When I woke up I noticed that Amy had left me a voicemail, it came in some time while I was asleep. She had been working seriously weird hours at the bookstore so she probably didn't even realize it was after ten when she called to check up on me. She wanted to get together for coffee on Sunday— she had been working all day Saturday, otherwise she'd have called sooner. I sent her a quick text that I was probably going to be caught up with work for the day but would let her know if any of that was going to change. I included a note that I would like to see her, even though it took a few re-reads and almost-hitting-sends before I finally sent that part.

  I dressed business casual. I didn't want an accidental sighting to put me in the same hoodie I was in the day before. My midnight protector received a whole can of wet food before I left for the day, in thanks for his vigilance, and I found my way back to the Digger house. They lived in one of the neighborhoods west of the hospitals, on Stevens Street. I parked down the street but close enough that I could see the driveway and keep track of the vehicle parked there. I had brought a sandwich and some drinks with me, so there wasn't much danger of me having to go away to miss anything. It was more than halfway through the day when Sarah and Eric left the house on an errand. They had some bags with them, so I assumed they would be out shopping. Daniel, on the other hand, stayed in the house for another hour before getting in his van and heading a few miles away. He parked on College Street on the Green, so I found a space a few cars ahead of him and watched my mirrors until he walked past my car. I hadn't had to do much following on foot but, even on a Sunday, there were enough people walking in the same direction that I wasn't worried about being spotted. He walked south on College for a block, and I followed him until he turned into the Cornerstone, one of the dive bars on that corner. It was a college town, so bars were pretty common, this just happened to be one of the more local dives.

  I waited about five minutes before following Daniel into the bar. It was a pretty busy place, for a Sunday. Daniel had found himself a seat at the bar itself. I contented myself with a table by the wall. The place wasn't so large that I couldn't keep a rough eye on the proceedings from where I was. Before deciding if I was going to engage my target, I was going to do some fly-on-the-wall information gathering first.

  Observation one: Daniel was a regular. He knew the bartender, Sal, by name, and Sal knew his drink of choice, a double shot of whiskey with a beer chaser.

  Observation two: Daniel's choice of bar friends was the grizzled sort. These were long-time tradesmen, mechanics, and laborers. Some people, when the work wore them down, tended to dull the pain and cut loose at the bar. Mostly back slapping and swearing, telling off-color jokes, or making misogynistic comments about the women who were brave enough to even set foot in the bar.

  I didn't get to make my third observation for a while. I nursed a beer, reassuring the waitress that I was going to be an easy customer, and watched the evening unfold. Daniel and his barflies drank with a pretty single-minded determination. He was well into his third beer, that was with six accompanying shots of whiskey, for anyone counting, and it was a couple of hours later at that point. It wasn't even time for dinner yet, but I didn't think he was going to spend the whole night there at that pace. I decided to belly up to the bar and took up a seat near Daniel, with one empty stool between us. I nodded in Daniel’s direction and then addressed Sal by name and ordered what Daniel had been drinking since he arrived. Sal didn't recognize me, he knew I wasn’t a regular, but he'd served so many people he just assumed I must have introduced myself once or twice before and this was a repeat visit.

  During my classwork, I learned about the sales technique called mirroring. It was where a salesperson adopted the behaviors of the customer he was trying to sell. It could make the mark more inclined to trust them since they were more like them.

  “Now there's a man who knows how to drink.” Daniel raised his beer to me, liquid sloshing dangerously toward the lip of his glass. My luck, carrying over from Friday, held.

  “Cheers.” I raised my whiskey, took a short sip, and then waited to see if he was going to make small talk. He was fairly engaged with his beer so, after a minute or two, I decided to cast some line and see what I could catch. I took another sip of whiskey and blew out the heat of the alcohol with a “Hell of a week, yeah?”

  “Huh?” Daniel was working himself toward numb, so it took some effort to focus on me and the conversation I was trying to draw him into. “Oh, yeah, hell of a fuckin' week.”

