Page 21 of Shadows Reel

Instead, he parked on the street half a block away from the lounge. He wedged his van between a Subaru withco-existstickers on the rear bumper and a rattletrap red Jeep Cherokee.

He drew out his phone and found the text thread with Geronimo Jones and tapped out:I’m here.

Then Nate slid out of the driver’s seat and crab-walked into the back of the van. He located a toggle switch on the interiorpanel and turned it on. Because there were no side windows to the van and the back ones were covered by shades, no one outside could see in.

He pulled on the shoulder holster with the .454 and buckled it on and covered the rig by zipping his down vest over it. He slipped an eight-inch Buck knife into the top of his left lace-up boot. He strapped a 9mm semiautomatic Sig Sauer P365 pocket pistol on his right ankle and concealed them both by rolling down the cuffs of his jeans. A stubby canister of bear spray—a favorite tool of his friend Joe’s—went into the right pocket of his vest.

Although he wanted to put his trust in Geronimo Jones, he had no illusions. “Geronimo Jones” could be Axel Soledad’s alias, or the name being used by one of Soledad’s accomplices to lure him in.

Before going out and clicking off the light, he looked around. Empty cages stood stacked and secured against the interior walls on both sides of the van. A bulging duffel bag of clothes and gear was shoved against the inside of the back doors.

His phone lit up as he exited through the driver’s door into the street.

It read:Come on in.

—

Nate threaded his waythrough the parked cars in front of the Palomino Lounge. The bar was from another era, before Denver was gentrified. It was square and plain, and the neoncoorssign in the window was so old it looked new again. It was a neighborhood bar.

The front door was faced with dented metal and the handle was a well-worn horseshoe welded to the frame.

He pulled it open and slid inside. He knew better than to stride right in. Instead, he kept his back to the wall on the side of the door until he could assess the situation.

The Palomino was dark and close inside. Except for a lighted shadow box containing a John Elway–signed football on the wall, he could have been stepping into a portal that took him to “Denver, 1976.”

There was an unused pool table lit by a hanging lamp, its green felt ripped by errant cue tips. Black-and-white photos of downtown Denver in the 1930s decorated the walls.

The backbar was carved wood and inappropriately ornate and had no doubt come from somewhere else.

Five customers sat with their backs to him at the bar. They’d been hunched over bottles of light beer, but four of the five swiveled on their stools to check him out. A shaggy-headed man narrowed his eyes as he looked him over. He didn’t offer a greeting.

Next to the shaggy-headed man was an overweight woman in an oversized sweatshirt with a graphic of Santa Claus on the front of it. She had tight silver coils of curls and appeared to be with a skinny dark man next to her wearing horn-rimmed glasses and a pencil-thin mustache. A lone drinker who appeared to be in his sixties sat at the left end of the bar, trying to keep his head from dropping to the surface of it.

Moving lazily in front of this group of four was a gaunt bald man with narrow eyes and a beak of a nose. The bartender. He seemed content to stay near his customers and wasn’t eager tolook up and challenge Nate’s entrance. The bartender kept his hands low beneath the bar. Nate guessed he had a baseball bat or other weapon down there within easy reach.

There was a large gap between those customers and a menacing-looking man, who sat by himself to the right. The man had a mass of dreads that cascaded down his back and partially obscured his wide mahogany face. He wore a bulky tactical jacket with dozens of pockets and heavy combat boots. A green tactical bag sat on the floor near his feet.

Why were the patrons so suspicious? Nate got his answer when he read the lips of the bartender, who whispered to the older couple, “No black bloc.”

He was assuring them that Nate wasn’t dressed like the rioters outside, so he probably wasn’t one of them. With that, the customers turned their backs on him again.

Nate drew out his phone and found the text thread.

Geronimo Jones?

He watched as the Black man slid his big paw into the side pocket of his coat and pulled out his phone and read the screen. Then he looked up and their eyes met.

Nate took the stool next to the man and turned so that his back was to the others.

Before he could speak, the man said, “Follow me.” Then to the bartender: “I’ll be back. Don’t take my beer.”

—

Nate thought the mandidn’t fit in with either the neighborhood or this particular bar. Just like Nate didn’t.

He followed Jones down a narrow hallway past the restrooms. The man was built like a linebacker, with wide shoulders, a thick neck, and a huge woolly head. He had so much thick coiled hair it was almost a helmet. His gait was graceful, smooth as silk. Nate was taller, but he was outweighed by twenty or thirty pounds.

Jones darted left into a room with a sign that readstaff only.

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