Read Online Night Work by Steve Hamilton - Free Book Online Page A

like maybe he’d already emptied a little too much of his glass.
    “We’ll figure that out,” Anderson said. “Tonight we’re just celebrating, right?”
    I sat down and let him pour me one, knowing it would be a mistake to drink it. But what the hell. This was certainly a side of Anderson I’d never seen before. His hands were a little unsteady as he handed me the glass.
    “Wild Turkey,” I said. “How old is that bottle?”
    “I’ve had it in my desk for ten years,” Anderson said. “In case I ever got the chance to celebrate something.”
    “To your wife,” I said to Rolando. “To your first child.”
    We all drank to that. Then we drank to Anderson and Maurice and myself and everything else we could think of.
    “Your old man,” Anderson said to Rolando. “He’s going to be a grandfather, eh? What’s the Spanish word for grandfather?”
    “Abuelo.”
    “He’s going to be an
abuelo.
Good for him. You should have brought him along tonight. Give me someone my own age to talk to.”
    “He’s working.” Rolando wasn’t looking me in the eye, but I couldn’t help wondering if I was one big reason the old man never came to the gym. I’d had a few of the local Mexican kids as clients, so I knew the general story. If the parents are illegal, they don’t want to have anything to do with me. It doesn’t matter how much I tell them that I’ve got nothing to do with the INS, that I couldn’t care less what their status is as long as they want to help get their kidsstraight. I’m still a man with a badge, and that’s all they see.
    Before I could say anything about it, Anderson moved on to the next toast. “To the Rock,” he said, lifting his glass to the tattoo on Maurice’s left arm. “Rocky Marciano. That was the real Rocky right there. Never mind that movie.”
    “To the Rock,” Maurice said, lifting his glass.
    “To your other hero,” Anderson said, putting his hand on Maurice’s right arm. He touched the woman’s face as gently as he would the real thing. She looked ageless with her long blond hair falling over her shoulders. “This lovely woman who means so much to you. What’s her name?”
    “I just call her Angel.”
    “That’s nice,” Anderson said. “That’s beautiful. She must have really helped you out.”
    “I’d be dead by now. Or in jail. She was the one who saved me.”
    “Do you still see her?”
    “Sure, I try to do stuff for her whenever I can,” Maurice said. “She doesn’t get out much anymore.”
    “That’s good,” Anderson said. “You’re giving back to her now that she needs you.”
    “I try.”
    “It’s always one person, eh?” Anderson turned to me and grabbed me by the shirt. “Rolando’s old man. Maurice’s angel. One person who makes the difference. Am I right, Joe?”
    “Sometimes it is, yes.”
    “That’s what you try to do. Every day, huh? That’s your job, being that one person who makes the difference. Even now, after what happened to you. Maybe even more now …”
    I wasn’t sure what to say to that. I had never heard him talk this way. Then again, I’d never seen him sitting around drinking Wild Turkey.
    “To Joe,” he said. “And to his sweet Laurel. May she rest in peace.” They all raised their glasses to me. I had one swallow left in mine, so I sent it down.
    As everything started to get soft around the edges, I looked at Anderson and I said to myself, okay, maybe this isn’t so surprising after all. This is the man who gave me a place to stay, gave me something to occupy my body while my mind healed. No matter how tough his exterior might be, he obviously has a heart as big as this gym. I was about to refill my glass and propose my own toast to exactly that sentiment when I noticed somebody walk in through the front doors, at first just a dark form against the light from outside. Then, as the form stepped closer to us, I could see it was a woman.
    Marlene? Coming to see me in person, instead of returning my