  “I think I get a break on the weekend,” I continued, “but no, of course not. Wife's nagging me to go shopping, kids want to go see this, do that. I put in a solid week and I want some time to unwind.” This, Your Honor, was leading the witness.

  “Damn straight.” Daniel held his glass out and we clinked, shot to pint. “I had to get the hell out of the house too. Couldn't stand it.”

  “Amen brother,” I said, “wife and kids?”

  “Ha,” he barked a laugh and sipped his beer, “one good-for-nothing wife that doesn't do a goddamn thing around the house, and one soft pansy of a son. But that's my lot, right?”

  “Yeah?” I wanted to sound interested. “That's the standard complaint though, right? No one's wife does enough, and every man's son isn't the John Wayne we all want him to be.” I winked at him. “I bet they're okay.”

  “Wish I was, man,” he sighed, “wish I was. Woman's too feisty for her own good, and I get nothing but lip.” He used his glass to punctuate his statements, spilling golden drops across the bar. “I'm trying to raise my son right. My father did the same, and his father too. We turned out just right. Strong, independent, successful men. Family, house, car, white picket fence. Nothing but arguments from her, 'Oh you can't treat him like that,' she tells me. Don't you tell me what I can or can't do to teach my son. I mean, what would you do? You’ve got a boy, right?”

  “Well,” I improvised again, unwilling to create a family backstory out of whole cloth, “I can't say I had a good example to follow in my dad, doesn't sound like mine was like yours.”

  “My dad.” He leaned against the bar, obviously getting nostalgic. “God bless that man, he was the best there was. Sure, he was hard as hell on me growing up, but look at me!” He posed, and I looked. “You don't need any better. My son? He's only in elementary school. He should want to be a fireman, a policeman, or a construction worker. You know what he wants to be when he grows up?”

  “President?” My sarcasm was hard to turn off.

  “Pfft. President. He wants to be a goddamned artist. No son of mine is going to waste his life on something like that.” Daniel nodded to himself and drank more of his beer.

  “Well, he's a kid, what does he know? Your wife is probably just trying to be supportive. Mothers love their sons, right?” I tried to commiserate, but I was having a hard time faking it at this point.

  “What does he know?” Daniel's voice rose slightly. “He knows what his father tells him, which should be like gospel, and his father tells him to stop acting like a girl and hit the damn ball when I throw it at him.” He was very intense by now, his voice holding an anger that wasn't in any way justified by the words he said. “Now I'm going to go home to a house that isn't clean, have dinner that's barely edible, and listen to my son tell me about all of the sissy things he did with his mother all day.”

  “Yeah.” I didn't have a lot left in me to work this conversation, I'd had enough and was hoping it would burn itself out. Luckily, I didn't have to wait long. Daniel pulled his wallet out and dropped some cash on the bar.

  “What was your name again?” He had turned to me, after giving Sal a silent salute.

  “Bob,” I said and held out my hand to shake.

  Daniel shook my hand, in that overly aggressive alpha male kind of way. “Daniel,” he said, “good talking with you, but I've been here too long already. You think your wife's nagging about her shopping, well wait till I get home to mine. She doesn't like it when I go out drinking on Sundays. Like that's going to stop me. My house. My money. My rules.” He put his finger against my chest and jabbed with each of his points. “Well, Bob, I'll see you around.”

  Observation three: Daniel was an angry drunk.

  Daniel stumbled toward the door. I thought for a minute about calling the cops and reporting his license plate for drunk driving, but then I remembered the conversation I had with Sarah. I'd have felt righteous, but it would have caused her and Eric nothing but trouble. I felt guilty thinking that if he wrapped his car around a tree on the way home, it would make things both more and less complicated for the remaining Diggers. I was just going to have to wait until the next day and talk to Lu about options.

