Pernicious (24 page)

         
“Mrs. Davis, if you would just relax for a moment maybe I can help you sort this out. Take a deep breath and relax.”

         
“You heard her! She didn’t have to talk to me like I was a piece of trash. I came down here willingly to help you guys, and look how she treated me. Like shit!” Hyperventilating: “I didn’t deserve that, and you know I didn’t!”

         
“Ma’am, will you please sit down and relax. You’re working yourself in--”

         
“I want a damn lawyer!”

         
Bob grimaced.

         
“Now!”

         
Bob sighed. Those five words ended further discussion; he had no other choice but to let her go.

         
Tasha was standing by the coke machine, sipping on a coke, when he walked out the interrogation room with Perry on his heels, her eyes locked on the back of his head.

         
Catching Bob’s attention, Tasha mouthed: “What in the world is going on?”

         
Bob shook his head. When Perry disappeared through the doors that led downstairs to outside, he said, “She said the magic words.”

         
Tasha threw the coke in the trash. “Craps!” she shouted. “Craps! Craps! Shit!”

                                     
Chapter 10

         
Perry stormed out of Little Rock police headquarters and started walking on South Gaines Street. Her house was some ten miles away. She couldn’t have cared less; she was furious--no, she was pissed with an open wound.

         
A man driving a red BMW stopped and asked if she needed a ride. She answered with a finger.

         
“Fuck you!” the man said and sped off.
   

         
People were all the same, Perry thought.
They just want to use me…get what they can get…and then throw me away like trash…
She could deal with the users; she understood their motivation…
But the jealous ones, the haters, they’re sick.

         
Like that bumpy-faced swine back there at the station masquerading as a detective. Nothing’s worse than a fat, ugly, bad breath, bumpy-faced bitch. Nothing!

         
She probably couldn’t get a man if her life depended on it
.
Hey, Detective Montgomery, here’s a surefire remedy for bad skin: A good fuck!

        
She turned south on State Capitol Street and walked past two parked taxicabs, one driver opening the passenger door for her.

         
Wicked wench put all those blank pages in that folder and told a flat-foot lie! ‘I have a witness, Mrs. Davis, who can put you at Fourche Creek.’ Yeah right, like you have an award-winning skin complexion.

         
Her feet hurt. The pumps were a poor choice for a long walk. Now she was in front of the state capitol; water sprinklers fanned the verdant lawn and sidewalk. Perry walked through the spray, her thoughts elsewhere…
and who is she to throw Robert’s name in my face! Who told her? Someone from Dawson? Probably that lard-ass Sheriff Anus.

         
A Central Arkansas Transit bus stopped before her on the corner of State Capitol and Marshall and several people got on.
        

         
The bus driver held the door open. “Are you getting on, ma’am?”

         
Perry stared at him as if he were insane, reversed her direction and started walking north on State Capitol, her mind and body in two different decades…

         
She and her cousin Erica Robinson were walking to the Country Store. She had money; Erica, as usual, did not.

         
“I can get money anytime I need it,” Erica said, walking ahead.

         
“Is that right?” Perry replied, waving her five-dollar bill like a flag.

         
“Girl, that ain’t nothing. I can get twenty dollars just like that,” snapping her fingers.

         
“Get it then. Show me, I’ve been to Missouri.”

         
“Follow me.” Erica started walking in the opposite direction to the store. Perry followed her cousin through the woods to the back of Robert Stubbs’ house.

         
“What are we doing here?” Perry asked, as Erica walked up to the back door of the house that reminded Perry of the southern estates she’d read about in school.

         
Erica knocked on the door. “You’ll see.”

         
A heavyset, dark-skinned woman opened the door. “What you two girls doing here? Y’all git home ‘fore I call y’all mammies! Git!”

         
“You git!” Erica shot back. “Is that how you s’posed to answer the door, with your non-English-speaking ass? If you the maid go wipe something!”

         
The woman, horrified, hooked the screen door.

         
Erica kicked it and the latch popped. “Where’s Mr. Stubbs?” barging in.

         
Perry caught a glimpse of the woman running to another room.

         
“Come on in,” Erica invited.

         
Inside, in the kitchen area, Perry marveled at an array of stainless steel pots and pans hanging from what looked to her large fishhooks. The kitchen was huge, with gadgets and machines she had never seen before.

         
“Come on, girl,” Erica said. “Ain’t you never seen what white folks’ kitchen look like?”

         
She hadn’t seen one quite like this, not even on television. Not only was the kitchen opulent but every room they ventured into, with Erica calling “Mr. Stubbs? Oh, Mr. Stubbs,” was lavishly decorated.

         
Abstract paintings, oriental rugs, exotic chandeliers, antique furniture in mint condition. Inside one room, which Perry figured was the dining room, there was a magnificent grand piano, its veneer so shiny it reflected her image.

         
She couldn’t play, but oh how she’d longed for a piano.

         
“What the hell is going on?” said a gruff, raspy voice.

         
Terrified, Perry grabbed her cousin’s hand. Erica jerked free. “Let me go!”

         
The voice came into view. He posed a grotesque figure: body bent like a cane in a tattered pair of blue jean overalls, urine streaked top to bottom; his nose long and crooked; eyes light-blue and liquid; face lined incongruously with wrinkles; hair dirt-silver, flecked with dandruff.

         
And he stank! Stale piss and a whiff of BenGay.

         
Grinning, he said, “What can I do for you two gals?”

         
“Came to show you something,” Erica said.

         
“Wait a minute.” Taking tiny baby steps, he crossed to the door and yelled, “Emma! I’m in the parlor.” He coughed harshly. “Don’t disturb me!” He turned toward Erica. “What you wanna show me?”

         
“How bad you wanna see it?” Erica said.

         
He squinted hard at Erica, at Perry, back to Erica. “Really bad. Really bad,” smiling, rotten teeth and black gums.

         
To Perry’s astonishment, her sixteen-year-old cousin raised her blue sun dress.

         
His eyes danced inside their watery sockets. He started to speak but was seized by a spasm, coughing, face turning beet red. Liver-spotted hand covering his mouth, he struggled to a chair and sat down.

         
“Come get it,” he said after his coughing subsided. Erica stepped to him, reached inside his pocket and retrieved a wad of money. “You didn’t get the change,” he said.

         
Again her hand disappeared inside the pocket…This time it lingered…Perry noticed two bulges and wondered which was Erica’s hand.

         
Later, as they were walking back through the woods, Perry asked, “How much you get?”

         
“Thirty-three dollars. Why?”

         
“You’re nasty! You’re flypaper nasty!”

         
“Wasn’t for nasty you wouldn’t be here.” Perry thought that over; it made sense. “Too bad you think it’s nasty ‘cause Mr. Stubbs asked me about you.”

         
“Me!” Perry said. “What did he say?”

         
Erica stopped and turned on her. “You said it was nasty!”

         
“I did--it is! I still wanna know what he said.”

         
“Hmmph!” Erica snorted. “I catch you over there I’ll snatch a chunka meat out you, you hear!”

         
“I’m not going back to his house. Not without you.”

         
“I bet! He told me to tell you you’re welcome at his house anytime.”

         
“What does that mean?”

         
“You know what it means.”

         
“You’re nasty!”

         
The next day, Perry knocked softly on Robert Stubbs’ front door. She’d given the matter considerable thought: only a fool would pass up easy money.