A Field of Red (4 page)

 “Georgie!”

She was calling again, from inside.

George stood and wiped his muddy hands on his pants. He was surrounded by tall, bushy plants planted in long rows that stretched off toward a distant fence line and trees beyond.

He liked working in the mud, working with the plants. It made him feel like he was doing something real with his life, instead of wasting time in a jail cell. He’d had enough of that. Now, he truly appreciated the outdoors. The morning was warming up, coming up over the trees that lined the river, which ran along the eastern side of the property, beyond the tall fence. The plants liked it sunny and dry, and this crop was almost ready to take in. But it had rained yesterday and again this morning, and you had to watch it—too much water was bad. So he was out here checking on them.

They were growing like weeds.

He smiled to himself. He made that joke a lot and always thought it was funny. The marijuana plants were almost as tall as George, marching away in long rows toward the fence.

Chastity never laughed at his jokes. She was much more likely to roll her eyes and say something dirty under her breath. She didn’t think he was funny. When she did laugh at his jokes, George got worried—he got the feeling she wasn’t really laughing with him. More like at him.

At least she laughed. George had never gotten up the nerve to tell any of his excellent jokes to the boss.

George picked up his tools and started for the house—she’d be calling again. Once she started, she never let up. And it always seemed like she needed something.

He looked up at the house. The back yard, more like a field, was fenced on all sides with high planks of pine. Beyond, stood the big old farmhouse, two stories and a large side porch that wrapped part-way around the front. Old wooden shutters hung from each window of both floors, mixed with the ivy that grew up from the west side and had nearly taken over the south side, too. There was even an attic huge enough to play basketball in.

George liked the house. It wasn’t his, but the boss let him stay here, as long as he kept things up and took care of the crop. Even though they were way out in the country, and no one ever came snooping around, the boss didn’t like things to get too run down.

It was the closest thing George had to a home in a long time.

George walked to the tall gate and exited the field, turning and dead bolting the gate behind him. With the lock and the twelve-foot fence, no one could see what they were growing, not without a helicopter.

He turned and crossed the small yard. There was a rusty old play set with swings and a back concrete patio with ratty furniture and a sliding patio door. He was headed for the house but then remembered what he was carrying and veered off, walking to the back door of the large red barn that stood across the gravel driveway from the house. He undid another deadbolt and went inside.

The old wooden barn was huge on the inside, lined with old wooden rafters that framed a dusty central area. For some reason, the inside of the barn reminded George of the inside of a church—high ceiling, quiet, dusty. But this was unlike any church he’d been to—from the rafters hung hundreds of marijuana plants, drying in tight bunches and wrapped with brown twine. The plants cured in the dry heat of the barn. It had been a good summer, hot and dry, and the yield had been high. Between what was in the barn drying and what was still in the field, it had been an excellent summer. The boss was very happy.

Pot came in two varieties. The narrow leaf, like what George was growing, was supposedly more potent than the wide-leaf variety, typically grown in humid and artificial environments. The broader leaves produced less resin per ounce of finished product, and the more resin, the better. At least, that’s what the boss had told him once.

Of course, growing outdoors had its own share of problems—weather, weeds, insects, and prying eyes. That was why this farmhouse was perfect—surrounded on three sides by forest, with a backyard and the field beyond. The fence was only three years old and still looked new. The boss had it built after picking up the property in a Sheriff’s real estate sale.

 “PUDDIN’!”

Jeez, he hated it when she called him that.

It had all started out as a joke. “Georgie, Porgy, Puddin’, Pie,” when they’d first hooked up, but now Chastity called him that all the time. She almost never called him George anymore.

A dozen tables and other work surfaces ringed the perimeter of the barn. George tore himself away from looking at the drying marijuana and set down the tools, then picked up a large bundle of green plants he’d brought in earlier. The tables and benches around him were set up with production equipment: twine and hooks to gather up pot for drying and hang up the bundles, bundlers and a boxing machine for making bricks, and boxes of baggies and scales and anything else he might need to prepare the merchandise for sale. Using the twine, he tied the ends of the plants together and hung the bundle from one of the few open areas in the barn.

In the middle of the barn, also used as a garage, sat two vehicles: an old Mustang and a beat-up old white Corolla, parked under a grouping of work lights, surrounded by the tables and work surfaces. He looked at the new car taking up a good portion of the open area of the barn. It had appeared overnight, as if by magic, and would be gone soon. George would be driving it, as soon as they heard about the ransom. He wished he could keep it. He’d asked, but the boss said no.

