“If it wasn’t me, it’d be someone else.”
“I’d rather it was someone else,” he replied seriously.
“Yeah, yeah,” I joked, grinning. Sometimes the guy reminded me of my mom, which was weird considering that they hadn’t even met until they were adults.
“You got everything you need?” he asked.
“Probably better, the less you know.”
He nodded and turned up the TV, ending the conversation. It was as easy as that.
I spent the next day hanging out in Nix’s apartment while he was at work, and driving across town to check out the hotel Sokolov was staying at. It was a shit hole, in a nasty part of town, but the place was pretty much deserted in the middle of the day. I knew the man’s room number, and tried to check it out as I drove past, but there really wasn’t anything to see. All the rooms looked the same, shitty doors that would be easy to kick down, and old as hell windows.
I parked a few blocks over and threw the hood of my sweatshirt over my head, thankful for the rain. Umbrellas were rarely used by anyone except out-of-towners, so my hood would go completely noticed. If you were an Oregonian, you pulled up your hood, tilted your head toward the ground, and dealt with the fucking weather.
I could hear a few people in their rooms, TV’s blaring and a couple fighting, which made me a little nervous. Thin walls were a pain in the ass when you were trying to get shit done without noticing.
I clocked Sokolov coming out of his room around lunchtime, and the fucker strolled down the street to a diner like he didn’t have a care in the world. The man was still as fat and bald as the last time I’d seen a glimpse of him, but the years in prison hadn’t treated him well. The guy’s skin was gray. Not just pale, actually fucking gray, like a corpse.
As soon as he was in the restaurant, I went back to his room and jiggled the handle until it opened. The locks on those rooms were a fucking joke. They probably hadn’t been changed since the seventies.
The room stank like some nasty aftershave, and as soon as I’d done what I needed to do, I got the fuck out of there.
I spent the rest of the day watching cable at my uncle’s and eating most of the leftovers he had in the fridge. The guy never cooked for himself, so the fridge was always filled with takeout from the week. He was anal about throwing shit out, though, so I knew none of the food was too old. He was the only person I’d ever met that wrote the dates on top of the boxes, so he knew how old the food was. Smart, but also a little pathetic. Uncle Nix was obviously going through a dry spell, because every guy he’d ever been with could cook, and there was nothing homemade in the fridge.
I fell asleep from boredom around four and didn’t wake up again until Nix was pushing through the front door that night with a bag of takeout in one arm and his ratty old briefcase in another. I raised my eyebrows in surprise as I glanced at my phone, realizing that it was almost eight o’clock.
“Work late?” I asked, sitting up. Shit, my eyes were blurry from sleep and I felt groggy as hell. I hated that feeling.
“Yeah,” he said, dropping the food on the coffee table. “New assistant at work fucked a bunch of shit up that I had to fix before I left.”
“Is she hot?”
“He’s not, no. The kid’s young and an idiot, and if he does this shit again, he’s going to be unemployed, too.”
I laughed and took the fork he was handing me, shaking my head at the beer he offered. I wasn’t having anything to drink when I needed to be sharp in just a few hours.
“Thai,” he said motioning to the bag of food.
We dug in and I almost groaned. Nix knew the best places in Portland to get food. He always found the hole-in-the-wall restaurants where you worried you’d get food poisoning, but decided it would probably be worth it.
“I’m gonna load up your bike in the morning,” I said, my mouth full. “Grease is gonna take a look at it.”
“You’re not?”
“Nah, I’m in the middle of a project.” I shook my head. “Grease has some time, so he’ll work on it, and one of his boys’ll drive it back up at the end of the week.”
“That’s some good service,” he said with a sigh, leaning back in his seat.
“Family, and all that.” I grinned. We both knew there was no way I’d be carting his bike around if I hadn’t needed the cover. For longer than I could remember, he’d been bringing it to Eugene himself whenever it needed work. It gave him a reason to visit with my grandparents and see the rest of the family.