She finally realized I wasn’t going to turn over any serious cash, and she slipped back to the bar and found herself a new guy to hang on to.
I was too swilled to be disappointed that I hadn’t gotten more out of her. I opened the file again, then closed it, then opened it. I hissed, shut it, and got to my feet. My stomach twisted with the alcohol. I headed for the door. I wanted to go home to my bed.
Why did it matter to Collie now five years too late, and why the hell should it matter to me?
Maybe it was in the blood, this thing that made us so bent, so wrong. The veins in my wrist ticked away, black and twisted.
13
I knew I’d have to talk to Gilmore eventually. I didn’t expect him to come around the back of my car in the Elbow Room parking lot and give me a left hook to the kidneys.
The pain forced me to my knees. I puked up the liquor and nearly went over but managed to keep my face out of the asphalt. I made a noise that sounded like an animal about to start gnawing its leg out of a trap, then I vomited again. I’d tossed my cookies more in the last two days than in the twenty years prior.
Gagging, trying to catch a sip of air, I looked up and saw Gilmore standing over me. He wore a sorrowful grin even while he sucked on a cigarette. His eyes were dancing pinpoints of dejection. His hair was short and chopped across the front, messy but still fashionable. His face had some alcoholic bloat to it.
Maybe he’d been following me and had seen me duck into the Elbow Room. Maybe he watched as I turned pages, and he recognized the photocopied files. Or maybe the old man from the archives had left a message on Gilmore’s voice mail and given him shit for circumventing protocol. Gimore would question the guy and eventually put it together. Who else would grab Collie’s jacket except me?
My father had said that Gilmore had no edge to him now that he’d lost his wife. I couldn’t quite agree with that.
I crawled forward a bit and tried to stand. Gilmore gave me another shot in the same place. He grunted a little like it caused him pain. It hurt me ten times worse than the first punch and I went down flat on my face.
He lit another cigarette and leaned back against the trunk of my car. He stared off in the distance like he couldn’t bear to look at me.
“Terrier. Didn’t think you’d ever come back. Been keeping your snout clean out there wherever it is you’ve settled?”
Cars drove by. The front door of the Elbow Room opened and closed. I heard hushed voices punctuated by mean girlish laughter. Gilmore took me by the armiveil an19; and got me to my knees.
A few of the other patrons walked by on their way to their cars. Gilmore acknowledged them and said, “Evening.”
I deserved what I’d gotten. I accepted it the way I’d accepted the beating from Big Dan’s boys. I took my chances with my eyes open.
Still, I thought Gilmore was overreacting a bit. It was a petty move. He knew I’d never punch a cop, not even in self-defense.
He tried to help me to my feet, but I was still too wobbly. He left me kneeling on asphalt and patted my back tenderly.
“You know, Terrier, you broke your mother’s heart.”
Jesus Christ, I thought, here it comes.
He toed the paperwork scattered across the ground. He said nothing about it.
“I always liked you. You and your whole family. From the start, or nearly so, we understood each other. There are lines you cross and those you don’t. Your grandfather knew that, your uncles, your father. But it got crossed up when it came to you and your brother.”
I wanted to tell him I was nothing like Collie, but I still couldn’t speak. The pain was lessening. I breathed deep. As I listened to him talking quietly behind me, I couldn’t stop picturing him pulling his piece and popping me in the back of my head, execution style.
“I wish you would’ve called me. I wish you would have asked. I deserve that much respect, no matter what you think of me or cops in general.” He rubbed my back again, took a deep drag on his cigarette, and let the smoke out over my shoulder. “I thought you were the bright one. I thought you might be going somewhere. I had hopes, Terry, I really did. I figured you and Kimmy would get out of that house and go your own way. You’d leave the life behind and raise a family. It would’ve been a good thing. I knew you had it in you.” He sighed. “But then you ran out on everyone. You showed a real lack of character there, you know?”
I knew.
“You got a wife wherever you been living? Kids?”
I coughed and shook my head.
“That’s too bad.” He flicked his cigarette butt away, lit another. “Did you really come back just to stir up trouble?”
“No,” I groaned.
“Well, that’s good to hear. I’m happy to hear that. You still on the grift wherever it is you’ve gotten to?”
“No.”
“Good, that’s good to know. But there’s something about home that brings it out in you again, huh?”
I thought it might be time to try standing. He slung one of my arms over his shoulder and helped me up. When I was on my feet again, I propped myself against the back bumper of my car. I slumped there for a couple of minutes, watching him smoke.
When I was able to, I bent and retrieved the copied files, opened the car door, and stuffed them back under the passenger seat.
“I bet you could use a beer right about now,” Gilmore said.
My voice sounded exactly like I felt-sick, weak, trembling. “I think I’m done for the night.”
“Then you can buy me one. Come on, Terry.”
He turned away from me and headttedth="1ed into the Elbow Room. I followed him, limping along. I smelled like asphalt and vomit. I thought I might get sick again the second I stepped back into the bar. Gilmore breezed over to the table I’d been at and took the opposite bench. I sat exactly where I’d been sitting all night.
The waitress came by and Gilmore ordered us two beers. She returned with them and he paid her and said thank you. I grabbed the wet bar towel from her tray and wiped my face with it.
Gilmore sipped his beer and stared at me like I was a long-lost friend he’d been searching for and had finally found. “You look well,” he said.
“I’ve been better.”
“You deserved worse from me, but we’ll let that slide for now.”
His eyes were dark and lonely. His kids were gone. He probably saw them only on alternating weekends, if that. When he was forced to drop them off at their mother’s again, the grief would try to drown him from the inside.
“You didn’t hang around for your brother’s trial,” he continued. “You never got to see the evidence against him. Hear the witnesses. Listen to the testimony. Take the stand in his defense. Your mother did, you know. She wept the whole time but she tried to put in a righteous word. You could’ve said something too, if you’d cared.”
“What would the point have been? He admitted his guilt.”
“That’s right, he did.”
I started to feel better. Suddenly I wanted the beer that was in front of me. I took a swig. Gilmore finished his and ordered another round. He paid again. Our eyes met.
“You know what he says now?” I asked.
“That he didn’t smoke the teenage girl. Rebecca Clarke.”
“That’s right. Is there any chance it’s the truth?”
“None,” Gilmore said. “He did them all.”
“He never confessed to killing her.”
“He didn’t have to. Maybe he just forgot. Isn’t that what he said? That he wasn’t sure at the time? A night like that, a crazy murder spree. Who wouldn’t want to forget?”
I nodded and sipped. “What about the kiss?”
He pulled that tight and wistful grin again. He couldn’t help himself, his face fell into it so naturally now. It showed me how forlorn he’d become. He let out a false chuckle that told me even more about how his life had smashed up since I’d last seen him. “You spotted that, huh? Sharp eyes.”