(2004) Citizen Vince Read Online Free Page B

Doug’s storefront toward downtown, which looms ahead, a couple of newer twenty-story glass-and-steel slabs surrounded by brick-and-stone stumps. He likes the cluster of buildings from a distance like this—the suggestion of cornices and pillars; imagination fills in the blanks.
    Vince stops at a little diner, orders coffee, and sits alone at a table, staring out the window, chewing a thumbnail. Twice in oneday: that word. Paranoid. Still, how could you possibly tell if you’re paranoid when worrying about being paranoid is a symptom of paranoia? It’s not the fact of Doug asking where he gets the credit cards, necessarily, or of Lenny showing up in the alley two days early—although either one of those things would have made him suspicious. It’s this feeling he’s slogged around with since he woke up—this sense of being herded along, that his time is coming. What if death is just out there, at some fixed point, waiting for you to walk under it like a piano suspended above the sidewalk? He feels like a chess piece, like a knight that’s come out with no support and is being chased around the board by the other side’s pawns. He can escape the pawns, but he senses other pieces, larger pieces, more significant pieces—a move, two moves, three moves away. After a minute, Vince goes to the front of the diner and drops a quarter into the pay phone. Dials.
    “Hey. Is he in?”
    Waits.
    “It’s Vince. You up for a game of chess?”
    Listens.
    “Oh, come on. Why do I gotta do it like that?”
    Listens.
    “Jesus. Okay, okay…This is twenty-four-fourteen. I need to come in. There. How’s that?”
    Listens.
    “I need to see you now. Today.”
    Listens.
    “Of course it’s an emergency. What do you think?”
    He hangs up, walks back to his table, and finishes his coffee. He zips up his windbreaker and steps outside. He walks with his head tilted forward, toward downtown. It’s cool and sunny and the combination thrills him in a way; he pulls a deep breath through his nose and takes in the bare, skeletal trees, the strip of black avenueleading downtown. It really is a beautiful city in its way. Not so much architecturally, but in contrasts: glimmers of style against those drastic hills and urban trees, and through it all the river cut—a wilderness very nearly civilized with a few tons of concrete, blacktop, and brick. A real place. He walks without looking back, uncharacteristically.
    If he did look back, he wouldn’t like what he saw. Two blocks behind him, Len Huggins’s burgundy Cadillac sits in front of Doug’s Passport Photos and Souvenirs.
     
    DOUG RUBS HIS jaw. “How much?”
    “He said for gratis.” Lenny takes off his sunglasses. “Means free.”
    “I know what it means. Who is this guy?”
    “Just a guy. Name’s Ray.”
    “Where’s this Ray from?”
    “Back East, like Vince. He just got into town.”
    “What’s he doin’ here?”
    “I don’t know, man. He didn’t say.”
    “But he does this for a living?”
    “Oh yeah. He pushes buttons.”
    “Buttons?”
    “That’s what they call it.”
    “Buttons?”
    “Yeah, that’s what he said. He works for some serious guys back there.”
    “And you’re sure he ain’t a cop?”
    “He ain’t a cop, Doug. Not this guy.”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Look. This guy wants to do it for gratis. How can we say no?”
    “It’s not for gratis, Len. It’s just gratis.”
    “Whatever. Look, this Ray says they do the whole credit-cardthing different Back East. Vince is making a lot more money than he’s paying us. That ain’t right. And he won’t tell us where he gets the cards? That ain’t right, neither. We’re supposed to be partners and he’s holding back on us, man.”
    “It’s just…I like Vince.”
    “I like Vince, too. Everyone likes Vince. It’s got nothing to do with Vince.”
    “So what would we have to do?”
    “Nothing.”
    “Nothing?”
    “Just show him where to point the gun.”
     
    WALK ANY BLOCK in Spokane and