I walked past them, letting my left shoulder brush J.D. as I went by. I walked around behind my car and opened the door.
Henry said, 'We'll be watching you close, smart guy.'
'I hope so,' I said. 'You might learn something.'
Then I got in the car and started up and pulled away from the curb. In the rearview mirror I could see them standing looking after me. I resisted the impulse to floor it. No sense being immature about it. A dignified departure was much more adult.
Trout Breath?
Chapter 8
I spent the rest of the day getting the lay of Wheaton. The good-income section up the hill from the library, the shabby middle-income ranches along Route 9 toward Quabbin, and the Hispanic section in the southeast part of town across the Wheaton River and below the mills.
I stood at the bar in a small saloon in a converted storefront on the corner of a threestory flat-topped apartment house with warped clapboard siding. There were a couple of 1950s pinball machines and a jukebox that played Spanish music. I was drinking an authentic native Budweiser from the longnecked bottle. I had nothing against glasses but no one had offered me one. On the bar near me was a jar of pickled eggs, and past that, one of pickled sausage. There were maybe eight men, all Hispanic, sitting around two tables in the middle of the room. The bartender was at the other end watching McHale's Navy on a small black-and-white television. He looked my way. I gestured with my beer bottle. He nodded and brought me another one.
'Excuse me,' I said. 'Do you know a guy named Eric Valdez?'
'No,' he said, and picked up my empty bottle.
'Reporter for the Central Argus,' I said. The bartender shook his head. His wide flat face had no expression.
'How 'bout the woman he was dating,' I said.
The bartender shook his head again. 'Don't know nothing,' he said, and walked away with my empty bottle.
I put a five-dollar bill on the bar and picked up my beer and walked over to the men sitting at the near table.
'Any of you guys know Eric Valdez?' I said. The four men looked at me. The oldest, a dark man with graying hair and a white shirt unbuttoned over his bony chest, shook his head.
'How about the woman he was dating?' I said.
Same head shake from the gray head. The others sat silent.
I looked over at the other table. Two of the men shook their heads.
'Know where I can score any coke?' I said.
One of the men at the other table made a short laugh. Then there was silence.
The grayhaired guy said, 'No. Don't know nothing about that stuff, mister.'
I took a handful of cards out of my pocket and offered them around. Nobody took one so I dropped some on each table.
'I'm at the Reservoir Court,' I said. 'There's a lot of reward money available.' Nobody said anything. Nobody moved. Nobody read my card. Nobody flinched before my implacable. gaze.
'No strangers, here,' I said. 'Just friends you haven't met.'
I leaned back in the bench-press machine at the Wheaton Nautilus Center and inhaled and pressed up 280 pounds while I exhaled. The machine only went to 280. I did that eleven more times and then got off and set the weight at 230 and did twelve more reps and got off and set the weight at 200 and did twelve more. I got off the machine and took in some air and shrugged my shoulders a little.
There was a guy next to me doing the same thing.
He had blond curly hair cut close to his skull. He wore a gray sweatshirt and gray sweatpants and a blue headband. His medium-sized body was thickened around the chest the way bodies get when they've done a lot of weights.
'Doesn't get any easier, does it,' he said.
'Sure doesn't,' I said. 'Ever run into a guy named Eric Valdez working out here?'
'The guy got killed?' he said.
'Yeah.'
'Nope, never met him,' he said. 'You know him?'
'How about his girlfriend,' I said.
'I don't know the guy,' he said. 'How come you're asking about him?'
'There's a lot of reward money,' I said.
The blond man put his hands up, palms out. 'Hold it,' he said. 'I'm just here working out. I don't know anything about Valdez or rewards or anything else. You know?'
I took one of my cards out of the zipper back pocket of my shiny sweats. 'I'm at the Reservoir Court,' I said.
