In Autumn's Wake Read online

  “Yeah, we’ll pass on that one.” He puts his hands behind his head and tilts back. “Women in here couldn’t care less you’re using them. At twenty-two, you better live it up before it becomes permanently limp.”

  I pick a piece of lint off my black flannel shirt. “At twenty-two, I’m too old to be screwing gullible women to ease my pain.”

  “Whatever, man.” He rocks the chair forward and back. “Sounds like something your mom would say to you.”

  “That’s because she raised me right.”

  The front legs of his chair hit the floor. He leans closer to the table. “Is that so? Was your mom the one who taught you the proper way to dispose of a body?”

  I lean in and whisper, “Shut it, Sean.”

  “Just sayin’, you’re no angel.”

  The girl at the bar looks over her shoulder. She scans the small crowd of Friday-night regulars, forming a nervous smile when she discovers us gawking. I sit taller and pull my shoulders back.

  “Jackpot, eye contact,” Sean whispers.

  Taking her smile as an invitation, I unwind my scarf and drape it over my coat on the back of my chair. “Be back in a sec. Or not.”

  “Good luck. Don’t say anything stupid, like your mom raised you right.” His laughter trails me to the bar.

  I roll my shirt sleeves, showing off my forearms. They’re not Popeye-sized, but larger than most. “Hi,” I say. She turns away as if my greeting was intended for somebody else. “I said, hi.”

  Annoyed a little, she drums her fingers on the bar while eyeing me in the mirror. I hold steady. She arches a brow with effort.

  “Not interested,” she says, her voice fixed flat.

  “In what?” I step closer to her.

  The barstool spins, and she thrusts her palms into my chest, shoving me backward. Message sent loud and clear: don’t invade her space.

  “I didn’t mean to—”

  She cuts me off, thumbing toward the empty chair across from Sean, directing me back to the table.

  “Okay. All right.” I lift my hands, backing away. “This is my bar, by the way,” I call back to her. “Being friendly to new customers isn’t a crime.”

  “She’s not listening,” Sean says. “What happened?”

  “She told me to get lost.”

  “Forget her then. Look for someone else before Riley gets here. She hates it when you’re the third wheel on our date nights.”

  “If I’m such a burden, I can hang with my dad in the back office.”

  “Hey, don’t take offense. Riley’s the one who’s bothered by your constant negativity, not me. I’m the one stuck in the middle of you two. Can’t leave you alone and can’t spend a Friday night without her.”

  Sean and Riley. They’ve had an on-off relationship for years. More bedmates than lovers, they hook up whenever Sean thinks he’s hit a dry spell, which to him is every weekend. And like most women who frequent the bar, Riley doesn’t mind being his bed buddy. The promise of free booze and screwing Sean is plenty for her to show her face tonight—or any night.

  Riley and I get along well enough, but her endless gab about Sean’s legendary moves in the sack can be tiresome. It’s bad enough Sean and I share a house with walls so thin I have to cover my head with a pillow when the moaning starts in his room, I don’t need to overhear the exaggerated details from her on top of that. And if she gets sloshed tonight, her touchy-feely side will drive me nuts. Like the pawing at my leg while going on about how much she misses Heather. It’s tough. Nothing is more depressing than talking about my dead girlfriend when I’m drunk.

  “See anyone else?” Sean asks.

  I browse the room. “No one I care to talk to or haven’t already been with.”

  “Not going back for seconds?”

  I shake my head, spotting Ms. Not-Interested peering at me from the bar, making me question if she’s really playing Ms. Hard-To-Get. She hasn’t taken off her black leather gloves or burgundy peacoat, clutching the collar tight as she drinks. People who are tense and never remove their coats are usually planning to drink and dash. Only I can’t imagine this girl is that type. By her tasteful makeup and clothes, she must have money.

  Then again, the ones with innocent faces and expensive clothing can be the most deceptive.

  I whistle to get Tim’s attention, rubbing my thumb and index finger together in a classic money anticipation gesture. My dad and I use it to signal our staff when we have our eye on a customer. Right away, he picks up that I’m questioning the girl in front of him. He nods that she’s cool, reassuring me by pocketing her tip and wiping down the counter in front of her. He tries to make small talk, but she rejects him with a rapid spin on the barstool. I smile when she faces me. She spins back.

