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“He was pretty anxious. On one foot and the other. And I thought I saw him talking to someone in a car for a while. An older car. Faded red. Like a truck of some kind, actually, maybe. Whole front of it was like dusty pink instead of red. Maybe one of those car trucks.”
“El Camino?” the older man beside McCrae said.
“Fuck if I know,” Tracy said. “That’s all I know. There ain’t no more. You want anything else?”
“Chevy stopped making El Caminos in eighty-seven,” the guy said.
“It was old, okay?” Tracy snapped at him as she walked away. “That’s all I’m saying.”
McCrae dropped money on the bar with a sizable tip. The old guy looked at the bills hard, and before he left, McCrae gently reminded him it was stealing if he should slip a dollar or two into his own pocket.
* * *
The Bengal Room was just as Coach Dean Sutton had described it, with real-enough-looking fake tiger skins adorning one wall to make McCrae take a second look, a sleek mahogany bar sporting under-counter lighting, and blood-red leather club chairs nestled around a scattering of tables. The lighting was low, and there was an understated elegance that drew in a crowd of fortysomethings.
“My condo’s over thataway,” the coach said, pointing west, after he and McCrae shook hands. Fifteen years later, Coach had short-clipped gray hair and had grown lean enough to hollow out his cheeks. His body was still fit, though the faint pudginess that had defined him was long gone. This man was sober and stingier with his smiles as he gestured for McCrae to take one of the club chairs at a table crowded close to the bar.
“Oh, man, that’s tough about Tanner,” he said, his long face growing even more hangdog. “Saw on the news that he didn’t make it. Hard to believe. So much potential . . .”
“I know what you mean.”
Sutton was lost for a moment,
sorrowfully shaking his head. Then he drew a breath and looked around. “Hope it doesn’t turn out to be Delta.”
“Yeah.” McCrae tried to sound somewhat noncommittal, even though he agreed completely.
“Masterer isn’t here yet, but I bet he comes.”
“You want me to see him.”
“She was flirting pretty heavy with him, that’s all.”
“How are you doing?” McCrae asked him, which sent him on a long story about how good the boys’ track team was at Montgomery and how it was a shame the fastest runner was more interested in soccer than football.
McCrae had trouble concentrating. His thoughts were chasing each other around and around. He felt the need to be doing something more than legwork. He wanted something to grab on to.
He let the coach go on for a while before he decided to bring the conversation back to the here and now. He wanted to call Delta again. It felt like a long, long day without any communication, which was probably another thing to think hard about, but that one he pushed away.
“You wanted to talk some more,” McCrae reminded.
“Ah, yeah. I didn’t know he was gone then.”
“Does it make a difference?”
“Feels kinda bad to say things about a guy who just died, yeah. But it wasn’t all about him. It’s about all of ’em, I guess. Been thinking a lot about Carmen Proffitt. She was a good girl. A really good girl. Did you know her?”
“She was in my class,” McCrae reminded.
“I mean really know her. Like a good friend.”
McCrae shook his head. Carmen was the reverend’s daughter, and most of the guys had steered clear of her. She was tall, gangly, connected at the hip with Bailey, and not interested in any guy but Tanner.
Sutton said, “She had a big crush on Tanner, but a lot of ’em did back then.”
Tanner Stahd, the teenage god.
“Yep,” McCrae agreed.