George had always been into cars. He’d started out as a mechanic and sometimes wondered what would have happened, if he’d stayed at the dealership, busting his nut working on other people’s cars. After he’d been released from prison, he’d gotten on with the boss and George had been able to fix up some of the old farm equipment around this place. But he missed working with cars, trying to figure out what made them tick, trying to fix them.

He ran his hands along the clean lines of the stolen Mustang. He assumed it was stolen. The boss hardly ever let him in on anything. All George knew was the plan required a fast car that couldn’t be traced back to any of them, and so a car appeared.

The other car in the garage, the beat-up, old, white Corolla, George had found wasting away in a back corner of the garage, when he’d moved in. It hadn’t worked at the beginning, but he’d fiddled with it for a few months and had gotten it working. Now, he used it when he needed to run into town. It was too bad they couldn’t use the Corolla tomorrow and abandon it. He hated that useless car. It rattled like a deathtrap on the highway. He hadn’t been able to fix the body panels, which, had swollen with rust and, in places, pulled away from the chassis.

The back door swung open, bathing the inside of the garage with sudden sunlight, and Chastity walked inside.

“Where have you BEEN, Puddin’?” Chastity asked, exasperated. She got exasperated a lot. “Leave that car alone and get inside. You know you can’t keep it.”

Chastity looked good.

He’d appreciated her from the moment they’d met, and thanked his lucky stars for every day that she put up with him. Even if she was mean to him. She was thin and blonde and gorgeous. And she knew it, too. One time, she’d told him that she hardly noticed anymore when men were admiring her. “I’m like a pretty painting,” she’d said at the time. “They just like to look.”

Chastity was wearing a tiny pair of blue denim shorts he liked and a tight, yellow shirt that showed off every curve of her figure. It made George happy to be a man, anyway. Just looking at her was worth putting up with—

“They won’t shut up,” she said, stopping in front of him and putting her hands on her hips. “The crying and the whining. Puddin’, I’m getting sick of it!”

He loved those hips but pulled his eyes away and looked at her eyes, nodding.

“It’s okay, Chas. I’m coming,” George said, nodding. “I just had to finish up.”

He left the garage, locking it behind him and walked to the house. She shadowed him, starting in again with the complaining. They were too far out in the country, there wasn’t anything to eat, they were out of beer. You’d think with as much money as they were going to see from this job, she’d stow the whining.

“It’s the little Mexican one, she’s the worst,” Chastity said, walking behind him. He wasn’t looking at her, but he could tell she was shaking her head. “I can hear her up there, whining and talking away in her Spanish.”

“Maybe, if you went up there—”

“I’m not going up there,” she screeched. It reminded him of the owl he’d once found in the barn. It had taken him weeks to get rid of the thing.

They got to the patio doors at the same time, but Chastity stopped and just looked at the closed doors, her arms crossed. He knew she was waiting for him to pull the door open for her. Sometimes, George wondered how she got along when he wasn’t around.

He pulled the door aside and followed her into the dining room, which took up the back corner of the house. Sunlight slanted into the windows that lined the back wall of the kitchen and dining room, windows that looked out into the backyard.

To his right was the kitchen; every flat surface was covered with dishes or empty pizza boxes or other takeout trash. She didn’t like to cook, and he couldn’t make much except Mac and cheese.

She smiled and walked over to him with that bounce in her step that drew men’s eyes wherever she went. “What about the plan?” she asked. The boss had been by earlier to talk to George.

“He gave me a cell phone,” George said, patting his pocket proudly. “And he wrote down when I’m supposed to call and what I’m supposed to say. Then I’m to ‘take the phone and break it and throw it in the river,’” he said slowly, repeating what he’d been told. He wanted to make sure he got the words right.

Chastity nodded.

“Good,” she said. “We need to get this show going.”

George looked up at the ceiling. He could hear someone crying upstairs.

“I’d better go up and check on them,” he said.

Chastity nodded and went back out, carrying her cigarettes and lighter. George walked through the kitchen and then down the hall, passing other rooms—a large dining room, bathroom, the living room/parlor—and into the big foyer by the front door. He turned and started up the staircase.

The girls were in different rooms. There was no real need to keep them quiet, out here so far from town. But the boss had said not to put them together, so George had got them set up in two of the four upstairs bedrooms, on opposite sides of the hallway. As he climbed the stairs, he could hear them both crying.

George didn’t like it, but he wasn’t in charge. The boss was, and George did what he was told. There was a big payday coming, maybe even enough money for him and Chastity to finally head west. George wanted to see the ocean, the mountains, and the Golden Gate Bridge. Mostly, he just wanted to get into a car—even that old Corolla—and start driving. All he wanted was for him and Chastity to see the ocean, walk in the surf, get away from Ohio.

