His head nods yes. So Dobbins actually knows Ben Boothe’s address and sold Delilah out to Cherry. Cherry, the winner convicted of DV and whatever other felonies who is perfectly willing and able to kill his own friends.
“Where is the address now?”
Fading: “Dresser...right on top...”
He looks off in the distance. Smiles. I’m sure he sees the long line of his ancestors coming to greet him into their family in the afterlife. I’m sure right now they are beautiful and forgiving and just want him to be with them where it is safe and warm and far from knowing pain.
He can’t help me anymore. But thanks to this asshole I’m going to have to walk back to the road. I cover his mouth and nose with my glove. He doesn’t struggle. Off, go on your way, Cherry.
I wonder if his ancestors could see that.
37
Takes three hours total.
Cherry was digging in his glove box for a spare magazine. I found it. Siphon gas from the car tanks, soak the insides of the cars. The inferno sends smoke into a good wind which carries it towards the mountains and not the city. Gives me time to beat feet before EMS arrives.
The sun is high and still the world is frozen when I get to Dobbins’ house. He’s alone. In through the back door; he hasn’t done much about it from when I entered this morning.
There is he is, the accoutrement of a dirt bag surrounding him: pipe laying on the carpet, crumpled wrapper from a Twinkie, a skin mag dedicated to publishing amateur photos taken in poorly-lit basements with girls who might or might not be legally sound mind enough for consent.
Both thumbs slapping away on a joystick to a video game system. He looks up. He’s shirtless, has on sweat pants. The crotch darkens with urine.
“Hey, buddy,” I say. The controller falls from his hands. Limp now. “I thought you hadn’t seen Delilah Boothe for a while now.”
“Yeah—well, no—I just—see, this is the thing—”
“But you knew she was crashing with her dad, huh?”
“Now that was like last week, man. Who knows where she is—”
“How did you find this out?”
“I took her there,” he says. Small. Very small. His eyes turn red. Wet. “Look, mister, I—”
“Anything else you left out?”
“No. I swear. I—”
“Why’d she go to her dad’s?”
“I dunno but she’s there. She’s there. Please understand that whatever Danny and Cherry said—”
I say goodbye with six rounds from Cherry’s gun.
38
Cab picks me up four blocks over.
Drops me off a few blocks from Cherry’s house. I tear a twenty in half, drop one piece in the front seat and say, “Meet me here in half an hour.” He nods, pockets the piece where his boss won’t be checking.
I smoke, walk. Find it, go right up the front steps. I knock on the front door. No answer. I know where two out of the possible three occupants are.
A guy I know—and maybe he’s somebody I shouldn’t be seen with—sells me bump keys by the shitload. They’re a lock-picking device used to circumvent pin tumbler locks, which are generally inside cylinder locks. They work and they don’t damage the system. No one will know.
I slide a bump key into the front door lock; give it three solid taps with the butt of my .44 Magnum, turn. Open. Inside.
Cherry’s room: sparse furniture, messy in the way a hotel room is when the occupant is in town for a lot of business and not very organized. I go to the dresser.