Nobody From Somewhere , livre ebook

Nobody from Somewhere A Crime Novel
Dietrich Kalteis






Contents Also by Dietrich Kalteis Dedication …Fitch …Wren …the Vancouver model …winners and losers …the hired help …maybe I’m doing it wrong …lying low …a little help from above …poking at shadows …slinking …fade to black …riding the rails …not much on goodbyes …the Potlatch …the boondocker …liver spots and runaways …chick habit …fender bending …Fitching …old school …smoggers and wheezers …on the clock …seen better days …the pain of pleasure …another thing coming …thinking it through …the jumps …Zhang bang …the decliners …gravy train …the dust-up …walking in cake Acknowledgments About the Author Copyright


Also by Dietrich Kalteis
Ride the Lightning
The Deadbeat Club
Triggerfish
House of Blazes
Zero Avenue
Poughkeepsie Shuffle
Call Down the Thunder
Cradle of the Deep
Under an Outlaw Moon


Dedication
To Andie always


. . . Fitch
He lay on the bed in back of his aging Winnebago, Fitch Henry Haut calling it the Happy Camper. Nothing happy about it these days. Not since Annie had passed.
Now having to deal with her angry side, giving him a hard time about the blood he’d been coughing up — doing it from the afterlife.
“Just means we’ll be together, babe, sooner than later.”
“Don’t be such a boob, Fitch.” The woman not taking his crap, never did in life, and not going to in death either.
“God, I miss you . . .”
“Make the appointment, Fitch.”
“It’s a little blood. It’ll pass.”
“I mean it, Fitch.”
Lying in the dark, folding his arms across his chest, he suppressed another cough, waiting for the iodine taste of blood to leave his throat.
“Knock it off,” she told him.
He stared straight up, fighting her with silence.
“Fine, be like a child. But I tell you, Fitch, you keep it up, this dense energy, then I won’t be coming back.”
“You can’t threaten me, not in my own dream.” Fitch sure that it wasn’t the way dreams worked.
“You have no idea. Listen, mister . . .” What she called him anytime her anger peaked. “Get out of your head and feel me with your heart. First thing in the morning, you’re making that call. I mean it, Fitch.” Promising if he didn’t, she’d stop showing up from the other side. “Put up with your stubborn nature for forty-three years. Don’t have to put up with it anymore.”
“What’s that mean?”
But she was gone.
Fitch sitting up. Even in a dream, his own dream, the woman got the upper hand. And he coughed more blood, wiped his hand across his mouth, feeling the wet.


. . . Wren
The Snows set Wren up on the Murphy bed in the main-floor den. Donna Snow wanted her feeling less like a foster kid, more like a family member. Kevin Snow making it plain he just wanted to feel her.
Pulled down, the Murphy bed left a foot and a half between the desk and a shelf of books, mostly self-help books: the power of this, the art of that. Growing rich and awakening giants. Titles like Unfu*k Yourself and The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck , with lots of asterisks. A grocery-store print above the pull-out, a still life with fruit and purplish shadows.
Next to the kitchen, Wren could hear the hum and rattle of the old Frigidaire, keeping her company those first nights when sleep dodged her. Propped against the pillow in the dark, she was thinking about her mom, praying for her. Wary of Kevin Snow from the start, something not right in the way he looked at her.
The third night, she opened her door, listened for sounds from the upstairs bedrooms, decided everyone was asleep and tiptoed in the dark past the noisy fridge, crossing the cold tiles, heading to the powder room in her undies, needing to pee. Kevin was sitting in the dark at the kitchen nook, a short drink in front of him. She froze.
Clicking on the light, he smiled, eyes sweeping up her bare legs. Wren covering up and hurrying to the bathroom, saying, “Sorry.”
“You got nothing to be sorry about, shortcake.” Kevin leaving the light on, waiting until she hurried back to her room, the hand towel held in front. Wren shutting the door hard enough, hoping to get Donna’s attention. Could hear Kevin chuckling in the kitchen.
Pulling the chair from the desk, trying to prop it under the doorknob, the way it was done in some movie she’d seen. The chairback too short to reach the knob. Glancing around the dark room for something like a weapon, she grabbed one of the self-help books.
Finishing his drink, Kevin came to her door and tapped his knuckles, whispering from the other side, “Nighty night, now.”
Sitting on the bed, thinking if he came through that door, she’d hit him, hard as she could, with the corner of Unfu*k Yourself .
Hearing the stairs creaking as he went back to his room. Wren seeing under the door, waiting until he switched off the hall light. Knowing he’d be back.


