The Alley-Way Blame Game

He should be here by now. Thomas Graham checked his watch again. It read 12:35, meaning he’d probably already checked it five times in the last minute.

Graham was ducked behind some dumpsters at the end of the alley between some small family-owned donut shop called Lucy’s Baked Goods and a ganja store. His ankles were beginning to cramp from being crouched for so long and Graham felt his patience dwindling. A small part of him considered the possibility he had misheard Cole (not entirely impossible), and his little behind-the-back deal was supposed to be going down somewhere else. The idea of Graham being in an entirely wrong part of the city was beginning to make its way to the forefront of his mind as he watched the Lucy family lock up shop, talking and laughing loudly as they made their way down the street.

“What the fuck am I doing here?” Graham muttered to himself. He looked back down at his watch, 12:36.

The thought to just get up and leave blinked in Graham’s mind but he flicked it off. He had learned early on that doubt clouds judgment. He knew what he had heard. Sure, it was the latter half of a phone call he caught by pressing his ear against the bathroom door. But he had heard the sound of Cole ass-fucking him clearly enough.

“Intersection of 9^th Street and Victoria Way? Yeah.” Graham couldn’t make out what the voices on the other end of the phone were saying, only the sound of Cole occasionally humming okay and then, “Don’t worry about him. He knows nothing and I intend to keep it that way.”

Keep it that way, my ass. Graham had brought Cole in on this operation when he was down on his luck. Graham couldn’t count on his fingers how many times he’d saved Cole’s sorry ass. The amount of times shots were fired at him. The times he’d had to fire back. The time Graham had to deal with the aftermath of Cole’s sloppy aim. Graham remembered her eyes, they were big. Too big for her head, something she’d grow into, if only she could. He was brought back from his thoughts by the sound of footsteps.

It was showtime. Graham reached for the glock tucked into the back of his pants, pulled back the slide and waited. He would get answers, and if they didn’t please him he’d be the only one walking out of this.

Graham listened to the sound of the footsteps getting closer and closer to him until they stopped on the other side of the dumpster. Graham didn’t dare peek to check if it was actually Cole, if he poked his head out he would certainly be seen, or at least the shifting of his feet on the asphalt would be heard. Graham waited, but there was nothing. Nothing but the feeling of a presence on the other side of the dumpster.

Sweat started to roll off Graham’s forehead. He could swear the sound of his heart working overtime could be heard. There was something off about what was happening. Graham glanced at his watch, the minute hand shifted to 12:39. It had felt like he and the man on the other side had shared an hour together, but it was no more than two minutes.

What Graham had missed was that as he was focusing on the feeling of his heart threatening to crack through his ribs the sound of someone walking had continued. Moving to the side of the dumpster Graham wasn’t checking and stopping right behind him. Graham could not see the bloodshot eyes of the man behind him. A messy beard growing in and hair that looked like it hadn’t been showered in weeks. He felt the knife plunge into his back before he saw anything. Graham felt his breath slip out the hole in his back as he exhaled. “What the fuck” Graham whipped himself around and tried shooting at whatever was behind him but the man already thrust the knife down into Graham again, piercing his chest.

A stray bullet escaped Graham’s gun and shot somewhere into the air. He had missed his target and with it any chance of making it out of this alive. The attacker kept thrusting the blade into Graham, even when Graham’s grip around the handle of the glock loosened, even when his eyes lost their glint of life. The man didn’t stop even when the police arrived. He’d kept stabbing as they screamed at him to stop. One police officer hurled their dinner as he saw what remained of Graham’s stomach spill his insides onto the pavement. Then the man stood up, fist clenching at the handle of the knife. The police shot him before he could rush them.

---

Half the city away, as Graham felt the presence stop at the other end of the dumpster, Cole was sitting at the bar enjoying his second large pint of the night. His phone dinged as he got the message. “He’s here.”

Hours earlier he had conspicuously hidden himself in the washroom of his and Graham’s apartment and received a call, faking a meet-up with a potential ‘customer.’ When he left the washroom he could see in Graham’s eyes a glint of mistrust, good. Graham was silent the rest of the evening. Probably scheming about intruding on Cole’s “meet-up.” When Cole left the apartment he knew it would be the last time he would see Graham again.

Cole didn’t go to any meet-up. He walked down a few blocks in the opposite direction and sat at the first dive bar he could find. He bought himself a pint and texted the number, “He’s on his way.” All he got back was a message from an unknown number with a man’s life's worth of money transferred to his account.

And why shouldn’t he have that money? After all, he was letting a dad find the man who supposedly killed and buried his daughter.