Page 75 - WTP Vol. X #7

get both cars in the garage. Here was me, standing there next to Tony, watching the rain, the nice guy who gives people a second chance, and I’m about to tell him “tough luck” when it’s cold and raining. I guess I could have offered to let him sleep at our place, but I didn’t.
I unlocked the service garage and pulled the door up about a foot, so that it’d hardly be noticeable. I’d done it before—hell, in the summers I used to just leave the door open. This was that kind of town; we left the back door of the house unlocked all the time, and kept a key under the mat. You didn’t have to worry about that sort of thing where we lived.
“You feel like it, you just crawl in there. Make sure to shut the door, all right? Don’t let anybody see you. Just stay dry, all right?”
“All right,” he said, nodding, but not looking at me. I think he was a little embarrassed to be taking the help. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Pops.”
I nodded at him. I was just as uncomfortable to be giving it.
“See you, Tony.”
~
I got woken up when the police called. Marcia had tried to open up at 6 and saw the door that led to the garage had been busted in. The register was open, but that was empty anyway. The door to the office had been kicked in. All the cash had been cleaned out, as well as some merchandise. The store was
a mess. I told the police that somebody must have forced open the garage door and gotten in that way – in short, I lied.
Paul showed up an hour later. He’d gotten up and driven all the way there to sort it out. He was livid, pacing around, the whole thing, just shaking his head. We’d been keeping cash in the filing cabinet because safe had yet to be delivered.
“And just by coincidence the security cameras haven’t been installed yet?” he asked me. I was a little taken aback.
“Well, if you’d let me use the guys in town, we could have had it all set up by now. The people at the number GasCo gave me haven’t even called me back.”
“We have our people for a reason,” said Paul. “They’re the ones we can trust.” He looked around
angrily, his cheeks bright pink. Then he turned to me, and I could see his eyes were watering, trying to hold back his emotion, like he’d been betrayed.
“That homeless guy did this,” he said. “I knew it was a problem, and I let you convince me to let you do what you wanted so there wouldn’t be a problem between you and me, and now look what happened.”
“You don’t know it was Tony,” I said. “It could have been anyone. He’s been around forever and never touched a thing.” I searched for some other explana- tion. “It was probably some dumb kids from some other town, or somebody who just drove off and won’t ever come back.”
“It was him,” said Paul. “You know it was. If I find out you helped him, I’m gonna have to fire you. Am I gonna have to do that?”
“Excuse me?” I said. I made sure this boy heard me when I said this: “This is my store. I don’t care who owns it, I’ve been running this place for fifteen years. You don’t accuse me of something like that ever again, you got that?”
Paul shrugged and broke eye contact.
“I don’t know what you’re capable of. But if I see that guy again, I’m going to have him arrested.”
“Fine,” I said after a moment. “You do what you have to. We’ll figure it out. I did everything I’m sup- posed to.”
“You didn’t give him the keys?”
“No,” I said, and technically that was true so I didn’t
(continued on next page)
68