. . . the Vancouver model
“So one minute she lays it on me, lets me know she’s eating for two. Eyes me to see how I’m taking the news. Next thing I’m getting slapped.” Cooder Baio took the safari hat off, set it down and shook his head, his mouth twisting up. “Right in the Taco Bell.”
“You took a pregnant girl to Taco Bell?” Angel James Silva swung his arm over the seat back, the grin sending his lazy eye into a squint — one eye looking at him, the other looking for him, the way Cooder saw it.
“Said she felt like Mexican. Plus, hey, did I know she was preggo?”
“Man, you hear yourself?”
“What?”
“Can’t talk like that, not these days — knocked up and preggo, uh uhn. Maybe back when you wore a mullet. These days you got to mind the social habit, the shit going on around you.”
“What then, the rabbit died?”
“Not that, no, and no bun in the oven.”
“Bun in the oven?”
“More important, it wouldn’t hurt you to learn about women,” Angel said.
“Guess you’re steering me straight, right?”
“Just trying to help.”
“And I’m saying the chick goes off, middle of me biting my chalupa — bam-o , and slaps me. Hard. You ask me, she needs the help.”
“Hormones are some hinky shit, brother, I’ll grant you that.” Angel looked at him across the table, lowering his voice, the Loop quiet at this early hour. “They get in the family way, and the hormones kick in, and the shit can get real. Why you got to keep to the high ground, my brother. Trust me, I been shacked up enough times . . .”
“Yeah, like how many?”
“Two official, plus one I don’t count. But now you’re going to tell me you smacked her back, right?”
“In the Taco Bell?”
“Drawing a line in the sand.”
“I ever hit this chick, man, they’d be drawing a line around me, doing it in chalk.” Cooder sipped again, this fucking awful coffee. Saying, “You don’t know Tracy, man. I’m telling you.”
“And I’m telling you, brother, it’s all about boundaries. Trust me.”
“Yeah, hitched two times, and one that doesn’t count. Plus, you been switching on Dr. Phil, I bet.”
“Fuck that guy, and Oprah too. You ask anybody you want.”
“So you recommend an open hand or just give her the full-on knuckles?” Cooder shaking his head, not believing he was in business with this guy thinking he knew women.
“Not saying you do it in the Taco Bell. But I tell you, you don’t lay the foundation, next thing you’re the whipped dog. Go on, write it down.” Angel went from serious to thoughtful, then saying, “’Less you said something to set her off.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, the something that got you hit.”
“Only thing I said, I asked if she’s sure it’s mine.”
“Ah well, there you go.” Angel clapped his hands, loud enough he had the bartender looking over.
“What?”
“You think about it. Take a minute.”
Cooder grinned back, this guy having his fun. Saying, “So you know women. Been to the plate with your two strikes, plus one you don’t talk about. What’s that, a bunt?”
“Yeah well, glad I could help.” Angel shook his head and glanced around. “Don’t know why I’m even talking to you. And what’s with the baseball, thought hockey was your game?”
“Six teams and three leagues, being the enforcer. Juvenile and Bantam before that. These days I lace up it’s Senior A. Other than that —”
“Yeah, okay. Wasn’t asking for your résumé. Look, last thing I’m saying about it, your domestic situation. There’s two ways you can go. You stick or you go, understand? One way you wade through shit, the other way you walk through clover. Totally up to you, figure out which way’s which. But right now, we got a job. And I need your head in the game. No time for thinking what color to paint the kiddie’s room.”
Cooder frowned. Not the first job they pulled together, Angel always cocky, playing the man in charge. But he was right on one score, Cooder couldn’t let Tracy sidetrack him. Not with this job staring at him.
Looking around the Loop — empty like Valentina told Angel it would be — that transition time between the night before and the morning after. The hour when the gamblers were thinking about hitting the sack instead of cracking the nut. The line of seats along the long bar, a dozen tables and half dozen booths. Just the red-haired bartender behind the bar. Glass shelves lined with bottles all lit up, every kind of demon drink you could name. Red wiping down glasses with a rag, likely keeping busy to keep from nodding off.
Cooder sipped the shit coffee, bitter and going cold, as bad as the Maxwell House back at Angel’s, the place he’d been staying, sleeping on the narrow pull