Free Lincoln Perry 02 - Sorrow's Anthem by Michael Koryta Page A

the picture still hung above the old booth where we’d all carved our
names. I took a step toward it, wanting a closer look, but Draper
took my elbow and guided me away from it and into another
booth.
“What can I get you to drink? On the house, of course.”
“Whatever’s cold and in a bottle.”
“Be right back.” He went back out to the bar, and I heard him
talking in low tones with Bill Foulks. I wondered what Draper was
saying. Probably not giving me a hell of a lot of support. He’s here
on business.
When Draper came back to the dining room, he had a bottle of
Moosehead Canadian in each hand, and the guy in the jeans and
silk shirt trailing behind him. Draper handed me one of the beers,
then nodded at his companion.
“This guy was Ed’s boss,” Draper said. “I was just filling him in
on what happened last night.”
I looked at the stranger with interest now.
“Jimmy Cancerno,” he said, offering his hand as he slid into the
booth beside Draper. He wasn’t as old as I’d originally thought,
probably no more than fifty, but he carried himself with slouched
shoulders, and his thinning hair was shot with gray.
“You want anything to eat?” Draper asked me.
“You kidding me?” I hadn’t eaten in many hours, but the Hideaway
food wasn’t going to improve on an empty stomach.
“What? Food’s better around here now, Lincoln. We made some
changes.”
“So the grill got cleaned?”
He grinned. “Some of the changes are still on the list. But we
got new pickles.”
“Dill chips?”
“Spicy dill chips. They were on sale, of course.”
Cancerno watched this interplay without interest. We were
jammed together in one of the tiny booths, hunched over an old
wooden table. Above the booth we sat in today was an old blackand-white
photograph showing Draper’s grandfather sitting on
the hood of a big Oldsmobile, probably taken around 1950.
“Bar’s been here a long time,” I said, looking at the picture.
“Better than a half century,” Draper said. “My grandfather
opened it when he got back from World War II. Dad took over
when he came home from 'Nam. Family tradition called for me to
fight a war before I could run the show, but then my old man died
before I had the chance, so I took over.”
“Died too young,” I said. David Draper had died from lung cancer
a few years after we graduated from high school. He’d smoked
better than a pack a day for forty years and spent the rest of his
time working in a bar that was generally so hazy with smoke it was
difficult to see the television screens.
“Hell, all of our dads did,” Draper said. “Yours was the oldest
when he went, and he was still too young.”
Draper took out a pack of cigarettes, shook one out for himself,
    and offered them to me. Apparently his father’s illness had done
nothing to deter Scott’s habit. I declined, and he lit his own, then
immediately set it on the edge of the ashtray.
“They put Ed in the ground this week,” he said, and his brown
eyes were flat. “I haven’t decided if I’m going out for it or not.
Wouldn’t make a bit of difference to Ed.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Poor bastard,” Draper said, sighing and lifting his cigarette
back to his lips. “But in a way, it’s almost better, you know? Things
would have been ugly for him, Lincoln. You know that.”
“If he didn’t kill her, we could have proven that, maybe gotten
him back out.”
“We?”
I shrugged. “The police, then. I offered to help him, but it’s too
late now.”
Draper drained a third of his Moosehead in one swallow and
wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He was wearing a
white T-shirt that hugged his muscles closely, a thin silver chain
hanging over the collar.
“I got to admit, I was pissed off at you last night, and I mean
good,” he said. “It’s for the best that they put you in the police car.
I was blaming you for it, even if you hadn’t shoved him. I mean, he
was fine upstairs until you showed up.”
I sipped my beer