‘I get the feeling you don’t belong here, which means I don’t want you here.’ Short, blunt fingers on his left hand touched the swollen bicep on his right arm.
‘I’m looking for Dave Fletcher.’
‘I bet he’s not looking for you.’
‘Mind if I ask around?’
‘Why?’
‘As I said, I’m looking for him. Personal reason.’
Over the years I’d been in maybe a dozen cop bars. They weren’t always happy to have civilian visitors, but this kind of contempt and mistrust was new for me. I didn’t like to admit that it was intimidating, but I didn’t have much choice.
The bartender had a unique way of communicating with his customers. He took out a ball bat and banged it on the bar. He had to do this a couple of times before he got the amount of attention he wanted. He had some kind of long black remote in his free hand. He used it to mute the jukebox.
‘Guy here is looking for Dave Fletcher.’
Somebody shouted: ‘You know who he is?’
‘Uh-uh.’
‘Saw his picture in the paper the other day. He’s some kind of mucky-muck in the Bradshaw campaign.’
Somebody laughed. ‘Dude, you picked the wrong place.’
He got the response he wanted. Hilarity ensued.
I was now not so much a villain as a feckless clown. The bartender poked me in the back. Baseball bats are good for multitasking.
‘Think you better get the hell out of here, buddy.’
I took a last shot. ‘So none of you have seen him?’
This time the bat didn’t poke me. It slammed against my spine. ‘Get out of here, asshole. And right now.’
Even the older woman in despair looked appreciative for the distraction. She watched with great fascination. Unfortunately I’d left my Rambo kit at home.
I just started walking to the front door.
‘Maybe you didn’t notice, jerk-off. We’re all voting for Dorsey.’
Another wag got another collective laugh but by then I was at the door and pushing into the smoky-smelling chill of the autumn night. I’d had to park on the next long block. The bar had only a tiny parking lot so most customers had to use the curb.
The voice was friendly enough. I didn’t worry about one of the bar denizens wanting to fight me. I heard it when I was just a few feet from my car. This neighborhood had been deserted for some time. Dirty words on walls and windows were so obvious you couldn’t even dignify them with the term graffiti. Graffiti could be clever, even artful, at times.
I did take the precaution of turning around and setting myself for a fight. And if it did come — if I had misinterpreted the tenor of that voice — then I was going to start throwing punches with maniacal fury. The embarrassment of the cop bar scene still stung.
He was running in the dark. When he reached me he was bathed in the dirty streetlight of this dirty, half-deserted neighborhood.
‘Hey, man, I’m sorry about Henry. He’s an asshole. I hate the bastard. I took my brother there one night and he treated him like hell.’ All this came out between gasps.
I recognized him as one of the young ones along the bar. Curly dark hair, slim, dark V-neck sweater, jeans and white running shoes. Right now he was out of breath. He might be young and slender but he wasn’t in great shape.
‘Just give me a second, OK?’
I relaxed for the first time since I’d pushed open the door to the cop bar.
‘I—’ He waved me off and then began taking deep breaths. ‘My name’s Andy Bromfield. I saw Dave last night. He was—’ One more deep breath. ‘I just saw him for a couple of minutes at this convenience store. We live in the same neighborhood. He was pretty messed up. Scared and kind of babbling. He was like that when he first got back from Afghanistan. I couldn’t figure out what he was talking about. We were high-school buddies. I tried to call Cindy but I didn’t get any answer. I was worried about him.’
‘So you didn’t have any idea where he was going?’
‘No. Like I said, he just seemed confused.’ Then, ‘Sorry about the bar back there. Most of the guys are pretty decent most of the time — when strangers come in, I mean. The ones who gave you shit were in Showalter’s little group. They don’t like strangers. Hell, they don’t even like the rest of us that much. They hang out together. Terrible way to run a police force, if you ask me.’
‘Dave Fletcher’s in the group, isn’t he?’
‘Yeah. But lately he’s been talking to me a lot more about the old days, when we hung out in high school and stuff. There was a while there when he acted like he didn’t want anything to do with me. The others are still like that. Like they have their own little police force.’
‘You ever think of quitting?’
‘The wife just had baby number three. We’re kind of tied down right now. The only other thing I might consider is working at the casino being a dealer or something. They make pretty good money for the area.’ He seemed amused now. ‘Of course, the whole place is for shit. This is like some little redneck town where I grew up in Arkansas. That’s why I was comfortable here at first. But no more. The wife had two years of college and she thinks this is strictly Hicksville.’
This wasn’t getting me the kind of information I needed.
‘Any idea where Dave might go?’
‘I guess he’s not at home, huh?’
‘No.’
‘Figures.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘The wife and Cindy are friends. Cindy won’t come right out and say it, but Molly says she gets the idea that they’ve been having some pretty bad marriage problems. Cindy hates his little group.’ Then, ‘If he still has that old trailer of his, you might try there.’
‘He has a trailer?’
‘Yeah. He has an uncle who owns some property out in the country. Maybe ten acres is all. There’s this old trailer on it. An old silver one. We always used that as a hangout in high school. Take girls out there and drink beer and get laid if we got lucky. Damned thing is falling apart by now, I’m sure, but knowing Dave he probably hasn’t given up on it.’
‘Could you give me directions?’
‘Sure,’ he said. He made them as simple as possible. Then he said, ‘Sorry again about all the hassle in the bar.’
‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘give that bartender my best.’
Twenty
Somebody was following me.
Dark green van of relatively recent vintage.
I spotted it when the traffic thinned on four different occasions during my trek into the country. The first two times he was three cars behind me. The third time he was two cars behind me. The fourth time he was four cars behind me.
But he was cleverer than I thought. The closer I got to my destination the more often he disappeared. Maybe he was from the cop bar and had followed me from there. Or maybe because I’d asked about Dave Fletcher he knew where I’d look. I mean, it was obvious I was going into the country, and if he knew Dave he knew about Dave’s trailer, and if he knew about Dave’s trailer, he’d know by now where I was going. He’d just hang back and then show up when he chose.
To reach Dave Fletcher’s trailer you followed a narrow, deeply rutted dirt road that paralleled a long stretch of woods. The farmland had been posted but it was doubtful his uncle was sitting around with his sawed-off shotgun waiting for trespassers.
It was another autumn night with a full moon that mourned us all, but in an oddly elegant way, like a lovely but sad song. Just inside the gate a carefully arranged line of fiercely orange pumpkins sat by an old faded pickup truck with a MONDALE FOR PRESIDENT sticker on the rear bumper. All we needed was a scarecrow.