Episodul 25 · A Polite Visitor

Bren’s depot looked the same, except the loading bays were empty and a man with a hose was washing the concrete by the gate. Maxim stopped short of the water.

— You talk, he reminded him.

— I know.

— I’ll stand there and look good.

— Then this might take a while.

Maxim gave him a long look.

— Your ribs hurt. Your mouth’s fine. Shame.

Bren saw them from the office doorway, left his papers on a shelf, and came toward them like a man who had decided in advance how much time he would give them.

— Maxim.

— Bren.

Bren looked at Soles. At his face, then at the bandaged hand.

— I heard what happened outside the river workshop.

— That’s why I came, Soles said. To tell you from the beginning.

Bren folded his arms but stayed. Soles told him what he had kept back the first time: Kerr, the shooting beside the truck, and what Serren had said about the company after the flood, the debt, and Kerr asking for money after the workshop shooting, with his right hand bandaged. He left out only the strange certainty in his own body. The recommendation, the missing name and the appendix were things Bren could choose whether to help with.

Bren listened to the end. Then he turned toward Maxim.

— See? Wasn’t hard.

— I told him the same thing, Maxim said.

— All you told me on the phone was that you’d stop by the depot.

— And we did.

— And I found out my driver gave the name of a man who shot at this kid.

Bren rubbed the back of his neck and stared at the wet concrete.

— Fine, he said. The company was called Banks. Big name for what they did. They had contracts in the garden for almost two years after the flood. I hauled paving stone, soil, gravel for them. Sometimes people too, when their truck died.

— Kerr worked there? Soles asked.

— Kerr didn’t work anywhere. Kerr was around. He’d come in the morning with the foreman, stay an hour, leave. Next day, some supplier who’d been late with deliveries would disappear. Not for good. He’d just start delivering on time.

— And the foreman?

Bren looked at Maxim, not at Soles.

— I’m giving this name to you. If Ivo asks where it came from, it came from you, not me. He still sends work my way.

— From me, Maxim said.

— Ivo.

Maxim raised his eyebrows.

— Ivo Sarn?

— You know him?

— Know of him. He worked at the docks too.

— He’s still there, Bren said. At the old riverbed, by the boat sheds. When the company shut down, he kept the men who had nowhere else to go. If Kerr has anyone in this city who’ll give him a mattress without asking why, it’s Ivo.

Soles wrote down the name, pressing harder than he needed to.

— There’s something else, Bren said.

Soles looked up.

— You’re not the first one asking about Kerr lately.

— Police?

— No. Police came a week ago. Took the driver’s statement, left. This man came the day before yesterday. No uniform. Didn’t leave a name.

— What did he look like?

Bren thought.

— Well dressed. Polite. More polite than you need to be at a depot. Asked about Kerr like he already knew what I was going to say. Just wanted to see whether I’d tell him the same thing.

— And what did you tell him?

— That I don’t know Kerr.

Maxim made a short sound through his nose.

— First time we came, you sent us to your driver.

— Maxim brought you, Bren said. Nobody brought him.

Soles glanced at the gate, then back at Bren.

— If he comes back?

— If he comes back, I’ll tell him I still don’t know him. And I’ll call you.

He shook Maxim’s hand, then Soles’s, taking only the fingers that showed past the bandage.

— Next time, tell me what you’re asking before my driver gets involved, he said.

— I will, Soles replied.

Back in the truck, Maxim left the engine off while Soles sent the new name and location to the investigator.

— You’re thinking about the polite man, Maxim said.

— I’m thinking someone else might get to Kerr first.

— Then make sure the investigator knows that part too.

Soles added Bren’s account to the message. He wanted to go straight to the old riverbed. Saying so was harder than reaching for a door handle.

— Can we look today?

— I have a delivery. Tomorrow I collect a load nearby. I can walk over and see which shed is his.

— On your own?

— From the public path. I’m not knocking on his door.

Maxim looked at the yellow cab reflected in the office window.

— And I’m leaving this around the corner. He knows the truck.

Soles put his phone down. He had asked for a plan that did not rely on his cousin pulling him off the road again.

— Tell me before you go close.

— I’m not going close. I’ll tell you before I look.

He started the engine and checked the mirror before moving.

At noon, Soles wrote to Krista about Banks and Ivo. He left out the polite man, then deleted the message and wrote it again with everything.

Her reply came an hour later.

Banks shows up in the donations inventory. Twice.

Not as a donor.

As what?

As a beneficiary.

Soles read the word several times. A company that had repaired the garden could be paid out of donations, he wrote back. That wasn’t strange.

It was paid twice for the same work. The second time after it had been signed off. I haven’t finished reading.

He began telling her she did not have to hurry because of him, then deleted it. She was hurrying because she had found a question and did not know how to put it down.

That evening, while washing the dishes, he caught himself smiling at the thought. Then he remembered Bren’s visitor, asking questions he already knew the answers to.

Before bed, Soles checked the gate. He made himself walk away after testing the latch once.

In sleep he came to the tree. The soldier stood beyond the narrow leaves; the king stood farther along the roots. Soles had been so intent on those two figures that he nearly missed the smaller light between them.

A plant with fine, branching stems stood clear of the gray ground. Light followed the veins of its leaves. No one stood beside it.

He looked back toward the other plants, trying to remember whether the space had been empty before.

Soles read the stone at the plant’s base.

Elias Vey.

He touched a leaf. It bent instead of passing through his finger.