Beluga (11 page)

He came out bleeding and furious but calmed down when he saw Desmond.

“Hey here!” he shouted and tried to stanch the blood flow with his sleeve.

Him and Desmond wandered around the shop looking for a clean rag or a paper towel while they caught up on what they'd both been up to since they'd seen each other last. Ricky's buddy rolled out from under the Bronco and looked up at me from his creeper.

“Buddy ever asks you to help him with a damn thing, for the love of Sweet Jesus, don't.”

“All right,” I told him.

He took a contemplative puff on his cigarette and then rolled back under that Ford.

Desmond's buddy Ricky had found some toilet paper, and him and Desmond were over by Ricky's nasty sink on the far wall. Ricky had a mirror he could almost see himself in, and he was dabbing at his cut. I stayed where I was until Desmond waved me over.

“Tell him,” he said to Ricky.

“Heard about your tires.”

“Heard what?” I asked him.

“Might run across some Michelins on the cheap.” Ricky dabbed. Dirty, bloody tap water ran down to his nose.

“Who told you that?” I asked him.

“Think it was the Snap-on guy.”

“Did he say anything else?”

“Tell him,” Desmond said.

“He said if you see those Michelins coming, head the other way.”

Me and Desmond exchanged sour glances.

“Did he say why?” I asked.

Ricky shook his head. He drew his wet toilet paper away from his cut and had a good look at it.

“Nothing?”

“Just head the other way. I figured the tires were bad or hot or something, and now here you are with a load of them, right?”

Desmond said, “Yeah,” and nodded.

“So why don't you tell me.”

With a glance, Desmond let me know that would be my job.

“You ever been married, Ricky?” I asked him.

“Married right now,” he told me.

“Wife of yours got any brothers?”

He nodded.

“Has she got one that's maybe not worth a happy damn?”

Ricky didn't have to think about that. “Oh yeah,” he told us both.

I pointed at Desmond. “He's got one of those.”

“These his tires?”

Desmond nodded.

“Stole them?”

Desmond nodded again.

“Who from?”

If a shrug can be a lie, then Desmond told one to his cellmate.

“How much you asking?”

“Fifty for you,” Desmond said. I was entirely with him by then, anything to get those Michelins gone.

“How many you got in there?”

“A dozen,” I said.

“Check okay?”

Before I could offer that cash would be better, Desmond said, “Oh hell yeah.”

We even had to unload them and pack them onto Ricky's tire rack. Ricky examined them as we worked.

“Yeah, I can get these right out of here.”

“If you want some more…” Desmond started, but Ricky waved a hand and told him, “Naw.”

Then Ricky's buddy under the Bronco started putting up a fuss. “We doing this or what?” he wanted to know.

That's just when Dolly Parton came on the radio and drove me entirely out of the shop.

For the first few miles back north, Desmond unfreighted himself of various fond anecdotes about Ricky. Evenings they'd had, particularly the ones that had failed to land them both in jail. I let him go on and didn't bring up the nut of our troubles until we'd reached the junction at Hollandale where we could both see the road sign for Belzoni.

“Why don't we just dump those tires,” I suggested to Desmond. “Bury them. Burn them. Whatever the hell it takes.”

Desmond was equipped with a natural resistance to that sort of thing. He liked to go around saying he didn't care to be wasteful, but the trouble was that Desmond was tight. His mother was tight. His sister was, too. His father might have been dead, but he was still legendary for the corners he'd cut and dollars he'd stretched and retail prices he'd avoided. When Desmond's mother was looking to buy stuff, she'd tell Desmond, “I wish your daddy was here.” She didn't seem to pine for him much the rest of the time.

Desmond was a lot less skinflint proactive than his father must have been, but he'd balk instinctively whenever I'd make to bid to cut our losses.

I'd always weigh the trouble before us against the money we'd let out and do the math without affection for any part of the equation. Desmond's natural ardor for money always seemed to get in his way. He'd come around eventually. He always did. But bringing Desmond to a cash write-off was a little like herding a goat. You could do it, but never easily and certainly not at first.

