One Kind Favor I Ask of You (Kit Tolliver #8) (The Kit Tolliver Stories) by Lawrence Block Page A
Authors: Lawrence Block
Ads: Link
been on since then, but she took it out anyway and unfolded it and looked it over. Then she picked up her suitcase and started walking.
She’d expected a house, a modest older home, with a couple of broken-down cars on the lawn and, in the driveway, a rusted-out pickup with a gun rack. What she found was a house trailer, the first of four strung in a row, 24A and B and C and D. No pickup, with or without a gun rack. No cars on the lawn, and in fact no lawn; the trailers nestled within a near-forest of scrub pine, and the fallen needles carpeted the ground.
One car, a Hyundai hatchback with a dented front fender, stood alongside the trailer.
Home Sweet Home, she thought.
She’d have phoned, but she’d been unable to find a phone listed for him, or indeed for anyone at 24A Maple Street. And maybe that was just as well, because what would she have said? Hi, you won’t remember me, but I gave you a bon voyage blow job the morning before you shipped out. I can’t remember what year it was, so there may have been a few tours of duty since then for you, and a few blow jobs, too, but—
But what, pray tell?
Better to just show up and play it by ear. She had no idea what to say in person, but she figured she’d come up with something. And he didn’t have to remember her, or welcome her with open arms, or do anything, really, but let her in the front door. She could take it from there.
Wrong again.
The woman who came to the door looked as though she’d been bearing up bravely ever since the day she was born. That would have been some thirty-five years ago, and they hadn’t been easy years, and she wore her long-suffering look as if it affirmed her identity.
A wife? A girlfriend? No wedding ring, and this woman didn’t look like anybody’s girlfriend. Too young to be Alan’s mother. Jesus, was it even the right house?
She opened her mouth to say something, not sure what she should say, but the woman stopped her by holding her forefinger to her lips.
“My brother’s sleeping,” she said.
Thus answering an unasked question. This was Alan’s sister, worn down by life, and now sharing a trailer in the back of beyond with her brother.
Provided this was the right address. Just because this woebegone lady had a brother didn’t mean it was the man on her list.
So she whispered back, “Alvin Kirkaby?”
A nod.
“I used to know him. Years ago, I don’t even know if he’d remember me, but I happened to find this address for him, and I was—”
What? In the neighborhood? The only way anyone wound up in this particular neighborhood was by getting lost and being unable to find their way home. She let the sentence trail off unfinished, and the sister nodded, as if it all made perfect sense to her.
“We can talk outside,” came her whisper, and the finger she’d held to her lips was now pointing to a mismatched pair of lawn chairs huddled together beneath the pines. “I’ll just be a moment.”
“Hope the coffee suits you,” the woman said. “It’s instant.”
It could have been anything, she thought. It had been souped up with powdered non-dairy creamer and a lethal quantity of sugar, and any coffee taste it might have started out with was long gone. She said it was fine.
“It’s a relief to step outside,” the woman said. “I don’t like to leave him, you know.”
“Why’s that?”
“You don’t know? What happened to him?”
She shook her head.
“Roadside bomb.”
“Oh.”
“They thought he was going to die. Shipped him home in pieces, figured he’d be gone in a week or two and they could bury what was left in Arlington. But our people are hard to kill. This place, an uncle left it to me. I was living in one room over in Charlotte, doing data entry for an HMO. Left that and moved down here where I could take care of my brother. My name’s Joanne.”
No idea what name she’d given Alan, and what difference did it make? “Mine’s Pam,” she said.
“Pam. Why’d you
She’d expected a house, a modest older home, with a couple of broken-down cars on the lawn and, in the driveway, a rusted-out pickup with a gun rack. What she found was a house trailer, the first of four strung in a row, 24A and B and C and D. No pickup, with or without a gun rack. No cars on the lawn, and in fact no lawn; the trailers nestled within a near-forest of scrub pine, and the fallen needles carpeted the ground.
One car, a Hyundai hatchback with a dented front fender, stood alongside the trailer.
Home Sweet Home, she thought.
She’d have phoned, but she’d been unable to find a phone listed for him, or indeed for anyone at 24A Maple Street. And maybe that was just as well, because what would she have said? Hi, you won’t remember me, but I gave you a bon voyage blow job the morning before you shipped out. I can’t remember what year it was, so there may have been a few tours of duty since then for you, and a few blow jobs, too, but—
But what, pray tell?
Better to just show up and play it by ear. She had no idea what to say in person, but she figured she’d come up with something. And he didn’t have to remember her, or welcome her with open arms, or do anything, really, but let her in the front door. She could take it from there.
Wrong again.
The woman who came to the door looked as though she’d been bearing up bravely ever since the day she was born. That would have been some thirty-five years ago, and they hadn’t been easy years, and she wore her long-suffering look as if it affirmed her identity.
A wife? A girlfriend? No wedding ring, and this woman didn’t look like anybody’s girlfriend. Too young to be Alan’s mother. Jesus, was it even the right house?
She opened her mouth to say something, not sure what she should say, but the woman stopped her by holding her forefinger to her lips.
“My brother’s sleeping,” she said.
Thus answering an unasked question. This was Alan’s sister, worn down by life, and now sharing a trailer in the back of beyond with her brother.
Provided this was the right address. Just because this woebegone lady had a brother didn’t mean it was the man on her list.
So she whispered back, “Alvin Kirkaby?”
A nod.
“I used to know him. Years ago, I don’t even know if he’d remember me, but I happened to find this address for him, and I was—”
What? In the neighborhood? The only way anyone wound up in this particular neighborhood was by getting lost and being unable to find their way home. She let the sentence trail off unfinished, and the sister nodded, as if it all made perfect sense to her.
“We can talk outside,” came her whisper, and the finger she’d held to her lips was now pointing to a mismatched pair of lawn chairs huddled together beneath the pines. “I’ll just be a moment.”
“Hope the coffee suits you,” the woman said. “It’s instant.”
It could have been anything, she thought. It had been souped up with powdered non-dairy creamer and a lethal quantity of sugar, and any coffee taste it might have started out with was long gone. She said it was fine.
“It’s a relief to step outside,” the woman said. “I don’t like to leave him, you know.”
“Why’s that?”
“You don’t know? What happened to him?”
She shook her head.
“Roadside bomb.”
“Oh.”
“They thought he was going to die. Shipped him home in pieces, figured he’d be gone in a week or two and they could bury what was left in Arlington. But our people are hard to kill. This place, an uncle left it to me. I was living in one room over in Charlotte, doing data entry for an HMO. Left that and moved down here where I could take care of my brother. My name’s Joanne.”
No idea what name she’d given Alan, and what difference did it make? “Mine’s Pam,” she said.
“Pam. Why’d you
Similar Books
