The lock on the door appeared intact. If Doug had gotten into the house, he’d found some other way to do it.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“This is my house,” he said. “Why the hell shouldn’t I be here?”
“It’s the bank’s now, Doug,” I said.
“Oh yeah, thanks for reminding me,” he said glumly, taking a swig from the bottle. “But I always liked sitting out here havin’ a beer. I can still do that.” He patted the concrete slab next to him. “Pull up a chair.”
I sat down on the concrete step.
“Where’ve you been?” I asked.
“Oh, here and there,” he said, drawing on the cigarette, blowing the smoke out through his nose. “You sure you don’t wanna wet your whistle?” He pointed to the six-pack at his feet. It had one bottle left in it.
“I’m sure. You go out to see Theo last night?”
“Huh?” he said. “How you know about that?”
“He called you.”
“Damn right. Cell going off didn’t wake anybody up but me, though, because I’m sleeping down in the basement on my own.” He blew out more smoke, took another drink.
“What?”
“Yeah, get this. Betsy’s old lady won’t allow me and her sleeping together under her roof. Says it makes her uncomfortable, the idea of people having relations in her house, so I’m in the basement and Betsy’s upstairs. She treats us like we’re a couple of unmarried teenagers or something. Can you believe that? Just between us, I don’t think Betsy’s mom thinks much of me, but I’ll tell you this, she doesn’t have to worry about me and her daughter getting it on. Hasn’t been much of that in a long time. Betsy goes along with these rules, I think, because it means her and her mom can talk about me into the night without me being there.”
“What did Theo want?”
“Said he needed to talk to me, is all. I said, what the fuck is so important you need to talk to me in the middle of the night? And he said, ‘Get your ass up to my place and I’ll tell ya.’ Or something like that.”
“So you went.”
“Is there some sort of problem here, Glenny?” he said.
“Just tell me what you did.”
“I took a drive up. He gave me some directions and I went up there. You know what I think?”
“Tell me.”
“I think he was playing some sort of joke on me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I went all the way up there and the Greek son of a bitch wasn’t even there.”
“He wasn’t?”
“Nope.” He shook his head.
“You looked around?”
“His truck was there, but I couldn’t find him around anyplace. I looked in his trailer-he lives in a trailer, did you know that?”
“Yeah.”
“I went inside, looked around, stupid bastard wasn’t no place to be found.”
“What did you do then?”
“Drove around.” He finished off the beer and tossed the bottle onto the grass. “You sure you don’t want that last one?”
“Positive. Maybe it would be better if-”
“Don’t worry about me,” he said, grabbed the beer and twisted off the cap. “This one’s a bit warm. But what the hell.”
“So you just drove around.”
“Well, I was already up, and I didn’t much want to go back to Betsy and her mom. No fun up there. And the Infiniti, it’s nice to drive, and God knows how much longer we’ll have it before it’s repoed. Parked down by the beach for a while, must have had a little nap, because before I knew it, it was after ten.”
“Then what?”
“Picked myself up some beer and decided to sit here for a while and contemplate my future.” He grinned. “It’s a tad grim.”
“You never saw Theo at all?”
“Not to the best of my recollection,” he said, and chuckled. He finished his cigarette and tossed it in the direction of the bottle.
“What do you think he wanted to talk to you about?”
“I don’t know, but I sure knew what I wanted to talk to him about.”
“What was that?”
“Why’d he put those boxes of shit parts in my truck?”
“Did he tell you he did it?”
“Fuck, no.”
“But you think it was him? Last time we talked, you were talking like it was KF.”
He offered up an elaborate shrug. “I think I might have been guilty of what they call racist profiling, Glenny. Shame on me.” He theatrically slapped the back of his hand that was holding the beer. “But fuck, Theo? The heat’s already been on him for this. I mean, if he’s the one put that stuff into that house, makes sense he was the one put it into my truck. If I can figure that out, I don’t know why you can’t. I was interested to ask him why he’s trying to screw me over. And I still will, next time I see the bastard.”
“Theo’s dead,” I told him, looking for a reaction.
He blinked tiredly. “Come again?”
“He’s dead, Doug.”
“Well, shit, that’s going to make it difficult to talk to him, isn’t it?” He took a long swig from his last beer. “He electrocute himself? Be fitting.”
“No. He was shot.”
“Shot? You say shot?”
“That’s right. Doug, tell me you didn’t shoot Theo.”
“Jesus, you’re really something else, you know that? First you accuse me of burning our own houses down, now you think I’m going around shooting people?”
“So the answer is no,” I said.
“You gonna believe me if I say so? Because lately, you’re not exactly what I would call a great guy to have in my corner.”
“I’m sorry, Doug. Maybe I, I don’t know, maybe there’s some explanation-”
