Portland Noir - Kevin Sampsell [34]
“You’re collecting money all night?” the one on the couch asked.
“No, I just saw you were awake.”
“Aiming for a tip, huh?” he said, and laughed as if he’d made a tremendous joke.
22
The woman returned, holding a checkbook in the hand she wasn’t using to hold the boy. She tried to press it open on the back of the couch, then stopped and leaned toward us. “Go with Daddy now,” she whispered to the boy. He raised his head obediently and stretched his arms to the man at the door, who took him. The boy curled up on the man’s shoulder the same way he’d been on the woman’s.
“I’ve seen your son in the doorway sometimes when I deliver the paper,” I said. “He’s cute.” I reached to ruffle the boy’s hair then, but the man twisted away, moving the boy just beyond my reach. Both of our movements had been automatic, I think, but my hand was left in the air in front of the boy and his father until I dropped it back to my side.
The man looked harder at me. “Sometimes he has a hard time sleeping,” he said, and then, studying the bill, added: “And this isn’t due today.”
“It’s not,” I said.
“What’s wrong?” the woman asked.
The man on the couch slapped his leg and laughed wildly. He pointed at the television, where a number of motorcycles were tangled on the ground and riders scrambled to pull themselves from the mess. “Always the same turn,” he managed between laughs, “they always fuck up the same turn.”
“How much is it?” the woman asked.
“We don’t have to pay,” the boy’s father said, looking at me as if I’d claimed otherwise.
“But he’s right here,” the woman said.
“Take the baby and put him in his crib.” The man’s voice was tense, determined. “He should be sleeping.” He handed the child back to the surprised woman, who looked at me once more, and then headed from the room, patting the boy’s back and whispering to him. When she was gone, the man turned to me. “What’s your name?” he asked.
“Travis,” I told him.
“Listen, Travis. Next time you have a bill for us, just deliver it the same as you do to everyone else. I don’t care if you see our light on, and I don’t care if you see my son. Just throw the paper on the fucking lawn and move on. Understand?”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“I don’t give a shit if you’re sorry. You don’t knock on our door in the middle of the night asking for money.”
I nodded and closed the screen door behind me as I let myself out, then walked up the drive to my car. I didn’t look back until I put the car in gear and pulled away, and when I did, I saw the man standing in the doorway, watching me leave.
23
My hands shook so badly as I made my deliveries to the next few houses that I could barely manage to get the bills into the bags, and when I pulled back onto the highway again and headed further north, I drove past the turn I was supposed to take. It was just a small access road that led back down into the industrial area where I would deliver to a couple dozen more warehouses before being done for the day, but suddenly it was behind me, and I was still going. It was easier to drive straight and fast on the highway instead of continuing to struggle with the newspapers, whose plastic bags snapped in the breeze roaring past the open window. After a few minutes, as an experiment, I dropped one of the papers out the window of the car and turned for a moment to watch it tumble crazily along the road behind me.
The sky was starting to brighten in the east, which meant that I was way behind schedule. I knew that if I just kept going north, though, I would cross the Columbia River soon, and would be somewhere new when the sun rose. I pressed the gas to the floor, and the car strained to pick up speed. And when I tossed the stack of bills out the window, I watched in the rearview mirror as they exploded into a mass of fluttering shadows, like a flock of birds in the night.
PART II
CROOKS & COPS
THE WRONG HOUSE
BY JONATHAN SELWOOD
Mount Tabor
I’m working the pry bar along the north side of Mount Tabor Park trying to scrape together enough to make a buy off the Mexicans