“Lewis ain’t here,” said the first man. He had plump cheeks and fair skin, like he’d been raised on milk and cheese. His red T-shirt advertised Miller High Life, which suited him, because he was built like a beer keg. But he walked lightly, almost on his toes, as if approaching a tango partner. He had a large eagle tattoo wrapping one arm, and a Green Bay Packers tattoo on the other.
The second man had a long, angular face in a deep, gleaming black. “And who might y’all be?” The slow drawl sounded like Texas, or maybe Oklahoma. His T-shirt was blue and read MAXIE’S SOUTHERN COMFORT. His skin seemed a little too tight on his body, every muscle group clearly defined. He wore no shoes or socks, and Peter could see the hard calluses on his feet that came from kicking a heavy bag very hard over a long period of time.
Dinah didn’t seem to notice any of those things. She put her hands on her hips, back straight and strong. A formidable woman.
“Gentlemen,” she said. “I know he’s here. His truck is parked right outside.”
Behind the salvaged bar, the door opened and a man walked through carrying a can of Remington gun oil. His skin was coffee-brown, his head shaved. His ancestors could have been from anywhere and everywhere.
He stopped moving when he saw Dinah.
It was not a voluntary pause.
It was total stillness, abrupt and automatic. As if his sensory system had overloaded.
He wore crisp black jeans, a starched white dress shirt with the cuffs rolled exactly twice, and a carefully blank expression that did nothing to hide the hollow eyes of a man who was just punched hard in the stomach.
Dinah said, “Hello, Lewis.”
Only two quiet words, but in them Peter could guess their entire history.
—
It lasted for only a moment, the space of a breath. Then Lewis closed his eyes and opened them again, somehow a different person. Older, maybe, and harder.
“Hey, Dee,” he said. “Been a long time, girl.” His voice was like heating oil, slippery and dark. The heat and combustion latent within.
Watching Lewis cross the room, Peter thought of a mountain lion he had once seen in the North Cascades. Lewis had the same elemental precision and economy of motion. A predatory indifference. Peter was sure the two men in T-shirts were strong and capable. But compared to Lewis, they were bunny rabbits.
Lewis didn’t acknowledge Peter in any way, as if he weren’t even there. But Peter knew that if he did anything unexpected, Lewis would be ready. Because Lewis was always ready.
Peter was the same way.
Lewis stopped at the table and looked down at the disassembled shotgun. His hands twitched restlessly at the ends of corded arms. He said, “What you doing here, Dee?”
She tapped her toe twice. It was loud on the hard oak floor. “It’s about James,” she said. “You know he’s dead.”
Lewis didn’t look up. “Yeah,” he said. He contemplated the shotgun’s component parts, laid out neatly on the cloth. “I was real sorry to hear.”
Dinah said, “I need to know what he was doing for you.”
A faint smile tilted the side of Lewis’s mouth. “You always was direct.” He picked up the barrel and peered down the bore. “I used to like that about you.”
“Lewis,” she said. “I need to know. Was he working for you?”
Lewis didn’t look at her. “I don’t run the day-to-day,” he said. He put some gun oil on a bore swab and ran it through the barrel. “I went in one night and there was Jimmy, washing glasses.” He sprayed a hand swab and wiped down the action, the stock, and the barrel. The simple movements carried the grace of long practice. His shoulders lifted in a shrug. “Man did his job. I let him be.”
Dinah said, “I don’t know what else you’re doing, but I know you. What was James involved with? Was he handling money for you?”
Lewis looked at her now. The force of his full attention was tangible, like a hot desert wind. Dinah didn’t waver.
He said, “First place, girl, you don’t know me. Could be you never really did.” He began to reassemble the shotgun without looking at his hands. There was no trick to it, just practice. Sometimes, to calm himself when the static was particularly bad, Peter would close his eyes and field-strip his 1911.
“Second place,” said Lewis, “all the man did was tend bar. The only money he moved went in the till. I wouldn’t have asked him to do anything else. And he wouldn’t have done it.” He locked the barrel assembly into the stock, then thumbed massive shells into the magazine. “You knew anything about either of us, you’d have known that.”
Dinah stared him full in the face, deciding for herself.
“All right,” she said finally. “If James wasn’t carrying or keeping anything for you, then I have a problem. Someone left some money under my porch.”
The slight smile tilted Lewis’s mouth again. He spun the shotgun in one hand like a majorette’s baton. It was a show-off move. His hand wasn’t in full contact with the weapon. Of course, Peter was six long steps away, and Lewis could finish the spin and shoot Peter in the chest twice in the time it took him to close the distance. If it was loaded with buckshot, it would literally cut Peter in half.