"What happens to the money from Cullum's?" I asked, looking up at her.
"The state treasury recovers the twenty marked bills for court exhibits," Ramos explained, taking the clipboard back and stamping the bottom corner with a state seal. "Cullum Equipment received a certified treasury credit voucher an hour ago. You’ll be issued a state comptroller check on Monday afternoon for the original two-thousand-dollar labor invoice, plus standard mileage for the delivery."
I pushed the cold coffee mug away and rubbed my palms against my denim thighs. "A state voucher doesn't buy three hydraulic seals from the distributor in town tomorrow morning."
Jim gave a dry, quiet snort, the first sound approaching a laugh he had made since yesterday morning. He reached into his coat pocket, pulled out his own worn leather billfold, and laid three fifty-dollar bills and two twenties on the laminate table between us.
"That's an advance on the fuel you burned knocking down the county's back gate," Jim said, sliding the paper toward my sleeve. "Pay me back when the state check clears your bank. And you don't use it on hydraulic seals until Jesse gets his alignment rack paid off."
I looked down at the bills. They weren't crisp or marked with audit ink. They were creased, soft-cornered bills with ordinary fold lines, earned from thirty years of honest municipal pension contributions.
"He's over at my shop right now, isn't he?" I asked.
"Jesse’s been sitting on your back dock since ten," Jim said. "He brought two spare cans of kerosene for your shop heater and three frozen pot pies from the general store. He didn't want to go home to an empty trailer after his mother called him about the sirens down on Court Street."
I stood up from the table. My left knee popped with that sharp, dry ache, reminding me that sixty-nine is too old to be diving into the bed of a moving pickup truck over two thousand dollars. But when I put my weight down, the joint held firm. A man gets used to living with a bad hinge as long as the frame underneath isn't rotten.
Ramos walked me out through the annex side exit. The night air had dropped below freezing, turning the mist coming off the river into a crust of white frost along the chain-link fence.
In the center of the lot, my ninety-four Ford sat under the hum of the mercury lamp. The front bumper had a fresh crescent of red primer scraped clean where it had hit the gate post, and the right headlight lens was spiderwebbed from the impact, but the heavy iron block had cooled down to a steady, quiet ticking. The oil pressure gauge on the dash had settled, and the exhaust was clear.
I climbed up into the high cab. The vinyl seat was cold against my back, but the familiar smell of grease, clean motor oil, and old tobacco greeted me like an old friend who didn't ask questions. On the passenger side, the empty leather wallet lay where I had left it. I picked it up, tucked Jim’s fuel money inside the bill fold, and shoved it deep into my back pocket.
I fired the starter. The diesel rumbled to life on the first compression stroke, its deep, heavy cadence echoing off the concrete annex wall.
I didn't look back at the booking bay windows as I pulled through the shattered gate. I turned the Ford onto Court Street, guided the nose across the abandoned railroad spur, and headed west along Route 9 toward the shop. The road was entirely empty now. The red and blue strobes were gone from the drainage ditches, the limestone dust had settled back into the gravel shoulders, and through the cracked windshield, the first pale blue light of Saturday morning was beginning to show above the high ridge of the pines.
FINAL THANK-YOU NOTE
Thank you for making room for these pages today.