Ugly As Sin (20 page)

Doesn’t matter who the kid’s granddad is...

What the hell was
that
about?

A few minutes shy of six a.m., as the sun began to peek over the Blue Ridge Mountains, Nick stood at a payphone not far from Annie’s Country Diner, searching through the Yellow Pages for a place to rent a car. Unfortunately, nothing was open at this hour.

He wondered how long it would be until the Sheriff’s Department released his Bronco. Did it even matter, after an assassin’s shotgun had turned her front-end into Swiss cheese?

He tried calling Melissa as a last resort, thinking he might be able to borrow her car for a little while. But his daughter didn’t pick up.

He cursed, slammed both fists down on the phonebook. The kiosk shuddered beneath his tantrum. A religious pamphlet someone had left there drifted to the ground (DO U WANT 2 GO 2 HEAVEN? asked cursive text above a bad illustration of the pearly gates, and some prankster had penciled a reply at the bottom: “HELLS YEAH!”). A flock of pigeons pecking around a nearby wrought-iron bench scattered to feed elsewhere.

In the distance, a garbage truck
beep-beep-beep
ed as it made its early morning rounds. For about half a second Nick considered hijacking that thing for his purposes.

Realizing he was out of options for now, he stomped back to his motel room. A busy day lay ahead of him. He thought it might not be a bad idea to recharge his batteries with a short nap.

Unfortunately, sleep evaded him like an old friend who owed him money. Nick tossed and turned, stared up at the ceiling as his brain refused to switch to a lower gear. He was dead tired. His body ached from head to toe. But until he had a chance to chat with this cocksucker who called himself Coko Puff, he knew he would remain wide awake.

At precisely eight a.m., he picked up his cellphone and rang the closest car rental company he could find. An hour later, the vehicle was delivered to his motel.

He hit the streets again. This time he took along his tire iron, which had lain beside his bed since the day Melissa invited him over for lasagna.

He only hoped he possessed enough self-control not to hurt Mr. Puff too badly before he got the information he needed.

†

Nick couldn’t recall the last time he had been so uncomfortable. Maybe while he was being tortured by two crazy rednecks who didn’t know the difference between real life and sports entertainment.
That
had certainly been worse than this. Or maybe when he’d been kneed in the balls by a soft-spoken hitman with muttonchop sideburns. His current predicament wasn’t quite as bad as
that
.

This sucked, though. No doubt about it.

He had asked for
BIG
. Insisted on
plenty of legroom
. Told the rental company he didn’t care about
sporty
or even
fuel-efficient
, since he didn’t expect to need the car for very long.
Just make sure it’s BIG
.

They sent him a Kia Spectra.

A crick burned in his neck. By the time he reached his destination, his spine felt like an old wire coat-hanger that had been bent back and forth until it was ready to snap any second.

Clarence “Coko Puff” Shabazz lived nine miles outside of Midnight, in the southeast corner of the county along the North Carolina/South Carolina border. His house was the last of four on a quiet, dead-end street. It was a small bungalow, gray with blue trim. A satellite dish on the roof. Paved driveway. The property was neatly kept save for a garbage can on the front porch that was overflowing with black bags. To the right of the house, behind a chain-link fence, a vicious-looking Rottweiler sat chewing on a hambone as big as a man’s arm.

Nick parked his rental beneath the shade of an elm tree several hundred feet from the drug-dealer’s home. He chose a vantage point close enough to spot anyone coming and going, but far enough away so he wouldn’t arouse suspicion.

The driveway was empty. Coko Puff wasn’t home.

So Nick waited.

†

...and waited some more.

Business must have been booming for Polk County’s most prosperous dope-peddler. All day and into the evening Nick watched the house, with only the growling of his stomach to keep him company (how long had it been since he’d eaten? At one point he thought about ordering a pizza, but then decided against it; this wasn’t a stakeout in some bad cop movie). Occasionally he tried calling Melissa to give her an update on everything that had happened, but he kept getting her voicemail. More than once fatigue caught up with him, and he nodded off for a few minutes. He cursed himself each time he jerked awake. He sat up in his seat as much as the tiny Spectra would allow, and refocused his bloodshot eyes on the drug dealer’s home.

Around three or four in the afternoon, his cellphone rang.

