Beluga (23 page)

We swung by Pearl's first. I had Desmond stop a good block or two away, so I could slip up on the place and take in all the possible perils. I lurked in the neighbor's backyard for a time until Pearl came out off her back porch and went puttering in her flower bed. She didn't look like a woman put upon by villains and louts, so I slipped up to where she was weeding and piddling.

“Hey,” I told her.

She jumped a little.

“Anybody been around?”

“Debbie,” she said.

Debbie sold cosmetics out of her car, and once Pearl had said her name, I noticed the face that Debbie had put on her. Pearl's cheeks were a little more scarlet than normal, and her eyelids were a shimmering blue. The lip gloss kind of stopped me once Pearl had turned to face me full. It was a two-tone job with stark red in the middle and a border penciled in.

Pearl had been deadheading petunias and went back to it while I watched.

“I'm going upstairs for a minute,” I said and pointed toward the car shed, “and then what do you think about going for a little ride?”

Pearl was always up for a ride. She was like a spaniel or a toddler that way, and she never seemed to care exactly where you might be heading. A car trip for her was a social occasion on wheels.

“Can't go in this,” she said and went inside to change while I eased up the stairs to my apartment. The door was still properly latched. The apartment was just like I'd left it. I went to the knee-wall door and fished out my duffel. It seemed sensible to bring all the firepower I had left. I'd left my A-5 and the Ruger both back at Kalil's in my Ranchero, so I'd have to make do with my SIG SAUER and the MAC-9 I'd taken off a guy up in Ruleville.

Pearl came partway out in some kind of frock but changed her mind about it and so ducked back in before I could hurry her along. She reappeared in some muumuu-shaped thing but caught sight of her reflection in one of the kitchen windows.

“Oh my goodness,” she said in a tone that was bound to trump anything I could manage. So she went back in, and I called behind her, “Kind of in a hurry.”

I should have known better, because when Pearl speeds up she effectively slows down. She gets all flummoxed in high gear, and I could hear her muttering in the house. She couldn't find anything in a color or style to suit her. In about a quarter hour she came back out in the clothes she'd had on in the garden—her usual blouse and slacks and espadrilles—and her Debbie-applied face.

Desmond was lurking down around the corner. He could see me in Pearl's driveway and came up when I waved him over. Pearl got in the back with Larry, whose left eye was swollen shut now. When Pearl asked him what happened to his face, Larry asked her what happened to hers.

Then the Hoyt in the wayback groaned and fidgeted, and Pearl told us all, “Oh my.”

“A guy we know,” Larry informed her by way of explanation.

Pearl leaned toward Larry and whispered at him, “He smells.”

Did he ever, and Pearl's gardenia perfume didn't help, about like lighting a scented candle in the stockyard.

“What are we going to do with him?” Desmond asked me.

We were on the truck route by then, heading over to pick up 61 out by Leland.

Beluga LaMonte leaned forward to tell me and Desmond both together that we could take that Hoyt and fling him in a swamp. Not that he'd want to see it or have a hand in it at all, but Larry couldn't imagine there was a Mrs. Hoyt at home and little Hoyts primed to miss him.

“Looks like he lives in a hole somewhere.”

“Let's just see what he knows,” I said, and then I swung around and told Beluga, “I'm not about to go to Parchman for a Hoyt.”

“Are we going to the buffet?” Pearl asked me.

She'd plainly noticed we were heading toward Leland, where a couple of Greek brothers ran a Chinese place that was all steam table fare. Pearl had decided their food was slimming. I can't imagine why. The teriyaki was treacly enough to sweeten your coffee with.

“We ate already,” I told her. “You hungry? We'll stop and get you something.”

“Peckish,” Pearl informed me. She'd never own up to more than that.

Before I could instruct Desmond, he said to me, “All right,” and drove us straight over to the Savros brothers' Feast of Peking restaurant, where they opened at ten in the morning and stayed that way until ten at night since once you had the steam table heated up, there wasn't much point in dialing it down.

There was a state police car in the parking lot and a couple of Washington County cruisers, which meant Desmond would have to go in to get Pearl whatever food she wanted. Pearl had been raised to believe that picking up takeout spoke poorly of a woman, while me and Larry were active fugitives from the law.

