Nickel City Crossfire by Gary Ross (popular romance novels .txt) 📗

the Great Recession with a third of his assets intact but less of his reason. Some years after his emotional collapse, he returned home to Buffalo and founded the collective, which offered food, shelter, and conversation to those in need, along with GED classes and workshops on the Seven Micromorphoses, the small changes that would sculpt individual and group identity into a more effective social personhood.

“So that was him,” I’d said, glancing back at the elderly bald man enveloped in an oversized cloak that resembled a brown monk’s robe. “The guy with the frozen smile who opened the door, Pastor Paul.”

“Yes, but he’s not ordained in any faith. Pastor Paul is a nickname.”

Omicron Seven sounded like bullshit to me. Paul Pollard, now speaking to a wraith of a man seated on a cot, struck me as one who straddled the line between altruism and mental illness. But I said nothing as Ileana motioned me to a chair and introduced me to Veronica. I shook her hand—bony, chapped, with ragged nails and open cuts encrusted with dirt. I sat without reaching for the mini-bottle of hand sanitizer in my jacket pocket. Ileana spoke in tones intended to put Veronica at ease, repeating what she had explained before my arrival, that Keisha was in trouble and I was going to help her. My back to the room and the buzz of other voices, I took two tens and three fives from my wallet. I held them where Veronica could see them. Her dull eyes sharpened a bit. She looked at me with a faint leer, a mild kind of come-hither smile.

“Veronica, tell Mr. Rimes what you told me, and he’ll give that money to you.”

“One bill at a time.” My need to find my clients’ daughter struggled with my guilt for feeding a drug habit. “The more you tell, the more you get.”

“Fuggin’ real?” Veronica’s voice was surprisingly deep but she slurred her words.

“Fucking real,” I said. “I hear you saw Keisha Simpkins today. Where?”

“Here.” She opened her hand, waiting for me to put a bill in it.

I moved a five toward her and lowered it slowly. “When? What time?”

“S’afternoon.” Her fingers crumpled Lincoln’s face, and the bill disappeared into a pocket quickly enough to impress a magician. Her hand returned to the table, her fingers uncurling in anticipation of my next question.

“But the Sanctuary doesn’t open till evening,” Ileana said.

“So why was she here today?” I said.

“I dunno.” Veronica’s hand made a gimme gesture.

I shook my head. “Just thinking out loud. I didn’t expect you to answer that one.” I held out the next bill. “But why were you here so early?”

She hesitated, looked off, and said, “Goin’ to Elmwood.”

Lie or truth? Her demeanor gave me pause but the stretch of Elmwood just a few blocks away was home to a dozen restaurants and coffee shops. She might have been on her way there to beg. I gave her the bill. “Do you know where she went or where she’s staying?”

“No.” Veronica wriggled her fingers, eager to close them around my last five.

I pulled it back when she reached for it. “If you don’t know where Keisha is, I don’t think you can help me find her.” I made a show of reaching for my wallet to put away the rest of the money.

“I saw her someplace else, shithead.”

“Where? Other shelters?”

Her hand was still open, “Me to know, ash-hole.”

I put the five in her palm.

“Salvation Army, yesterday.”

“Has to be the one on Main Street downtown but I called earlier and she’s not there,” Ileana said. “Veronica walks all over town but doesn’t get out to the suburbs. Right, Vee?”

Veronica nodded without looking at her former colleague.

I leaned toward her, but her eyes were on the first ten. “Okay, this time I need more than one answer. In your walks all over town, have you seen Keisha at other places—and what places?”

Browning front teeth clamped over her lower lip, Veronica nodded again. “The Friary,” she said after a moment. “Cornerstone. Gerard Place. Night People. Mercy House.”

“Shelters that take women,” Ileana said.

At that moment voices rose in anger some distance behind me—“Touch my shit I’ll kill you, nigger!”—and as I turned around there was a loud crash.

“Who you callin’ nigger, you muhfuckin’ hillbilly!”

About thirty feet away from us, two full-bearded men, one black, one white, faced off amid overturned cots. They began to move in a tight circle as they prepared to engage. Those nearest them scrambled away, and no one produced a cell phone to capture a bum fight video for YouTube. In dirty camo and half-crouching, the gray-bearded white man held a tactical folding knife in his right hand—carbon steel, the black blade suggested. Taller and fatter, the other man was about my complexion. He wore a threadbare pea coat. His hands were balled into fists but his fighting stance was all wrong for defending himself against a knife attack.

I slid the pair of tens to Ileana and stood up, my legs beginning to move. My brain was already calculating how quickly I could reach the man in camo and how best to disarm him without drawing my Glock. Before I could get to them, however, another man darted in from my left—a sandy-haired man in jeans and a pile-lined suede jacket. He looked about thirty but moved like a teenager. In a quick, fluid motion he stepped between the combatants and caught the white man’s wrist. He twisted hard and kicked the blade aside when it clattered to the floor. I bent to pick it up when I got there and closed it.

The younger man clutched the older by his jacket and pulled him up to his full height. “You know the rules, Norm. You can’t stay here if you fight.”

“Sorry, Brother Grace, but he touched my shit.” He pointed to a black plastic garbage bag a few feet away.

“I ain’t touch nothin’, you crazy fool!” the black man said.

“I got this, Charlie,” Brother Grace said, giving Norm a hard