Free Sinister Heights by Loren D. Estleman Page B

representation?”
    I shook my head. “You wouldn’t want to try it on, either. All the ops that can swing the dues work out of air-conditioned offices with a modem and a key to the executive washroom. It’d be like negotiating for the enemy.” I took a pull from the bottle, for effect. For effect it tasted pretty good. “My old man was a Teamster twenty years. Worked his way up from a pedal truck to a diesel rig back when people ran outside to watch one go by.”
    He grinned for the first time. It made him look younger. He was just past thirty. “They didn’t have power steering in them days. I bet he had an arm on him.”
    â€œYou couldn’t tell by me. He never used it on anyone who couldn’t hit back.”
    It was more or less a blind cast; I was still pondering my approach and didn’t even know I’d made it until I got a strike. The grin went out like a smashed bulb. He leaned forward to fumble his bottle onto the endtable, knocking off one of the empties in the process. He stayed leaning forward with his feet on the floor, straddling the footrest, and covered his face with both hands. “Oh, God,” he said. “Oh, Jesus God.” His shoulders shook. He was sobbing.

CHAPTER
EIGHT
    I finished my beer while he was crying. He wasn’t through by then so I lit a Winston. I got up and went over and pried up the sash of a window that looked out on the street. It was a quiet street: no backyard hot-rodders or chainsaw maniacs, just houses and trees and a solitary roller-blader padded up to the gills racing his shadow along the opposite sidewalk, making no more noise than a handful of marbles rolling downhill. My street had been like that once and might be yet again, if the reform crowd downtown managed to resist graft for another term or two. It was a lot to hope for.
    The fresh air and new tobacco improved the atmosphere in the room. I drummed a Winston partway out of the pack, nudged Glendowning’s shoulder with the back of my hand, and held the pack out. He took his face out of his hands to look at it. After a moment he snuffled, dragged his twill sleeve across his eyes, and took the cigarette. His hand shook a little as he pushed the tobacco end into the flame of the match I held for him. When he had it burning he nodded and sat back. He sniffed, composing himself. His eyes were redder than they had been, but apart from that he might have been anyone else coming off a bender.
    I cleared space on the sofa and sat down. My back was nearly as stiff as Carla Witowski’s after the drive down and the workout on the porch, and I didn’t think there was going to be a rematch right away. I picked up my empty beer bottle and tapped ash into it. A little on the rug wouldn’t have hurt the room in the condition it was already in, but there is a protocol.
    â€œWhich one did you hit, your wife or your son?” I asked. “Or both?”
    â€œWho says I hit anyone?” He flicked his cigarette toward the heaped ashtray. He didn’t even come close.
    â€œThere are shelters for that kind of thing. She could have checked into a motel, but she’d go to her mother’s before she did that. The only time a shelter’s better than family is when there’s a question of safety. That means beating. Also there are the tears. We’re all of us very sensitive today, very New Wave. I don’t think. A trucker needs a reason to cry. More so a champion of labor.”
    â€œI never hit little Matt.”
    I smoked and said nothing.
    â€œI never meant to hit Connie. I mean I never planned it. She has a way of getting to me. Well, shit, that makes it sound like it’s her fault. It isn’t. I never laid a hand on her sober. I’m a mean drunk. I guess you know that.”
    â€œI’ve seen meaner. But I’m not your wife.”
    â€œI never beat her up neither, just smacked her a couple of times. Okay, more than a