The boss had him and Chastity under his thumb, but this job was supposed to put things even. Once the pay came in, the boss had said that George and Chastity were free to leave. The boss was working with someone else, a guy George had never met, and this other guy was calling the shots on the schedule and the ransom. Between the mystery guy and George’s boss, they had a whole plan all worked out.

George and Chastity were watching the girls. That was their job, their part of the plan. But Chastity wouldn’t have anything to do with the girls, except complain about them. Sometimes, she made the meals, but she wouldn’t deliver them or talk to the girls. She sometimes helped let the girls out of their restraints to use the bathroom, but only at night and only after turning out all the lights. George thought Chastity didn’t want the girls to be able to identify her.

So it fell to George to care for the girls, keep them fed, and relatively happy, until the situation was over. Then Chastity and him, they’d be off. When this was all over, they’d be together in a car, driving the open roads on their way to San Francisco. They’d be together, with no one bossing them around. Chastity could ride in the car with the window down and her bare feet sticking out, like she liked to do. And when they got to the ocean, spread out flat in front of them, he and Chastity would park the car and take a blanket out of the trunk and sit on the wide, sandy beach and count their money. Count the stacks and stacks of cash from this job. She would love the ocean. Chastity had never seen it. Neither had George, but it didn’t matter. They just needed to get away, a long way from here, where they could be together and happy.

Or, at least as happy as she could get. It seemed like Chastity was always cross about one thing or another.

The ransom money would come in soon. But he worried about the little girls. At one point, George had asked about what would happen to the girls after the ransom money came in, and the boss had said he’d “take care of it.” He didn’t even want to think about what his boss meant.

Even George was smart enough to know that didn’t sound encouraging.

Heading inside the Tip Top Diner, Frank was struck again by how the place was “decorated.” It literally looked like he’d stepped forty years back in time. The large restaurant was filled with wooden booths and square wooden tables, and the walls, and every other flat surface, were covered with old, faded wallpaper, broken up only by paneled, dark wood.

To go along with the season, the walls and booths and the crane game next to the entrance were decorated with paper pumpkins, crepe paper spiders, and dozens of other Halloween decorations. Next to the door stood a mannequin decorated to look like a mummy. Behind the counter, near the cash register, was perched a sad, old-looking stuffed witch, her pointy hat sagging. And, while the servers and greeters were costumed as well, sadly, all the spider webs in the corners were 100% genuine.

Nevertheless, the food was excellent and the wait staff friendly. They had Frank snugged away in his favorite booth with a mug of fresh coffee in no time. The coffee here wasn’t as good as the numerous cups he’d enjoyed at the Café Du Monde in the French Quarter—so far, he’d never found a better cup anywhere—but the coffee should, at least, chase away his hangover.

Everywhere he went, it seemed he was attracted to these types of restaurants—quiet, family owned, the decor needing a massive update. Never a chain place, ever. And the crazy thing was, there were places like the Tip Top Diner all over the nation, little hole-in-the-wall greasy spoons where you could always get a great meal and a hot cup of good coffee. And it didn’t hurt that this particular restaurant was thirty feet from the front door of his hotel.

In Birmingham, he had a half-dozen dives and family restaurants like this one that he frequented, much to the chagrin of his partners. They always wanted to eat somewhere a little more “upscale.” But places like this one were the backbone of the restaurant industry, and, to Frank, they just felt more real. You knew that when you ordered something off the menu it wasn’t just pulled out of a freezer somewhere and nuked. It was one of the reasons he never went out for Mexican food. He loved the cuisine, but it seemed like every Mexican restaurant’s food tasted exactly the same, like it all came on the same delivery truck. Maybe it did.

The other thing he enjoyed about dives was that they left you alone. His wife had never understood his need for solitude and eventually had been happy to grant him a permanent supply, unfettered by her presence. He had always preferred going somewhere quiet to eat, usually bringing along a case file or something else to read.

 He sat in booth #3, which had already become his favorite. Over the last few days, he’d been in here so often that the waitresses had learned his name and which booth he liked. And he had settled into a standard breakfast order after sampling about every breakfast plate on the menu.

Frank liked where he was sitting. The booth had nice view of the entire place and the door, and his back was to the wall. Situational awareness—it had been drummed into him at the Academy and was another old habit he couldn’t seem to shake— meant choosing the seat with the best view of the room.