“If the Snap-on guy is warning people off…”

“No sir,” Desmond told me. “Might as well sell them. Now that you've scuffed up Shambrough, he isn't going let us off.”

I drove back to the catfish farm, but there was no sign of Larry or Skeeter. Their buddy, though, was in the tractor shed fooling with his power lift.

“Seen them?” Desmond asked him.

He spat a stream of snuff juice and shook his head.

“Got a number for Skeeter? I think Larry's phone's dead or something.”

He shook his head. He spat.

“If they come back through here,” I told him, “make sure Larry gets up with Desmond.”

The buddy nodded. He pointed at disassembled tractor parts spread out on a square of Visqueen. “Ever had one of these apart?”

It was a bunch of gears and hydraulic fittings with springs and gaskets and such.

I shook my head. “I'd rather buy a new tractor.”

Since Larry and Skeeter weren't going to, me and Desmond put the tarp on the trailer. We got the thing covered just as Larry's buddy managed to get a toe under his Visqueen and spill his disassembled power lift all over the dirt shed floor. I've got to hand it to him. He was a man of snuff and moderation in all things.

He spat a stream. He told us both, “Well, shit.”

 

TEN

For a few minutes there, I was even actually planning on going home. Then I reached the turnoff up around Isola and found myself working west with Greenville in my sights. I decided I was going to have a word with Kendell face-to-face. Get a read on him, a feel for his personal opinion of Lucas Shambrough.

You couldn't tell much about Kendell on the phone. He was short with everybody. A face-to-face, I told myself, that'd be worth driving for. Then there was the Officer Raintree factor that I thought about a little, too.

So I both drove and rationalized. I even took the chance of swinging north up by Geneill on the way. I found a spot where I could get a good look at the Lucas Shambrough homeplace without running the danger of anybody glancing out the window, seeing my Ranchero, and deciding, “There's that fucking guy.”

There were more cars parked in front of the house now, most of them trucks and 4
×
4s. I had to figure Shambrough was holding some sort of powwow in my honor, guessed if I rolled on down the driveway, I'd get turned right into soup. Instead I continued out to Hollyknowe, hit the truck route, and went west. I was in downtown Greenville in twenty minutes, just me and the half-dozen crows perched on the meters and the trash cans out in front of the Greenville precinct house.

Kendell was working a split shift. That's what the sergeant at the front desk told me. I recognized him. I'd watched him beat up a guy at the hotel bar over in Greenwood once. A loud, drunk guy from Madison, a suburb north of Jackson that attracts the sort of people who get loud and drunk in hotel bars. They usually wear loafers doing it, and they almost never wear socks.

I saw the whole thing by accident. The sergeant, a McCarty who was off duty, followed the loud drunk guy into the men's room, where I happened to already be. I was washing my hands and probably would have been gone, but the drunk guy started talking to me. He parked himself in front of a urinal, groaned once, and then said, “Hey, sport…”

Since it was just me and him, I had to guess I was the sport he meant. He burped before he bothered to even try to tell me something, and that's just when McCarty came in. He approached the vacant urinal like he meant to use it, but instead he punched the drunk guy in the kidneys one time hard.

That gentleman went down and stayed down. Whimpered a little. Started talking about his lawyer.

The sergeant relieved himself and flushed. He told the drunk guy, “Go somewhere else.”

I don't know what he'd done or how bad a day the sergeant had been having, but I couldn't even muster the barest twinge of sympathy for the guy. He was one of those fellows who'd be improved by a kidney punch three or four times a day.

I yielded the sink, finished drying my hands, and said to the sergeant, “What are you drinking?”

So we had kind of a relationship after that—I stood him for a couple Jack and Gingers—which meant I could pry and meddle a little.

“When does Kendell come back on?” I asked him.

“Around eight,” he told me.

“How about Officer Raintree?”

“Right,” he said. He had eyes just like me. He knew what I was up to and why. “How about Officer Raintree?”

