The Last Kind Word

The Last Kind Word by David Housewright Page B

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Authors: David Housewright
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had holstered it between my belt and the small of my back, and stepped away from the table. Jimmy went to his sister and pulled her out of the line of fire. The old man dodged out of the way as well. Skarda sat in his chair and watched. Roy eyed me cautiously yet did not move. It occurred to me that I might have played my hand too hard, forcing Roy to go all in even though neither he nor I wanted to. Fortunately, clearer heads prevailed. Josie stepped directly between us, slowly looking first at Roy, then at me, then Roy, and finally back to me again.
    â€œI’m grateful for what you did for my brother,” she said. “But gratitude has an expiration date. Like a sack of donuts, after a while it just goes stale. You know?”
    â€œI’ll be out of your hair by this time tomorrow,” I said.
    Josie glanced over her shoulder at Roy. He found something on the wall that seemed to demand his immediate attention and was pretending not to listen to us.
    â€œGood,” she said. “On that happy note, I think we should be thinking about sleep. Jill, you’re with me in the master bedroom.”
    Jill drifted toward the doorway while watching her husband as if she expected him to stop her. When he didn’t, she disappeared into the bedroom.
    â€œRoy, why don’t you, Dad, and Jimmy take the bunk beds. Dave, you stay out here with Mr. Dyson.”
    â€œIn case I decide to run off with the silverware,” I added.
    Jimmy grinned. He was the only one who did.
    Blankets and pillows were doled out. Jimmy, Roy, and the old man went quietly into their bedroom while the women went into theirs. Skarda bedded down on the sofa across from me. When he wasn’t looking, I took the county-issued sneakers he had been wearing when we escaped and pushed them farther back under the sofa where no one could see them.

 
    FOUR
    I couldn’t sleep; wasn’t sure I wanted to. It was well past midnight and Skarda was snoring softly when I rolled off my sofa, went to the refrigerator, and found a beer. It was in a blue and white can, the kind of beer I would ridicule even before I quit the St. Paul Police Department to collect a seven-digit reward on an embezzler. But I was stuck in a North Woods cabin with Fagin and his pickpockets, and beggars can’t be choosy. I took it out onto the deck, opened it, sat in a chair, propped my feet on the railing, and took a long pull. The air was crisp, yet I didn’t mind. A half moon hung in the sky, its beams reflecting off the borderless black water just visible beyond the trees.
    I drank slowly while my inner voice debated my options. It kept coming back to the same one— Jump into the Jeep Cherokee and get the hell out of here. Since becoming a man of leisure I sometimes worked as an unlicensed private investigator doing the occasional favor for friends. But the people I was working for, they weren’t actually my friends, and this was frickin’ dangerous.
    On the other hand, so far everything had gone exactly as planned. Besides, there was something exhilarating about being undercover, knowing that at any moment you could give yourself away. I understood why some cops like it so much …
    *   *   *
    I blamed Harry, real name Brian Wilson, special agent working out of the Minneapolis office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I called him Harry because when I met him five years ago he reminded me of the character actor Harry Dean Stanton. He had been working at the time with an agent of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives named Chad Bullert. I blamed him, too.
    Three days ago—was it only three days?—Bullert ambushed me in the clubhouse of the Columbia Golf Course in Minneapolis. I liked Columbia—it was a short course with narrow fairways that favored course management over distance. After playing eighteen holes, Harry and I had stopped in the clubhouse to talk it over. The waitress

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