  “Hey, Sal.” I flagged down the bartender. He stared at me with another look of Do I know you, pal? for one second before giving up the search of his mental database.

  “What's up, bud?” he asked, propping himself up on the bar with one elbow.

  “What's with that guy, Daniel?” I asked, innocently.

  “Danny?” he smiled. “What's with him? Nothin', man, he's an okay guy. Sunday regular. Just has a couple drinks before he heads home.”

  “Seems a little high-strung,” I volunteered.

  “Eh, he's not the happiest drunk but he's never started a fight here. Talks to some folks, or keeps to himself, but if he gets pissed off, he just takes himself somewhere else. Probably takes it out on his wife or somethin'.”

  “What?” I looked horrified, I'm sure.

  “Hey, bud, I just work here.” He took Daniel's empty glasses and walked over to the sink, realizing he had probably been a little too candid, the conversation was definitely over.

  I finished my drinks and then took a walk around the Green for a bit to make sure I was sober enough to drive. I couldn't help but worry I had spun Daniel up and it was going to make whatever happened to Sarah and Eric worse.

  Maybe I wasn't as good at this as I thought. Either way, I was pretty sure that I was done drinking whiskey.

  Chapter 16

  I tossed and turned that night, waking up at least every hour on the hour. Odin was so annoyed with me that he left the room, sleeping on the couch instead of dealing with me flopping around and throwing the covers over him one more time. You would think that growing up in the Northeast, I'd be pretty immune to guilt. No one, however, was as good at guilting me as my own brain. Nothing would clear my mind of the spiraling thoughts that I had done something to cause Sarah and Eric grief. I thought I understood a bit better what the defense of “I was just doing my job” felt like. It wasn't a very strong one, and it was made less so by the fact that I had gotten caught up in how damn slick I had been.

  Sarah opened up enough to me on the first day I met her, and I got Daniel talking within five minutes. I had something to prove! I wasn't just an espresso jockey or a college dropout. I was a problem solver, an out-of-the-box thinker. I was… manipulating people, and I couldn't figure out how I felt about it. Rationalization, and I was getting good at that too, brought certain phrases to my mind like “for your own good,” “the ends justify the means,” or “it's what they deserve.” It was all bullshit, and I rolled around for hours trying to fight my way to some kind of conclusion about what I had gotten myself into, what I had started myself, and what the hell I was doing in this handbasket.

  I finally fell asleep around four a.m. but woke with a start at six. I jumped out of bed and hit the shower, getting ready for the office. I was done with my surveillance, I didn't need any more information, but I had to know. Actions had consequences, and if I had been the cause of some, I was damn well going to witness it.

  I parked in my usual spot outside the school, ready to watch the drop-off line. I hadn't even caffeinated, I was that anxious to see Eric. I continued the rationalization train and assured myself that last night was probably par for the course for Daniel, and nothing I had done would change anything. Not even I was buying it.

  The time dragged on, nothing happened quickly when I waited for it, but finally the van arrived. I got out of my car and moved closer to the school so I could see properly. They had their turn at the curb and Eric got out, walking toward the entrance.

  Face: no new bruises, check. Torso: nothing obvious that I could see. Okay, maybe this was just another Monday morning. Except that he was limping. Not enough that any casual observer would make a big deal about it, but I had been watching this kid for a whole week. He had a slight hitch to his right side that said something wasn't right, but he didn't call attention to it by favoring one side or the other. I hated that he must have been used to pretending to be fine.

  Guilt filled me, white hot, as I stormed back to my car. Every choice swear I had ever learned was muttered in a litany under my breath as I drove to the office. Lester smiled in my direction and was about to say 'good morning' before he noticed the storm cloud I carried with me and decided it was better to look back to his computer. I dropped my things in my cubicle and sat, trying to compose myself, before knocking on Lu's door. My right leg twitched up and down, and I couldn't force myself to relax. Finally, I stood up, glancing at the ticker above my desk.