  “I gotta find out what’s up with this one,” I say to Sean. “Need anything while I’m at the bar?”

  He points behind me when I stand. “Watch out—”

  A guy built like a rock, a good twenty pounds heavier than me, pushes me out of the way and heads straight for the bar. Pungent cologne lingers in the air behind him. He stops a foot behind the girl and stares at the back of her head.

  “That’s why you struck out with her.” Sean raises his mug toward them. “I thought you might be losing your game, but I guess she was waiting for that chump.”

  “No way, she’s been on guard since she came in. Something fishy is going on. Look at that guy; he hasn’t said hello or done anything to let her know he’s here.”

  The girl sees his reflection in the mirror and spins around. She smacks the guy’s face—far more aggressive than she was with me—then attacks again by ramming her fist into his chest.

  “Step back, or I’m calling the cops,” she warns.

  She’s lifted off the barstool and hustled toward the door. I try to step in, but the guy elbows my side, knocking me into our table. My mug tumbles and shatters on the floor, silencing the bar.

  “Let go of me!” My pulse erupts when I see the look of sheer terror on the girl’s face. “Stop it!”

  He tightens his hold and forces her out the front door.

  “He’s not getting away with this.” I chase after him, Sean a step behind, then more footfalls follow as customers rush outside.

  “I got this.” Sean forges past me in his boots with the grippy treads, having better traction than I do in my wingtip dress boots. He manages to land on the guy’s back, bringing him down to the sidewalk in a heap.

  The guy’s face reddens like a plum. “Get off me. Ow! My wrist. Get off!”

  They wrestle on the sidewalk, ending up in a snowdrift in front of the building.

  I slide on the icy sidewalk a few feet past them, coming hip to hip with the mystery girl. My touch draws her gaze away from the fight. She looks over my head into the night sky, the corner streetlight igniting her heart-shaped face, dotted with freckles. Snowflakes melt on her long eyelashes, and the light reveals something I hadn’t noticed in the dark bar—her bi-colored eyes. One hazel. One brown. Framed by full brows and a small nose, her killer looks capture me. I’ve stepped into a dream.

  Color amid the landscape is sparse in Northland. It’s distinctly black and white with splashes of red, either from city lights or blood. This girl’s burgundy coat, freckles, and copper penny highlights are the warmest colors I’ve seen since the leaves changed last autumn.

  “You all right?” I ask, turning my guttural voice tender. “Let’s get out of the cold and—” She shrinks away when I touch her shoulder, launching into a wobbly escape. “Hey, you shouldn’t be out here alone. You need a lift home? My friend Riley can give you a ride if you want a woman to drive you.” She walks faster. “Wait, slow down.”

  I track her distorted reflection in the sidewalk’s slick ice, watching her shadow move farther ahead until the flashing neon light of Big Daddy’s Pizzeria is all that remains at my feet. With her hands out at her sides like a penguin, she rounds the corner of th
e next block and disappears into the vastness of the city.

  I turn back and see Sean with his arms crossed, keeping watch over the guy, the onlookers heading inside. When a fight’s over in the city, there’s no need to hang around for the aftermath unless you can handle the agony of frozen fingers and toes. Tonight it’s a whopping ten degrees. I don’t blame everyone for taking off.

  I make it back to Sean’s side and pat the snow off his shoulders. He points at the unintentional snow angel his flailing body left in the drift, just before the constant Northland wind kicks up a storm of flurries and morphs the outline of the angel into a pitchfork. We were raised Catholic, but not an ounce of God stuck with us once we became teenagers. Between the cursing, screwing, and kicking ass, I guarantee God’s not a fan. The devil’s pitchfork lingers in victory.

  “Did he get a swing in?” I ask.

  “You kidding me? Of course not, this guy’s nothing but a sloth.”

  “Sloth?” The guy slides out of the drift, unable to get off the ground with his injured wrist. “I’ll kill ya for sayin’ that.”

