Lincoln Perry 02 - Sorrow's Anthem (32 page)

“Uh-huh. And now I got a question—you knew I set the fires,
but you didn’t tell the cops that, and you got your friend to find
Corbett, make sure he didn’t say anything.” Draper turned to look
at me. “Thanks for that, Lincoln. I could be in jail right now. But
I’m wondering … if you knew I’d burned those houses, and you
thought I was working with Jimmy, why the hell did you come
down to the bar? Why didn’t you just call the cops and let them
finish me off?”

“I wanted to hear you explain it. I just wanted to understand why
the hell you would’ve done it.”
“Well, I’m damn lucky you did. Because you saved me down
there.”

“Were you working with Cancerno, at any point?”
He shook his head. “Not in the way you’re thinking. Reason I set
the fires was simple—it was what Ed had in mind when he went
down. And I owed him. So I decided I’d finish his job.”
“Did you know what had happened between Cancerno and Ed’s
family?”

He nodded. “He told me the night he ran from the cops and hid
at my bar.”

“So you knew all of it? Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t know all of it. I just knew the old stuff. Didn’t know
anything about the houses and Anita Sentalar and Mike Gajovich.
Cops explained all that to me yesterday. All I knew was that Ed
was out to settle a score with Cancerno.”
“And you didn’t tell me.”
“I pointed you at him,” he said. “I brought him down and introduced
you to him, I told you about Mitch Corbett, and later I reminded
you about the old fires. I got you started. I figured you’d do
the rest. And you did. I just didn’t know … I had no idea how bad
it would all get.”
Two women were walking toward us. When we got close, they
looked at Draper’s face with undisguised horror and stepped off
the sidewalk to get away from him. He didn’t blink.
“So you directed me,” I said. “When you could have just told me
from day one. And people got shot, and people died, and you got
your face beat to shit, and half the neighborhood burned down.” I
shook my head and looked away, across the street.
“Like I said, I didn’t know what would happen, and I didn’t
know how deep it all ran. I only knew what Ed had told me about
Padgett and Cancerno.” Draper ran a hand over his bald head and
sighed. “And there’s something else to it, Lincoln. Something
that made it a little difficult for me to really talk to you, bring you
into it.”
“What?”
He stopped walking, turned to face me. I didn’t want to stop
moving, but I had to when he did. I looked at him and waited.
“When Ed went to jail, he wasn’t protecting Antonio Childers.
He was protecting me.”
“What…” I didn’t even finish the question. I just stood and
stared at him. A city bus roared by beside us, belching a cloud of
exhaust smoke. The sun was harsh in my eyes.
“I was in serious money trouble,” Draper said. “I was going to
lose the bar. Less than two years after my old man died and left it
to me, and already I’d run it into the ground. I couldn’t let that happen.
I talked to Jimmy Cancerno. He was the guy you talked to in
the neighborhood with something like that, or so I thought at the
time. He told me he could definitely help. Said a guy in my position
could be useful as hell. He had the connection to Childers. Offered
serious cash if I’d run some stuff out of the bar. Said I needed one
good guy I could trust, though, to handle the transactions.”
His eyes flicked down, seeming lost in the swollen, bruised tissue
that surrounded them.
“I picked Ed.”
I stood with my arms at my sides and didn’t speak. After a while,
I turned away from him and looked out at the street, watched the
cars go by. Then I began to walk again.
He followed. “That’s why he wouldn’t tell you anything. That’s
why he took the fall. He was protecting me. Ed didn’t know anything
about Antonio Childers; I did.”
I spoke for the first time in a while then, my voice tight. “So
when the neighborhood was cursing my name for being such a
traitor, you kept quiet.”
“No,” he said. “I led their cheers.”
I shot him a hard look at that, and he met my gaze evenly. I held
his eyes for a moment and then looked away.
We came to Clark and turned left, walking west, toward Ed
Gradduk’s old house and what was left of Draper’s bar.
“I know it went rough on you,” he said.
I gave a short laugh and shook my head. “You know it went rough on me? Good call, man.”
We walked on together, but it was different now. Our steps were
falling in sync, but it seemed as if they shouldn’t be, as if we both
