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“You go first,” Emery said at the same time.
With a nod, Jem broke for the door. His last glimpse was of Emery pacing, pretending to read something on his phone. Or, since he was Emery, probably not pretending.
Inside, a wall of cool and light and odor met Jem. The air conditioning must have been working overtime, a respite from the muggy stillness of the evening outside. The club smelled like a deep fryer with oil that needed to be changed, and like body spray and cheap synthetic fabrics. It made Jem think of clothing growing warm from friction, of chafing bodies. It made him think of a rash. The lights were dim, but in contrast to the near total dark of rural Missouri, they still made Jem blink as his eyes adjusted. The club was as he remembered it: the bar, the tables, the private booths. TVs showed grainy footage of half-dressed women. On the stage, a topless woman in a silver bikini bottom paraded with heavy, Bride-of-Frankenstein steps. Tonight, Kid Rock had gotten bumped by The Scorpions and all their empty promises.
Jem stepped away from the door to let a heavyset man in overalls pass, and he used the movement to hop onto a stool, positioning himself as far from the bar and the stage as he could, where the club’s yellowish light was weakest. Someone had been showing his picture around the club. Someone had been asking questions. That meant he couldn’t walk up to the bar, couldn’t ask a waitress for a beer. Not without taking a risk. If anyone else had seen DeVoy, he wouldn’t be in here at all, but that was the problem about being a sneaky shit—it caught up and bit you in the ass eventually.
For a couple of minutes, Jem stayed where he was. The Scorpions gave way to Katy Perry. An iron-haired woman in a black apron held up a finger to Jem, like she’d get to him in a minute. A man stuffed bills into the dancer’s bikini bottom, and she leaned over him and pretended to squirt milk from her breast into his mouth. Jem was grateful for the distance; he could pretend, to himself anyway, she was pretending.
Then he spotted DeVoy. He sat with a man Jem recognized from his first visit: the spray-tan guy, the one with the giant cross around his neck. DeVoy looked worse for wear—he was fidgeting, talking rapidly, casting blind, nervous glances around the room. It was hard to tell in the club’s gloom, but it looked like one eye was swollen. Probably, Jem thought, because someone had knocked DeVoy around for being a dumbass. Not a good time to approach him, Jem decided. Not sitting in the middle of the club.
When Emery came through the door, Jem glanced at him the way he’d check anyone who came through the door, the kind of automatic assessment and dismissal—the rookie move would have been to ignore Emery completely, and Jem wasn’t a rookie. Then Jem let his gaze drift back to the middle distance, where he could watch DeVoy while pretending to watch the stage. The waitress finally began to make her way toward Jem’s spot in the back, and a knot tightened between Jem’s shoulder blades. Before the woman could reach him, though, Emery intercepted her, snapping something that made the woman hurry toward the bar. Jem grudgingly chalked a tally in Emery’s column; that had been fast thinking.
Settled on his stool, all Jem could do was wait until DeVoy left the spray-tan guy. As minutes ticked by and Katy Perry changed to Ariana Grande, other faces—familiar faces—caught Jem’s eyes in the crowd. The sharp-jawed, blue-toned blond in biker leathers, holding court with a cluster of rawboned men and women who looked like they all might be distantly related. The square-jawed, clean-shaven guy Jem had seen on his last visit—a little bit like young-Mitt Romney-hits-the-gym. Two nights in a row, Jem thought. Well, well, well.
It took him a moment longer to find the big, blond action hero. The man sat in one of the private booths, the curtain partially drawn, and he seemed to be watching the crowd instead of the stage. When his head swiveled toward the back of the room, Jem leaned back on his stool and thought invisible thoughts. A moment later, his gaze moved on, and the fist squeezing Jem’s chest eased.
Then DeVoy slunk out of his seat and scurried across the room, bent almost in half as he moved, the posture of a man who didn’t want to draw anyone’s attention. Jem slid down from his stool, pulled his hat lower, and started after him. DeVoy disappeared down a narrow hallway, and Jem picked up his pace. The bartender—a woman with a septum piercing and, to judge by how her vest fit her, other piercings as well—glanced at Jem as he passed. He thought she might have done a double take, but he didn’t want to draw attention by looking back to check, so he ducked his head and went faster.
When he came around the corner, DeVoy stood less than five feet away. He had his phone in both hands, and he was typing something, fingers flying over the screen. He looked up, looked down, looked up again. Shock opened his face.
“Hey bozo,” Jem said.
DeVoy ran.
It was a narrow hallway crammed between plywood walls, and from the reek, at least some of the doors opened onto what passed for restrooms. At the end of the passageway, an EXIT sign hung above a steel fire door with a crash bar. DeVoy sprinted toward it. Jem charged after him.
When DeVoy hit the door, it flew open. He turned his move into a spin and darted out of sight. The door started to swing shut. Jem caught the crash bar on his hip, felt the distant ping of pain that said he’d have a bruise, and clutched the side of the door to swing himself around it, following DeVoy’s path. Gravel skittered under his sneakers, and for a moment, the loose stone might as well have been ice. But Jem’s grip on the door stabilized him, and a moment later, he was planted again, and then he was running through the heavy drapery of the night’s heat. DeVoy had twenty feet on him, and he was headed for the roll-up doors on the back of the club—the same place, a buried voice in Jem’s head noted, where he’d gone the last time.
The closest roll-up door stood open, and as DeVoy jinked around the corner, he suddenly went flying. The thumping beat of the club’s music partially swallowed the thud, the jangle of metal, and the cry of pain.
Jem kept running, for form’s sake, and skidded to a stop at the opening to the door. John-Henry had his hands on his hips as he stared at DeVoy, who lay at the base of a set of metal shelves, surrounded by a fallen can of paint, a plastic-wrapped bundle of toilet paper, a roll of individually packaged condoms like a forgotten streamer from the world’s saddest party. DeVoy moaned and stirred.
“Don’t get up,” Jem said and set one foot between his shoulder blades.
“Fuck happened?” DeVoy mumbled. His nose was clearly broken, and a long, bloody mark rashed one side of his face.
Still keeping his weight on DeVoy, Jem nodded to John-Henry, who squatted next to the fallen man and patted him down. John-Henry tossed a wallet, a vape, a phone, and a pack of Orbit gum (bubblemint, so, gross) onto the ground. John-Henry finished his search and gave Jem a shake of his head. Then he picked up the wallet and began going through it.
As the rush of adrenaline died, more details began to work their way to Jem’s consciousness: the smell of motor oil, the stickiness of his bare skin, the relatively lighter rectangle on the floor of the garage, where the ambient light from outside reached. And then the more important detail hit him.
“Where the hell is the van?”
DeVoy moaned again.
“Hey.” Jem jostled him with his foot. “Where’s your van?”
“Fuck, man. Fuck.”
“You’re goddamn right. Where’s your van?” He bore down, driving his weight into that spot between DeVoy’s shoulder blades. “I’m asking you a question.”
“Cadenas told me not to park in here!” When Jem eased up, DeVoy brought a hand to his face. “My nose, man. I can’t breathe.”
Jem scanned the garage, but the van didn’t pop out of hiding. It had been a long shot, of course. Part of him had known that. But at the same time, it had seemed completely possible—if this was where DeVoy operated, if he had a hookup, the owner of the club, maybe the manager. Jem let the rest of the thought go unformed. He looked at John-Henry, unable to keep the frustration out of his face.
“DeVoy Foreman,” John-Henry said. “License is valid, address in Warsaw. That’s not far from here. A couple of hundred bucks. Phone is locked.”
Jem made a gimme motion, and John-Henry tossed him the phone.
