Free You're Next by Gregg Hurwitz Page B

lap.
    Jimmy was waiting in Mike’s truck, passenger window rolled down, elbow stuck out, radio blaring. Mike had brought him along
     because they needed to select rock for the fire pit, and Hank’s office was en route to the stone yard, a good drive from the
     site.
    Mike climbed into the truck and tossed the enormous file onto the vast plane of the dashboard. Jimmy eyed the file but said
     nothing. Mike had told him he needed to run an errand, and it was clear enough he hadn’t wanted to say more than that.
    The music was all ska rhythm and subbaritone bleating. Mike turned down the volume, but kept the channel in a show of largesse.
     ‘Thanks for waiting.’
    Jimmy shrugged, bopping to the tunes. ‘You the boss, Wingate.’ Pulling out, Mike watched him poke at the buttons on the console,
     turning on the seat warmer – a seat warmer in fucking California. ‘Hey,’ Jimmy said, ‘can I have this truck, too, when you
     done with it?’
    ‘Not if you play this music in it.’
    Jimmy made a dismissive sound, tongue clicking against his teeth. ‘Shaggy’s shit so smooth, you get VD just
listenin’
to his ass.’
    ‘That’s by way of recommendation?’
    ‘Better than your James Taylor shit.’
    ‘
My
James Taylor shit?’ Mike rolled the knob in protest. A few channels over, Toby Keith was crooning that he should’ve been
     a cowboy, a sentiment not shared by Jimmy, judging by the sour twist of his mouth.
    Mike loved music, but particularly country with its twang and swagger, its paternal America, its celebration of hardworking
     men who punch a clock their whole lives and don’t ask for nuthin’. Parents were heroes, and if a man put his sweat into the
     land, he could have a shot at an honest life and good woman’s love.
An honest life
. Those PVC pipes bobbed up through Mike’s thoughts like a corpse that wouldn’t sink, and for the rest of the drive and the
     baking walk through the stone yard he was distracted and useless.
    On the drive back, they passed a cemetery Mike hadn’t seen before, so he pulled off the frontage road and turned in.
    Jimmy looked across at him, displeased. ‘We don’t got enough to finish today that you gotta do this again?’
    Mike said, ‘Two minutes.’
    The guard in the shack kicked back on a stool, reading the
L.A. Times
. Mike rolled down the window and was surprised to confront himself in a grainy black-and-white photo beneath a headline reading, GOVERNOR SHOWS FOR THE GREEN. Yes, that was Mike, grinning in all his lying, hypocritical glory, his arm stretched around
     the governor’s considerable shoulders. The paper rustled and tipped, the guard’s ruddy face appearing. The guy waved Mike
     through without asking any questions. There was a time when Mike got stopped at every checkpoint and reception booth, but
     now he was legitimate, with a knockoff Polo shirt and an overpriced fucking truck.
    He parked under an overgrown willow, and they climbed out, Jimmy tapping down his pack of smokes. ‘The hell you look for in
     all these graveyards anyway?’ Jimmy asked.
    ‘John.’
    ‘Just John?’
    ‘That’s right.’
    And a woman born in the late 1940s
.
    ‘There a lotta Johns out there, Wingate,’ Jimmy said.
    ‘Five hundred seventy-two thousand six hundred ninety-one.’
    The cigarette
     dangled from Jimmy’s lower lip. His eyebrows were lifted nearly to his dense hairline. He took a moment, presumably to ponder
     Mike’s sanity. ‘In the country?’
    ‘State.’
    ‘You know he dead, though? Just John?’
    Mike shook his head, thought,
Wishful thinking
. He grabbed the file off the dash, because he didn’t need Jimmy nosing through it, and headed off.
    The sod yielded pleasantly underfoot, and the dense air tasted of moss. A snarl of rosebush plucked at his sleeve. He found
     his first one three rows in – John Jameson. The dates were a stretch, but you never knew. Two more rows, the file growing
     heavy in his arm. Tamara Perkins.
Maybe you
. A