The Nightworkers: A Novel by Brian Selfon

Author:Brian Selfon [Brian Selfon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780374718114
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2020-10-06T04:00:00+00:00

chapter 28

“You don’t know someone,” Uncle Shecky says, “till get your nose up their money.” Henry is fourteen years old. “Where’s it come from? Who’s paying them to do what they do? To be who they are?” Henry is fifteen, he is eighteen. “Who’s in control?” Henry is twenty-one. “You don’t know anything until you smell that money.”

Three days after the murder, dusk, Henry stands outside Cha-Ching Money Services. He takes in his city. The reek of diesel from the nearby Luk station. A blinking, hissing streetlight, the long shadow from the parked semi and its double trailer. He’s safe out here, where he can’t smell the money. Where he can’t learn, from the records in this building, whether Emil completed his last run, like a good boy. Or whether—

He doesn’t know how to follow his suspicion. Can’t sense the shape of it. But it’s there in him, just beneath the surface, and he’s afraid of what’ll happen if it manifests. Who his friend will turn out to be. So let’s stay out here forever.

And then a dark sedan approaches, slows, and panther-creeps toward him. Is this badge 7229, he wonders, or is this a gun with a clipful of you-owe-me’s from Red Dog? The latter Henry almost wouldn’t mind. To die out here, not knowing the truth about his friend, but also not having given up on his search, is darkly seductive. Then the car passes and Henry lets out his breath.

Sorry, Emil. But you’re gone, I’m here, and privacy is for the living.

He steps to the door.

Inside Cha-Ching the night clerk empties her waste bin into a larger garbage container. “Everything is recorded,” she says. She hasn’t looked up.

Henry looks around. He and the clerk are the only people in the room, but she’s speaking as if they’re in the middle of a conversation. The bluish lights and the muted goth-disco beat add to the sense that he’s on ayahuasca.

“Cameras are everywhere,” she says. “Your face is already on tape.”

“This is a friendly visit,” Henry says.

“The vault has a time lock,” she says. “I couldn’t open it if I wanted to.”

At last, she looks up. He doesn’t recognize her from his drop-off days. She’s sixty-something, got a wattle on her neck. His heart goes out to her. Old lady on a night shift—she doesn’t want to be here either.

Henry approaches, grabs a deposit ticket on his way. There’s a cup of pens—he takes one, sketches Emil, and brings the sketch to the counter. “You seen this guy?”

The woman squints at the picture. There’s a moment of unmistakable recognition—she looks up suddenly at Henry—but then she’s shaking her head. “Sorry. Not ringing any bells.”

“Emil wasn’t a bell,” Henry says. Heat from his fist moves up his arm. From his arm to his shoulder, from his neck to his heart. He catches himself. Lowers his voice and looks down. “He was my friend.”

The woman’s hand drops. “Was?” At last she looks Henry straight in the face. “What happened to him?”

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