“This fella—excuse me, sir—Mr. Mitchell says he became violently ill after drinking the coffee you served him, Parker.” The sheriff yawned and continued to question me in a tone more bored than any that could be found in the world. “That’s not so, is it, Parker? You trying to poison this fella? Mr. Mitchell, I mean.”
“No, Sheriff, sir,” I said, shocked—terribly shocked. Goodhearted Parker whom every parent in town knew and wished their kids were like? Never. “I was walking down the sidewalk to take Stefan his lunch when this guy started yelling at me. I didn’t want to get into trouble, and I was kind of worried, you know. Sort of. He’s twice my size.” Three times was more like it, but I was playing nice, although too little, too late. That slippery slope had me now, but I kept the teenage talk flowing. “I kept going, but, like, I could smell the alcohol on him. I hate to say it . . . er . . . sir,” I added earnestly. Hand to God and light a candle for the tourist’s alcoholic soul, I was that earnest. “But I did. He smelled like Old Bob down at the river.”
“Bullshit.” Mitchell, the tourist—with vomit fumes instead of alcohol now, snarled. “I wasn’t drunk.” Which could be true. He could’ve only been buzzed? . . . Yes, buzzed was what they called it. “And I grabbed the spiteful little shit. Shook him good. You be rude to me, that’s what you get. And then he told me—”
Stefan cut him off. “You touched my brother?” The sheriff’s car hadn’t gotten him standing, but that did. “You grabbed him? You shook him?” I slanted a glance to see Stefan’s eyes go that wolf amber . . . slits of pale brutal brown. “You called him names that I’ll bet your mother should’ve put on your birth certificate? Is that what you did, shithead?” He seemed to get bigger somehow. “Well? Is it?”
Before the sheriff’s sunglasses had a chance to slide down his nose more than a fraction at “Harry’s” sudden change of temperament, Stefan was punching the tourist in the nose, which resulted in an explosion of blood. He then aimed the same fist at the man’s oversized gut, causing yet another episode of vomiting, which he had to be tired of by now—before waiting until the man dropped to the ground and following up with a hard, solid kick to the ribs.
I looked up to see Sheriff Simmons peering over the top of his reflective glasses, his eyebrows raised. He didn’t reach for his gun or move. He didn’t look wary . . . but he should have. He was seeing Stefan, the real Stefan for the first time. Harry, the gingerbread-painting, fence-repairing, gutter-cleaning, toss-back-a-beer-on-Friday-nights-at-the-local-bar-and-talk-football, all-around laid-back guy, had just added ass kicking to his resume. And not ordinary ass kicking. In the split second of speed and very purposeful brutality, the sheriff had seen Stefan Korsak of the Mafiya. He’d seen the man who hadn’t wanted to choose a life of violence, but when he had, he’d made sure he was extremely good at it.
What he’d done in that second was only a fraction of what he could do. But then he remembered he wasn’t Stefan here. He blinked, and the bared teeth and wolf eyes were gone and he was Happy Harry again—the gingerbread man. “My old man was in the marines.” He gave a sheepish shrug but didn’t back down. “He taught me a thing or two. He also taught me you don’t pick on kids or family. This guy did both.”
“And I think he’ll regret that—once he stops puking.” The sheriff pushed up his sunglasses and let it go—what he’d seen and what he had to suspect, because it had turned out a few weeks ago that Stefan was right.
In Cascade Falls you could get bail for anything.
Two weeks ago, Stefan had gotten in a bar fight on his usual have-to-be-ordinary-to-fit-in-Friday routine. I’d told him that wasn’t the way to avoid notice, the same thing he was always telling me to do. But he’d shrugged and said, “It was the whole damn bar going at it. If I hadn’t swung back when that guy punched me, I would’ve stood out. Exception that proves the rule.” The bail had been only five hundred dollars. When I’d paid it and picked him up, he’d shrugged, wadded up the receipt, and tossed it in the backseat. “ ‘Harry Alonzo’ now has a record. Actually, that’s my first time behind bars, believe it or not, which means no worry about comparing fingerprints,” he’d said.