Read Online West Seattle Blues by Chris Nickson - Free Book Online Page B

my son, no matter how much I loved him.
    “And just for that, you can do the dishes and put Ian to bed.” I stuck my tongue out at him. “Right, I’m gone.”
    The path down to Carson’s house was covered in moss and slippery after the rain. I wondered how he’d managed it with an injured leg. But there he was, yelling at me to come in as I knocked on the battered screen door.
    He was wearing sweatpants and a paint-spattered old sweater, his left leg extended, and a stick by one side of his chair. The big difference was in his face. He looked sallow and drawn. The stubble on his cheeks showed white against his skin, and the lines around his eyes and mouth could have been chiseled into his flesh. The scar on his cheek now stood out sharply. I knew he was sixty, but right now he looked a good ten years older than that. It was as if all the energy had drained out of him. Rode hard and put up wet, as my father used to say.
    “I brought you some food,” I said, trying to make my voice sound bright as I held out the casserole. “I’ll put it in the refrigerator. Just nuke it when you’re hungry.”
    He didn’t move as I walked past him. There was a glass of bourbon on the table beside him, half empty, and a bottle of Maker’s Mark, along with the pack of Marlboros and an ashtray holding five crushed butts.
    “You want to talk about it?” I asked as I sat down.
    “Got my ass shot,” he said with a shrug. He sounded hoarse, his voice like gravel. So that was how he wanted to play it: John Wayne stoic.
    “No shit,” I said, and that seemed to mellow him a little. “But your grandson said it’s not too serious.”
    “In and out the meat of the thigh, they said. Just a flesh wound.” He gave a small laugh. “You remember when they used to say that in the Westerns? The hero would just tie a rag around it and carry on?” Carson looked at me. “Don’t believe a word. It hurts like a motherfucker.”
    “Who shot you?” That was the big question
    He shook his head. “I don’t know. I didn’t see him. That’s what I told the cops up there, too. But I don’t think they believed me.”
    “Why the hell were you even looking into who killed your son? Why didn’t you hire someone?”
    “I checked into private detectives, and I don’t have the money they’re charging. Not if they’re going to do it right. So I decided to do the job myself. I’m his daddy, and I owe him that. It’s the only thing I can still do for him.”
    I shook my head at his stupidity. “You must have been making progress if someone bothered to shoot you.”
    “Got further than I thought, I guess,” he said wryly. “Goddammit, all I did was ask some questions.”
    “You must have been asking the right ones, then. So, you found out more than you expected.” I wasn’tgoing to let him off the hook too easily. There’d be sympathy, but I wanted him to realize how dumb he’d been. And the frustrations of my day needed an outlet, anyway. He just happened to be on the receiving end.
    “Yeah, I spent last night in a hospital bed figuring out what a lucky bastard I am. I got a hole in my leg. It could have been in my head.”
    “For Christ’s sake, Carson, what did you think you were doing? You’re not the Lone Ranger. What were you going to do if you found the guy, anyway?”
    He shrugged and winced as fresh pain spasmed through him.
    “Seems to me that all I found was a whole load of nothing. I trailed around pretty much every bar up in Everett, asking if anyone had known my son. I ended up in a place down by Hewitt and Hoyt. A couple of the guys there remembered him.”
    “What did they tell you?”
    “Pretty much what I already knew, that his family was better off without him.” He shook his head. “The truth is that my son was a low life. He drank a lot, didn’t care who he stole from.”
    “Maybe he stole from someone he shouldn’t.”
    “You could say people shouldn’t steal from anybody,” Carson pointed out.