Dirtbags (17 page)

The sitter quickly stood as he entered the motel. Upon seeing him, she returned to her seat, her mouth open in a gasp as if she’d been punched in the belly. She couldn’t look away from his face.

“You okay?” he grumbled.

Her chin quivered. She tried to look away, but couldn’t. “Y-yes sir,” she said. “How are
you
?”

“I’m fine.” He dropped his car keys to the floor beside the door, then staggered into the room and sat on the edge of the bed. “I’m taking Jason to the movies, so you can go home early today.”

“Mr. London,” she said slowly, “I wasn’t supposed to watch him today.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

“You never came home last night, sir.” She nervously strung out her words. “I was supposed to go home at nine, remember?”

London checked his watch, then scratched his head. “You told me you could stay the night.”

She squinted. “No sir, I’m afraid you must be confused. I have school and I . . . I called my parents and told them and they said—”

“Listen,” he interrupted, “it’s not my fault you didn’t get your calendar organized before you agreed to take this job. I am sorry, but I don’t think it’s working out.” He fished dollar bills from his wallet and tossed them onto the motel bed. “I won’t be needing your services any longer.”

“Mr. London, I—” She glared at him, her head shaking this way and that, her mouth going all open and shut. What the hell was she staring at anyway? Finally, just when London thought he would have to escort her out, she  snatched the money off the bed and was out the door in a huff.

London fell back onto the bed. Little Jason emerged from the bathroom and asked where was the sitter.

“To hell with the sitter,” London grumbled. “You and me are going to the movies.”

“What are we going to see?”

“Whatever you want.”

To hell with the sitter indeed. Those things were expensive. He reminded himself that the cost of sitters had been what drove him to Reyna in the first place. Oh, he could have stayed single and lived it up for quite a while after Corrina, were it not for the price of babysitters. After a few dates with Reyna, he’d realized a good thing when he saw it and knew he needed to lock that down fast.

All of it had been for Jason. Every step of the way. All for family. Divorcing Corrina, marrying Reyna, fighting to keep the restaurant open. It would be easy to slip into the SUV and hit the Interstate, be up and gone and rid of this godforsaken town. He did Lake Castor a favor by keeping the restaurant open, and they didn’t necessarily do him one in return. But for Jason.

London had been just fine cooking on the line for other assholes. Showing up to work high, staying out after drinking, and living the good life of a restaurant worker. But he would watch his bosses haggle with purveyors, yell at waiters, refuse to recook steaks, and knew right away what he wanted in life. But most of all, he watched them get rich. Any asshole who could boil water had a chance at a huge payday, and he thought it plain ridiculous to count him out of that lot. No, there was a place for a man with no skill set, no artistic ability, and an inexplicable aptitude for shaving costs, and that was the restaurant world. London felt grateful every day he’d stumbled upon it.

He struck out on his own for Jason. To carve a spot somewhere on this earth for he and his son. Since opening the joint, London had made no decision without thinking of his boy. Raising the prices, making the portions smaller, firing the original manager and replacing him with Rhonda who would work for much, much less . . . He held his boy tight and thought of all those other children growing up with dipshit fathers who couldn’t provide.

London tried to sleep during the movie. Some cartoon or another Jason wanted to see. But his phone kept buzzing. The first time he checked it, Jason admonished him sharply.

“Shhh,” he hissed. “You’re supposed to turn your phone off in the movie.”

“What if it’s Reyna?” London whispered, and checked the screen.

“WE NEED TO TALK”—the text came from an unknown number. London cleared it and returned the phone to his pocket. He watched the cartoon as long as he could stand, then fetched the phone again and fired off a text: “DID YOU JUST TEXT ME?”

After a minute, Rhonda returned: “NO.” Then, “ARE YOU OK?”

“I WANT TO SEE YOU.”

“NOT A GOOD IDEA. YOUR WIFE IS CAUSING PROBLEMS.”

“I WANT TO SEE YOU. SOON.” Then, he wrote: “I MISS YOU.”

A black lady two rows over turned and gave him the stink eye. He returned the stare, but turned off the phone anyhow. He slipped it back into his pocket and didn’t think about it again until later, when they stepped out of the theater and into the lobby, where Jason asked for a dollar for the arcade games.

