“Had he?” Grade asked.
Dunphy shook his head. “No,” he said. “Everyone liked Verne. He did some work for a couple of the girls—tracked down people who owed them money or exes who’d skipped out—and none of them had anything bad to say. He did his job, didn’t charge over the odds, never offered to let them pay in kind. No one here had any problem with him. Well, except Dory, I guess. Hopefully it wasn’t the sort you kill people over?”
He laughed at his own joke. Grade smiled along with him, but the problem was that Grade didn’t know that. Not for sure. Maybe it was a coincidence that Verne had poked his nose into what happened to Tommy Pulaski and then turned up dead. And that he’d apparently been working on a no-win, no-fee deal that had gotten Dory her money back.
Or…
Or Verne had actually found something, decided not to tell Dory, and whatever it was had gotten him killed.
Call Grade a fatalist, but that sounded more likely to him.
“What did you want to talk to him about?” Dunphy asked, a hint of curiosity in his voice.
Grade shook his head. “I guess it doesn’t matter now,” he said with a shrug as he stepped back. “Good luck with TikTok.”
Dunphy snorted and waved his hand dismissively. “Like I told Sal, people tip when their stomachs are full of chicken and they’ve got tits all up in their face. Not because she lip-synched to some old TV show.”
Grade shrugged and turned to go.
“Hey.” Dunphy stopped him. “You know if Dory has trouble with anyone, she just has to tell me. She’s a good earner. The last thing we want is for her to get spooked and leave.”
“She’s pretty hard to spook,” Grade said as he took another couple of steps away from the bar. “I… Verne had just offered to do some checks for her, private stuff, and I was worried he might be a con artist. Guess I misjudged him.”
Dunphy shook his head. “Who knows,” he said. “None of the girls he worked for had any complaints, but people can always surprise you.”
He went back to his accounts, and this time Grade left without anyone stopping him. When he got out to the parking lot, Clay was waiting for him, propped up against the side of the van with a cigarette in hand.
Grade stopped mid-step, caught between whether to ask how Clay had found him or why he’d wanted to. He didn’t have to pick. Clay pushed himself off the van—the outline of his shoulders left smudged into the dust caked on the white metal—and flicked the butt down onto the concrete between his feet. He ground it out under one foot, embers smeared over the concrete in a long curve. The sharp-edged man from the other night, in gray cotton and a tailored suit, was gone, and instead, the sleep-tangled curls, faded canvas jacket, and old jeans were back.
It would have been nice if that made him less distracting, but Grade had a specific type. This hit all his buttons.
“I’ve been looking for you,” Clay said. “We need to talk.”
***
“I told you,” Grade said. “Never work with amateurs.”
“Bit late for that,” Clay said. He took the burgers from the girl in the food truck and handed her a couple of notes in trade. “Keep the change.”
“It’s never too late to say ‘I told you so,’” Grade said. He held out his hand, and Clay gave him the Southern Fried Turkey Burger while he hung on to the cheeseburger and fries. “This is what amateurs do, they getfeelingsabout the job, and that’s when it gets messy.”
The handkerchief of green space in the center of Sweeny was named Caplin Park, after the owner of the mining company that used to run the town. Like the school and the hospital, the park had been something to convince people that mining was a good job and would totally take care of their descendants too.
It had stood more or less ignored for years, except as a desire path to get somewhere better quicker, until the pandemic. The uptick in people who lingered had resulted in the addition of two new trash bins and a handful of picnic tables clustered around the statue of Caplin’s rearing horse.
The statue used to be of Caplinonhis horse, but he’d been broken off during protests when the mines closed up. Now all that was left were two stone legs in stirrups.
Grade grabbed a picnic table in front of the horse, under the granite hooves, and started to deconstruct the burger.
“I’ve killed plenty of people I had a real hard-on for,” Clay said as he straddled the bench opposite. He set his plate down in front of him and picked at it, but most of his attention was on the park around them.
“You might want to keep that to yourself,” Grade said. He found a pickle and set it aside. “Especially when you’re talking to the guy you’re fucking.”
A lazy grin curled the corner of Clay’s mouth as he tracked a couple with a screaming child across the perimeter of the park. He shifted focus as they cut across the road to go into the shop.
“I thought that’s what you liked about me,” he said. “That I was dangerous.”
That one was hard to argue. Grade pulled the corner off his slab of turkey and dunked it in the hot sauce. He waved the slathered bit of meat in the air.
