“The neighbors,” I said to Clyde.
I picked the house to the east since someone had at least mowed the lawn in the last month. A curtain twitched and a minute later, a woman yanked open the door. She had a five-foot frame, gray-black hair cut sharply at the chin, and a wary squint. The scents of fish and ginger wafted out. She left the screen door closed and scowled up at me, taking in my badge and uniform with suspicion. Then her eyes lit on Clyde.
“Oh, isn’t he precious!”
Former Marines don’t aspire to be precious, but Clyde bore up well. He opened his mouth and let his tongue unfurl, which made him look happy. The woman beamed.
“He’s such a beauty! My son has a dog just like that. Adopted him through some veterans program.” She lifted her eyes to me and the glare came back. Clearly I ranked far below Clyde. “Rosco was a military working dog.”
“Ma’am, I’m here about your neighbor, Fred Zolner. Have you seen him today?”
“That nasty old man.” The screen door pixelated her sneer. “Left yesterday evening. I saw him loading stuff into his truck. I went and asked him if he wanted me to keep an eye on his place. Trying to be neighborly.”
“His truck is in the driveway.”
She pushed open the screen and stepped outside, shielding her eyes with her hand. “Not that one. He took off in his old black Dodge. Looks like a piece of shit, but I guess it runs okay.”
“Did he tell you where he was going?”
“Up to Cheyenne to spend a few days with his daughter. Said he’d be back next week. Mind if I pet your dog?”
“Sorry. He’s on duty.” I remembered what Mauer had said, that Zolner didn’t have any family. “A daughter? You’re sure?”
She glowered. “You think I’m lying? That old man’s so bitter I find it hard to believe any woman ever slept with him. Plus he’s ugly as sin. But some people get desperate. And he’s got a pension. Makes a certain kind of woman chase him.”
Probably meaning her. I pulled out a business card. “If he comes back, can you let me know? Tell him I need to speak with him. It’s urgent.”
She took the card. I was halfway down the porch stairs when she said, “You want to know about the other fellow who came by? He said it was urgent, too.”
I stopped, felt that staccato beat in my chest, and turned back. “Who was he?”
“Salesman, he told me. Said Fred called for a quote on siding. But”—she sidled over to the top of the stairs—“I saw that movie. The one about the mob. You know, the one with the horse’s head.”
“The Godfather?”
She nodded triumphantly. “That’s the one. That’s what he made me think of.”
“He made you think of Italian mobsters?”
The glare came back. “Hit man. Not Italian. Just a bad . . . what do you young people say? Dude. A bad dude. He smiled and smiled, and all the time I’m telling myself that smile don’t mean a thing. I didn’t want to get Fred in trouble, but I didn’t think it was a good idea to lie. So I told him the same thing I told you. Daughter in Cheyenne. You ask me, old Fred’s got a real problem. I think”—her voice dropped—“it’s his gambling. Probably borrowed from the wrong people. Don’t they cut off people’s fingers if they don’t pay up?”
“Did they threaten you?”
A snort. “You heard of the Asian Pride gang? I got two nephews and a cousin. Nobody better threaten me.”
Back in my truck, I frowned out the windshield. Maybe, probably, Zolner’s disappearance and his threatening visitor had nothing to do with the Davenports. Maybe the man was a siding salesman, although I’d bet my own pension against it. But I wasn’t big on coincidence. I called Mauer, confirmed that there was no family on record for Fred Zolner, then decided I’d try to run Zolner down another way before backing off.
I drove half a mile north toward Colfax Avenue and a long strip of bars. As I went, I crossed out of gang territory and into a place where the lifestyle tended more toward hookers and fifty-cent beers. Plenty of bars, but none with Royal or Crown in the name. I circled back and still came up with nothing. I pulled over and dialed Dan Albers.
“I’m not on shift, Parnell,” he said by way of greeting.
“Consider it overtime.” Albers was one of our engineers. He had a bad temper, and I’d had to rein him in now and again at employee barbeques. For Albers, beer and too much idle time were a deadly mix. But he was good at his job and showed up for work as reliably as a Monday-morning quarterback. “I need something.”
“Which is different how?”
“I’m looking for a railroading bar near East Colfax. The Royal or the Crown, something like that.”
“It’s not five o’clock, Parnell. But I’m in.”
“You’re out. This is business. You know the place?”
“The Royal Tavern’s what you want. But if you’re going in to knock heads, be gentle. Nothing but old guys there, getting drunk while they wait for the last stop.” He rattled off an address. “Now, about that drink?”
“I should be so lucky.”
He snorted. “Story of my life. Kidding, anyway. I’m in Topeka. And listen, Parnell? Call me again before I’m back on shift and it’s over between us.”
“That’s all it’d take?”
He chuckled and dropped off the line.
I glanced at Clyde as I put the engine in gear. “Did you doubt me?”
The Royal Tavern looked like a good place to go when no one else would take you in.
A squat, gray-brick building with blacked-out windows, the bar sat back from the road and was surrounded on three sides by an army of dying poplars whose leaves clung like the last strands of hair on a balding pate. I pulled into a dirt lot littered with broken glass and rain-sodden trash. There were only two other vehicles, and neither was a Dodge pickup.
The Royal wasn’t a typical working-class bar or a friendly neighborhood bar or even a convenient stopping-off place for a beer and some peanuts before you went home to the missus. This bar was exactly what Albers had said—the end of the line. The kind of place where you went to get thoroughly wasted before the bar closed and you had to go home and face whatever waited there. Maybe your personal demon in the form of a fifth of rotgut. Or maybe nothing more than the echo of empty rooms and your own reflection given back darkly.
It would be hard to fall farther than this.
I got out of the truck and waited as Clyde hopped down.
“The sooner we’re in, the sooner we can leave,” I told him.