Page 2 of Gold Rush (Murphy’s Pub #3)
Goldie nodded but said, “When I can’t sleep, I walk. Mornings I don’t work out right off, because Cosmo needs me to spot him with the weights.”
“Okay, well, now where?”
“Down to the end of the next block, then around to get behind the strip mall. I need a better look at the doors, and with you here, you can scope the security.”
“Ooh, project. Awesome, but I should have worn more comfy shoes,” he said, and Goldie looked down to see pointy-toed boots.
“Abs…Jesus.”
“Well! I wore boring clothes! Did that have to extend to the shoes?”
They went down the next block, past an abandoned Blockbuster that had been seventeen other businesses since the nineties, when he’d first walked that neighborhood as a very little kid. He remembered the Blockbuster, though, the rows of his favorite cartoons.
“I used to live about ten blocks east of here,” he said to Abs. Abs was the only one who knew much about him. He didn’t open up to the others often. He just… didn’t.
“I know. You showed me the building once.”
“I forgot. I remember a grocery store up that street that we would go to, and the lady cashier would give me a cookie every time she saw me coming.”
“I love those kinds of people. I always thought I’d be one of them.”
“Yeah, I try, but we don’t get a lot of little kids that need that kind of thing at the pub.”
“True,” he said with a sigh. “I love you, Goldie. You know that, right?”
“I do. You’re my little brother now, and if you ever need a cookie, just let me know.”
“Ass,” Abs accused with a giggle.
They walked past a couple that were walking fast, both with backpacks and tattooed necks. The girl was tiny, and her boyfriend, whose hand tightened on hers the moment he saw Goldie and Abs, was huge. It was the het version of Goldie and Abs, and it made him laugh.
“What’s funny?”
“That would be us if you were a girl.”
“We’re not together,” Abs said. “Remember we tried?”
When they’d first become friends, they got a little drunk one night and made out, which nearly led to sex, but they’d snapped out of it in time to realize they didn’t feel that way about one another.
At first, it made them both a little sad. They were so close, true friends, and sure, that could lead to love, but not for them. Maybe they loved each other too much.
“We tried, yeah.”
They went around the block at the end, and back up the little hill until they moved back down, bringing them right to the alley behind the strip mall.
Before they started down it, Abs stopped him and cautioned, “Wait, what if they have cameras down here?”
“There is one behind the payday loans place, of course, but nothing besides that until you get to the end, and Bent’s office has a small one above the back door, but from what I’ve been able to gather, it’s one of those that lead to a VHS recorder.
Those tapes are at most six hours, and I doubt he digs into his pockets for new tapes, if he can find them. ”
“Oh, the old fake camera to scare off thieves trick. If they only knew.”
“Glad they don’t.”
As they neared the nail salon’s back entrance, Goldie had already counted the steps it took, the distance between businesses, the sights and sounds of the homes behind the alley.
They were cut off from it by chain-link and wooden privacy fences, and most had overgrown shrubbery and trees to hide them from the business traffic.
Then, Abs stopped him with a tight grip on his arm. “Goldie? What is that? Tell me it’s not a dead body!”
Goldie shushed him and pushed him back toward a chain-link fence. “Wait here.”
As he approached the lump of a person next to the dumpster, he heard his heart thrumming in his ears. Yeah, he was a thief, he was a criminal, but he wasn’t used to seeing dead people. That took a whole other type of scumbag that dealt in death.
He crouched by the person and was relieved to see they were breathing. “Hey. Hey, are you okay?”
No response at all. Probably drunk or drugged out of it. Possibly OD. Goldie moved his hand to the person’s back and shook a little. “Hey, are you there?”
Abs had moved closer. “Are they…dead?”
“No. But whatever is wrong is…”
“Want me to call the cops?”
“An ambulance, yeah, but the cops will come too, to secure the area before the EMTs are allowed in. Damn,” he said, terribly annoyed that they’d have to put off the coins for months or even years. The cops would see their faces and wonder why they were walking behind the strip mall.
He got up as Abs was describing where the person was, and once he ended the call, Goldie told him, “We were using this as a shortcut to get to where we were going to call our rideshare. That’s simple, and don’t elaborate. Just two guys walking around.”
Ab’s eyes were wide as he nodded. “Are they gonna be okay?”
Goldie went back and crouched, and the long light brown hair fell over the person’s face completely. Goldie gently moved it from the person’s face, and immediately, he stopped breathing.
The man under that patch of long, wavy hair was the most beautiful man he’d ever seen in his life. He was reminded of a big picture of Jesus on the wall of his grandmother’s house, the white Jesus with captivating blue eyes and almost blond hair and beard.
Goldie remembered feeling like he was going straight to hell, because he’d fallen for that image, and not as the savior his grandmother believed him nto be. It was the first crush he’d ever had.
His face was long, bearded, with a perfect, pale complexion. When Goldie moved the coat that was over him, he saw a needle sticking out of the man’s arm, and a long rubber hose around their bicep.
“Nah, baby, why’d you go and do that to yourself?”
“What?”
“Needle. Looks like he almost OD’d himself. Dammit.”
“Maybe we should just go, Goldie.”
Goldie barely heard him. He was staring so hard at the man, he could barely think.
“I think we should go.”
“I have to know if he’s okay first. Use my excuse. We’re fine, Abs.”
Abs came and kneeled next to Goldie, staring at him like he was staring at the beautiful man on the ground by a dumpster. “What’s wrong?”
“He…reminds me of someone.”
“This guy?”
“Yeah. Yeah, this guy.”