George Pelecanos - The Way Home

Cotter was tall, broad, and strong, with a big chest and an unchecked gut. His black hair was also on the long side and swept back behind his ears. He wore a dark walrus mustache on a face with high, pronounced cheekbones. His eyes were black, mostly pupil, and did not appear to be threatening or unkind.

Mindy prided herself on reading people. She was in a business that required such a talent, after all. These two were strange, stuck in a time warp, perhaps new to the city, and uninterested in current fashions. But they weren’t here to do her any harm. In any event, there had never been a situation that she couldn’t handle.

Mustaches, wallet chains, boots… costume macho. Gay bikers, thought Mindy Kramer. Okay, I’m projecting. Gay would fit fine here, though. But do they have the dosh to buy this house?

“You gentlemen are both interested in the property?” she said. “You’re considering it… together?”

“Yeah,” said Ralph Cotter. “Can we have a look inside?”

“Of course!”

Mindy opened her small purse, where she kept her BlackBerry and keys, and negotiated the lockbox hung on the doorknob.

“No alarm system?” said Cotter.

“No need,” she said, looking over her shoulder and up because he was so tall.

“Street looks peaceful enough.”

“You notice no bars on the windows, either. We really don’t have those kinds of problems in this neighborhood. It was dicey at one time, but”… she opened the door… “no longer.”

They stepped into a foyer, where a staircase led up to the third-floor bedrooms and a hall went straight back to the body of the house. The little one, Nat Harbin, shut the door behind them. The closing of it darkened the foyer, and Mindy switched on a light.

“Where did you find out about this home?” said Mindy. “I always like to know if my advertising dollars are well spent.”

“Drove by it and saw the sign,” said Cotter. “Then we got on the Internet and learned the particulars.”

“So you’ve read the entire listing.”

“We know the price,” said Cotter patiently. “We can handle it.”

“You gentlemen are in what business?”

“Don’t worry, we qualify,” said Cotter. Not annoyed, just matter-of-fact. “Let’s see the house.”

“Okay,” said Mindy. “We’ll start with the kitchen.”

They went down the hall. The one named Nat eyed the layout and various rooms as they went along, but Cotter kept his focus on Mindy. He looked down at her head, noticing her scalp showing through all the clumps of hair glued together and sticking up straight. There didn’t seem to be much to her under that dress. She had an ass but not enough of one. She had small cans and she was old. He didn’t mind the old part, but he liked a woman with big tits.

“Here’s the kitchen,” she said, casually sliding a dimmer switch mounted on the wall and bathing the room in a yellowish glow. “Granite countertops and stainless steel appliances, as you can see.”

Granite countertops were now as remarkable as toilet paper holders in bathrooms, and stainless steel surfaces had no bearing on the quality of the appliances themselves, but the public was gullible. Who was Mindy Kramer to educate them when she was merely trying to move a house?

“Nice,” said Cotter, nodding his head.

“And all new,” said Mindy. She placed her purse on the granite counter. “Do you two like to cook?” Neither of them answered, and Mindy said, “This is a very diverse neighborhood, you know.”

Cotter and Harbin looked at each other and laughed.

Mindy scratched at her neck. It was something she did when she became a bit self-conscious and insecure, and she hated herself for succumbing to the reflex now. These two were vulgarians. They were not going to buy this house, nor could they afford to. They were wasting her time.

“Internet said this place had a library slash den,” said Nat Harbin. “Can you take us to it?”

“Yes, but… please understand, I have a very busy schedule today.”

“We’d like to see it,” said Cotter, still smiling, his capped teeth perfect and ugly in the yellow light. “If you don’t mind.”

She led them back down the hall. She stumbled, catching the toe of one Stuart Weitzman sandal on the walnut floor, and Cotter grabbed her elbow with his big hand and steadied her.

“Easy now,” he said, and as he held her elbow with one hand, he lightly stroked her bare arm with the other. Bumps rose on her flesh.

She went into the library and they followed her. She crossed her arms and looked out the window that gave to a view of the street, and then back at the men. The one who called himself Ralph Cotter stood blocking the door. The little one, Nat Harbin, was looking at Cotter expectantly, waiting for a signal or direction.

“Get to it,” said Cotter.

Harbin bent forward, hiked up the left leg of his jeans, and pulled a knife from a tie-down sheath inside his boot. The knife was hardwood handled, with a heavy-duty pommel and a spine-cut surgical-steel blade.

Mindy Kramer hugged herself and looked down at her feet.

“That’s right, honey,” said Cotter. “You just stand there and mind your own.”

Harbin went to a corner of the room, lifted a bit of the carpet, and cut cleanly beneath it in a filleting motion. He pulled back a triangle of the Berber and with his knee kept it pinned down. He found the notch in the cutout of wood floor and lifted the piece away, and when he saw there was nothing in the basket that had been fashioned beneath it, he said, “Shit.”

“Nothin, huh,” said Cotter.

“It’s empty,” said Harbin.

Cotter shook his head. “That’s a problem.”

“Where is it, lady?” said Harbin.

“Where is what?” said Mindy Kramer in a small voice, keeping her eyes to the floor.

“I had somethin in that hole,” said Cotter. “It belonged to me.”

“I don’t know anything about it,” said Mindy.

“Look at me,” said Cotter.

Mindy willed herself to raise her eyes and face him. “I swear to you. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I bought this house to flip it. I’ve never lived here. I’ve never even looked under that carpet, not once.”

“Rug looks brand-new to me.”

“I replaced it, just a week ago. Not me, of course…”

“Who?”

“I used a local company.”

“Who exactly? ”

“I’ve got the information. I keep a file on all the work I’ve done here. Warranties and such.”

“Where?”

“It’s in the kitchen.”

“Let’s go.”

Cotter stepped out of the room to let her pass, Harbin close behind her, knife in hand. They all went back down the hall, and in the kitchen Mindy maxed out the dimmer switch and pulled open a drawer near a stainless steel gas cooktop. On top of a stack of use-and-care manuals was a manila file folder, and she withdrew it. She opened the file on the granite countertop, her hand visibly shaking as she rooted through papers and found the one she was looking for.

“Here it is,” she said, handing it to Cotter.

He examined the piece of paper. The name of the company and the billing address were at the top of the page. The cost of goods and the labor were line-itemed in the body of the bill. At the bottom, in the total slot, the number had been changed and initialed.

“Flynn’s Floors,” said Cotter. “And you dealt with…”

“The owner. Thomas Flynn.”

“Looks like he gave you some kind of break on the price.”

“It was an adjustment. His installers did a poor job. They had to come back and redo the work.”

Cotter and Harbin exchanged a look.

“You wouldn’t recall the names of the in- stallers, would you?” said Cotter.