“Are we going home after this?” Jason asked.

“We’ll go back to the motel,” London said.

“Not the motel,” Jason whined, inserting the dollar bill into the change machine. “I want to go to our house. Where we used to live with Fritzie.”

London frowned. “Soon, son. We’ll get back there soon. In the meantime, the motel can be like summer camp.”

He watched the boy drop quarters into the arcade slot, then fished the phone from his pocket to check his messages. No new texts from Rhonda, but he found six voicemails, all phone calls from the same unknown number as the earlier text. He dialed the service.

“Mister London,” the first one said. “This is Calvin. I’ve been thinking about it. I’ve been more than patient. I need to get out of town. The cops have come round asking Rhonda some questions. They know I was in Dallas, and they know I was with Phillip Krandall. I don’t care. You know, after Ted Bundy was caught, he went on to do some of his most famous killings? It’s true. He escaped from jail twice and, after the last time, high-tailed it to Florida where—”

London skipped to the next message.

“I don’t mean to keep bothering you,” said Calvin’s next message, “but it’s real important that we talk. I just need a little of the money. If you can’t pay it all, then—”

“Jesus,” London breathed. He skipped to the next message.

“Calvin again. I have an idea. Why don’t we meet up and—”

Next message: “I hear you’re having problems with your current wife, and I can make you a deal—”

London erased all of the messages in his phone bank. He pocketed the phone and watched his son play the arcade game. He had way too much on his mind to deal with Calvin Cantrell.

***

After work, he chased a couple beers with a couple of cocktails and found himself driving out of town on Highway 809. It was as if the car directed itself, either by rite or rote, and in no time, whipped off the highway and into the red clay parking lot of the old drinking hole and nudie bar known as Club 809.

He checked his phone again before he got out of the car. No texts, no messages. More than slightly tipsy, he dropped the phone, then picked it up and wiped away the red sand. He fired off a quick text to Rhonda: “THINKING OF YOU.”

It wasn’t a lie. He’d met her at the 809, all those years ago. In a rush, she flooded his memory: those lips, those arms around him . . . legs, even. He stepped into the 809, hoping to drink her off his mind, find someone to share his despair.

He hadn’t been in his seat longer than two songs when Bubba Greene emerged from one of the back rooms, face full of hellfire and barking how London wasn’t wanted around those parts. No, he could kindly go to hell.

“Bubba, what gives?”

“You know damn well what gives,” Bubba Greene growled. “You come in here all them months back and sneak off with one of my girls.”

“Do what?”

Bubba sneered. “Don’t play dumb with me, London. She didn’t give me no notice, just up and left because you offered her a job in town. How would you feel if I rolled into your restaurant and poached some of your waitresses, told them how much money they could make shaking their titties in here?”

London thought about it some. “Hell Bubba, if that’s all you want, head on down to the restaurant and pick one out. I don’t think there’s one right now you’d cotton to, but you’re more than welcome to poke your head in and have a look.”

“You’re missing the point,” Bubba said, shaking his head. “Between you and me, there’s a couple here I wouldn’t have minded you taking. That is, if you’d asked nice. But not that one. You didn’t have no call to take that one.”

“You can have her back for all I care.”

“The real mystery to me is why she went at all,” he snarled. He raised a hand and snapped his fingers. His trusty bouncer bustled forth, eyes wide and maw gaping. His fingers were fat sausages, bursting from their casings. “Point is, you ain’t welcome here no more, Tom London. Fool me once, and all that.”

London looked around. The girl on stage had stopped dancing. Stood there staring at them, nipples erect, waiting for whatever to happen so she could get back to making money. The other fellas from town ogling the girl now ogled him. Everyone waited. It had been a spell since someone last crossed Bubba, then were walked out back, never to again be seen. Would tonight be the night? For a minute, no one breathed. London soaked in the moment before throwing up his hands.

“If you don’t want my money, Bubba,” he said, “then far be it from me to force it upon you.” He smiled nice as could be then stood. The bouncer stood at the ready, should he try anything. Kansas blared from the shitty juke in the corner, telling him to carry on.

