hand, I thought I recalled leaving a puddle of vomit at the mailbox too, and that didn’t so much have any significance that I could think of, except letting people know I’m an idiot as they walk by.
I slipped on my pair of jeans, grabbed my baseball bat from the hallway closet, and went to the front door. I was barely able to walk straight. The pounding continued. My head felt like it was full of lead pellets. Buckshot.
“Stop it!” I shouted.
A male voice I couldn’t place said, “Open the door. Now.”
“Oh, I’ll open it, scumbag.”
I undid the chain and four locks, and as I ripped that door open, I raised the bat to shoulder level, aiming to score a homer with this bastard’s head.
It was a guy in a gray suit and polished shoes. Sunglasses. Short hair. A wedding band on his finger that he twirled without realizing it.
“Detective Van Buren,” he said. “Remember me?”
“I’ve tried not to,” I said. “Leave me alone.”
“You want to put that bat down?”
“No,” I said.
“I can make you.”
“Have it your own way.”
He didn’t make a move. He was smart.
“What the fuck do you want, cop? You woke me up.”
“It’s two-thirty in the afternoon, Higgins. What happened to your precious job serving gruel at that hellhole on Main Street?”
“Fuck you,” I said.
“I won’t be doing that today,” he said, smirking.
“Is this what you came here for? To wake me up? To joust with me? I don’t have time for this shit.”
“I think you do,” he said. “I think you have plenty of time to talk to me.”
“Sorry, I don’t think I do.”
“We can do it here, or we can do it at the station.”
“Listen, son, I’ve been hearing that line longer than you’ve been alive, arright? Don’t give me that shit.”
“Listen, Higgins …”
“No, you listen, cop, I don’t know what you want, but you’re seriously fucking up the Zen-like flow of my day here, and you can’t really talk to a man when he’s holding a baseball bat, so get the hell off my porch.”
I went to slam the door in his face, but he put his foot in the doorway. The door bounced off of it and swung back open.
“You don’t have a porch,” Van Buren said.
“Oh, you’re cute,” I said, surprised at his audacity. “You must be handicapped, like, mentally, to pull that shit on me.”
“You scuffed my shoe, Mr. Higgins. I’m not happy with that.”
“Drop dead, lawman.”
“You’re going to hear me out whether you like it or not,” he said.
“I already don’t like it.”
“How about you let me in. We can talk like gentlemen.”
“I don’t think so. Move your foot and write me a letter. The building number’s on the door.”
I made a move like I was going to slam the door again, but his foot didn’t budge, and I wasn’t about to wail on a cop unless he swung first. So it seemed we were at an impasse, as Proust would say. I couldn’t crack his head open without feeling provoked, and he couldn’t come in or pull me out to talk to me unless he saw a table behind me covered in cocaine and plutonium. But why did he want to talk to me? Was it for something I’d done at some point? Something they suspected me of? Whatever it was, there wasn’t enough proof around for this cop to get too fresh with me.
“Arright,” I said, “I have a serious fucking headache, man.
What’s it going to take for you to go away?”
