Vinnie had stuffed what clothes were his into an old Samsonite, and then surveyed the house for whatever else seemed familiar or interesting. Next to the suitcase was a single cardboard box with a curious variety of things, half of which did not belong to him.
Louis pulled out a couple of candlesticks, a windup alarm clock and an old framed photo of him and Vinnie as boys, standing at a lake somewhere, Louis couldn’t remember. Vinnie presented an impressive bass by its gills.
“What are you doing there?” Vinnie asked. He held a fistful of Louis’s neckties in his hand.
“These are mine, Vinnie.”
“The hell they are.” He came over and draped the ties over the sofa arm, taking the photo from Louis. “I picked up the frame here from the Pay ‘n’ Save over on Sprague Avenue,” he said.
“Vinnie—“Louis closed his eyes and gave himself a breather. Logically, he knew none of this mattered. They were things, nothing more, and chances were he’d wind up with it all before long, anyway. But still, it got under his skin in the way that only Vinnie could make happen.
“Where was that at?” He nodded his chin to the photo.
“What, you don’t know?” Vinnie laughed softly, shook his head at his brother’s short-circuited recall. “It was Cricket Lake, up near Mead, remember? The same summer I got this.” He held up his arm, turned it so the scar caught the light from the table lamp. Louis remembered the scar but goddamn if he could bring back what exactly had happened.
“Right,” he said anyway. He took the photo and studied it some more, those cheeky faces smeared in dirt. The way Vinnie’s chest puffed out like a turkey, holding that bass as if it was the greatest thing to have ever happened to him.
Louis laid the picture back in the box, along with the candlesticks, the clock and the ties, rolled neatly into a tight coil. “I’ll give Hattie a call now,” he said. “Let her know you’re ready.” And before the hour was up, Vinnie was gone.
It had been nearly a week, and Louis couldn’t shake those last moments when Vinnie shuffled down the walkway and climbed into Hattie’s Fairmont. He’d paused at the door and looked up at Louis, scanning the house as if he’d just been released from prison or something; the only thing missing was a final salute, or maybe a defiant middle finger. It had been his brother’s choice to leave, there was no denying that, but Louis couldn’t help thinking that he’d pushed the decision along, having never gotten a decent hold on the resentment and irritation, the old coot being under foot and nerve every waking moment.
As he rolled out of his drive and watched the house shrink behind him, the windows all black and cold, Louis tried to turn over that sense of liberation that had been waiting for him all that time, the relief of being alone again. But it was nowhere to be found.
It was just after seven when he pulled into the station. Holly’s VW was in her usual spot, the stubby, yellow Beetle crowded under the low branches of the cedar. It was the only place in the lot that guaranteed shade for the bulk of the day, and she’d claimed it as hers the minute she came on board, timing her arrival well before the earliest of early birds.
This morning she was already at it, standing at the bulletin board, shuffling papers around, sticking pushpins in flyers received through the mail drop. There was a wild-eyed drugstore thief thought to be heading east with his underaged girlfriend; a hippie fellow who’d walked off from a work camp over in Yakima; a kid missing from out of Wyoming, likely kidnapped, information to follow.
“Always running,” Louis said.
“Why can’t folks just stay put?” Holly said, pulling down a yellowed sheet of paper and wadding it in her hand. “It’d make it a heck of a lot easier to catch ’em, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes, it would, as a matter of fact.”
Louis went straight to the coffee pot and fished his mug from the stack, stealing a cup while it continued to brew.
“I’m gonna hole up in my office,” he told Holly. “When Mitch gets in, have him give me a holler, will you?”
“It’ll be the first thing out of my mouth when I see him.”
He had the folder laid out on his desk when Mitch poked his head in through the door. There were yellowed papers, thin as tissue, text unreadable what with the blots of bleeding purple ink and script that looked to Louis like a child’s jumbling of random letters. In the center of it all he unfolded the passport. Staring back at him, that face, almost exactly the way it had looked up at him under the pines. Eyes vacant and tired, the face a roadmap of lines and folds from his hairline to his chin, nothing whatsoever to suggest that the man had had a single bit of joy in his life. Louis had seen plenty of passports in his life and while they could never be mistaken for a Sears portrait, one could typically get a sense of hope. A passport usually meant something good lay ahead, a journey somewhere better, perhaps. This one, in its grainy black and white, head bent forward as if he’d been hit from behind just before the flashbulb, was more like a mugshot for a man about to step before the firing squad.
“Holly said you’re antsy to see me,” Mitch said.
“‘Antsy’ is a bit much,” Louis said. He waved Mitch in, motioning for him to close the door behind him.
“You getting sleep?” Mitch asked.
“Some.”
“You don’t look like it,” he said. “Missing Vinnie, I suppose.”
Louis laughed at that one. “If it wasn’t for all the little clean spots on the shelves where he swiped things from me I wouldn’t even notice.” He picked up the passport and turned it to face Mitch. “If it’s all the same, I like to bounce a little something off you,” he said. Mitch didn’t say anything, so Louis went on. “This fellow. He’s taking up an awful lot of head space.”
“The Russian.”
“There’s something about it that I can’t seem to let go of.”
Mitch took the passport from Louis and thumbed the page. “You sound anxious.”
Louis turned in his chair to look out his window, to the bank of trees that shielded his view of the highway. “I feel like there’s a story out there,” he said. “It’s got a beginning, middle, and end that I’ve somehow cobbled together in my mind, and I don’t know if it’s just this crazy old man’s misfire, or if it’s the most obvious goddamned thing there ever was. I already got myself halfway convinced, but I want to be closer to damned sure before I do anything further with it.”
“Okay,” Mitch said, pulling a chair up to the desk. “I’m listening.”