Quinn Goes West by L. H. Thomson

Author:L. H. Thomson [Thomson, L. H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781484973264
Google: h75knAEACAAJ
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Published: 2013-05-14T05:00:00+00:00

The court papers had tossed out two other names that were worth checking on, so my job on Monday morning was to find the Skinner brothers. They were among a small group of Grey’s workers who weren’t included in a class action statement of claim, outlining a lawsuit for lost wages.

Curtis and Elwood Skinner had been let go by Dominic’s company six months before his death and had filed their own suit before the class action, looking for two months’ back pay and severance. Marcus Rosen’s lawyer had recently filed a statement of defense, saying the two were to be let go regardless of the closing, for smoking pot on the job, perpetually showing up late and hitting on women who visited the construction site.

Elwood had a trailer in a mobile park, the kind of place where the common area grass goes unmowed all summer and the leachate from the cigarette butts could poison the groundwater. At the main office, a guy in a leather vest with a bald-top mullet and beard looked me over as I asked him about his tenants.

“Don’t suppose if I tell you it’s private you’re just going to scarper off without bothering them none, am I right?”

“You got me pegged there,” I said. “Sorry, but business is business.”

“Hmph,” he said. “Well, them’s the type anyhow. They always got someone lookin’ for ‘em. Just don’t shoot up anything what ain’t insured. They’re in 21A, at the very end of the park.”

“Hey,” I said, “you sound like you’re from out of town.”

“Go fuck yourself,” he said.

Their neighbors had gone to lengths to keep their modest homes clean and attractive despite management’s best efforts to completely ignore the rest of the park. But the Skinner brothers’ place looked like a more natural fit. It could charitably have been called a dump, if the person doing the calling had something against dumps. There was a rusting engine block on the lawn, and parts from cars to which it might have at one point belonged, along with a pair of stripped motorcycles. Outside the trailer’s main door were plastic lawn chairs and a rusting iron table. Somehow, even out in the Arizona sun, the place managed to seem dank and pathetic. I knocked on the door, half expecting it to slump on the hinges.

Then I thought I heard a window opening. I’d turned to the left trying to figure out where it was coming from when the shotgun blast blew out the top window of the door, showering me with broken glass, the concussion ringing in my ears. I dove sideways, expecting the second blast, landing on the cheap lawn furniture and sending it flying just as half the door blew off its hinges.

Lying on my side I could see under the trailer, where a pair of feet was heading in the opposite direction, moving like a juiced Olympic athlete. It seemed smarter to go after that guy than to try to reason with whoever was on the other end of the shotgun, and I sprung to my feet, sprinting after him.

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