  200 out of a thousand. Fine, I deserved that.

  I knocked on the office door and walked in after hearing a muffled noise that sounded like “come in.” Lu leaned back in his chair, reading a newspaper. He folded it as I walked in, and turned to face the front, my report was sitting on his desk. I couldn't tell if he had read it; it was still in the folder I had left on his desk.

  “Nick! Come on in.” He gestured at the chair across from him. “You look like you've had a hell of a morning. Probably a hell of a night too.”

  I sat down and took a few breaths. The last time I was in his office, I felt like I had made a fool of myself, sputtering about the situation with Eric.

  Lu didn't wait for me to compose myself. “You stole his sandwich?” he said through a toothy smile. His eyes twinkled, full of mischief.

  Apparently, he knew exactly how to break through my black mood. I couldn't help it, the fact that he brought up what might be the most inane part of my experience of the past week just broke me. I started laughing, he started laughing, and that continued as a welcome catharsis for the next few minutes.

  “What the hell am I doing, Lu?” I finally asked, breathless, wiping tears from my eyes.

  “From the look of it,” Lu flipped open the folder of my report, “what you needed to.”

  Even when the boss was the Devil, I felt a little surge of pride when he told me I was doing something right. I didn't let it override the guilt or concern that I had, but it definitely bolstered me for the conversation.

  “Look, Nick,” he continued, “this isn't going to be the cleanest business. Not the dirtiest either, I wouldn't ask you to do that. I picked you for the way you think, and your mental agility. This?” He stabbed a finger at the report. “This shows me that I made the right choice. Samuel was right to say you were the man for this job, and I'll agree with him there.”

  I hiccupped slightly, wiping away the last of my tears. “Flattery will get you everywhere.”

  “Touché,” Lu motioned toward me as if awarding a point. “you're sounding like me.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  “Well,” Lu stroked his chin, “it's a complicated situation. Our contract is with Samuel, and I agreed to handle two problems for him. First, the building of the school. Speaking of which, you should attend the ground-breaking ceremony tomorrow. Samuel recently came into a large amount of cash, lottery I think, and decided to donate it all to build the school and fund it in perpetuity. Lovely man, really.” Lu smiled, smugly. “Second, handling the situation with poor master Eric. He wasn't that specific, just that we make the abuse, if confirmed, stop. Beyond that, we've got a bit of carte blanche. Samuel did confide in me that if Mr. Digger was in a position to disallow future transgressions, regardless of the potential victim, he would rest more easily.”

  “So we just make it up now?” I wasn't sure how this worked.

  “Make it up? You mean like poof,” Lu snapped his fingers, “Daniel is on a desert island with an ample food supply, unable to influence the future of the human race?” He chuckled. “I do like the idea of that, but it's not how it works. Remember that whole free will thing I told you about? Troubling business, honestly. I can't just magic him away, he's got his own measure of free will that I can’t tamper with directly.” Lu paused. “That's what lets him drink heavily and then go home to beat his wife and child.” His voice dropped an octave on the last sentence.

  “You're not saying we can't do anything, are you?” I was surprised and it showed.

  Lu waved his hands. “No, no. I'm just saying it's not going to be as easy as waving a magic wand. Why do you think I have this extensive operation? I'm a busy man, and I'm in a lot of places at once, literally. But there's a limit to the amount of co-location I'm willing to do. I need a trained and diligent staff to work on these problems, with my occasional input. Case in point, you.”

  “Decision-making power.”

  “Precisely.” Lu pointed at me, hand shaped like a gun, and pulled the trigger. “So here's my suggestion, as your mentor. Go talk with legal and put together a package. We need him to agree to it, they can help you with all of the standard clauses. He's not the brightest bulb, so you can probably hide some language in the appendices.”

  “You want me to put together a deal that's good enough to get him to sell his soul? Isn't that like rewarding him for bad behavior?”

 

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