The Drifter (Peter Ash #1)(55)
Not much against a .32.
Better than nothing.
Still careful of the passenger-side mirror, he walked calmly toward the Ford. Coming at an angle from the rear. He could open the passenger door, but he’d have to attack through the vehicle. His improvised weapon wouldn’t help inside that small space. And the passenger door was likely locked, anyway.
So he crossed behind. Down low to keep out of the rearview. Holding the seat post like a medieval weapon in his left hand. The arm outstretched. The Ford’s engine running.
He peeked out for a gap in the traffic and almost got his head removed by a minivan. But he slipped into the stream behind it. Three quick steps up the driver’s side. And he swung the seat post around in a wide sidearm loop, the scarred man registering his movement in the side mirror too late to do much but begin to raise his arm.
The bicycle seat smashed into the side of the scarred man’s face, knocking him farther into the SUV. Peter swung twice more, quickly, hitting him on the temple and then on his blocking arm. The seat post was not an ideal weapon in a close environment. Peter dropped it on the road and went through the open window, the scarred man leaning over and scrabbling on the passenger seat for something under a newspaper. Peter had no target, just the man’s shoulder and side protected by the thick leather car coat. Peter grabbed for the man’s collar to pull him into range, but there was nothing to take hold of, so he pounded at the man’s neck and face with short chopping punches, turning out to be harder to beat a man inside his own car than Peter would have thought.
The scarred man turned, showing his teeth, with the chrome .32 in his right fist coming up to bear. Peter reached a long left arm in and put his own hand atop the slide, forcing the nose of the gun down toward the door, jamming two fingers into the trigger guard and pulling hard. The gun went off with a loud bang and the scarred man shoved the gearshift into drive and stomped on the gas, swerving into traffic. Peter kept hold of the .32 but unhinged his elbows from the window frame to let the arc of the Ford’s momentum shed him onto the street with the gun still reversed in his hand. With a shriek of sheet metal, the Ford bounced off a delivery truck, tore the fender from a taxicab, ran a red light to a chorus of horns, and disappeared into the city.
Peter put a steadying hand on the hood of a stopped Honda. Then dropped the .32 into his coat pocket and threaded his way across the street to the sidewalk, where the parked cars helped hide him from view. Then he unlocked the door of his truck, started the engine, turned on his signal, and calmly pulled into the street.
He wouldn’t wait around for Lipsky to show up for this one.
He smiled.
It felt good to do a little damage.
26
He still had a few hours before meeting Dinah, and he was starving. So he stopped at Café Corazón, a little Mexican place in an old triangular building around the corner from the lumberyard. He ordered to go and sat outside under a picnic shelter to eat his burrito. It was a very good burrito. Top ten, for sure. Maybe top five.
Then he took out his phone and tried Aurelia Castellano, the missing Marine’s grandmother. Again he got the woman’s voicemail.
He was leaving his number when he was interrupted. “Hello? Hello?” A strong voice, but with the patina of years. “Are you still there?”
“Yes, ma’am, I’m here,” said Peter, strangely relieved. Part of him was afraid she’d vanished, too.
“Praise the Lord, I was afraid I’d lost you,” she said. Then, “Do you know anything about my grandson Felix?” Her voice was full of hope, absurdly. Her grandson had been missing for months.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, I don’t,” said Peter. “But I wonder if I could come talk to you?”
When she didn’t respond, Peter said, “I’m not a reporter or a policeman. I’m a Marine, like your grandson. I think you met a friend of mine. James Johnson.”
“Oh, yes,” she said. He could hear the smile in her voice. People almost always smiled when they talked about Jimmy. “I met Mr. Johnson,” she said. “Just over a month ago. What a nice man. He was looking for my Felix. But I haven’t heard from him. Not for quite some time.”
Peter said, “Ma’am? When could I come see you?”
She was home, just cleaning up. He could come by right now if he wanted to.
—
She met him at the door of a 1920s bungalow on the North Side.
The paint was old but touched up, the yard was neat, and he could see a kid’s play structure in the back. The houses on either side of hers were bigger, but they were boarded up, with a blue tarp over one roof that would not last the next storm, let alone the winter. Four other houses on the block had yellow notices taped up to their front doors.
This had been a nice neighborhood once, he thought. Now it was being gutted by the recession. Families foreclosed on, bank-owned homes standing empty and rotting.
“You must be Mr. Ash,” she said, holding the door open, smiling as if a stranger asking about her vanished grandson was the best part of her day. Maybe it was.
Mrs. Aurelia Castellano looked to be in her late sixties, with steel in her hair. Her skin was the color of burnished bronze. She wore half-glasses, a man’s dress shirt untucked with the sleeves rolled up, and immaculate blue jeans. She looked like a high school principal on her day off.