Nick glanced at its screen. Accepted the call. Yawned into the phone: “Sheriff.”

“Mr. Bullman. I dropped by the motel, since I was in the area. I was hoping to talk to you in person. You weren’t there.”

“I stepped out for a bite,” Nick lied.

“Mind if I ask what you’re having?”

“Annie’s.” Nick said the first thing that came to mind.

“Hmm. Annie’s is closed on Mondays.”

Nick was silent.

A radio squawked on the sheriff’s end of the line.

For now, Mackey said nothing further about catching Nick in a lie. He wasted no time explaining his reason for calling: “Something I thought you’d want to know. Remember what I told you about the scar shared by our two John Does? I did some digging. Turns out there’s an unsolved case from about fifty years ago. Conjoined twins were born to a poor family in Morganville. Boys, attached at the hip. A few weeks after they came home from the hospital with Mom, the infants went missing. There were rumors the parents sold them to a traveling sideshow. The boys were never found.

“Mr. Bullman, I think those missing Siamese twins are the two who came gunning for you. They would be in their fifties now, if they had lived. We’ve got no priors, no record of your attempted murderers’ existence at all. Do you know how rare that is? I’ve never seen it. Granted, the connection I’m making between an unsolved case from a half-century ago and the guys who tried to kill you...it is circumstantial. But I’ll be damned if it doesn’t add up. Now I just need to figure out what the hell I can do with this information.”

Nick didn’t know what to say. He assumed the sheriff expected him to be surprised. But few things surprised Nick Bullman these days.

Mackey apologized then, said he had a call on the other line that he had to take.

“Wherever you are, whatever you’re working on, let’s pray it leads us to her,” he said. “I just want Sophie home safe. All I ask is that you leave a few scraps for me. Something I can put behind bars when this is over.”

Abruptly, the sheriff hung up.

For a brief moment, Nick suspected that Mackey knew exactly where he was, what he was up to.

He tossed his phone on the passenger seat and resumed his wait.

†

Four hours later he spotted his quarry, as the sun began to set.

He heard the car before he saw it. Thumping bass from some hardcore rap song rattled the Kia’s mirrors, thrummed through the vehicle’s chassis.

A brown Monte Carlo rolled past him. A mid-80s model with oversized chrome rims, windows tinted black as a serial killer’s soul. Its vanity plate read KINGPUFF, and a sticker on the bumper urged D.A.R.E. TO KEEP KIDS OFF DRUGS.

Nick couldn’t wait to meet this piece of shit. He reached behind his seat to retrieve the tire iron.

The Monte Carlo backed into Shabazz’s driveway. The music stopped, but for a minute or more the car just sat there, its engine rumbling like the contented purr of a lion after a long day of slaying weaker animals.

Finally, the driver-side door fell open.

The Rottweiler welcomed its master home with a single bark.

Nick climbed out of the Kia, his stiff old bones popping and cracking like small-caliber gunshots in the twilight.

†

“Shabazz!” Nick called to the other man. He held the tire iron behind his back, out of sight.

The Rottweiler started barking furiously. It stood on its hind legs, its front claws invoking a metallic song of protest from the bowing chain-link fence.

Shabazz didn’t hear Nick at first. He was too busy telling his dog to shut the fuck up. Apparently, the beast’s name was Lashonda.

Nick’s bum knee throbbed like a son-of-a-bitch as he crossed the road, but he didn’t let it slow him down. He only hoped that fence would hold.

“Yo, Clarence!” He refused to call the guy
Coko Puff
.

“Who the fuck are you?”

Shabazz was a short, skinny black man with light skin and long, braided hair pulled into a tight ponytail. He wore baggy blue jeans and a Detroit Pistons basketball jersey. A fat diamond stud glittered in his left ear. He had a bushy uni-brow and a pointy goatee that gave him a slightly devilish appearance. Instantly, Nick knew where the drug-dealer got his stupid nickname: from the cluster of four reddish-brown moles on his left cheek and two more beside his right eye. Most of them were the size of a dime, but a few were as big around as a quarter.

“I need to talk to you,” said Nick.

Shabazz looked him up and down.

With one hand he lifted his jersey to show Nick a gold-plated Beretta stuck between his boxers and his washboard abs.

