PIKE by Benjamin Whitmer Page A

recognize. Nor anything I want to.”
    “You have a spare picture of her? I’m gonna need to find her.”
    Mrs. Jennings sticks her hand into the stack of poodle pictures and pulls out the photograph of her daughter. She hands it to Pike. “Keep it.”
    Pike slides the picture out of the frame and slips it in his breast pocket without looking at it. “You said she stayed here recently. Where?”
    “She has a room upstairs.”
    “Any chance I could see it?”
    She snorts.
    Pike nods. “And you have no idea at all where she might be?”
    “She’s a junky and a whore, Mr. Pike. She’s wherever you find junkies and whores.” She stands to see him out, her gargantuan eyes wavering in the cigarette smoke like a heat mirage. “I don’t happen to know where that is, nor do I care.”

CHAPTER 28
~ Not without compensation.~
    T here’s a hint of smoke behind Pike’s eyes as he come out of the house, like the bare beginning of a fire a hundred miles back in a thick Appalachian forest. He stands outside the truck and lights a cigarette as if to draw off some of his own heat, then swings into the driver’s seat and turns on the radio.
    “Can we please please listen to something besides country music?” Bogies whines. “Fucking please?”
    “No,” Pike says.
    “Please? Goddamn I hate this shit. Stories about losers. I wanna hear a song about a motherfucker who gets the girl. Who doesn’t fuck up his life.”
    “Wouldn’t ring true to you anyhow,” says Rory.
    “Fuck you. Like this shit rings true. Fucking Pancho and Lefty. Outlaws. This shit ain’t true.”
    “Sure it is. And you’re living it, outlaw.”
    “Fuck you.”
    They hit a stoplight next to an East side wine store. A couple exits the store, the man in loafers, holding a bottle, his mate in high heels, walking crablike, giggling in his ear. Both of them afternoon tipsy, taking the bottle somewhere they can be alone together. The man catches Pike’s eyes and stiffens, sobering visibly. He takes the woman by her arm, leads her at an increased pace down the sidewalk.
    The light changes and Pike hits the gas. Rory clears his throat. “So what’d we find out?” he asks.
    “We found out she’s a junky,” Pike says. “We found out she’s a whore. Two bits of information we pretty much had nailed.” Bogiechortles from between them. “What’s funny?” Pike says, in a voice that tugs Rory’s breath in.
    “Junky whores ain’t hard to find,” Bogie says. “I know all about them.”
    “I figured that. Consider yourself drafted.”
    Bogie crosses his arms. “Not without compensation, I ain’t.”
    Something black and malignant passes over Pike’s brow.
    “I mean it. I ain’t no nigger. I don’t work for free.”
    Pike’s hand twitches like it has a mind of its own and Rory tenses, but he only reaches for his cigarettes in his breast pocket. “I’ll give you twenty bucks a day.”
    “And necessaries. I need my necessaries, too.” Bogie sets his jaw imperiously. “Y’all can start right now.”

CHAPTER 29
~ It makes you want to claw at the sidewalks.~
    P ike follows Bogie’s instructions, brings the truck to rest on the corner of a downtown side street off Main. The sun’s crawled over the city horizon, leaving a grayish coating of light behind it like a slug’s trail. Rory rolls down his window to get a better look at the city and the winter wind slashes ravenously into the cab.
    “That hotel right there.” Bogie points down Main at a six-story redbrick with huge bay windows and a front door that could serve a barn. It’s the kind of hotel that had once spelled out luxury to the street below, but not anymore. Now the window ledges wander in crumbling slope and the brick’s crusted with mold and pigeon shit. Now the Fort Washington sign in dirty yellow plastic reads only that there’s no better times coming.
    Bogie pops the door open and scoots out of the truck heading for the hotel, then stops when Pike and Rory follow his