Майкл Корита - If She Wakes

Sam gaped. Murdered . That was not a word Savage Sam wanted to hear in connection to any of the cars he towed, even when they were for the police. Murder cases were unholy messes. His sister-in-law over in York County had to serve on the jury of a murder trial once, and it lasted most of a month. Now, she did say the lunches were pretty decent, and the case was interesting, kind of like TV, but Sam had no desire to get wrapped up with anything that could get him on the witness stand. Once he got to explaining those phones...

“It’ll be a damned turkey shoot,” he grumbled aloud. “I shouldn’t have given the phones to that gal. If she was a cop, maybe. But she promised she’d get them to the police. That ain’t gonna sound real good when I say it, though, is it?”

The kid gave him a sympathetic look and didn’t answer. Sam lifted the PBR to his lips and then remembered it was already empty.

“What if I could get them back for you?” the kid asked. He’d walked right up to the front porch steps now. Just a child, and yet he talked with such authority that Sam might’ve believed he was a cop. “Once I understand the details of the situation, I can make sure that your property is returned and that the woman who pulled this fast one on you won’t bother you anymore. By the end, she’ll be more afraid of the police than you will. As she should be.”

“Hell, yes, as she should be,” Sam said, beginning to think it was a damned good thing that this kid had pulled in when he did. Just ten minutes later, and Sam would’ve been settled at his booth down at the store, a couple pieces of old pizza on paper plates in front of him.

“Let’s have a drink,” the kid said, “and you can talk me through it. Unless, of course, you don’t drink on the job?”

Sam answered with a snort and crushed the empty PBR can beneath his dusty work boot. “I expect I can get a couple fingers of that sippin’ whiskey down just fine.”

The kid grinned. “I’m glad to hear it.”

Sam turned to the door. The keys were still in the lock. He took them out and then swung the door open and held it so the kid could pass through.

“A few more minutes and I’d have missed you,” he said. “Now I’ve got help and whiskey.”

“Lucky break.”

“So which side of the show are you working for? The girl’s family or the dead Mexican fella’s? Or the first dead guy’s? Shit, almost forgot about him. Lot of death around that wreck.”

“There sure was,” the kid said. “Say, do you have any glasses?”

Sam got so distracted by searching for clean glasses that he forgot the kid hadn’t answered the question about who he was working for. He found glasses and sat down behind the desk. The old chair wheezed beneath him, and dust rose, but the cushions were crushed down to the shape of his frame now, still plenty comfortable. Customized, you might say.

“There you go,” he said, sliding the glasses across the desk. The kid poured him a nice healthy shot, three fingers, maybe four. Sam almost told him to stop, but what the hell. He didn’t want to come across as a doddering old-timer who couldn’t handle his liquor.

The kid sat back and capped the bottle. Sam frowned. “Ain’t gonna have any?”

“Drinking on the job is high-risk, according to my father.”

“Well, hell, now I feel like you’re getting me drunk just to get me talkin’,” Sam said, and he was only half joking.

The kid must’ve seen that because he said, “Tell you what — I’d do a beer if you’ve got any more of those around.”

“Sure.” Sam fetched him a tallboy can of PBR, and the kid drank this without hesitation, which put Sam at ease.

The whiskey went down with a smooth burn and a faint tang. Sam pulled the bottle closer and tilted it one way and his head the other so they aligned in a fashion that allowed him to read without his bifocals.

“Gentleman Jack,” he said. “Not bad, but what was wrong with just the good old stuff? Why’s it always gotta be changing?”

The kid bowed his head and said, “Ah, that’s a sentimental thing, really. My father’s name was Jack. He was a gentleman too. A charmer, sir. People who made it through a whole day or a whole night with him, they always loved him.”

Now, this was something Savage Sam Jones could embrace, a kid who cared about his father. For all the bullshit you heard about these kids and their cell phone addictions and electric cigarettes and liberal notions, it was reassuring to know there were still some good ones.

“That’s real nice,” Sam said, and that’s when it hit him — the kid had said his father’s name was Jack. “Oh, man. He’s gone, isn’t he?”

The kid nodded.

“I’m truly sorry to hear it. I lost my old man too young too. What happened to yours?”

The kid lifted his head and stared at Sam with flat eyes. “He burned up in a forest fire in Montana.”

“Shit,” Sam breathed. “A real damned hero. I’m sorry for your loss, but at least you know he went down doing righteous work. I hope you think about that.”

“Oh, I do, sir. I think about that often. Matter of fact...” He rose, uncapped the whiskey, and refilled Sam’s glass. “Maybe a toast to him, if you don’t mind? Fire season’s done here, but out in California and Arizona, they’ve still got men on the lines.”

Sam lifted his glass. “To heroes,” he said. “To men like your father.”

“To my father,” the kid said, and he clinked his PBR can off Sam’s glass and drank.

The whiskey tasted fine, but, boy, it snuck up on you too. After just two shots of the stuff — well, two pretty stiff pours — Savage Sam Jones was fighting to keep his vision clear and his words from slurring.

“So what can you tell me about this woman who came to get the phone from you?” the kid said.

Sam told him everything there was to tell. He explained his habit of scouring cars for items of potential value and his immediate quest to notify the owner when such a thing was found. He explained how if nobody claimed their shit within thirty days, then you could hardly be expected to imagine they cared about its fate, and so he’d been known to take it down to his brother’s pawnshop a time or two. This kid listened respectfully and didn’t give any of the wry smiles like the blond gal.

As his whiskey glass was refilled and went back down, he decided to give this polite kid with the dead-hero father a little more of the truth.

“It was actually in the glove compartment,” he said. “But like I said, I always give a careful look. Situation like that, where people get hurt, people die ? Those sentimental things sometimes really matter to people.” He leaned back and waved his glass at the kid. “Hell, you know all about that, with what your dad did. You got anything like that left from him?”

The kid hesitated, and Sam wondered if it was too fresh, if he’d touched a wound that hadn’t yet healed. But finally the kid nodded. “More than a few things,” he said. “Most of them, I keep here.” He touched his temple, then tapped his heart, and Sam nodded sagely.

“Well, sure. Of course. I just mean some people like to have a tangible...”

He stopped talking when the kid brought the gun out.

It was a revolver, a Ruger maybe, with black grips and a blackened muzzle and bore but chrome cylinders for the bullets. It was a beautiful gun, and a mean one. Any fine-looking weapon was a frightening one. People hadn’t fallen in love with those friggin’ AR-15s because they were ugly guns. They looked the part. Hold one and look in the mirror and you felt the part. Problem was, that got in some people’s heads. Some children’s heads, for that matter.