Free Dodgers by Bill Beverly Page A

and shot a look at Michael Wilson. Michael saw East glaring and paused. “Mighty weird casino back there,” he began.
    “You shut the fuck up.”
    Walter bit his lips, looked sideways.
    “Don’t freak out, Easy,” Michael Wilson said.
    “Shit,” East said. “Lucky we ain’t facedown on a police car right now. You can’t even
park
without fucking up.”
    Meticulously Michael Wilson wiped something from his brow. “What do you want?” he said. “You want a little note, I’m sorry? I’m a get you flowers?
I’m sorry.
But don’t say you didn’t want to go in too.”
    “I didn’t want to go in.”
    “But you went.” Michael Wilson opened the door and climbed out. He dabbed at his hairline. “This is when I go pay for things. Who’s pumping?”
    East cursed. He climbed out and set the nozzle in, then stood waiting for the pump to click on. Just listening, the night sky starless, smeared pale by lights, by his pique. Unacceptable. He blamed Walter almost as much as Michael. But he was too mad to even begin with it.
    At last the pump beeped and the orange numerals zeroed out. He began running the tank full of regular and banged on Walter’s window. It rolled down.
    “We got problems with that one.”
    Walter moaned, ghost-faced. “He’s right, man. We all did go in.”
    “You first,” East insisted. “None of us would have gone if you didn’t.”
    “If I didn’t,” Walter said, “we’d still be there. Outside, waiting. Wondering was he gonna stop before all the money was gone. You think he was just gonna come back out in five minutes?”
    East slid dead bug crisps around with his feet. “All right. What happened outside, then? The tow guy?”
    Walter’s face pinched shut. He shook his head.
    “You best tell me. I need to know.”
    The pump kicked off, and East hung up the nozzle. Inside the bright station he saw Michael Wilson waiting in line, his head bobbing to a song inside it.
    Walter squeezed himself out of the van. He glanced at East and stepped to the other side of the pump, furtively. East glanced back at the van where Ty was and followed Walter.
    “It said
No Parking.
Right? We didn’t see it. When I walked back out, the van was already hooked up. They probably keep that truck in the lot all the time. So. The law says you can’t tow when somebody’s in it.”
    “Don’t give me law. This ain’t California.”
    “It ain’t just California.”
    “Stop with the truck,” East sighed. “What happened with the guy?”
    “So I’m yelling at the guy,” Walter continued, “telling him stop. Then whoop, here comes your brother.”
    Walter swung his arm once.
    “What’d he do? Hit him?” East scoffed. “Boy weighs a hundred pounds.”
    “Hit him with a gun,” Walter whispered. “That’s what I believe.”
    East frowned. “But Johnny searched him. He’s clean. You saw.”
    “I know,” said Walter. “Whatever it was, that guy changed his mind quick. And security, standing back watching like they did—explain that.”
    East looked up and tried to swallow the bad taste in his mouth. Above them, a big plastic dinosaur spun on a wire. Cars rushed by out on the highway, and East had to keep himself from staring down each one. Things moving. At first, the ride had felt like getting out, like being set free. Into nothing. But since Vegas, this felt like being stuck back in it. Like every headlight that rolled past was pointed at him.
    “That boy is trouble,” Walter said, looking away into nowhere.
    “Which one?”
    “Your brother.”
    East’s back went up in spite of himself. “My brother is on the job. College boy is the problem.”
    “You talk like you’re sure,” said Walter, “but you best
be
sure.”
    East was not sure. What East didn’t know about his brother would fill the van. You heard stories. Things he’d done, scenes he’d been on, that he could get in anywhere, was too little to catch, too young for the police to bother with. Only stories, and