Hanshaw, a giant former tribal cop who took the occasional job, mostly collections, from Wendell Banjo, sat opposite in a bentwood rocking chair that had been pulled up before the desk. He sat gingerly because there was a tear in the caning and he was worried that his ass would fall through the seat.
“When you going to burn that dump down?” asked Hanshaw.
“It has its uses,” said Wendell Banjo. “So, what? Are you game?”
“Sure,” said Hanshaw.
“Sure, he says. Cool as a cucumber, ennit? You need anything from me?”
“You know it’s Argenziano for sure,” said Hanshaw.
“They know it’s him. And that’s good enough. Like I said,” said Wendell Banjo, “I am always interested in not stirring up trouble. These are serious people and they’re talking about a lot of money.”
“Some of which you ended up with.”
“Which the thing of it is I get to keep it. If I do this.”
“Me. If I do this.”
“OK, you.”
“Why not one of your boys?”
“These pussycats? Be serious. Reminds me. How’s your nephew, what, Jeramy?” Wendell Banjo lit a Pall Mall.
“He’s good,” said Hanshaw.
“Sharp kid,” said Wendell Banjo, generously. “My son’s a senior at Kalamazoo now. Wants to go to graduate school and get something called a MFA.” He pronounced each of the letters distinctly, as if speaking the name of a genus of insect. “You know what that is? You pay to go to school to learn to do something no one’s ever going to pay you to do.”
“And so you told him?”
“ ‘Good luck.’ ”
Wendell Banjo laughed. Hanshaw shook his head sympathetically. “So,” Hanshaw said. “When?”
“No rush,” said Wendell Banjo. “I mean, be on it. You need anything else?”
“Money.”
“Out back.” He gestured with his thumb in the direction of the derelict house.
“For Christ’s sake,” said Hanshaw. “I have mold allergies.”
“How long can you hold your breath?” asked Wendell Banjo.
TODAY
They drove to Abbottsville under a flat white sky, seemingly always on the outskirts of tiny settlements, a flip-book view through the windshield of manufactured homes clustering and then thinning out again, service stations and tractor supply stores, open country where a collapsing barn or a stone farmhouse persisted amid the snow-covered fields. The highway eventually fed them directly onto Abbottsville’s main street, a thoroughfare that was simultaneously shabby, utilitarian, and quaintly old-fashioned. Mulligan thought idly that the place was prime for what he thought of, with irony, as a revival; that when hopes ran high and credit came easy (and once a certain kind of person had been priced out of other towns), cafés, boutiques, galleries, and wine shops would virally multiply on these razor-angled plats.
Kat called up a map on her phone and directed him to bump over the railroad tracks separating the west side of town from the east. Now even the shoddier pretenses of the town’s facade fell away; here the story was all about evacuated capitaclass="underline" here were the low industrial structures, pitted and scored in their abandonment, the shuttered luncheonettes, the no-name gas stations, the dives with their neon beer signs, the tumbleweed trash. They passed a cluster of single-story residential structures, painted a noncommittal beige, with building numbers stenciled on the walls at each end and bedsheets and towels dangling askew, as curtains, in the windows. It reminded Kat of the apartment complex on the reservation.
“Here’s where you hang a left,” she said.
Mulligan steered onto Essex Street, where most of the lots had trailers smack at their center, some decrepit, some well cared for; a row of faded pastel shoeboxes on display.
“Slow down,” Kat said. Then: “Here.”
This shoebox was pale pink with rose-colored trim and poured concrete steps. Aluminum awnings were cantilevered above the windows and door. Wherever one thing had been bolted to another a filigree of rust had bled from the connection. An old barbecue grill sat to one side, and a soggy-looking bag of briquets and a rusty container of charcoal lighter were shoved under the trailer. A pair of white sneakers, an empty soda bottle nestled neatly in one, sat on the top step before the door. No vehicle was in the driveway.
“Nobody home,” said Kat.
She climbed the steps and knocked on the door, then tried the knob. It was locked. A neighbor strolled over from the shoebox next door, a wiry old man wearing a Brewers cap and an oversized pair of glasses that magnified lively-looking eyes.
“You looking for John, there?”
“That’s right. Do you know where he is?”
“He just takes off sometimes.”
“For a while?”
“Oh, yes,” said the man. “He’ll be gone, I don’t know.” He trailed off and gestured with his hands, trying to indicate the length of time as if it were a fish. The two of them watched him. “He’s gone a whole day sometimes.”
“That long, huh?” said Mulligan.
“Oh, yes. He’ll come back, he’s got, you know, groceries. Trunk full of groceries. I help him carry them inside.”
“You help him? Does he help you?”
“Why would he?” The man drew himself up. “Anyway, Amy helps with that. She’s my daughter. Takes me shopping, takes me to my appointment. She’s a good girl. Or sometimes,” he continued, “he’ll have a video from the video store. Or sometimes I don’t know where he’s gone to.”
“He just takes off and comes back.”
“I don’t ask no questions,” said the man. He began to move off, heading back to his trailer, smaller than Salteau’s, but with a concrete patio and table and chairs to go with it. He paused midstride, alert, looking up the road.
“Looks like you’re in luck. Here comes his little Jap car now.”
An old Nissan rolled toward them slowly, hugging the right shoulder of the road. It came to nearly a complete stop at the entrance to the driveway, and they could see the figure in the driver’s seat effortfully cranking the steering wheel to the right before jerkily accelerating into the turn. The car bounced to a stop, and after a moment the door opened. A man slowly emerged.
“You got some visitors waiting here, John,” said the man.
“I can see that, Al,” said the other man. He peered at them over the open car door. “Who are they?”
“Can’t say that I know.”
The man who’d gotten out of the car maneuvered around to the other side of the door and gave it a shove, to close it. He had to be at least as old as Al. He walked slowly down the driveway toward them.
“Can I help you two?”
“Are you John Salteau?” asked Kat.
“That’s right,” he said. “Who are you?”
“I was trying to tell them where you might be, John. But I didn’t know.”
“Well, no, you didn’t, Al. There’s no reason why you should have known.”
“Sometimes I know.”
“Well, sometimes I tell you, now don’t I?”
“I thought it might be bank day.”
“It’s not bank day, Al.”
“Bank day?” asked Mulligan.
“He likes to go make sure his money’s in,” said Al. “He goes to the bank and checks.”
“Your money?”
“Social Security. Not that it’s anyone’s concern but mine, Al.” He paused for effect. “It’s direct deposit and I don’t have a computer.”