“Still here?”

He nodded and pointed at the ceiling.

“You mind?”

He didn't and let me go on up. Teddy was shackled to the bench again. He must have been Greenville's only vagrant, or at least the only ill-mannered and lawless one, or maybe just the easiest to catch. He would need to have been up to some powerful crime before I would have hauled him in since he served to perfume the place to a fare-thee-well. Urine and feet stink and human clothes grease.

I told him, “Hey,” as I walked past, and he asked me for a dollar. He didn't even have a southern accent. Teddy had come here to be poor.

I gave him five dollars. “Where do you sleep, Teddy?”

Teddy pointed nowhere much. “Back in there somewhere.”

I gave him ten dollars more. “Did you eat today?”

Teddy broke savage wind and said something phlegmy.

“What did they pick you up for?”

“I ain't done it.”

I gave him twenty and nodded. “I hear you, brother.”

I turned around to find Officer T. Raintree standing in the squad room doorway. She was half out in the hall, watching me and Teddy.

I pointed at Teddy and told her, “He ain't done it.”

I think she smiled. I couldn't quite tell. She went back in the squad room. I found her at her desk.

“Kendell's working splits,” she told me.

“Back at eight, right?”

She nodded.

“You?”

“I'm done.” She closed her warrant book.

“Anywhere to eat around here?” I was laying the usual groundwork. I was expecting the usual result, which would be me finding out where to eat and then going there all alone.

She'd been tidying her desk, but she stopped. There was only one other officer in the room, well away from us and over against the far wall and on the phone. Officer T. Raintree named a couple of local restaurants, and then she waited.

“You think maybe you want to get some dinner or something?” I had to hope it was only half as painful to hear as it was to string together. I tried to say it while looking pleasant and hopeful and ready for rejection, which I was prepared to tolerate with a jolly shrug.

Officer T. Raintree didn't help me much. She just let it sit there for a bit. When she finally spoke, it was just to ask me, “Why?”

“Why … dinner?”

She nodded.

“With you?”

Kept nodding.

I hadn't worked up a why. I knew I found her beautiful and exotic and was hoping to get a chance to see her outside of her official duties where I could try to be at least a little winning on my own. That kind of thing's tough in handcuffs.

“Well,” I said. “I thought we could talk.”

“About what?”

“Just, you know, get to know each other.”

“I know a lot about you already.” With that she opened her middle drawer and drew out a manila folder. It had a few typed pages in it. “Kendell gave me this.” She ran her finger down the top sheet. “Born in March of 1975. Roanoke, Virginia. Four years in the marines. Six different police jobs in twelve years. One ex-wife. One daughter. Deceased. Independently wealthy somehow. Kendell had thoughts on that.”

“‘No thanks' would have worked just fine,” I told her and stood up like I'd be leaving.

“Sit down.”

I did.

“June 1980. Clarksdale, Mississippi. Two years in the marines. Two different police jobs—Baton Rouge and here. One husband. Deceased. One son. He eats, too.”

I was upset with the woman for not just saying no. So it took me a quarter minute to figure out what was going on.

“That's a yes?”

“Let me change. Pick up CJ. Shotgun House all right? He'll eat about anything there.”

“Yeah. Great. Am I meeting you there?”

She nodded. “When you hit the levee, turn left.”

She shut my folder, dropped it into her drawer, and closed it.

“What else did Kendell tell you?”

“Told me you'd ask me that.”

I headed for the squad room door.

“Hey,” she said.

I turned around.

“Keep your money. Teddy eats it.”

Damned if he wasn't chewing my twenty when I passed him in the hall.

*   *   *

The Shotgun House turned out to be a joint—barbecue and burgers and even alligator, battered and fried. There was a bar crowd drinking Bud Lights and eating crawfish straight off tin trays and then a room to the side with tables where there were a few kids eating already.

“One, hon?” The waitress was the hostess as well. She had a couple of pencils stuck in her hair and a basket of fritters in hand.

“Three,” I told her with, I guess, comical manly pride.