Parker Field by Howard Owen Read Free Book Online Page A

he said, “do you really want to look back, at the end of the day, and say, 'I showed them. I didn’t do one damn thing more than I had to. They didn’t get anything extra out of me.’?”
    Parks was right. Sometimes, as Sally says, you have to serve yourself.
    I will need a handful of days to travel to exotic places like Tete de Fromage, Wisconsin, and East Bumfuck, Georgia, to get the “now” part right, but it won’t be that hard. If I have to take vacation time to do it, hell, I usually spend my vacations at Penny Lane, anyhow.
    I wander through the newsroom, killing a little time before I take Peggy over to see Les. Sarah Goodnight is standing by Mark Baer’s desk, and her smile makes me wonder if, God help her, they’re dating again.
    “Hey, Willie,” she says. “How’s Les?”
    I give her the company line and ask her if anything new and terrible has happened since Sunday morning.
    “Oh, the usual. Chuck Apple had a meltdown. I guess you heard about the company cars.”
    It turns out that Chuck’s ancient Toyota died about three months ago, and Chuck’s been using company cars for his main source of transportation.
    “He lives about five miles from here,” Baer says. “He says that now he’s going to have to break down and buy something.”
    I think about the depth of poverty that would force a person to depend on our chariots for transportation. Maybe we should take up a collection for Chuck.
    I put in a call to Peachy Love. She tells me that they’re waiting for Finlay Rand to return from vacation. They don’t have any record of a shooting like that happening around here, or anywhere in Virginia, for the past five years at least.
    “The guy must have been a nut,” Peachy offers. “I mean, they’ve been talking to everybody, trying to find out who might have a bone to pick with your stepdaddy, and they’ve got nothing.”
    “They’re not married.”
    “What?”
    “My mother and Les. They’re not married.”
    “OK. Guess I knew that. Still, he’s like a daddy to you, right?”
    I concede that he’s about as close to one as I’ve had.
    I could have told them Les doesn’t have any enemies. Hell, I did tell the detective who talked to me the day after it happened. I guess they hear that a lot. “He didn’t have an enemy in the world. He was the sweetest, kindest man you’d ever want to meet.” In Les’s case, though, it’s pretty much true.
    “Well,” I tell Peachy, “Rand ought to be back on Wednesday. Maybe he’ll know something.”
    A minute after I put the cell phone back in my pocket, it rings.
    I’m greeted by the slightly giddy voice of Andy Peroni.
    “How soon can you be ready to go to Baltimore?”
    I’m quiet for a few seconds.
    “Baltimore,” Peroni says again. “The azaleas are blooming, the Birds are in town for an afternoon game. Time for a road trip.”
    I heard laughter in the background. I recognize R. P. McGonnigal.
    “We decided to have a mental-health day,” Peroni says. It’s easy enough for Peroni to do that, since he now owns the hardware store his old man left him. And I guess McGonnigal works in a business where you aren’t hanging somebody out to dry if you take a vacation day on ten minutes’ notice.
    I tell them I have to get Peggy and take her to the hospital.
    “Then go get her,” McGonnigal says, grabbing the phone. “We got four seats down the third-base line on StubHub. Hell, man, you don’t even work on Mondays. You’ve got no excuse whatsoever.”
    They’re right. I can drop Peggy off and get Custalow to pick her up later. Custalow hates baseball, and he really does have to work today.
    We agree that they’ll pick me up on Broad Street, outside the hospital, in an hour.
    “Road trip!” Peroni yells. There’s something in all this of the forced gaiety of men our age trying to relive what can only be lived once. No doubt there will be an ice chest full of Miller pony bottles, and Andy will be blasting beach music all the way