The Manhattan Hunt Club by John Saul Page B

might have rubbed against it, leaving flecks of paint on the deeply gouged surface. His fingers unconsciously tracing the marks the careening car had left, he looked back toward where the van had burned.
    “Man, it was somethin’,” a slurring voice said.
    Startled, Keith looked down to see a crumpled figure covered with enough ragged and filthy clothing that he was almost invisible, curled in the doorway of an empty store. He was peering blearily up at Keith through eyes so bloodshot their color was indistinguishable, and under the layer of grime that stained his skin, a vast network of ruined veins and scabrous sores spread over his features.
    “Shoulda seen it, man—looked just like the fires of hell.”
    Keith’s pulse quickened and he squatted down. “You were here yesterday morning?” he asked. “When the van burned?”
    The man’s lips twisted in a lopsided grimace, revealing the stumps of half a dozen broken teeth. “Where else am I gonna be?” His rheumy eyes fixed on Keith. “You got a couple’a bucks? I ain’t ate in a while.”
    On any other day Keith would have walked away from the man, probably not even looked at him if he could have avoided it. In Bridgehampton, the man couldn’t have stayed on the streets more than a few minutes before the police force—if you could really call Bill Chapin and his three deputies a force—would have hustled him onto a bus with a one-way ticket back to Manhattan. Certainly, he wouldn’t have been allowed to roam the streets long enough for any of the town’s wealthier citizens to have their weekend spoiled by stumbling across him.
    But this wasn’t an ordinary day, and Keith wasn’t in the familiar confines of Bridgehampton, and instead of quickly standing up and walking away, he pulled his wallet out of his hip pocket.
    It flipped open the same way it always did: to Jeff’s graduation photo, taken almost a year ago.
    Keith’s stomach tightened as he gazed at the photograph. Taking out a five-dollar bill, he turned the wallet toward the man leaning against the building. “Did you see this person?” he asked. “Yesterday morning?”
    The drunk peered at the photo. “Nah,” he mumbled. “Who’s that?”
    “My son,” Keith said. “He was—” He fell abruptly silent and flipped the wallet closed as the surrealism of the entire scene suddenly closed in on him. How had this happened? How could he explain to this man—this man whose own life had devolved down to sprawling in a doorway at ten o’clock in the morning—what he was doing here? Why would the man even listen, let alone care?
    What was
he
even doing here?
    Grasping at straws, just like Mary had said.
    The drunk, his eyes glued to the five-dollar bill, said, “Onliest guy I saw was the one from the van.”
    Keith’s pulse quickened. “The driver?”
    The man shrugged. “Nah—who cares about him?” He frowned, then reached tentatively toward Keith’s wallet. “Lemme see that pitcher again.”
    Keith reopened the wallet, but kept it just beyond the man’s reach. The man leaned forward, squinting, and Keith winced as his breath—a combination of stale wine and tobacco—threatened to overwhelm him.
    “I dunno,” the man finally said. Keith moved the five dollar bill closer. “Maybe that coulda been him,” the drunk went on. “But maybe not.” Keith let him have the five. “They was over there—” He gestured vaguely in the direction of the fire hydrant. “—an’ I was sittin’ right here. An’ I didn’t get a real good look before they went down in the subway.”
    “The subway?” Keith echoed. “Who went into the subway?”
    The man sighed as if explaining something to a child who wasn’t paying proper attention. “I told you. The guy Scratch took outta the van.” Something across the street seemed to catch the drunk’s eye, and he struggled to his feet. “Gotta git to gittin’,” he muttered, but Keith grabbed his arm as he started away.
    “Scratch?