Empire Falls

that might have been an ancient, fossilized dog turd, or perhaps just a clod of earth. Otherwise, the ground was bare.
    Funny how the mind works, Otto considered. This time when he turned back to the house and stared at the curtained second-floor window, he was sure he hadn’t given Charlotte Owen a stroke by ringing her doorbell and pounding insistently on her back door. Charlotte Owen was not home, and hadn’t been for some time. The boy was living in the house alone. A stake in the ground with a chain attached didn’t prove any of this. Probably, Otto had to admit, it didn’t even suggest it. But he was certain all the same.
    At the foot of the porch he found a stone that was about the right size. The thing to do was call the cops, of course, but that might mean Jimmy Minty, and Otto had had enough of the Minty family for one day. If it turned out he was wrong and the whole thing backfired, he could always claim he’d heard the old woman inside, calling for help. A wind had in fact sprung up, and the moaning it made in the surrounding trees did sound a little like an old woman’s lament. Feeble, but it would have to be his story. If he was wrong. Except he wasn’t. Strange, too, that being sure had settled his stomach.
    Once again he climbed the back steps. At the door he didn’t hesitate before breaking the small pane of glass nearest the doorknob and reaching through the jagged opening to let himself in.
    T HE E MPIRE G RILL had a Closed sign hanging in the window, but when Miles saw it was Otto Meyer he went over and unlocked the door. “All right, all right,” he said. “I’ll stand for school board, but I’m telling you right now I don’t have time to campaign.”
    “Thanks,” Otto said as Miles closed and relocked the door behind them. “You won’t have to campaign, I promise. When people see you’re on the ballot, they’ll make their mark right by your name.”
    Over at the counter Otto recognized a couple of the regulars Miles allowed to hang around drinking coffee after the lunch crowd cleared out. Horace Weymouth, the reporter who usually covered the school-budget wars was there, and Walt Comeau, who owned the club out by the strip mall and who’d just married Miles’s ex. It was a little on the chilly side in the restaurant, but Walt had stripped down to his white cotton T-shirt. Maybe it was warmer over by the grill.
    “Big Boy!” Walt Comeau bellowed. “Get back over here. Let’s settle this right now. No more running away.”
    Miles ignored him. “You want a cup of coffee, Meyer?”
    Otto laid a hand over his stomach. “Have a heart, will you?”
    “Glass of warm milk?”
    He started to say no, then reconsidered. “You know what? I hope you weren’t joking, because that sounds wonderful.”
    “Grab a seat.”
    “Okay if we sit over there?” He motioned to the far booth, which a group of girls with large, elaborate hairdos was just vacating.
    Miles nodded. Otto said hello to the girls, one or two of whom he recognized from their thinner high school days, then slid into the booth. While Miles took care of their check and let them out, he consolidated their plates and coffee cups, wiping the table clean with a lipstick-smudged napkin.
    “That was quick,” he said when Miles handed him his milk, warm in its glass.
    “The beauty of the microwave,” Miles admitted, sitting down.
    “Big Boy!” Walt bellowed again.
    Miles sighed. “Be right there.”
    “What’s all that about?” Otto couldn’t help asking, since the very idea of Walt Comeau in Miles Roby’s restaurant was strange enough.
    “He’s always trying to get me to arm-wrestle him.”
    “Why?”
    “You’d have to ask him. It seems to have something to do with his belief that one of us isn’t a real man. You know what? You don’t look so hot.”
    Otto shrugged. “Your new busboy working today?”
    “John? He was supposed to come in for a couple hours to clean up the lunch stuff, but he hasn’t turned up. Until today he’s been real reliable.”
    “If he shows up, I’d appreciate your giving me a call.”
    “Okay,” Miles said. “Is he in some kind of trouble, Meyer? None of my business—except for Tick.”
    “She here?”
    “At home. I just talked to her.”
    “Good,” Otto said. “I just feel sick about this, Miles. I’m the one who asked her to be nice to the kid.”
    Miles sat up straighter in the booth. “You better tell me, Meyer.”
    Now Otto sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe