4

Senior Probation Officer Tom Cole lowered himself out of his Explorer gingerly to avoid straining his knees. The pressure of the bones rubbing together felt like needles digging deep in the joints.

He slammed the door and hitched his pants, making sure the tail of his shirt hid the Glock 23 holstered at his kidney.

Traffic whizzed past him on Melrose, so he held tight to the side of the vehicle. The sun warmed his shaved scalp like a heat lamp. Stepping up to the sidewalk, he ran his palm over the smoothness from his shave an hour ago, back toward his clean crown, and then forward over the ridge above his forehead. The Fu Manchu mustache that framed his mouth was the only hair left on his head other than his eyebrows, and in this heat he thought of shaving that off too.

This unannounced visit to Flip’s place was overdue. He had it on his schedule every week, but with all his high-control parolees, he always seemed to be playing catch-up.

Tom moved off the sidewalk into the alley behind Flip’s apartment building. He scowled at the graffiti scrawled everywhere—black, red, blue. The name Trixter in yellow block letters was outlined in red to make it look three-dimensional. Above, way out of reach, someone must have leaned out from the roof to paint the huge initials RF. Lower on the wall, less artistic initials were drawn in white over others partially crossed out with black paint.

He walked past blue cubic trash bins reeking of baked garbage, a door meshed by iron grating, the entrance to an underground parking lot with a black-barred gate closed against intruders.

Here was the back door to Flip’s building. A keyhole and a handle only, no knob. He gripped the handle and yanked it. Solid.

Above the doorway, burglar bars covered the second-floor windows. A smile crept across his face. Bars on the windows with Flip inside. It was like a zoo with predator and prey locked in together.

On the sidewalk at the end of the alley, Tom sidestepped a pair of Goths in long black coats despite the heat. Their faces were pale behind black hair. Transylvanians. Next came three women side by side, sunglass styles branding them as tourists, purses dangling from their fingers. Ready to shop. He passed a tattoo parlor and glanced inside. The artist—spiked hair, arms inked up—sat with his feet propped on the counter in front of images of tat options pasted on the wall. The man reached forward to flick his cigarette against the edge of an ashtray, and their eyes met before the wall passed between them.

Tom rounded another corner and found handbills pasted the length of a wall like wallpaper insanely repeating the same announcements over and over until you couldn’t help but understand and remember that Kayse Evans was going to be playing at the Gig on August 28 and 29.

Five doors down, he came to the front of Flip’s building. In contrast to all the security in back, the door here swung open like the place was a drugstore during business hours. He stepped inside.

No elevator. The climb was going to murder his knees. Calling Flip down would save the wear on his joints, but that would be cutting corners. Tom needed to take a look at this new apartment.

He leaned on the banister, trying to take as much weight off his knees as he could, but every step grated. Soon he’d have to have the surgeries done. He couldn’t delay it much longer.

Down the hallway, he passed six doors and came to 312 and raised his knuckles and rapped. The door opened.

Flip held on to the edge of the door as if he wanted to slam it closed. Recognition of Tom Cole crept onto his face, and a sideways kind of grin replaced the glower.

Flip was wide enough that Tom couldn’t see past him. The man was shaped like a nose tackle; if you wanted to move him, you’d have a big job. He stood with his feet spaced, letting his black eyes bore under black brows, buzz-cut black hair, the nose a prizefighter’s, squashed onto his face like putty. A scar from an old cut creased his right eyebrow and continued diagonally upward to the corner of his forehead, lifting that brow just enough to give him the look of a perpetually interested observer.

“Officer Cole,” Flip said, and his grin exuded so much menace that Tom shifted his back muscles to make sure the holster hadn’t suddenly vanished from his belt. “I guess you want to come in.” He wore a wife-beater T-shirt, the kind Marlon Brando wore seducing Blanche. Tom could see the rockiness of his muscled arms and shoulders, the chest like a wall.

Flip backed away and motioned inside. The gracious host.

“Step on outside, Flip. You’re going to wait out here.”

Flip hunched over for an instant, shrugged, and stepped past Tom into the hallway. The man’s smell drifted up to him. Some kind of cologne tried to mask it and didn’t quite succeed. It was a smell like you’d expect to find under a rock where bugs crawled around.

Tom locked him outside.

The room was typical of furnished apartments like these, bare except for a cheap coffee table and a brown plaid sofa that sagged in the middle. Beyond it was a kitchen, a refrigerator green as the wall at Fenway. The rank smell of unwashed dishes filtered through the room.

Tom wandered into the kitchen. No drug paraphernalia. He wouldn’t expect any with this guy. The dishes in the sink hadn’t piled up beyond counter level yet, but they were close. A coffee cup sat on the counter with a line inside that marked where the coffee had been when he’d set it there, a quarter-inch above the black liquid now pooled in the cup.

On the small bathroom counter, Flip’s toiletries were scattered—a disposable razor, Barbasol shave cream, and a bar of soap worn down to a nub. A bottle of Old Spice was the one nod to vanity.

The bedroom was nothing to get excited about. A scarred bureau with drawers hanging on at odd angles. No sheets on the bed, just a couple of blankets on top of the bare mattress.

Tom returned to the door and joined Flip in the hallway. “Tell me about this job.”

“Working in a soda warehouse. Moving cases around. It’s not bad.”

“Yeah?”

“I guess you want the guy’s name and number.”

“You guess right.”

Flip went inside and came back with a business card. Tom pulled out his notepad and copied down the name and number of the warehouse manager.

“Does he know about your record?” He returned the card to Flip.

“He knows I got one. Knows I got released from Lancaster last month. That’s enough, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, that’s enough.”

Flip kept his hands behind his back.

“Who you been hanging around with, Flip?”

Those black eyes held steady, didn’t move off Tom’s face. “Everybody I know’s in prison. Who’m I going to hang around with?” There was no flinching on Flip’s face, no turning of the eyes. “I’ve been keeping to myself. Not going to bars, not hanging around with any known felons. I’ve been staying in town. What else is there?”

“Let me see those hands.”

Flip’s eyes betrayed him for an instant. It was like something flew across his brows to narrow his eyes and then was gone, and the face relaxed again. He brought his hands around, palms up.

“Turn them over.”

Flip smiled, his lips not parting. It was an animal smile. He turned them over.

The skin on the knuckles was broken and bruised, the injuries a few days old. A laceration an inch long ran across the middle knuckle on his right hand. “I scraped them moving some cases of soda.”

“Cases of soda.”

“Sure.” Flip dropped his hands.

Tom saw no marks on Flip’s face. Nothing but the battered knuckles. “All right, we’re going to take some pictures. Keep those hands out.” Tom pulled his camera out of his pocket and snapped two shots of the hands. It was mostly for show, but there was no harm putting Flip on notice. He slipped the camera back into his pocket. “You know I’ll check the hospitals. I’ll find out what really happened.”

Those eyes didn’t flicker. “There’s nothing to find out. I just told you. Moving cases of soda. Nothing else to it, Officer.”

The eyes held too steady. This guy had been lying all his life. Just like the rest of them. They were all as good at it as they were at survival inside.

“Okay, Flip. I’ll see what I can find out from our database over the past few days. When I find a guy you put in a hospital, or if this job turns out to be bogus, you’re going right back inside.” He turned away.

Having his back turned to Flip flared up every nerve ending. But no blow hammered into his back or neck. Flip only said, “I don’t get many visitors, Officer. You come back real soon.”

Tom turned. “You’re pushing your luck.”

That animal smile came back, nothing happy about it. “I ran out of luck a long time ago.”