Chapter1
You could turn over any given rock and find a more appealing collection of organisms than the folks gathered in the Plugged Nickel tonight, Eli thought.
Or to put it another way, it was a pretty typical night at the Plugged Nickel.
Of course, they all looked as innocent as a black velvet painting of dogs playing poker. If he possessed X-ray vision, he knew he’d see the odd unregistered firearm strapped to a back, knives shoved into boots, drugs safely hidden in butt cracks or rushing through the pipes in the men’s room. Much like actual dogs, they seemed to have heightened senses, at least for when the law was about to show up.
He hovered just inside the doorway and listened:Clink, hiss, slam, crash. The clink and hiss of bottle caps being yanked off, the bottles slammed on the bar for the customers, the empties hurled with gleeful violence into a big recycling bin. The mixed drinks here were strong, cheap, and careless—you could order the same one again and again, and it would never taste the same twice. The music was usually loud enough to vibrate the molars clean out of your mouth.
He hadn’t been inside the place for several months. Carl, the Plugged Nickel’s owner and bartender, had been uncharacteristically circumspect on the phone about why he might need Eli tonight. The Plugged Nickel generally didn’t invite the law to visit, which its customers appreciated.
“Well, there was an argument between four guys. And now there’s a poker game going on, Eli.”
“...And?” Eli could afford to be patient. Nothing was happening in Hellcat Canyon tonight. It was Tuesday, though bingo could get pretty cutthroat at the town hall, thanks to the rivalry between Elysian Acres and Heavenly Shores Mobile Estates. Given his clientele, Carl usually liked to police them himself, though a surprise visit from a deputy now and again kept them all from relaxing completely.
Carl cleared his throat. “...And I think the prize is a woman.”
Eli frowned. Nothing made ugliness go down faster than a drunken fight over a woman. Especially in a place like the Plugged Nickel, which in its storied history had primarily distinguished itself as a haven for people who had nothing to lose.
“Guess I can pay you a visit,” he’d told Carl, dryly.
He took a step deeper in and paused and leaned against the wall, getting the lay of the place. The Wall. That had been Eli’s nickname in high school. Because he was big and quiet and you couldn’t get anything or anyone past him on the football field. It had its advantages: it was how he’d honed a gift for swiftly noticing things—physical details and emotional nuances and minute anomalies, where Waldo was on a page or the perfect split-second gap on a football field to hurl a ball through to the receiver or how Glory Greenleaf’s lashes were a sort of mahogany color at the very tips, where the sun got to them. His powers of observation were probably in his DNA. His dad had been a cop, too, and they kind of came with the territory. But life’s vicissitudes had honed them.
He scanned the customers, mostly men, gathered at the scarred wood tables, and his eyes lingered on four guys seated at a table against the wall, heads close together. He knew three of them by name and reputation; the fourth was a stranger. Tension practically rose from them like steam.
And then he saw the real danger—in more ways than one—standing behind the bar.
His heart flipped over hard.
What the hell was Glory doinghere?
He had a hunch this was why Carl had called him.
Her sheet of straight black hair was thrown carelessly over one shoulder; her chin was propped in her hands. Her soft old jeans molded the unmistakable curve of her behind. Her expression was complicated. A little amused. A little sad. A little wicked. A jaded, wistful quirk at the corner of her mouth, which, he knew, was where a dimple lurked. As if she’d set something in motion, an experiment, and hadn’t abandoned all hope of being surprised, but she wasn’t holding her breath.
Either she hadn’t yet seen him or she was deliberately ignoring him.
His money was on the latter. Given she’d managed to do that for going on nearly a year now.
So while he practically sprained his neck with the effort required to keep his eyes aimed at those men and not at her, he was conscious of the other customers shifting and rustling, either turning or straining not to turn to look at him as he wound his way through to the four men. His presence had the kind of weight that disturbed the atmosphere.
He paused next to the poker players.
The card players slowly, simultaneously leaned back in their chairs and put their cards down. Clearly someone with a badge had told them more than once to keep their hands where he could see them and it was a reflex now.
The guy Eli had never seen before kept a grip on his cards and looked up at him.
It was a long way up. Eli towered.
This guy had sulky lips and movie-star cheekbones and a narrow white scar running from his cheekbone to his chin. But he was aging fast in a way that Eli recognized. It came from a hard life of doing bad things. He was wearing a leather vest, which struck Eli as frivolous, maybe even a little vain. Jeans, t-shirt, a gun, boots—what more did a guy need before he left the house in the morning?
“Evening Dale. Hey, Boomer. How’s parole treating you?”
“Can’t complain, Deputy,” Boomer Clark said, polite as a boy scout. He was a blocky guy, a little dim, good-looking in a forgettable way, and an unpredictable drunk whose first impulse was to shed what he apparently viewed as the terrible burden of wearing clothes. Eli had once been compelled to pin a naked Boomer to the sidewalk on Jamboree Street and cuff him, which hadn’t been easy since Boomer had been a wrestling champ in school. It was an intimacy Eli hoped never to repeat. Even if an audiencehadgathered and clapped at the conclusion, and theHellcat Canyon Chroniclehad printed a photo of the excitement, in which Eli looked triumphant if a trifle queasy and they’d pixelated Boomer’s penis.
“Put in a garden this year, Eli,” Dale Dawber volunteered. “Got some squash, beans, artichokes. If you need tomatoes, I’ve got ’em coming out of my ears. Even built a trellis to train them. Working on building a greenhouse. For the tomatoes,” he hurriedly added.
“Good to hear your green thumb isn’t going to waste.”