thought maybe we should change our pace, let the other fall behind
or pull ahead. We stayed together, though, through several
blocks of silence.
“You hear people talk about going home all the time,” I said
eventually. “Every Christmas, people from out of state, from across
the country, tell me they’re going back home. I’ve lived ten minutes
down the damn street for years, Draper, and I couldn’t go home. So
much as walk in this neighborhood, and anybody who knew me
would tell me to leave. My father, who it turns out was the only
guy who tried to fix anything the right way, moved out a year after
Ed went to jail. It wasn’t because he wanted to leave the neighborhood,
either.”
Draper didn’t say anything.
“But, yeah,” I said. “It went rough on me. Yes, it did. Thanks for
understanding, buddy.”
“I was a coward,” he said. “I know that. You took the heat for
trying to help, and I kept my coward’s mouth shut and let Ed do
his time and you pay the rest of the price. I was looking at more
time than Ed if they really investigated me, and I used that to tell
myself it was all right. Ed was just weighing it and making the best
decision for both of us, right? That’s what I told myself.”
“You ever visit him in jail?”
“Every week.”
“You look him in the eye when you were there?”
He didn’t say anything to that. We went another block before a
red light brought us to a halt.
“Ed knew what you were trying to do,” Draper said. “I’m not
saying he appreciated it, the idea you and Allison cooked up, but he
understood. He told me that, himself. You were trying to help. You
were a bigger man than me. Without question.”
I shook my head. “Ed was. You were the coward and I was the
fool who wanted to be the hero. Ed was the man.”
We kept walking, but didn’t say anything more for a long while.
We went for many blocks. Past Ed’s house. I looked up when we
went by, wondered about Alberta. Should I go see her? What
would I say? None of it would matter now. Not to her.
“I’d give anything for a chance to talk to him,” Draper said. “Just
one more conversation. To be able to tell him that it’s done. That
you finished it for him.”
“It was done for him five days ago.”
We reached the Hideaway and stopped. We stood together on
the sidewalk and looked up at it. The fire department had done a
hell of a job, but then they’d had a hell of a lot of practice in the
days leading up to the fire. They’d managed to save the building,
though the interior was demolished. The sturdy old stone remained,
though, the ancient walls and that massive door standing
strong and steadfast.
“You gonna get it back up and running?”
“Hell, yes,” Draper said quietly. “No doubt, Lincoln. It’ll be
back. I’m one of the only people on this block who actually had
fire insurance.”
“Good. You belong behind that bar.”
“It’ll be a while before I can work the bar without turning people’s
stomachs. I’ve got plastic surgery ahead, it seems.” He
snorted. “Plastic surgery, and me a guy from Clark Avenue. What
do you think my regulars will say when they hear that?”
“Probably tell you to spring for the boob job while you’re at it.”
He laughed. “You know, it’ll be a surprise if one of them doesn’t
say something close.”
I nodded and turned away. “I’m going to take off, man. Get back
up to the hospital, see how my partner’s doing.”
“Wait.”
I turned again and looked at him expectantly.
“Lincoln, I owe you . . . ,” he began, but I waved him off.
“Don’t say that. I don’t want to hear it. Not about owing people,
about debts and balances and making amends. It can’t be about
that, Scott.”
He frowned, shifted his weight, and hooked his thumbs on his
belt, then took them off again. I’d never seen Scott Draper look so
awkward.
“Listen,” he said, “I was thinking, maybe you and Allison could
drop by later this week. We could grab a drink, have some dinner
or something. Hang out again.”
I gazed up the street. “That group’s one name short, don’t you
think?”
“Yeah. But that can’t be helped anymore. The others can.”
Cars buzzed back and forth along the avenue, crossing over the
pavement where Ed Gradduk had died, nobody slowing. I watched
them for a while before I nodded.
“Yeah, Scott. We can do that.”
He put out his hand. “I hope so, Lincoln. When I get the bar
open again, I want to see you down here. And not just because I
owe you.”
I took his hand. “I’ll be down,” I said.
I left him there in front of his bar and walked up Clark Avenue,
the sun warm on my back. Joe had been asleep when I’d left, but
he’d wake up again soon. I wanted to be there when he did.

The End.