Frank just hoped he could go the whole meal without anyone talking to him. Frank had been told before that he was an introvert, but he didn’t buy it. He just hated people, sometimes, and needed to be left alone to recharge his batteries. His partners had all tried, unsuccessfully, to get him to go out after his shift for drinks, but he’d never been into socializing.

His wife had hated that, too.

Long before she’d left him, she’d bitch about them never going out. But then Laura had come along, and Trudy had found a new hobby that didn’t involve complaining to him about her life. He should have seen what was coming next. Now, looking back on it, he wondered why it had been a surprise at all.

But so far, the best part of retirement was the quiet meals by himself: no one to entertain, or interrogate, or need to smile and nod while they blathered on and on, talking about whatever stupid thing had happened to them.

Frank had the Dayton paper spread out on the table in front of him—he’d grabbed a free copy of the Dayton Daily News from Oscar at the hotel front desk—and was enjoying his OJ and coffee and a ham and cheese omelet. A cardiologist back in Alabama had said to back off the carbs, so he’d switched out the buttery hash browns for some fresh tomato slices.

But one thing he wouldn’t give up was his eggs.

Frank remembered his one and only trip to Paris. In the mornings, waking in one of those truly tiny European hotel rooms he’d been warned about, he’d craved any kind of protein for breakfast. But this being Paris and all, all he could find were dainty little croissants and chocolate-covered pastries. For all the decadence of the food in Paris, he’d have traded all of it for a nice omelet. There was no meat at any of the breakfasts, just pastries and breads, everything drizzled in chocolate.

Trudy would’ve hated him for that. Of course, she never went on travel with him, on any of the occasions his work had taken him out of New Orleans. Maybe if he’d taken her with him, even once, things would have worked out better. But on the rare occasions they had taken trips together, it seemed the vacations were always more exhausting than they should have been.

“More coffee?”

He looked up. It was Gina, one of the waitresses, smiling at him. She had smoky eyes and wore too much makeup for his taste but seemed like a good sort.

“Yup. Thanks.”

She smiled and leaned over the table, topping off his cup of coffee and setting a few creamers down, all in one practiced motion. He reached for the coffee, and she rested a hand lightly on his elbow.

“I just wanted to thank you, Mr. Harper,” she said quietly.

Frank glanced up at her again and nodded.

“No problem. Did you change the locks?”

She nodded.

“Yeah, and I put all his stuff out. Took pictures, too. Everything I put out by the driveway, like you said.”

Frank nodded. “That’s good—he can’t say you have anything of his?”

“No, no, everything left is mine,” she said. “It’s all from before we got married.” She was rubbing her arm as she spoke, probably the site of an old bruise inflicted by her “loving” husband. Frank wondered if she was even aware of rubbing her arm like that.

“Good,” he said. “What kind of pictures?”

“Pictures of the house and all my stuff,” she said. “Like you said.” She leaned in a little closer. “I also took those other pictures you talked about, the ones of me—my face, arms, legs. My sister took those, actually.”

 “Good, that’s good,” he said, his voice low. “Cops?”

She nodded.

“I filed the report, like you said. And gave them the envelope with all the photos of our property and me, so there was proof, if he ever hits me again,” she said, glancing around. “Not sure how that’s going to work, though. His buddies might protect him. But my sister’s staying over, and things are already a lot better.”

Frank nodded slowly and looked her in the eyes.

“Keep an eye open,” Frank said, frowning. “Things will get worse for a while—a lot worse—before they get better.”

She was taken aback.

“Are you sure?” she asked, glancing around comically, as if her ex-husband were hiding behind the crane game machine that stood near the front door.

Frank nodded and resisted saying anything else. He looked at her and nodded again, then turned back to his breakfast. After a long moment, she walked away, much less chipper than she had been before.

Why did he do that? Frank knew he should say something to her, something more comforting, but he couldn’t force himself to bullshit her.

He’d had enough bullshit in his life. Too many lies, too much death. He liked to keep things simple, truthful. Maybe he’d been too truthful too often. Maybe that’s how he ended up sitting at this random table, eating breakfast alone in a small town he’d never heard of.

Sugarcoating things never worked. Trudy never wanted to hear about his work or the troubling things he saw. She only wanted to hear the good stories, and there weren’t many of those. Frank must’ve started repeating himself somewhere along the line, because she’d lost interest. First in his career, then in him, and then their marriage.

Gina, the waitress, had asked for advice on his first visit, and he’d given it to her. Why had she asked? Maybe he still looked like a cop. That barkeep Saturday night had said the same, so maybe Frank still gave off the appearance of someone who cared. Or should care, at least.

