Free Quiver by Peter Leonard

and had the Purple Heart come and pick everything up.”
    Maureen said, “Why?”
    “It’s time …” Kate said. “I think about him everyday and I probably always will, but … it’s time to move on.”
    Maureen poured more wine in her glass. “How’s Lukey?”
    “He’s not getting any better,” Kate said. “I’m worried about him. His counselor called and said his teachers are concerned about him. He’s in class but he’s not there. Doesn’t do his homework. His grades have dropped.”
    Maureen said, “Do you talk to him about it?”
    “He doesn’t talk. He comes home and goes to his room. He doesn’t see his friends. Doesn’t do anything.”
    “Isn’t he seeing someone?”
    “Yeah,” Kate said. “A psychiatrist recommended by the school.”
    “What about you?”
    “I don’t need help, I’ve got all the neighborhood men.”
    Maureen grinned. “What did the dirty-talker say?”
    Kate took a sip of wine, trying to remember and then she did and started to laugh.

E IGHT 
    Amber told DeJuan about this dude was looking for someone to pop his wife. DeJuan said, “Why you telling me?”
    Amber said, “ ’Cause he’s offering ten grand and I thought maybe you’d be interested.”
    She was behind the bar, mixing a drink, looking fine in her black low-cut outfit. DeJuan said, “I strike you as somebody going to kill some motherfucker for money?”
    Amber said, “Why you think I’m telling you?”
    “That the way you see me, huh?” He picked up his drink, Courvoisier and Coke and finished it.
    Amber said, “Want another one?”
    He nodded. The music was so loud he could hardly hear her. Place was packed with scene-makers on a Thursday night. Two-deep at the bar. He was in one of the swivel bar chairs, watching an early-season Tigers game on the flat screen. Amber put a fresh drink in front of him.He said, “How you know this dude is looking for someone?”
    “We used to go out,” Amber said. “Let me put it another way. He used to take me to his place in Bermuda. Fly down in the Gulfstream, Marty doing lines like the governor just pardoned him.”
    DeJuan said, “You tell him about me?”
    Amber said, “That’s what I’ve been saying.”
    “Where’s he at?”
    “See that guy with the long silver hair?”
    DeJuan saw him down the bar. Weird-looking, kind of freakish dude, bald on top with long hair hanging off the back of his head, mid-fifties, drinking what looked like vodka on the rocks—the right glass, with a slice of lemon. He was all over this young thing, blond in a tank top, seemed to be ignoring him.
    Amber said, “Go talk to him if you’re interested.”
    She moved down the bar to get a drink for someone. DeJuan looked up at the TV, saw Maggs hit a tater to left against the Twins, watched him run the bases and win the game, Ordoñez making it look easy. DeJuan looked down the bar again, saw the dude with the hair finish his drink, get up and move through the crowd. DeJuan put his drink on the bar top and followed him outside, standing behind himon the street, waiting for the light to change. It was dark, the marquee of the Birmingham Theater casting light on the scene. And the people were out, little bitches in their skimpy, skin-tight outfits, the man checking them out, not missing a thing.
    He crossed the street. It was easy to follow him with that hair—compensating for being bald on top, that silver pelt he had, saying, look motherfucker, I got all the hair I need. Check it out.
    DeJuan followed him, trying to catch up. The man walking fast, almost running. He stopped in front of a restaurant, sign said 220, went down the stairs into a place called Edison’s, high-priced Birmingham nightclub look like somebody’s basement—pipes and shit exposed in the ceiling—like it was under construction. Place was dark and crowded and filled with smoke. DeJuan felt his eyes burn. He didn’t care for cigarettes. Never had one in his life, never would.
    The man stopped at