The Drifter (Peter Ash #1)(22)
Peter figured it was some kind of investment house. Jimmy could have borrowed the pen from someone and stuck it in his own pocket when he was done. Jimmy was a notorious pen thief.
Peter held up the pen. “Do you know this place? Lake Capital Funds?”
Dinah shook her head. “We don’t have any investments, Peter. We never had enough extra money to invest.”
Peter looked at his watch. Lake Capital would be closed for the day.
—
He repacked the box and walked back to his truck, thinking he’d try to find the place where Jimmy was staying. He’d taken a single photo to show around the neighborhood. While the truck warmed up, he pulled it from his shirt pocket to look at it again.
Jimmy wore dusty desert camo and carried a beat-up M4. He stood in front of a half-demolished mud-brick house with Manny Martinez and Bert Coswell, the platoon’s two other squad leaders. Although Jimmy’s broad shoulders were slumped and his face was lined with fatigue, his eyes were lively and the smile was genuine. It was a photo of a happy warrior. But now Peter could also see the man who had sung his young sons to sleep.
Peter remembered the day clearly, because he had been there.
Peter had taken the picture.
But that was then.
Who was Big Jimmy in the weeks before he died?
What had he been doing that involved four hundred thousand dollars and four slabs of plastic explosive in a Samsonite suitcase?
The Man in the Black Canvas Chore Coat
He turned the old blue Ford pickup from the two-lane onto a gravel side road not found on maps. The wind had stripped the trees bare of leaves, and their branches mingled overhead like long, bony fingers. There were no houses in sight.
Past the first curve, a clean white Dodge cargo van idled at a wide spot in the road. The driver leaned against the fender, smoking a cigarette, nodding in time to the music coming through his earbuds. He wore jeans torn at the knees and a gray hooded sweatshirt with a plumbing company’s logo on the chest.
The van itself had no markings other than the make, model, and license plates.
The man in the black canvas chore coat parked the pickup next to the cargo van and killed the engine. The van driver pulled out his earbuds and hung them around his neck, then pushed himself off the fender and walked toward the back of the Dodge. He pinched out the cherry of his cigarette with a callused thumb and forefinger and tucked the butt in his pocket before opening the van’s rear doors.
There were no seats or toolboxes.
Just an old canvas tarp draped over the cargo.
The man in the black coat dropped the pickup’s tailgate and hoisted up one of the white fifty-pound bags of fertilizer into his arms. Fifty pounds wasn’t heavy, he thought. About as much as a small box of books, or a healthy six-year-old boy. He handled the weight easily enough. He’d carried heavier loads for far longer distances before this.
He carried the bag to the van, then held it momentarily in one arm while he threw back the canvas tarp with the other. Then laid the bag down carefully. The bags would be moved multiple times, and it helped to keep the plastic intact. The van driver came behind him with the second bag and threw it beside the first.
“Careful with those,” said the man in the coat. “I’ve told you before.”
“Dude,” said the van driver. “They ain’t gonna go off on their own.”
The man in the coat allowed himself a small sigh.
“One more stop,” he said, looking up through the bare tree branches. “You have the rendezvous for tonight?”
“Yup.” The van driver nodded. Thrash rock came through the dangling earbuds, spoiling the quiet. “Hey, we’re about out of food. Definitely out of beer. Okay if I find a gas station or something?”
“Sure,” said the man in the coat. “Don’t make any new friends. I’ll be an hour or so.” He walked to the pickup.
The van driver leaned into the back of his vehicle to grab the corner of the tarp. The fading light shone weakly on the growing stacks of white fifty-pound bags.
Until the tarp covered them up again, and the doors slammed shut, and the van looked like any other white Dodge van in fifty states.
10
Twentieth and Center was an easy walk from Shorty’s, the bar where Jimmy had worked. Dinah didn’t know which building, or even which block. Peter thought he could narrow it down by knocking on doors.
Jimmy was a friendly guy. Someone would remember him.
Or so Peter hoped.
Driving, he continued to check his mirrors, but saw no sign of the black Ford SUV or anything else. Although, in the dark, one set of headlights looked a lot like the rest.
Vacant lots gaped like black holes where the city had torn down derelict housing. The remaining buildings were duplexes built in the twenties, when factory jobs were plentiful. Once they were tall and proud. Now, even with half the streetlights dark, Peter could see the crumbling chimneys, asbestos siding cracked and falling, roof shingles slipping downhill, revealing the worn layers beneath.
Peter understood why Jimmy didn’t want Dinah to see where he lived.
He circled the block twice before finally parking. Getting out of the truck, he thought about taking the .45 with him. It was a Colt 1911. This one had the serial numbers filed off, which under the current circumstances he didn’t mind. He’d bought it in the parking lot of a gun show in Washington State, not because he thought he would ever need it, but because for a soldier who’d spent eight years at war, not owning a weapon was like a writer emptying his house of pens.