Red Dog (12 page)

I
DECIDED FINALLY TO FOLLOW
S
HERIFF
W
INCE'S ADVICE.
I
picked up pizzas on the way home to try to make it up to Anci. She wasn't speaking to me, unless grunting is speaking. Jeep was snoozing on the sofa. I thanked him and he hurried off to his four-to-twelve. I put the food out and we ate a quiet meal. When we were done, I set about looking for the Harvels. Turns out, they were easier to find than I'd expected. They weren't listed in the white pages, and I don't think I'd have been able to bring them up on Anci's computer except that Arlis had been popped a few years back for exposing himself outside an elementary school and got himself on the state's sex offender registry, complete with address. I was celebrating with a slice of the leftover pizza when the phone rang.

“You goddamn shithead.”

“Speaking.”

It was Susan. She said, “Slim, do you know how old I am?”

“How old?” I asked. “I don't know. Ain't that a question a gentleman isn't supposed to wonder about?”

“Just answer, will you? It's not a trap.”

“Okay. Uh, fifty-two?”

A long pause happened on the other end.

Then finally: “Forty-four, Slim. I'm forty-four.”

“That's what I said. Forty-four. Might have said forty, even. This connection is terrible.”

She said, “Slim, shut up.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

She sighed and pressed on. “Point is, I'd like to make it to fifty-two. I'd like to make it to a lot more than that. Way things are going with this job, I'm not so sure I will.”

“They called already.”

“They called. Someone name of Tibbs. He wants to meet you.”

“These folks don't waste time. When and where?”

The address was someplace in Marion near the industrial park. The time was seven in the morning. The haters were early risers.

“He said to remind you to come unarmed,” she said. “Oh, and one more thing, I'm burning this phone. I'll let you know when I get a new one.”

“That good, huh?”

“Let's just say I'm sleeping with the lights on tonight. Maybe several nights.” Then she paused for maybe ten seconds and finally said, “Jesus, Slim, don't get yourself killed.”

I started to say I wouldn't, but she'd already ended the call. I dialed Jeep Mabry's number to leave a message.

A
NCI WAS STILL IN BED THE NEXT MORNING WHEN
I
MADE
ready to leave, but I'd promised not to sneak off without telling her where I was going. Jeep's wife was downstairs cooking breakfast.

“Your aunt Opal is here for a visit with you,” I said. “Might want to talk over some of those detective stories even. So try not to sleep the morning away.”

She was groggy-headed, but the change in babysitting personnel to Jeep's wife got her attention.

“Not Jeep again?”

“He's tied up for a while.”

“Oh, tears. Now we'll never finish our puzzle. Where are you off to, anyway?”

“Bran-Wichelle Industrial. A tool and die.”

“Living the high life as always.”

“It's for a meeting,” I said, “with a notorious character.”

It hurt my feelings a little that she didn't seem to mind about the notorious character. Instead, she looked thoughtful for a moment, brow furrowed.

She said, “Bran-Wichelle. Why's that familiar?”

“Well, it's that big factory over there on 13. We ride past it, time to time.”

“That's maybe it,” she said, but she didn't sound so sure.

B
RAN-
W
ICHELLE
I
NDUSTRIAL WAS A GRAY AND WHITE ALUMINUM
box covering roughly fifteen acres of land outside the town of Marion. There was a guard box outside the
twelve-foot-high electric Bran-Wichelle branded fence, but the man in the box waved me through without hesitation or identification. Clearly, my arrival had been foretold. I drove up to the main yard and stopped. I waited in my idling truck until a fat guy with greasy hair and even greasier clothes moseyed over to the driver's-side window.

“Get out,” he said.

I got out. He and another guy gave me about as thorough a frisk as you can get with your clothes on, separated me from my keys, and drove me up to the main building past a line of morning-shift stragglers dragging their hangovers onto the floor, where the machines were roaring away as though they never slept.

I hoped they wouldn't want to do the meet inside and risk opening themselves up to me that much. And they didn't. I was led across the work floor and out the other side to a small, open-air patio between buildings where fat boy and I stood until another door opened and a young man came out.

“That's far enough,” he said, though I hadn't moved. He was dressed in a light blue suit with patent leather shoes and sunglasses so big they covered half his face. His hair was chestnut, combed neatly to one side; combined with the glasses and the duds, it made him look a bit like a Jim Jones impersonator. He had one of those Bluetooth things in his right ear and just one hand, his left. The other was a prosthetic, plastic and smooth and white as an apple half. The one-handed man Carol Ray had mentioned, the one whose coke deal she'd blundered into at Classic Country
all those years ago. He nodded, and the man at his right disappeared into the building.

I said, “Don't want the hired help listening in?”

“Not exactly. There are limits to our trust. There's a man on the roof, though. Of course, we search everyone who comes here, but sometimes weapons are cleverly hidden, and the best weapons can't be taken away at all. Do you understand?” His accent wasn't Little Egypt, but it took me a moment to realize that it wasn't anything: a voice freed of accent, smoothed out, and made expressionless and robotic.

“Sure, Mr. Tibbs,” I said, and shrugged. I tried not to think of the man on the roof, tried not to imagine the bead being drawn on me, but I couldn't help it. What would it be, head shot, one to the heart? Dealer's choice? A trickle of sweat made its way down my throat, and as I glanced down as though to follow its course I spied the tiny red dot of a laser scope resting at the top of my chest.

Throat shot. Arty.

Tibbs said, “I apologize for that. A bit of theatrical flair of which I personally disapprove. But I trust the point has been made.”

“Whatever.”

“My name is not Tibbs.”

“It's Tibbstein?”

He ignored me.