  “You that testy?” I ask him. He holds his arm and tries to stand, getting a surprise kick in the chest from me, sending him back into the drift. “What’s your problem?” I crouch next to him, prepared to bring out my knife if he tries anything shifty. “Why’d you get so rough with that girl? She dump you for being such a frickin’ scrubb?”

  “The hell you care?” The streetlight shines on his twitching nose.

  “I care what happens inside my bar. Care enough to tell you what you can expect if you mess with anyone in there again.” I take out my knife and the blade catapults out. “Hear that?” I do it again. “Does that thwack make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside? Or does it make you think twice about coming around my neighborhood?”

  “Warm and fuzzy.” He smirks. “Now move back so I can get up. My ass is numb.”

  “Oh, need a little warmth?” Sean snickers, unzipping his jeans to piss on the guy’s leg.

  “What the hell?” He tries to move out of the stream, getting on all fours. He slips and lands flat on his chest, knocking his wrist on the icy concrete. With a groan, he turns on his back and sits up in a fury, flaring his nostrils at Sean. “Filthy ni—”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa.” I wrap my hand around his neck, strangling the word that’s on the tip of his tongue. “Not gonna happen, punk. I’ve beaten the crap out of more men for this than anything else.”

  Sean zips up, and we drag the beast down the alley between the bar and pizzeria. I bash the guy’s shoulder into the brick wall once we’re off the street. He loses his footing and topples to the ground, giving me a chance to straddle his waist.

  “Yanking a girl out of a bar is one thing, but using the n-word on my friend is another.” I start throwing punches. If the guy didn’t have a busted wrist, I know I’d be the one on the receiving end.

  “You’re both dead,” he says, just as I belt his nose. “Dead!”

  I’m angry, cold, and sober. Plus Sean’s piss on the guy’s pant leg is seeping through my jeans. It’s a suck-ass night so far.

  The guy gives me a hollow little laugh as if he’s enjoying this.

  “Keep taunting me, and I’ll keep swinging,” I warn.

  Growing up on the streets of Northland, this is all I know. Drinking, fistfights, eating greasy pizza every night, complaining about the weather, working shit jobs for corrupt cops, all while protecting women and friends from morons like this. This is Northland. This is me.

  I grip the collar of the guy’s leather jacket. “If I had to count the number of times some schmuck took a crack at using that word on my friend.” I hit him continually, supposing I look like Ralphie in A Christmas Story, losing my cool and beating the crap out of Scut Farkus. “The first bastard who said it lost his front tooth. We were about twelve. The kid wailed the whole way home to his mama.”

  Sean laughs. “Dylan, cool it. I can handle this guy.”

  “The second had a shiner the size of a hockey puck for weeks. No one’s ever gotten the entire word out after him. I won’t hesitate when I know it’s coming.”

  Sean shifts out of the corner of my eye. It’s unlike him to step away when we’re in the middle of a fight. I cock my head, fist raised, ready to throw another punch when a Chevy Tahoe stops at the end of the alleyway and flashes its lights. Looks like the same SUV that passed us at the river.

  “It’s a cop. Get up,” Sean says. “Get off him before we get arrested.”

  The driver’s-side door opens and slams shut, a distraction that gives the guy on the ground a chance to get even. With a blow to my jaw, I drop back and land in the snow.

  A flashlight shines on the scene, circling all around before it stops on Sean’s face. “Put your hands where I can see ’em.” A thick voice echoes through the alley. “Now!”

  “Right. Pay no mind to the two white guys on the ground beating each other to a pulp!” I shout. “Focus instead on the clean-cut black guy standing off to the side doing nothing!”

  I stretch out in the snow, my eyes closed, imagining that Sean’s obeying orders, raising his hands into the pitch-black night. I hold still, listening to the sound of snow crunching under the cop’s boots, growing louder until the noise is an inch from my ear. Snowflakes spot my face and dissolve into my heated skin, the cop’s flashlight in my eyes as the toe of his boot kicks my side.

  “Dylan.” He kicks me harder. “Get the fuck up and get me a beer before I haul your ass down to the station.”

