Free One Kind Favor I Ask of You (Kit Tolliver #8) (The Kit Tolliver Stories) by Lawrence Block

 

     
    Hedgemont, North Carolina.
     
    T here was no bus station as such. The bus stopped at a convenience store with a pair of gas pumps out front. She got off, and the bus driver climbed down after her and retrieved her suitcase from the luggage compartment.
    “Bet you’re glad to be gettin’ home,” he said.
    He was a pleasant fellow, heartier than his passengers, and she saw no reason to disabuse him of the notion that Hedgemont was home to her, and that she was glad to be here. It wasn’t hard to guess how he’d jumped to that conclusion. If it wasn’t your home, what on earth would bring you here?
    Alvin Kirkaby was here.
    That was reason enough. Alvin Kirkaby, a corporal in the infantry, had shared a bed with her before his unit was transferred to Iraq. She remembered his name and rank, and not a great deal more about him. He’d been wearing his uniform when she spotted him in a bar just down the street from her apartment. She’d been living in Chelsea at the time, and the bar drew a mixed crowd, half straight and half gay, and she’d have assumed he was gay—like, a uniform in a Chelsea bar?—but when their eyes locked she knew otherwise. God knows what he’d seen in her eyes, but it had been enough to make him dump his companions and head straight over to her.
    Cocksure, that was the word for him. He approached her with complete confidence, knowing she found him attractive, knowing she’d take him home with her. And he was right, of course, and his assurance was attractive in and of itself.
    In more ways than one. It would make the sex better, and it would make the aftermath positively delicious. All that confidence, all that certainty, and the next thing he knew he’d be dead meat. It would mean leaving her apartment and moving on, but that was all right. She was getting tired of Chelsea.
    In his uniform, he’d been generically attractive. Military haircut, face clean-shaven, broad shoulders, athletic physique. Out of it, his body turned out to be everything she could have wanted, and in bed he gave a good account of himself. He wasn’t the most imaginative lover she’d been with, or the most experienced, but ardor and stamina made up for anything that might have been lacking.
    Earlier, she’d had a look at his wallet when he paid for a round of drinks. Nice thick wad of bills in there. Hardly enough for a retirement fund, but it was always nice to turn a profit. Pleasure was all the better when you made it pay.
    Then, while he lay beside her smoking a cigarette, he told her how he’d be shipping out the next day. To Iraq, where he’d be in combat. He’d been there once already, this would be his second tour of duty over there, and he became a little less cocksure when he talked about it.
    So much for that. Once he was over there he was on his own, but she could make sure he lived long enough to go serve his country. She let him go to sleep, and woke him in time for morning sex, and after a shave and a shower she sent him off to be a soldier.
    She knew all about that. “You’re my little soldier,” her father had told her.
    So when she drew up a list, he’d been on it. Alvin Kirkaby. Surprising, really, that she’d remembered the name, but somehow it had stayed lodged in her memory and she’d been able to dredge it up. Alvin Kirkaby. Corporal Alvin Kirkaby.
    That was then.
    Now he was Sgt. Alvin Kirkaby, United States Army (Ret.) He’d been promoted, and he’d been discharged, and he wasn’t a soldier anymore.
    And he was on her list.

    She could have asked directions at the convenience store. But this was a small town, just a dot on the map, and the less contact she had with people, the better off she’d be. Earlier, at an Internet café just two blocks from Washington’s Union Station, she’d asked Google Maps for directions to 24A Maple Street, and she had the printout in her purse. She didn’t even need it anymore, she’d studied it enough on the train and two buses she’d