He said, “You might wanna make an appointment next time.”

“It’s about Sophie Suttles,” said Nick.

“What the fuck I care about that bitch?” Shabazz glanced back toward the Rottweiler, licked his lips and gave Nick a taunting grin. “I mean, uh...Coko Puff don’t know nobody by that name.”

“Wrong answer.”

Nick brought the tire iron from behind his back, swung it at the drug-dealer’s head.

Coko Puff went down like a spilled bowl of cereal.

†

He came to slowly, blinking like a man who just stepped out of a dark room into harsh sunlight.

Shabazz moaned. Rubbed at his scalp. The tips of his fingers came away bloody. He tried to sit up, but then hissed through his teeth. He collapsed back into his recliner.

“Shit, man...what hit me?”

Before him, in a straight-backed chair turned backwards, sat the answer to his question. Bigger than life and twice as ugly.

The dealer reached for his gun. Couldn’t find it.

Nick showed it to him, before stashing the Beretta between his pants and the small of his back. In his other hand he held his trusty tire iron.

“Who the fuck are you? Somebody send you to rip me off?”

“I think you know who I am,” said Nick. “And you can stop pretending that you don’t know why I’m here.”

The house smelled like Old Spice aftershave and marijuana. The carpet was fancy, snow-white and soft as a kitten’s fur, but the walls were painted a gaudy mustard-yellow. Behind Nick, an elaborate stereo system stood silent next to a leather sofa. On the opposite side of the room, atop a small end-table, framed pictures of Shabazz with his arm around a little old lady sat incongruously beneath a poster of Al Pacino wielding an M-16. The way the poster was positioned on the wall, it looked as if Scarface’s wrath was aimed right at poor Grandma.

Nick had taken some time to look around the rest of the house while Shabazz was unconscious. He wasn’t at all surprised by what he found. A table had been shoved into one corner of the kitchen. The surface was cluttered with miniature scales, glass vials, and plastic baggies. The tools of this scumbag’s trade.

“I don’t know why you be steppin’ up on my property, ’causin’ Coko Puff trouble,” the dealer said now. “You must be lookin’ for some other fool.”

“No,” said Nick, “I’ve got the right fool.”

“Coko Puff is a peaceful man, yo. I’m a law-abidin’ citizen. A follower of Islam. Believe
that
.”

“You peddle poison and carry a nine-millimeter,” said Nick. “You also have a habit of speaking of yourself in the third-person. Makes me wanna hit you again, hard enough so you don’t wake up this time.”

Shabazz rubbed at his head again, winced. “You makin’ a big mistake, dawg. Don’t be surprised if yo’ ugly ass wake up dead one mornin’, after this.”

Nick yawned. “I’m afraid you’ll have to get in line, Shabazz. You’re not the only one around here who wants to send me home in a box. Besides...look at me. Do you
really
think you scare me?”

Shabazz had no reply.

“Now that we’ve got that out of the way,” said Nick, “I understand you’re one of this area’s biggest distributors of illegal substances. I have it on good authority that a man named Eddie Whiteside worked for you, before he wound up on the wrong end of a twelve-gauge.”

“None of those accusations have ever been substantiated,” said Shabazz. “And I don’t know no ‘Eddie.’ ”

Nick pointed with his tire iron toward the kitchen.

“The baggies, the vials, the digital scale...I guess those are for selling encyclopedias door-to-door. Cut the bullshit. I’m not the law. I know what you are. But I don’t care about that right now. All I want is info concerning the whereabouts of Sophie Suttles.”

Shabazz reached into a bowl on an end-table next to his recliner. It was full of those little Valentine’s Day candies that come in pastel colors with various flirty messages printed on them. He plucked one out of the bowl, took his time reading whatever it said before popping it into his mouth.

He sucked loudly at the candy, smirking at Nick all the while.

The big man jumped to his feet and hurled his chair across the room. It crashed into the stereo system, shattering the glass door of the entertainment center that housed it.

He brought his tire iron down on the dealer’s right arm.

Something cracked. Shabazz screamed—a high-pitched, girlish scream. A rainbow of colored hearts rattled across the end-table like teeth in a bar-fight.

Outside, the Rottweiler started barking like crazy again.