“That a thirty-eight?” Dano asked the man pointing the gun at him.
“Yeah,” Cooper said, sitting calmly at his desk holding the weapon at Dano in the doorway of Cooper’s office.
Dano chuckled.
“Want to hear a funny story?” Dano asked, not waiting for an answer. “When white men first came to the islands of my people, they brought guns with them also. Revolvers. Thirty-eights. Kinda like that one. My people are a large, strong, proud people. Confrontations were inevitable and we didn’t have anything like those weapons. But they only had as many as could fit on their boats. And we had the islands. So when they opened fire they expected to cut us down like big trees. Those white fuckers unloaded the six shots in their revolvers, but we just kept coming. By the time they realized they needed to reload, folks like my great, great, great grandfather were stabbing them with spears.”
Dano sat down in the chair in front of Cooper’s desk.
“My point here is that while you have the drop on me and can shoot me with that little gun of yours, it probably won’t kill me and it’ll be the last thing you ever do. Whereas my thing? It might make us both some money.”
Cooper hesitated, then put the gun on the desk. He notably did not put it away.
“How about this?” Cooper said. “You tell me what you know, I’ll give you a ten percent finder’s fee.”
“Ten percent of what?”
“Whatever I get back.”
“I’m more of a cash in hand kind of guy.”
“How much?”
Dano hated this part. Ask for too much and you’re an asshole who doesn’t know what his information is worth. Ask for too little and you leave money on the table.
“Ten thousand. Cash.”
Dano’s phone buzzed in his pocket. The sudden sound made Cooper’s hand go towards the gun on the desk, but he stopped. Dano held up his hands.
“Just my phone,” Dano said, but made no move to grab it.
“I don’t have that kind of cash on me,” Cooper said.
“Not even in the big fancy safe?” Dano pointed to the safe behind him.
Cooper laughed and gave Dano a knowing look.
“How much money would you keep in an office that got robbed?”
“Where do you want me to start?” Josh asked.
He watched Erica’s face as she drove the 1965 Galaxie through Tacoma’s North End vaguely in the direction of Point Defiance Park. Her face remained a mask.
“Wherever you like,” Erica responded. “Just don’t lie.”
“Well, you already know most of the history of me and Paul.”
“Gay high school sweethearts, then on again off again fuck buddies, then he disappears. Now he’s back. That about cover it?” Erica said. Here words came out clipped.
“That’s one way of puttying it, sure,” Josh said. “But there’s more.”
“Do tell.”
“Right before he disappeared, I asked him to run away with me. Just get the fuck out of this place and start a new life with new people. Him and me against the world. But he turned me down and disappeared.”
Erica turned onto Pearl heading towards Ruston.
“And now he’s back,” Erica said. “What? Did he change his mind?”
“Something like that.”
They drove in silence for a few minutes. Josh hadn’t lied yet. He didn’t want to. His feelings for Erica and his feelings for Paul overlapped at times, but the fact remained that Erica hadn’t run out on him when he needed her and Paul had. Not to mention Erica was carrying Josh’s child. Still he couldn’t say his heart didn’t jump seeing Paul again. He always seemed to quell Josh’s anxiety because he had a plan. And if the plan didn’t work, he’d come up with a new one.
Paul was probably enacting Plan B or Plan C or Plan F now that running off with Josh a year too late wasn’t happening. Josh had to remind himself that he was never Paul’s Plan A and it was a mistake to think otherwise.
“If you want to go,” Erica said. “I understand.”
“I’m in your car. Not his,” Josh said.
They drove through the small town of Ruston and into Tacoma’s Point Defiance Park. Traffic was sparse. They drove past the Japanese gardens, the zoo, and Owen Beach.
“Then tell me,” Erica said.
“Tell you what?”
“Tell me what you’re afraid to tell me.”
“If I do that, it’ll change things.”
“Christ, Josh. Just say it. It’s not like things are perfect now. Maybe things need changed.”
Josh remained silent for almost a full minute as they drove into Five Mile Drive, a twisting one-lane one-way road that weaves throughout the park. Erica looked over at Josh.
“There was no inheritance,” Josh said finally.
“No inheritance,” Erica repeated.
“Paul got screwed over by his boss to the tune of over five thousand dollars so we took the money in his boss’s safe.”
This time it was Erica’s turn to be quiet.
“How much was in the safe?”
“Significantly more than five thousand dollars.”
Paul had watched two tugboats escort a container ship through Commencement Bay out into the rest of Puget Sound where it’d cross the ocean. He wished he could just run across the water and hop on. Just leave everything.
It’d been a half hour since he tried to call Dano. He didn’t know who else to call. He sat on the hood of his car. His piece of shit Mazda was finally living down to its name. It wouldn’t start.
He should just take an Uber. But where?
His phone buzzed. Paul answered it before it had time to ring a second time.
“Where the fuck are you? I need your help.”
“You son of a bitch. You nearly got me shot,” Dano said. “Speaking of shot, you also didn’t meet up with me at Bullseye earlier. What the fuck’s up with you?”
“Like I said, I need your help,” Paul said.
“What else is new? I’m drinking right now. Call me tomorrow.”
“Send your car.”
“You know what, pal?” Dano said with an edge in his voice. “That I’ll do.”
By the time Josh had finished telling Erica what happened, she’d driven to the other end of town. They were over by the Tacoma Mall now. She had listened. She had stopped asking questions. She hadn’t told him to get out of the car. She hadn’t said a word in the last ten minutes. Josh knew this because he checked the time on his phone.
“Are you going to say anything?” Josh finally blurted.
Even that got no response. She drove with her eyes on the road. A light changed green to yellow and she gunned it through the red.
“Have I ever told you about my brother Jesse?” Erica said with an eerie sense of calm.
“I didn’t even you know you have a brother. Your mom’s never even mentioned him to me.”
“Yeah, I guess we don’t talk about him much.”
Erica took a right turn, drove straight for a few seconds then pulled into a parking lot.
“I love you,” Erica said. “I don’t know if what you’re telling me is true or not, but I don’t want to live knowing one day there will be a knock on my door from the police coming to tear my life down.”
She pulled the large vehicle into a space marked Visitor and put it into Park, but she didn’t turn off the ignition.
“Go deal with this. Talk to me when you’ve dealt with your criminal shit.”
Josh looked at where Erica had driven them. It was the headquarters for the Tacoma Police Department.
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