But Gina had asked for his advice, and he’d given it, freely. He’d walked her through the steps, and she’d jotted them all down on the back of her ticket book. She asked intelligent questions, questions that told Frank she might have a chance of extricating herself from the situation.

He’d seen it enough to know the chances weren’t good, but he thought she might be able to pull it off. Of course, it was up to her to follow through, to make it work. Either way, he didn’t really care—he’d seen too many people in bad situations to assume it would work out. It usually didn’t.

He resisted the temptation to call Gina back over and say something comforting, like “oh, you don’t need to worry,” or “he’s probably moved on.” Instead, Frank slipped out his flask, added a little vodka to his OJ, and went back to his paper.

There was trouble all over, he knew. But, reading the paper, the news in the Midwest seemed less dire than it had in other places he had lived. The Dayton paper was full of stories about unemployment and petty crimes and the occasional murder, but there were also a fair share of upbeat items. As he ate, he read about some new construction going on at the nearby Wright Patterson Air Force Base, the large military installation in Kettering and a major local employer.

There was also ongoing construction on the highway heading down to Cincinnati, and the paper had included complicated maps to avoid the area and the traffic. And there had been several shootings in Dayton. Evidently, there was some kind of ongoing turf war over drugs, and several young men had been killed over the past 48 hours.

But there were several charming stories, too, something he didn’t remember from Birmingham or the big Atlanta papers. Chili cook-off’s and fundraisers and animal rescue stories might not save the planet, but they broke up the gloom and doom.

Frank heard the jingle of the bell on the front door.

He didn’t look up.

He’d been trying to work on relaxing, on avoiding the temptation—or the habit—of monitoring every situation down to the “nth” degree. Instead, Frank forced himself to continue reading.

But his mind wandered, falling back into the old habits. He could hear two people. One spoke to the greeter, who led them to a nearby, empty booth. Frank managed to read the whole rest of the newspaper story before he gave in and glanced over at the pair.

It was an older man and a young woman, looking at menus. The man was in his late forties, dark hair, nice boots. Clean boots, too, not the kind you saw on the farmers around here. These boots were for dressing up, not shit-kicking or mucking out stalls or taking care of horses. He was probably a lawyer or a banker. Maybe a dentist.

The woman was younger, early twenties, brunette, her shoulders and face down and pointed at the table. Her hair hung down in wet tangled clumps. Frank knew immediately that there was something wrong with her.

He looked back at the paper and tried to ignore it. It wasn’t something he needed to get involved in—she was probably just a depressed wife, a sad traveler. Maybe they were crossing the country, driving for long stretches. The man looked chipper and well-rested, but the woman looked like she’d just seen a hundred miles of hard road. Husband and wife or, more likely, father and daughter.

“Get ya something?” the other server, Donna, asked the pair.

The young woman glanced up at the waitress. Frank saw the young woman was one of those kids who liked piercings; she must’ve had a dozen in her lips, nose, and up her earlobe. She was also wearing dark makeup and had a streak of blue in the front of her otherwise black hair. He’d run into a bunch of Goth kids in the bigger cities—Atlanta had a whole area dedicated to spiky collars and tattoo parlors—but he hadn’t seen a member of that honored crowd in a while.

“Got any Red Bull?” the girl asked, mumbling.

Frank saw Donna’s eyes go wide. “Oh, no, but they have it at Speedway,” Donna stammered, indicating out the windows at the gas station across the road.

“Please excuse my daughter,” the man said, smiling. He was cool, collected, taking it all in stride. “She’s not in the best of moods. We’ll both take coffee.”

Donna scooted away, and Frank went back to his paper, relaxing. It looked like the dad had it together. The daughter was busy rebelling, and the father looked like the sort of person who knew how to handle it. If Frank had to guess, it looked like the father was retrieving his daughter from some all-night party or rave.

Frank wondered idly if Laura had gone through a phase like that. She was 24 now. It had been years since he’d seen her. He’d missed out on so much of her life—actually, only the last four years, but it seemed like a lifetime. She’d moved to Ohio, gotten married, had a kid, had her husband walk out on her.

Trudy, Frank’s ex-wife, had made it clear — Laura had wanted her own life, away from her father. He’d respected that for a while. Trudy had said that Laura had moved to Ohio but wouldn’t tell him where. Of course, a few calls to the right people, and he had found out. People he used to work with, work for. They tracked down the name and passed it along to Frank, along with a small town in Ohio that he’d never heard of. And he hadn’t used the information for two years, not sure what to do with it.