  3

  Officer Ed Dorazio—Cockeyed Eddie, as Sean and I call him—lowers his baton to help me up. Not his hand, always his baton. Seems like every other week he’s looking down at me while I’m at my worst.

  I snub his offer and stand on my own, fishing in my pocket for my bar keys to unlock the alley-side door for him. He’s not here because of the fight; he’s here to see my dad—best friends since they were kids, same as Sean and me.

  “When you gonna get over it?” Eddie slaps my back on his way inside, the remark aimed at my never-ending grimace whenever he’s around. I’ve been cross with him for months. “Hey.” He turns and raises my chin with his baton. “Let it go.”

  I can’t. He’s read Heather’s suicide note. He was the first cop on the scene the morning she was found hanging from the maple tree. He was there with her parents, pretending to be sympathetic before the homicide squad arrived. And for some reason, God only knows what, he won’t tell me what her note said. How can I let that go? How hard can it be for him to part his cracked lips and tell me what she wrote?

  “Dylan, it’s unethical,” he says.

  “Unethical?” I push the baton away.

  “Sorry, too big a word for you? It’s wrong. You get it?”

  Sean steps forward. “What’s drinking on the job and ignoring a fistfight in an alley? That’s ethical, Eddie?”

  “Back off.” Ed points the baton at Sean. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you two if you keep pulling that stink face it will get stuck like that?” His stubby fingers reach out and force the corners of my mouth upward into a strained smile. “That’s better. I miss your gap-toothed grin.”

  The space between my front teeth is minor; it’s not a gap like he says, barely noticeable.

  “I got a job for you guys,” he says.

  I wrench away, bothered by his thumb pressed into my aching jaw where I just got punched. “No, no more jobs. You still owe me for the last one and the one before that. I’m not ratting out slum kids for nothing. I’m not your snitch anymore.”

  His misaligned gray eyes open wide, one directed at me, the other at Sean. I’d love to deck him, but I know better than to hit a bloodthirsty street cop. And besides, he’s my dad’s best friend.

  “Where’s your partner, Ed?” I ask, looking down the alley. “You kill him?”

  “Kevin’s sick. And we’re even for the jobs. I paid you and Sean for—”

&nbs
p; “That’s not the deal. How can you keep asking me to be your snitch when you don’t keep your end of our agreement? I don’t want money.” My voice is at full throttle. “I wanna know what Heather wrote. And I don’t wanna end up with a bullet in my head for being your tool on the streets. It’s not my job!”

  “Since when?”

  “I’m not a narc. You promised to—”

  “I can’t tell you about the note, so drop it.”

  “How would anyone know?”

  “I would know.” He taps his chest in defense. “Me. I would.”

  “Dylan,” Sean cuts in, “the guy’s taking off.”

  Ed looks toward the street, the giant mole on the side of his nose lit by the light over the alley-side door.

  “Dylan.”

  “Sean, I don’t care about that guy anymore. I’m only thinking about Heather.”

  “That kid okay?” Ed asks with feigned interest.

  “He’s fine,” Sean says. “Bloody nose and lip, maybe a fractured wrist. Better than most.”

  Ed sticks his baton in his utility belt and reaches for the door. “You two stay out of trouble the rest of the night. And Dylan, get some sleep. You’re lookin’ paler than usual.”

  I turn to Sean once Ed’s inside. “Better get inside, too. Riley must be here by now. Bet she thinks you stood her up.”

  “You coming?” he asks.

  “No, I need to smoke first.”

  He blows on his hands and rubs them together to keep warm. Miniature clouds form with each mighty puff. “I’ll wait for you.”

  “Go inside, Sean.”

  “I’ll wait.”

  He knocks snow off the bottom of his boots, tilts his head and cracks his neck, fidgets, turns to look at the bloody snow, jumps up and down.

  “Sean.”

  He fidgets, warms his hands, fidgets again.

  “Would you go inside?”

  “As soon as I leave you’ll be pacing and talking to yourself. I’ll stay to help you work out whatever mess is inside your head.”

  “I’m just having a smoke.”

  He knows I’m lying. My cigarettes are in my coat pocket, and I left my coat in the bar. What I need more than a smoke is to clear my head of Heather before I get wasted.