“Just make me a plate,” Pearl told Desmond and then listed precisely what she wanted, which was everything I'd ever seen in there plus fritters and corn muffins.

Desmond gave me one of his grunty groans as he flung open his door. The Hoyt in the back started raising a ruckus. I was afraid we'd have to conk him, but he somehow made Larry understand that he wanted fritters, too.

“That's not Kendell's, is it?” I pointed at the cruiser.

“Too dirty,” Desmond told me and went stalking across the lot.

Pearl passed the time telling me and Larry and that Hoyt (I guess) about Gil. She'd been reminded of him by the sport coat Larry had on. She remembered an Easter dance he'd squired her to at the Grange Hall in that blazer.

“We tangoed,” Pearl informed us. She even turned to look at our Hoyt. “They had a band from Memphis,” she told him so he wouldn't feel left out.

Larry shoved a hand in his jacket pocket and came out with a hair clip. Him and Pearl together studied the thing there on his palm. It was one of those old spring-loaded ones women used to wear. Women, apparently, other than Pearl judging from how she looked at it.

When Pearl finally uttered another word, it was only “Oh.”

Then she sat in silence for a bit. I blamed Beluga a little. He tinkered with that hair clip until I reached back and took it from him. I opened my door enough to pitch it out into the lot.

“Isn't she a pretty thing?” Pearl said.

That's when I saw Tula. She was coming out of the restaurant holding Desmond by the elbow, Desmond who didn't look altogether pleased to be escorted. They were walking right toward us. What with the Hoyt all taped up in the wayback and Larry just as wanted as me, I did the only thing I knew to do. I climbed out of Desmond's Escalade, slammed the door behind me, and headed off Desmond and Tula out in the lot.

“Whatever you heard,” I told her, “that isn't how it happened.”

“What did I hear?”

“I slugged a cop. Just Jasper,” I said. “You've got to know what he's like.”

She did and didn't seem too terribly disturbed that I'd punched Jasper.

“Heard more about those boys in the Walmart,” she told me.

“Came at me.” I shrugged. What was a fellow like me to do?

“Tell me something.” She was talking to Desmond now. “Does he always draw trouble like this?”

Desmond surely could have thought about it longer than he did before he nodded and said to Tula, “Yeah.”

“They all looking for me?” I asked her.

She nodded.

“How about you?”

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“Us having a conversation.” She worked her finger in a circle to make me understand she meant everybody. The crew in the Escalade, too. “You're going to tell me everything that's going on and why.”

“Or?”

She reached back and plucked her handcuffs out of the holster on her belt. I'd been in those already. She didn't use them with much compassion.

“Where?” I asked her.

Tula jabbed her thumb toward the restaurant. “Big table in the back. On me.”

I stepped over to Desmond's car and swung open Larry's door.

“It looks like we're dining,” I told him and Pearl.

“Just ate,” Larry said.

“Want to tell her that?” I asked him of Tula.

He gave her a good look. “No.”

Pearl was considerably more enthusiastic. She climbed out and straightened herself. This was more of an outing than she'd dared hope for.

“Maybe they have those peas,” she said to me, “with the little onions.”

She headed toward the restaurant, pausing by Tula to tell her, “Aren't you the prettiest thing.”

Tula made her manners and thanked her. She was a little less cordial with Larry. She'd been around the badge enough to know a con when she came across one.

“That all of them?” she asked me.

I almost said, “Yeah,” but I didn't get to it quick enough, so Tula knew to come over. Desmond came with her while Larry and Pearl went on inside the Feast of Peking.

I raised the glass and lowered the tailgate. Our Hoyt mumbled through his taped mouth and wriggled around enough to stink.

Tula looked at him. Looked at us.

“He tried to shoot me,” I told her.

“Any particular reason?”

“We might can get to that inside.”

I went to raise the gate, but Tula stopped me.

“Bring him.”

“Stinks something awful,” Desmond said.

“Bring him,” she said.

I yanked the tape off that Hoyt's mouth and left a slick, clean strip that he yodeled about at first before he moved on to other complaints.

