Lake Charles (15 page)
“Hey, Brendan, quit shaking like a dyke’s dildo. Everything is cool, I tell you.”
Herzog gave Mr. Kuzawa a disgusted look.
But I couldn’t relax. My shaky life was shades of Karl Wallenda’s pins losing their balance on the high wire. Just last year he’d taken one false step and splattered to his death in San Juan. The newspaper story I’d read quoted him as saying, “Life is being on the wire, everything else is just waiting.” Well, I preferred my life lived not out on the high wire, and the calm waiting was just fine with me, thank you.
The diner’s weathered brick-front was snuff-colored. Underfoot the lava rock pathway crunched on our short stroll to the door where I went in first. Gabriel’s Diner used a hunting lodge’s décor—big on its polished brass, shellacked cedar, and crushed mirror glass. No tables occupied, the “Please Wait to Be Seated!” sign card seemed frivolous.
Straw wrappers, sugar packets, and cigar butts littered the parquet floor while “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” fiddled away on a sputtery radio. The disheveled eatery was a pigsty. My voracious hunger wasn’t as picky, and our booth faced the door. My slouch down in the seat relieved the .44’s pressure gouging my back. The food slot framed the Oriental fry cook’s hard jasper eyes on us. Feeding patrons at this odd hour, I guessed, was unexpected and unwelcome.
“The goddamn sneaky zipperhead,” said Mr. Kuzawa.
“Like you said, just be cool,” I said. “Let’s eat our lunch and go. No muss, no fuss.”
“Not if I give the zipperhead something to think about.”
Herzog took out the three menus from behind the salt and pepper shakers to distribute. “I like Brendan’s idea.”
“But who asked you?” said Mr. Kuzawa.
As the server ambled through the batwing doors and to our booth, I already pictured my burger sizzling on the steel grill. Freckled and angular, she brought a wooden smile. The name pin introduced her as Niki.
“What will you’ns have today?” Niki’s melodious inflection was sexy.
“Number Two,” said Mr. Kuzawa. “Plus grits. I gotta eat my grits.”
“You’re easy to please.”
“I’ll grab a burger,” I said.
“Sorry. No burgers. All we got is scrapple, ham, or sausage.”
I replayed Ashleigh’s spooky Circe tale, and I wanted no part of hogs. “Then my friend and I will have the same, Number Two.” I didn’t give Herzog a chance to speak and say something stupid.
Mr. Kuzawa cocked his head at her. “You look frazzled, honey.”
She sighed through her button nose. “I’m about ready to drop off my feet. Good thing tomorrow I’ll be off to Shreveport for three days to loaf.”
“You deserve it and more,” said Mr. Kuzawa. “We drove up to see Mr. Sizemore. Does he live near your diner?”
Her lips pursed into a livid scar. “Are you his friends?”
Mr. Kuzawa shrugged. “I don’t know the joker from Adam. We’re looking for work and heard he might be hiring.”
“You could do better. Mr. Sizemore is mean as a snake.”
“Mean as a snake is okay. We need a job, not to scrape up pals.”
“Not just mean. I’m saying worse stuff. Illegal stuff, you know, like selling cocaine.”
“Selling cocaine?” Mr. Kuzawa looked from her to me. “Did you know that?”
“No, but I’m hardly surprised.”
Fear slashed across her face. “Just forget I said that. I’ll go and get your orders on.”
“Relax,” said Mr. Kuzawa. “We heard nothing.”
“Have you seen a girl with my looks?” I asked.
“No. Is she your twin sister?” said Niki.
I nodded. “Do you know Sizemore’s daughter Ashleigh?”
“Sorry, but I don’t move in hoity-toity circles. I’m just a server, and I can’t take any more of your questions.” She spun on her heels as if I’d asked her to put a rush on our order. Her frame held rigid, she bustled through the batwing doors into the kitchen. Our questions on Sizemore had upset her.
Herzog flipped his menu to the tabletop. “Next time I won’t bother looking since you guys do the ordering.”
The Oriental fry cook’s eyes squinted through the food slot again.
“Goddamn zipperhead.”
“Easy,” I said. “We came to eat, not to fight.”
Mr. Kuzawa scoffed. “What a world. First Uncle Sam pays me to go
grease them, and now I’m expected to kowtow and kiss their yellow asses.”
“What a world, what a world.”
“Herzog, shut the fuck up.” Mr. Kuzawa propped up his feet and sat sidewise in the booth.
The fried food aroma wafting from the batwing doors left me salivating. I happened to glance out the front window before my double take saw Mohawk park the red Cadillac on this side of my cab truck. The four scruffy thugs climbed out. Their heads twitched, and eyes speared the diner. Handguns came out.
Hold up
, flashed in me. Gabriel’s Diner stood on a remote span of highway, and the dinner stampede was a few hours off. But the morning receipts chocked the register. My lower back muscles tingled.
They grouped by the Cadillac’s bumper. A pear-shaped, acne-scarred thug gestured with his free hand, first at my cab truck and then at the diner. He wagged his head as a no. Our presence had spoiled their caper. Shouting, Mohawk flew into a tirade. He seemed to regard the diner as easy pickings, but Acne Scar didn’t give in. The other two thugs watched them with hooded eyes, the humor dark on their savage faces. No cars or trucks went by.
“Who’s that hollering out there?” Mr. Kuzawa pivoted in his seat, and his eyes stretched to the window. He saw their firearms. “Aw shit, wouldn’t you know it? Party crashers.”
Herzog, his eyes grafted to the window, startled.
“They passed us in a big hurry on the Lake Charles road,” I said.
After reaching behind him, Mr. Kuzawa fisted the .44. “Take cover.”
