“A big pile of twenties behind a Saab. Some fifties, too,” said Coleman. “Guy in a white jacket just like yours. Didn’t you just come in here a second ago?…” Coleman stood on his tiptoes and looked around the lounge. “Maybe it was somebody else.” He was acting a little drunk, except he wasn’t acting. “Or maybe it was me.” He patted his own pockets, then turned and started weaving back toward the front door.
Troy ran up and grabbed Coleman’s shoulder from behind. “No, it was me.”
“Great. I’ll show you where the money is.”
Troy winked at the guys. They gave him three big thumbs-up.
Coleman wandered back and forth across the parking lot. Troy grew impatient. “Where the hell is this Saab?”
“I could have sworn it was right around here. Wait, no, it’s on the side of the building, just around that corner.”
Troy followed Coleman into the darkness. “I didn’t even know they parked cars back here.”
Serge stepped out of the shadows. “They don’t.”
The man exhaled with frustration. “Not you again.”
Another classic cultural misunderstanding. Troy had a completely different context of confrontation. Preliminary bravado, then everybody gets ready and starts boxing and the best fighter wins. You know, rules. He started taking off his jacket to teach Serge a lesson, and Serge grabbed his testicles. Troy hit the dirt so immobilized he couldn’t even cover up when the kicking started.
“You mean little bastard!” Kick. “Where does that kind of cruelty come from?” Kick.
Down at the tiki bar, Brenda’s head started lolling around in her neck socket. She tried lighting a cigarette by the wrong end, but the flame kept missing. Luckily, the bartender had just taken an alcohol-awareness class. He realized what was happening and rushed over to figure out how he was going to fuck her. Molly got up and went looking for Serge, tracing his steps around the back of the building. As she got closer, she heard voices. She put her hands on the wall and peeked around the corner.
“You evil piece of shit!” Kick. “Nobody talks about my Molly that way!” Kick.
She quickly pulled back. A hand went to her mouth. “Oh, my!” Molly scurried back to the waterfront, trotting in an odd sort of way that made it appear as if her knees weren’t bending, like the Church Lady might run.
When she returned to the tiki hut, the bartender was doing calculus: Brenda’s weight vs. the distance to his car. Molly jerked her off the stool.
Coleman squatted near the ground. “I think you killed him.”
Serge was bent over, grabbing his legs and panting. “Huh? What are you talking about?”
Coleman stood up and nodded. “He’s dead all right. Must have been the head kicks.”
“I just wanted to teach him a lesson.”
“Serge, we gotta get moving. Anyone can just come walking around that corner.”
“Okay, you wait here with him. I’ll get the car.”
Molly kept tugging Brenda’s arm to move faster. “Come on!”
“Let go of me. I need to lie down.”
Molly dragged her friend toward the corner of the restaurant.
“You got his ankles?” said Serge.
“Ready when you are,” said Coleman.
Troy thudded into the bottom of the trunk.
Molly and Brenda appeared in front of the car. Serge slammed the trunk shut. “Oh, there you are! We were just coming to get you.” He opened the passenger door and gestured suavely.
“Your carriage awaits.”
23
A POLICE SIREN ripped through the starry night, island to island.
A large crowd had gathered on the side of Lobster Town. A sheriff’s cruiser pulled into the parking lot.
Walter grabbed a clipboard. “There goes our quiet evening.”
The deputies got the onlookers back, and Gus began unrolling yellow tape to protect the crime scene. Other units arrived. Specialists took photos and video and poured plaster to make casts of tire imprints. There was a large quantity of blood and a shoe, but no body, just drag marks up to where the tire tracks stopped.
Walter canvassed the crowd. Nobody saw anything. He found the manager.
“And you say nothing unusual happened tonight?”
“Only a plumbing leak.” The manager remembered that one of his dishwashers was smoking outside by the garbage cans and heard something. “Alfonso! Get over here!”
A thin young man in a hairnet walked up. He was trying to grow a mustache. “…No, just crashing sounds, things breaking, shouts.”
“And you didn’t go look?”
“The parking lot always sounds like that.”
Gus rounded up three drunk roofing salesmen he’d found staggering down by the tiki hut, calling into the night for their missing buddy. They now leaned with their backs against the patrol car for balance.
“When did you last see him?”
“Someone found a bunch of money in the parking lot and he went to claim it.”
“Was it his?”
“Not really.”
An evidence tech with surgical gloves dropped a muddy Sebago Clovehitch into a clear bag.
“That’s his shoe!” yelled one of the salesmen.
“Don’t go anywhere,” said Gus. “I have more questions.”