“They snatched me!” he shouted at Tula. “Right off the damn street. That one there”—he nodded toward me—“done busted me in the head. Got me all tied up like a goddamn pig. Ain't fit back here for nothing.”

I pulled a fresh strip of tape off the roll and laid it over that Hoyt's mouth. That chafed him pretty good. He was wriggling and mumbling so that I had to raise the tailgate and lower the glass on him just to hear myself think.

“He's a Hoyt,” I told Tula. “Just like one of those Walmart guys. Desmond says Shambrough's got an in with them somehow.”

Desmond nodded. “Does.”

“Bring him,” she said once more of our Hoyt. He was raising a ruckus, shouting through his tape and kicking the tailgate.

“Can I hit him sometimes? It's all they understand.”

“Open up,” Tula told me.

I raised the glass and dropped the hatch. Tula had pulled out her Taser by then. She showed it to our Hoyt as if she had every hope of using it on him. He got still and quiet like a man who'd had a dose or two of voltage before.

I ripped off his fresh strip of mouth tape and yanked out a few more whiskers. Desmond freed his arms and left that Hoyt to work his ankles loose.

“We going to jail?” that Hoyt asked Tula.

She holstered her Taser. “Dinner,” she told him.

He stood up off the tailgate and tucked in his shirt. Tidied the front of his jeans.

“I ain't got no money much,” he informed us, “and this one here broke my gun.”

“Nose, too,” I said.

His hand shot straight to the swollen bridge of his nose. His right eye was black already. His left one would be soon.

“Guy in the Walmart one of yours?” Tula asked him.

He made like he couldn't be troubled to say until she'd reached around toward her Taser, when he nodded and told her, “Yes, ma'am.”

“Let's chew all this over,” Tula said and gestured toward the Feast of Peking.

I tried to sidle up to her and make some sort of all-purpose apology, but she just shook her head. In a low sort of sultry whisper, she told me, “Fifty thousand volts at five-second intervals for a minute.”

I'll confess it was a little stirring in its way.

 

TWENTY-ONE

The general Feast of Peking aroma always puts me off a little. It might be scorched peanut oil or expired oyster sauce, but the place always smells to me like they've just barbecued a goat. Not a young, tender goat but an ancient billy with all his glands in place.

Gus, the host and one of the owners, shoved a laminated menu my way and told me, like he always did, “Hey, y'all.”

I'd previously only ever come with Desmond, who had a thing about the ribs. It was a bimonthly thing for the most part. I'd order the egg foo young, which at the Feast of Peking was just an omelet with canned button mushrooms in it, scallions if any were handy, and maybe a water chestnut or two.

Larry and Desmond and Pearl and that nasty Hoyt were crowding the buffet already. The way they were chattering and laughing, you'd have thought they were a church group on an outing. I followed Tula to the big back table in a room all by itself. We had a view of the kitchen, where the chef and the dishwasher were yelling at each other. The chef wasn't Greek, like Gus and his brother, but he wasn't Chinese either. Filipino maybe or Malaysian, but way back in the distant past.

His people were all from Rosedale, and he and the dishwasher—some black kid in two-hundred-dollar sneakers—were arguing about a wide receiver the Titans had lately drafted. Some lanky jackass from Auburn known for his end zone dances. The kid approved. The chef didn't have much use for that kind of thing.

“This isn't what it looks like,” I told Tula.

“Do you even know what it looks like anymore?”

“I'm caught in the middle. Desmond's got in-laws, and me and Desmond are as good as brothers, so I've got in-laws, too.”

“What is it with you and him? He take a thorn out of your paw?”

“He's saved my ass a couple of times. I wouldn't be here but for him, and that buys him everything he needs from me.”

I looked through the double doorway into the main dining room, where Desmond, his massive back turned toward us, was still freighting his plate from the buffet.

Tula thought well enough of my loyalty to Desmond to just tell me, “All right.”

Pearl was her bright, chatty self now that she had a plate of food in front of her. She identified for us each item she had spooned up for herself, and then she had a word with our Hoyt, who'd gone exclusively for ribs.