Page 127 of Nobody's Fool

Gary looks at me. “Should we bust the door down?”

“No, we shouldn’t bust the door down.”

A familiar car makes the turn and hurries down the street. It’s Marty. I should be surprised, but I’m not. He pulls in front of Powell’s residence, gets out, and slams the door hard to make some kind of point.

Raymond shout-whispers from across the street. “Kierce,” he says, pointing at Marty. “Smoke Show is back.”

Debbie rolls her eyes. “That’s a man, dumbass.”

Marty storms toward where I’m standing on the stoop. “What the hell, Kierce?”

“How did you find me?”

“Molly has your location on her Find My Phone.”

“Oh,” I say, “right.”

Marty is not hiding his annoyance. “What’s going on? You’re supposed to be in the hospital.”

“The guy who was following Molly, the one with the scraggly long hair you said we couldn’t find.”

Marty sighs. “I never said we couldn’t—”

“He lives here. They”—I sweep my arm to indicate Gary, Polly, Debbie, and yep, Raymond—“found him.”

Raymond shouts, “You’re welcome, Smoke Show.”

I shake my head at Raymond. He holds his hands up in apologetic surrender.

“His name is Brian Powell,” I tell Marty. “And he was cellmates with Tad Grayson at Sing Sing.”

Marty’s eyes widen. “Wait, what?”

Gary steps forward. “There’s no answer at the door, and Powell didn’t show up for work.”

Marty looks toward me. I turn and knock on the door again as if to confirm Gary’s words. I try the knob. The door is locked. Marty steps forward and knocks on the door too. Like his knock is official and that’s going to work better.

“Mr. Powell,” Marty shouts. “This is the police. Please open this door.”

We wait. I press my ear against the wood. Nothing.

Marty says, “This isn’t my jurisdiction. Let me call the local Newark precinct and see if we can get someone over here to assist us.”

“We don’t have time for that,” Golfer Gary says. Then he snaps his finger as though he’s come up with an idea: “Besides, I hear someone inside screaming for help.”

Marty looks confused. “What?”

“There it is again,” he says. Gary is obviously making this up. There are no screams. There are no sounds at all. “It’s an emergency. He’s in trouble. Break down the door. Can’t you do that when you hear someone screaming like that?”

Marty puts his hands up. “Just wait—”

“I can’t,” Gary says. “Not when someone is in danger.”

And then without warning, Gary rears back more athletically than I would have imagined and kicks the door with his heel. The wood splinters, and the door gives way, banging open. Raymond whoops and applauds. Debbie claps too. Gary bows.

Marty and I stand there for a moment, too stunned to move, thenMarty says, “Everyone wait out here.” He looks hard at me. “Including you.”

“Yeah no,” I say to him.