The Lost Coast

the one person mentioning it to another, and then another, until the information reached the ears of someone in the organization who would act on it.
    Still, he paused in the antique lobby, the thought of returning to the dreary little room suddenly unappealing. Who could possibly recognize, or even notice him, in the sleepy town of Arcata, perched on the edge of the Lost Coast like a ship becalmed in the Bermuda Triangle? He decided the hell with it, a walk around the plaza if nothing else. After all, when would he ever be back here? He chuckled at that, because with the kind of animosity he had riled up, the likelihood was that he would never be back anywhere, let alone Arcata. He might as well enjoy a quiet night out. It would be boring, but less boring than lying awake on the bed in that small room, eyes open in the dark, waiting for sleep, afraid of the dreams.
    He went out. The smell of the forest was gone here, obliterated by the dank lees of cigarette smoke and spilled beer and wet tobacco. He crossed the street to the plaza, made a right, and walked slowly along. Many of the hobos were laughing and talking boisterously as he approached, but as he neared they grew quiet and averted their eyes, saying nothing, not even a request for spare change, as though he were a jungle cat they hoped by their sudden stillness might overlook them and choose some other prey.
    He walked the perimeter of the plaza, then crossed the street back to the entrance to the hotel. He almost went inside, but paused, again gripped by restlessness, some vestigial need to see something, connect with something, in the world outside another anonymous room in another random town.
    He walked slowly down the neon-dim sidewalk, parting the knots of pierced and long-haired college kids, barely noticing the unconscious discomfort that settled into the features of some of them at his approach and evaporated as suddenly in his wake. He was used to the reaction. Even when he wasn’t trying, even when he was trying not to, there was something about him that scared people. Most of them didn’t even understand why. But he did. They sensed the things he had done.
    Which was why he mostly steered clear of bars. Ordinarily, the low level predators knew from a single sniff to steer clear of him, but a little liquid courage sometimes made people stupid. Plus, he’d had a bad experience in a bar once, or rather, outside one. He’d been a teenager at the time, tough but stupid, and it had been three on one. They’d fucked him up pretty hard, and he still had a long scar at his hairline where they’d split his scalp, and hearing loss in one ear from a concussion to remind him of that evening. He’d never caught up with them, and even now, all these years later, he sometimes still wished he could.
    The first place he passed, Sidelines, was an obvious college meat market, loud and overcrowded. The second, The Alibi, looked as much restaurant as bar, and he’d already eaten. The third, Toby and Jack’s, had an impenetrable brick front that felt like a penitentiary. He wasn’t comfortable entering a room he couldn’t first look into, so he skipped this one, too. The fourth, Everett’s, looked okay. He stood in the doorway, his eyes scanning the room. The bouncer, a beefy, mustached man on a stool just inside the door, watched him but said nothing. After a moment, Larison gave him a collegial nod, having already determined how he would kill the man if it came to that, and moved inside.
    It was nothing fancy, a honky-tonk more than a bar. Wood-paneled walls, dim lighting, a pool table, a few tables, a couch. Over the hubbub of laughter and conversation, a jukebox was playing Bob Dylan,
Shelter from the Storm
. The walls were lined with the stuffed heads of animals: a bison, a bear, a gigantic ten-point buck. He estimated about forty people at the bar and at the tables, and that the place could accommodate maybe twice that if no one was paying overly close attention to fire code limits.
    He took an empty bar stool and scanned the room more closely. A guy in riding leathers and a greasy ponytail was running the pool table with strong, confident strokes. Another guy, similarly attired, sat watching the first guy, pool cue in hand, looking unhappy, perhaps at the thought of the money he was about to lose in a bet. He caught Larison’s eye and gave him a hard look. Larison didn’t return the look, exactly, at least not in kind. Instead, he just gazed at the