The parking lot of The Burger Shack was littered with empty Styrofoam cups and wadded paper sacks, and stands of teenagers who slouched against car doors and fenders, and one another, as they dragged on cigarettes and stuffed greasy fries into their mouths practically by the fistful. It was the same thing nearly every night and Lord Almighty how Louis hated the whole scene. He loathed the kids for their laziness and misguided entitlement and freedom from worry, and their sheer ignorance of the kind of world that lay ahead of them. One minute they’re eating a greasy burger and the next minute they could be riding off down the highway with someone they think they know pretty well, only to be left dead a mere twenty-five yards off a forest service road, in the middle of nowhere, no sensible explanation at all.
“Burger Shack,” he found himself saying aloud to Vinnie. “Nothing like Zip’s.”
His brother looked up from his chocolate milkshake. “This here is an alright shake,” he said, “but their burgers could stand in for dog food. Hell. Nobody does it as good as Zip’s.”
Louis remembered vividly the scent of fried onions, and the tumbling plume of smoke that pumped from the flat roof of Zip’s. The grid of streets that stretched out from that place into the East Detroit neighborhoods, from the shores of the Detroit River all the way out to Grosse Pointe. And then his mind rediscovered the tenth-grade harvest dance, and that long walk from the high school to the pay phone that stood alone outside the post office, just across the street from Randy’s Barbershop. He’d still had on him the nickel that Vinnie had given him before he left that night. “Just in case,” he’d said. “You never know when you might need to call, and it’s a lot more than a nickel if you have to reverse the charges.”
“You got Hattie coming by to see you?”
“I do,” Vinnie said with an uneasy laugh. He trembled a hand through his wispy hair, like breaking cobwebs. “She ain’t a big kick but she’s good for company.”
“You know she used to be married to Tip Moody.” Tip ran the U-Pick wrecking yard just off Wolf Creek Road, and everyone and their brother knew the sideshow the two of them had once been.
“Ancient history,” Vinnie said. “Tip gave up on her a long time before he put her out.”
Louis took a bite of his burger, dry as sawdust. “I told you I don’t like her in the house when I’m gone,” he said through the chewing. “She’s a bad influence.”
“At my age, I’m lucky if I can get any influence at all.”
They’d shared five dances, Louis and Shirley Byers, four fast and one slow, when she suddenly fanned herself and said she was thirsty, that she was going to get a drink of punch. Louis said, “By all means,” moving to the chairs at the edge of the gym to wait for her. That she didn’t come right back didn’t bother him at first. That she lingered on the other side of the gym for some time with her girlfriends, even that didn’t get on his nerves enough to make any kind of difference. But then she ran off with that creature Brenda Hoyt, and when he waved at them, Brenda just laughed at him and yanked Shirley by the arm. The both of them sauntered off from the gym to the parking lot where he knew Sam Gifford and Shel Tompkins were holed up in Shel’s Ford Coupe smoking reefer. They didn’t come back all night. That hurt.
Louis made that journey from the school to the post office as if his jacket was concrete, and he called home from the pay phone, with the nickel that Vinnie had insisted he take. Just in case.
And it was his brother who came to him, still wearing his ratty bathrobe, not even having taken the five minutes to change into a set of real clothes. He drove Louis straight to Zip’s, and sat with him without talking, just holding onto his kid brother’s shoulder as the boy cried like a baby into his vanilla milkshake.
The sun had dropped behind the high mountain ridges and everything had that kind of tinny feel, where even the sunflower stems showed gray. The streetlights were flickering up and down the street in fits, as if even they didn’t understand the time of day. Louis looked to make sure his brother’s seatbelt was locked in before pulling his cruiser from the lot and sailing out onto the highway toward home.
At first, he didn’t pay much attention to the sedan, other than the burgundy-colored trunk on the navy-blue body. Even that didn’t give him any kind of pause. It was a rare day if he didn’t see a car that was in some way patched together, tires of four different manufacturers, quarter-panels coated in primer, grills and bumpers cobbled together with baling wire, rebar, or even rough-hewn wood.
It was his brother who noticed it, about fifty yards ahead, pulling out from the liquor store. “He’s winking at you,” he said, pointing a finger up the road.
“Who’s winking?” And then Louis caught sight of it: a wide-backed sedan—an old Skylark—with its right taillight out.
Any other time he might have let it go, but it was good to let people know about these things. And his brother was right there. If anyone needed an example of responsibility, it was him. Louis reached down and hit the lights and ran on up close to the sedan, so he could get a look at the plates. They went on like that for a quarter-mile or so, Louis cozy with the car, the driver continuing on his way. Finally, he gave a tap to the siren and the driver waved a hand out the window and steered himself to a stop on the shoulder.