Herzog’s chin tipped to behind us. “Can we use another exit? We want nothing to do with this.”
“Pussies use back doors, Herzog. We fight,” said Mr. Kuzawa.
I watched Acne Scars interrupt Mohawk’s talk. Acne Scar’s hand urged them to get back in the Cadillac. He’d no grit to duke it out and wanted to leave. But the Cadillac was a gas hog, and they hurt for money, judging by Mohawk’s hand chops gesturing at the diner. He lobbied for their pulling the stick up.
“Hold up,” I said. “They’re making ready to go.”
“I tell you what. If they enter upright, they won’t exit the same way,” said Mr. Kuzawa.
I stretched over the table and snared his sleeve. “We’re okay. Just stand down. They’ll soon leave.”
“They’ll first clean out the register,” said Mr. Kuzawa.
“No, they prefer soft targets,” I said. “Not us. They’ll hit another business.”
Continuing to look, we saw Mohawk hike up his palms in exasperation, and they remounted the Cadillac. Its doors whapped shut, it revved up, and scorched a pair of rubber stripes scatting down the two-laner.
“We did the zipperhead a good deed,” said Mr. Kuzawa. “He should—”
I cut in. “No, he owes us nothing. Wolf down your chow before bigger troubles hit us.”
“This Ashleigh Sizemore was a snooty, rich nympho who took you for a ride. Why is that, son?” Mr. Kuzawa’s glance was quizzical.
The same thorny question had needled me since our fatal tryst. A road sign welcomed the motorists to Yellow Snake, population 2,503 and “The Mountain Laurel Capital of the World.”
I said, “I got lonely.”
Mr. Kuzawa scratched his collarbone. “You mean you got the beaver fever, and you didn’t play it too smart.”
“Our trip taken here isn’t too smart,” said Herzog, his cadence sounding strained.
“Brendan, where did she die again?”
“The Chewink Motel.”
“That motor court has to be the key.”
“Mrs. Cornwell was terse in the police report.”
“Good point, lawyer. We’ll go take a crack at her.” Mr. Kuzawa turned to me. “Put us there.”
“I’m drawing a blank where it is.”
“You were too crap-faced to remember now where it is.”
Herzog nodded at an upcoming package store. “We might get some directions.”
“Good idea but you stay rooted, lawyer.”
“Money?” I asked Mr. Kuzawa. My cab truck branched off, wheeled over the blue stone, and I braked. “I’m cleaned out, and we’re riding on fumes.”
Mr. Kuzawa slapped a gob of folded twenties into my palm. “Boom times in timber,” he said, by way of explanation.
“Boom times—that’s where I want to be.”
Mr. Kuzawa and I made for the package store. The finicky Herzog, his handkerchief made into a glove, used the gas pump. This late in the day, we didn’t have to joust with the queues of motorists rabid to top off their tanks. Would this gas crisis ever lift? The rationing of odd-even license plates on odd-even days was a bitch. The package store’s interior walls smelled of fresh paint, and I strolled to the back.
A pregnant blonde clad in a green jumper was stooping to inspect the shelves of refrigerated bottles and cans. She was barefoot. A brat bundled in a cruddy diaper fussed in her one arm. A lit Marlboro smoldered in her other hand. I eyed the six-packs of Falls City and Billy Beer behind the frosty glass doors as the distrustful blonde eyed me.
Feeling self-conscious, I left without the six-pack. It was just as well. My alcohol stupor just gave Sizemore another advantage. A different girl, early twenties with a jeweled navel winking from under her midriff T-shirt and coiffed in the popular Farrah shag, worked the register. She read the total from the meter, and I paid her for the gas Herzog had pumped.
Setting a fifth of whiskey on the checkout counter, Mr. Kuzawa using a handkerchief mopped his perspiring forehead. He smiled at her. “Whew.”
“Hot as the hinges of hell, ain’t it?” she said, ringing him up. “It hasn’t slowed down everybody. Ten minutes ago, a Caddy rocketed into our lot. Just as our sign says, we don’t sell unleaded gas. So they cut a sloppy doughnut and bolted off.”
Mr. Kuzawa nodded. “We saw the Caddy. Sky blue. A pair of tall, skinny jokers was inside it.”
“No, mine was red with four guys, just as I told our sheriff’s deputy.”
Her saying “sheriff’s deputy” clubbed me between the eyes.
But Mr. Kuzawa didn’t react. “Are any cheap, good motels in the area?”
“The out-of-towners seem to like the Chewink.”
He caught my slight nod. “Sounds good,” he told her. “Some directions, please.”
She told him as the pregnant blonde in the green jumper padded up and slapped down a six-pack of Falls City on the checkout counter. The cashier dished the blonde taking an unhealthy puff an oblique look and murmured something snarky. The blonde gave the cashier a glowering frown, but we didn’t stick around to ogle any catfight.
* * *
“Nope, I don’t know this boy.” Wrapped in a red muumuu, Mrs. Cornwell inclined her head at me. We’d sardined into the motel office smelling grubby with its liver-and-onion bouquet.
I wanted to stuff her hearing aid down her throat. “I paid you a fifty on a forty-four dollar room.”
“Let me think.” Her coppery hair upswept in a topknot slanted her eye corners, warping her face into a diabolic cast. Her five-and-dime store glasses dangled on the bead chain. “No, we’ve never met before.”
I heard Mr. Kuzawa crinkling some paper. “Try again, ma’am. Isn’t this the same boy?” He pushed a folded Andy Jackson at her.
“Well, he could be.” She palmed the bribe to tuck under her watchband, balanced the glasses on her beaky nose, and peered in at me. “In the better light, I can spot a certain likeness.”
“Good deal. Now since he is, might Room 7 be open for a look-see?”