Chump Change by G. M. Ford Read Free Book Online Page B

supposed to be fair. That good intentions count. That good prevails over evil and all that rot. He pushed himself indignantly to his feet, fumbled around in his pockets until he came out with his car keys.
    I reached out and snatched them from his fingers.
    “Top of the stairs. First room on the right.”
    He started to protest. I waved him off.
    “You’re way too drunk to drive, kid,” I said. “You’ve got enough problems without adding a DUI to the mix. The maids leave the room ready to go. Go sleep it off. We’ll talk about things in the morning.”
    The way I figured it, if a night’s sleep didn’t bring him back to reality, the seventy-five-dollar parking ticket he was going to find on his windshield for not having the correct zone parking sticker should be a real eye-opener.

     
    I was on my second cup of coffee when he came tottering into the kitchen with his shoes in his hand. “Sorry about barging in here like that last night,” he offered.
    I gestured toward the table. “Have a seat. How do you take your coffee?”
    “Don’t drink coffee,” he said, as he slid into a chair.
    Which, in Seattle, is like saying you don’t exhale. The place runs on coffee. Morning, noon, and night. If you fell in a manhole, you’d land on an espresso stand.
    “So . . . whadda you drink in the morning?” I asked.
    “Hot chocolate usually,” he said.
    I did good. I didn’t laugh.
    We settled on a Diet Coke that had been in the fridge since the Eisenhower administration. He took a big pull, set it on the table, and said, “I guess I just felt like I had to do something,” he said, around a belch.
    The doing something about Gordy part wasn’t a subject I much wanted to think about, so I asked him about himself. In my experience, most people are just dying to tell their stories; all you’ve gotta do is get them started. The kid was no exception. He was twenty-seven. Born and raised in some godforsaken burg in Nebraska. Dad passed away when he was eight. Mom still lives there, as does an elder brother.
    Graduated from Iowa State, with a degree in criminal justice. What with the economy and all, finding a job was a whole lot harder than he’d been led to believe by the school’s placement office, so he took advantage of the U.S. Air Force’s new two-year enlistment offer and did a deuce in Texas as an MP, which made him want to be a cop even more, so when he got out, he went back on the job hunt and came up with the gig out on the peninsula. He’d been there about five months, and was just about to move out of his probationary period when the shit hit the fan the other night.
    He finished the Coke, stifled another belch behind his hand, and stood up.
    “Listen, kid—” I began.
    “Keith,” he said. “My name is Keith.”
    “Listen, Keith . . . you made a mistake. Everybody does. It’s the story of our species.” I shrugged. “Don’t let this define you. You’re young. Move on to whatever comes next in your life.” He still looked like a beaten puppy, so I tried to give him an out. “I have it on good authority that Gordy wasn’t long for this world. He was a very sick man. All you did was hasten the process a little.”
    Ten seconds of silence ensued.
    “I was scared,” he said, finally.
    “Know the feeling well,” I said, unabashedly.
    “Really?”
    “All the time,” I assured him.
    I watched as he slipped his feet into his shoes. When he finished, he looked over at me. “I still feel like I’ve got to do something,” he said. “Apologize to his family. Put flowers on his grave . . . something.”
    “First off, ki . . . Keith . . . we don’t know if he’s even got a family.”
    “We need to find out, then.” He said it as if it had just occurred to him.
    I wagged a stiff finger. “No, Keith . . . you need to find out.” When he didn’t say anything, I went on. “This was a guy who breezed in and out of my life in the space of two weeks. I don’t know a damn thing