“Stay here,” Louis said.
“Where the hell you think I’m gonna go, Einstein?” Vinnie opened the glove compartment and started poking through it.
Louis got out and did the long walk from door to door. Besides the mismatched trunk, the car was a patchwork of paint and primer, the rear driver’s fender a spackled, matte gray. The driver had the window fully down, his registration and license at the ready. Louis recognized him immediately, the windswept mop and haggard face, wrung through and hung out to dry. The woman in the passenger seat, he did not know, though he could tell she was a pretty gal, and some years younger than the driver. She stared forward through the windshield, not looking at Louis.
“Was I speeding?” Lester Fanning slid his elbow out, resting it casually on the door. “It’s forty-five out here.”
“I know that, Lester,” Louis said. “Were you aware that you have a taillight out?”
This seemed to irritate him, though Louis couldn’t tell if it was the question or the circumstances that stuck in his side. “No, I was not.”
“It’s not a felony,” Louis reassured with a grin. He read over the license and registration. Lester Fanning had been on Louis’s radar since his arrival in the county some five or six years earlier. While Louis had to admit that the man hadn’t done anthing in particular to warrant suspicion (at least not that he was aware of), he always seemed up to something, and the sheriff knew from a few phone calls that there was a history there. Lester was a shifty sort who set off every light on Louis’s board—showing up in town at all hours with no consistent schedule, always plenty of cash to throw around. He lived in some primitive cabin he’d thrown together up in Whiskey Hills, and Lord knew there wasn’t a whole hell of a lot up there in those woods other than a scatter of seasonal hunting cabins and a few year-round hippie types.
“You have some bodywork done?” Louis turned to look back at the gray fender.
“Just some spot repair,” Lester said. “Rust.” He kept his hands on the steering wheel, squinting up at Louis as he spoke. Above his lip the skin glistened almost imperceptible, if not for the catch of the dropped sun against it.
“Mr. Fanning,” Louis said. “Can you take those keys from the ignition and step out of the car for me?” He moved back from the car and rested his hand on his holster. He was not yet worried for himself, though there was concern for what might be on display for his brother back in the cruiser. This should be nothing—it probably was nothing. But his gut.
Lester climbed out, his hands in front of him. He was a short man, but he carried himself tall, broad in the shoulders, squat legs and arms, everything in that rectangular shape. And that hair so unruly and thick as a mop, everything swamped with the dank odor of cigarettes, stale and heady.
“Am I in trouble, Sheriff?” he asked.
Louis walked backward, slowly. “I’d like you to open your trunk for me if you would.”
“What do you need me to do that for?”
“Lester,” the woman said from inside the car. “Don’t make trouble.”
Lester leaned down and looked into the car, then looked back at Louis with a grin and a slow shake of his head. He said, “Since the lady protests, I will do that, sir. Though I don’t believe it’s warranted.” He moved with Louis’s pace, his hands visible and steady except for the rattle of the keys. “I do believe I have the right to refuse. But I’m a man who is respectful of the law and the work that you fellows do.” He put the key in the lock and popped the trunk. “Far be it for anyone to say that Lester Fanning does not comply when asked.”
The trunk lifted like a drawbridge and Louis took from his pocket a pen light and shone it down into the space. With the exception of an old wool blanket that lay folded against the back, the trunk was empty and spotless. He focused the beam at the lamp housing where a pair of wires hung loosely from the connector. He reached in and pinched them between his fingers.
“Here’s your trouble,” he said. He held the wires up and turned them from one side to the other, the frayed, copper fringe shining in the light.
“Would you look at that,” Lester said. “I must have snagged them when I was mucking around back here.” He stepped back from Louis and rested his body against the fender. “I’ll be sure and get that taken care of first thing in the morning.”
“You’ll want to curtail your night driving,” Louis said.
“I’m heading home as we speak.”
Louis went back to his cruiser and climbed inside, reaching across Vinnie to the glove compartment. Fishing out a scrap of paper, he wrote out the name and tucked it down into his shirt pocket. “Lester Fanning,” he said aloud.
“Who’s that?” Vinnie asked.
“That’s him.” The Buick sat for a second while Lester fiddled with his papers and then it slowly pulled back out onto the highway, the single red stripe shrinking until the car disappeared around the bend.
“You sure carry yourself out there like you’re somebody,” his brother said. “Like you’re a somebody among somebodies.”
“World of lions, Vin,” Louis replied. “Doesn’t pay to act like a lamb.”
“That’s what Dad always said,” Vinnie nodded. “He said that.”
“Yes, he did.” And then Louis started up the car and eased out onto the highway and drove the last few miles to his house on Polk Street.