London moved first his left foot, then his right, slowly making his way to the front door, listening best he could over the juke for any creeping footsteps, particularly the size of Bubba’s bouncer. Nothing. Once he pushed open the door and stepped out to the red clay, he breathed fresh air and figured it good and fucked anyhow. If he couldn’t find solace in the county’s only strip club, then what good was it?

He reckoned to do the next best thing, which was end up over at Billy Nunn’s apartment, well inside the shitty part of town. Even before Lake Castor went downhill, the Highlands was run down, and it hadn’t seen a decent moment since. Fellas like Billy Nunn took root there, and folks rarely had cause to venture into that part of town were it not for hunting up some trouble. And trouble, as Billy Nunn saw things, usually came in little Baggies of white powder.

“Ain’t seen you in a spell,” Billy Nunn said when he opened his door to Tom London standing just outside. He let him in. Two ruddy-faced women sat on the couch, watching a TV screen with a paused video game. Someone hammered something into the wall in one of the back bedrooms. No one else minded it, so London followed suit. “Heard about you and your wife. That’s too bad.”

“It’ll blow over,” London said. He fumbled a few crinkled bills from his pocket and waved them around. “But in the meantime, I’m going to enjoy my newfound freedom.”

Billy Nunn nodded and set about fetching the shit. London looked over both of the girls in the room and thought about it more than once, but eventually settled on following Billy Nunn to the kitchenette. Billy Nunn stretched a skinny, white line across the back of a CD jewel case and offered a rolled-up dollar bill to London.

“I heard what happened to that first wife of yours,” Billy Nunn said. “That’s too bad. I liked her.”

London grunted something, then took the powder into his face. He rubbed furiously at his nose and nodded.

“She had issues,” he said. “I can’t have that. Not around my son.”

He set his money down on the counter. Billy Nunn slid him the tiny baggie and London set after another taste.

He barely made it back to the restaurant. There, he found a bottle of high-dollar vodka and got to working on it. He sprinkled a bit of the toot across the top of the bar and had at it. The girls over at Billy Nunn’s popped into his mind more than once. His phone buzzed again, and he saw the unknown number, the one Calvin had been using. He hit IGNORE and pulled from the bottle a few times before his mind went wild. Then he climbed into his car.

***

Someone tapped on the car window, and London snapped to. Everything was bright. Where the hell . . . ? He rose from the driver’s seat and peeled off an overdue invoice from his face. He looked around. The person rapped on the window again with leathery knuckles.

Sheriff Lorne Axel. “Roll down the window, Tom.”

London looked through the windshield. Outside, he saw the Shady Village Trailer Park where . . . 
dear God
 . . . where Rhonda Cantrell lived with her husband. His mind raced. He searched his memory for clues, looked around the car for something that would help him . . . fast food sack in the floorboard with the empty bottle of high-dollar vodka . . . his cellphone . . .

Lorne knocked on the window again.

London shook the cobwebs from his mind and pushed the window button, then realized he needed to start the car, which he did and rolled down the window.

“Hello, Lorne,” he said.

“Everything okay, Tom?”

“I reckon.” London tried to look the sheriff in the eyes, but no sooner had he done it than he had to look away. Things most certainly were
not
okay, but what was one more lie to the pile? “How about with you?”

Lorne shook his head. “You hit something last night, Tom?” He stepped back and pointed his chin toward the front fender. “You weren’t driving drunk, were you?”

“No sir.” London swallowed thickly. “This ain’t about my driving, is it?”

“No, I’m afraid it ain’t.”

London didn’t like the look on Lorne’s face. His mind raced. What could it be? Had he hit someone? Had he forgotten to lock the restaurant when he left last night? What about Jason? He’d left him in the care of a waitress with a hundred bucks. Was everything okay with Jason? London began to sweat.

“What gives?”

“We did a bit of checking on Corrina,” said the sheriff. “The FBI and the Dallas PD been talking with us. It ain’t good.”

London swallowed. The car was already started. Could he rip the transmission into drive and be up and out before Lorne could respond? The sheriff was an old man, had been an old man for years now. Hell, he could be out of Shady Village and halfway to the motel for Jason before Lorne had time to get to his cruiser. Out of the state long before they figured what was what. London put his free hand to the gearshift, the other sopping at his brow.