“French fries.”
“Okay.”
“And nuggets.”
“Okay.”
“And a shake.”
“Okay.”
Jerome would have preferred a more out of the way place, but he had to change before reaching Castle Rock, so he pulled in at a McDonalds at the outlets and tugged the hoodie over his blood soaked shirt. In the glovebox he found a package of Baby Wipes with a few inside that were still moist and used them to wipe off most of the blood on his face. The cut over his eye oozed a little, but at least he didn’t look like he was set for Halloween. His nose felt broken and his lips were badly swollen. He took a last look in the mirror and dragged the hoodie up over his head and down over his face as far as he could. After unstrapping Clair from her seat, he hoisted her up in his huge arms and carried her back to the bathroom. He locked them inside the handicap stall and stripped off his shirt and pants. Clair played with the doll he brought in from the car, while sitting on the fold out changing station inside the stall.
The stab wounds didn’t feel very deep, but they left nasty punctures that he couldn’t get to stop seeping blood. He had to rip one of the other shirts into sections and wad them up and shove them into the holes before wrapping them with longer strips and tying them off. He told himself he should have had a First-Aid Kit in the gym bag and Clair giggled when she heard him talking to himself. Jerome repeated the actions on his thigh wound then slipped on a new pair of pants and exited the stall to look in the mirror.
He looked bad. The darkness of his skin helped hide it a little, but not enough. The wound over his eye had started bleeding again and he wouldn’t be able to get away with shoving anything into it to get it to stop without looking even weirder than he already did. He dug through the bag, but he couldn’t find any Vaseline or even toothpaste to jam in there, so he tried five minutes of direct pressure with a paper towel and then scooped up Clair and took her back to the car. He ordered from the drive through, keeping his face averted as much as possible, and then parked in the lot so Clair could get out of the seat to eat. As soon as she finished, he strapped her back in and drove to his job site.
His foreman was a Hispanic guy named Tony, but he wasn’t in so he talked with the site supervisor, a white man named Steve Hollow. Steve was big, taller than Jerome, but with a gut and a heavy beard. His forearms were like steel pillars.
Jerome left Clair in the car while he went up the steps of the work trailer and opened the door. He made eye contact with Steve, who took one look at Jerome and indicated with a nod of his head they should talk outside.
“Man you look like you been through a meat grinder,” he said to Jerome.
“No, not a meat grinder,” said Jerome. “I need my pay.”
“You quitting?”
“Have to,” said Jerome.
Steve looked toward the car and Clair.
“That your little girl?”
“Yes.”
“Pretty.”
“I need my pay.”
Steve had been through this more times than he could count. Drifters, migrants, regular guys that drank a little too much. Construction was hard work and it took hard men to live the life and hard men tend to live and play as hard as they work.
Steve nodded. “Hate to lose you, Jer. You’re a good worker.”
Jerome didn’t say anything.
“I suppose you’d prefer cash to a check?”
“Yes,” said Jerome.
“I’ll get it.” He went back into the trailer and came out a few minutes later. He counted out seven hundred dollars and handed it to Jerome, who he knew as Jerry Jefferson. “I tossed in a fifty as a bonus. Hope you make it back this way, I can always use a strong hand.”
Jerome took the money.
Steve held up a finger. “Anybody looking for you I should know about?”
“Looking for me?”
“Yeah, like the law, maybe? I know how custody battles go. I’ve got two exes of my own.”
“Maybe,” said Jerome.
“Okay,” said Steve. “I haven’t seen you since Friday.”
Jerome nodded then walked back to the car.
As they drove away, Steve, the site supervisor, shook his head. Hate to lose a good man.
13
The construction site looked pretty much like most. Big dirt area with temporary metal fencing. Twenty-foot high mounds of fill dirt and deep-laid pits, crisscrossed with rebar and bordered by thick cement foundation walls. Large yellow machines dotted the landscape; bull dozers, cranes, generators, forklifts, squatting like giant bugs ready for work. Near the entrance sat a series of work trailers. Basically construction mobile homes used as offices. A few cars littered a makeshift parking lot just east of the trailers. Jerome’s car was nowhere in sight, so I parked near the other cars and started out to the main trailer. A big man, with a thick beard and the traditional hardhat, opened the door and gave me a look like he expected me and wasn’t happy about it. He walked down the wood-slatted walkway and came up to me.
“Whatever you’re selling, we ain’t buying.”
“You the boss?” I asked. My whole body felt like a bruise and I wasn’t in the mood for jerky.
“Site Manager,” said the big man. “And it’s ‘bout quitting time. So like I said…”
I pulled out the Secret Service badge Senator Marsh had bestowed on me, figuring it would hold more weight than my PI credentials.
“Has Jerome Larkin been here?”
He gave me stupid; like he didn’t know who or what I was talking about.
“Jerome Larkin, Jerry Jefferson.” I held out one of the check stubs from under the mattress and a picture of Larkin. “This guy.”
“Oh, Jer. Yeah, he works here.”
“I know he works here,”