“Tibbs is merely a figment, if you will. A code. When someone needs to speak to us on a sub-official basis, they ask for Tibbs.”

“And you represent the sub-official basis?”

“I do,” he said. “You must understand that large segments of our population have accepted the Jewish liberal media image of us as a terrorist organization. To them, everything we do is a crime. I'm afraid that it has become necessary to police ourselves.”

He noticed my expression.

“It's funny to you?” But he wasn't trying to pick a fight. Just asking a question.

“Nothing you guys do is ever funny.”

He didn't care about that one way or another either. He lit a cigarette. I said a silent prayer to cancer.

“I must also ask you to understand that if Dennis Reach had been a member in good standing of this organization at the time of his death, we would not be having this meeting. Do you understand that?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you believe it, though?”

“I don't know,” I said. “Does it matter?”

“Not really,” he said. “The White Dragons protect what belongs to them. It is their nature. It is
our
nature. Many times, we will even protect what we once possessed. Do you see?”

“I see.”

He nodded. He was awfully serious now. Grave even. Henrik Ibsen would have told him to lighten up.

“But you're not going to protect Reach?” I asked, catching on at last.

“It goes without saying that the issue of protection is relative by its very nature. A surgeon would gladly cut away a finger to save the entire hand.”

“And Reach was the finger?”

“Take five steps forward,” he said, his voice gentle. When I hesitated, he said, “Five steps. Please. Nothing will happen to you. It's all arranged.”

If they'd wanted me dead, I'd be dead. I took five steps. I looked down. I was standing on a large manila envelope, nearly invisible against the dust-covered concrete pad. I picked it up and opened it. Inside was a picture of Dennis Reach in a tuxedo, smiling as he plunged through a thick cloud of rice or confetti. Hard to tell which. His pleased expression made him look like a different man, or at least a younger, less careworn version of the train wreck he'd become. On his arm was his bride, a young woman with dark curly hair and coffee-colored skin.

My, my.

“As you might expect, our organization has rather strict rules regarding miscegenation and interracial relationships.”

“Rather?”

He shrugged.

“There are exceptions, of course, to every rule. Negresses possess certain . . . qualities. I would say
attractive qualities
, but I would only mean it in the strictest and most literal sense, and no doubt you would intentionally misunderstand me.”

“No doubt.”

“To the untrained mind,” he went on, like I hadn't said anything, “they can pose quite a danger.”

“Plus, if you started booting out every good old boy who had a black lady in his past . . .”

“Precisely.” A small grin appeared on his face, but it only made him seem greasier. “Officially, we are intolerant of the practice. Unofficially . . .” He let it hang there, unfinished.

“So marrying this woman wasn't the only reason Reach was expelled.”

“No.”

“Why then?”

“First,” he said, “we want to know why you care.”

“Let's just say that I like to see things through.”

“Even at the risk of your own life?”

“Even that,” I said. “Although I can't say I've seen anything too dangerous yet.”

“You're forgetting the man on the roof.”

“That so?”

I waved a hand over my head.

Tibbs looked up. The red dot left the top of my chest, drifted downward, crossed the concrete between us, and came to rest in the middle of his crotch. We both looked toward the roof, but only I was smiling. A man was still there, and a rifle barrel, the same rifle, except now the man was Jeep Mabry.

No one likes to be caught with his pecker in his hand, especially when he's gone through a lot of effort not to, but I have to admit Tibbs took it pretty well.

“I see,” he said. He cleared his throat a little. “Very good. Can I ask a question?”

“All's fair in love and gunfights.”

“Thank you. Is my man up there dead?”

“No. I had to hazard a guess, I'd say he's probably going to have to step up to the next size hood for a few weeks, but he's alive.”

“I see,” he said again. “You realize that this changes nothing about our agreement.”

“Sure, but you have to admit it does make things a hell of a lot more interesting.”

“I suppose it does. Would it make you angry if I said that should anything happen to me, even with your friend up there, your chances of getting out of here alive aren't terribly promising?”

“Would it make you angry if I said that if the shooting starts, you die first?”

“I'd expect nothing else.” He was a tough guy, all right, but no one was that tough. Even with those big shades sitting on his face, I could tell the idea of dying first wasn't going to remind him of any funny songs.

“Good.”

“I'm going to say some words to you now,” he said. He reached into the pocket of his jacket and took out a slip of paper. “They are just words, you understand, random sounds without meaning.” He was talking like that in case there was a directional mike pointed at him, in addition to a rifle barrel. “You cannot write them down, and I won't repeat them. After this, we're through. Am I making myself plain?”

“As a pressed white sheet.”

He frowned at that and shook his head. Another disappointment to the race.

“Black,” he said, enunciating his words clearly. “Number five. Third. B. Two days. You'll need this.”

He halted my advance with a raised hand and placed the slip of paper he was holding on the ground at his feet.

“When I'm gone,” he said.

“One more thing.”

“I told you . . .”

“Why are you helping me?”

“Our own reasons.”

“Fair enough.”

“Suffice it to say,” he said, mildly annoyed by the interruption, “that in many parts of this country, our organization has become an enclave of criminal activity. We consider this an unacceptable condition.”

“Postpones the revolution?” I asked.

“Something like that. Just look around you. Look at what's happened, what's happening, to our world. How violent do you think our major cities were fifty years ago? How dangerous were our schools? How many of our children were in danger of being shot on the streets or in their classrooms? People like you know what's true, but you also listen to the liberal Jewish media machine, and that, my friend, is a monster that speaks nothing but lies.”

“If you knew what your anger was doing to you,” I said, “you would shun it like the worst of poisons.”

He cocked his head, interested.

“Who said that?”

“Someone you wouldn't cross the street to piss on.”

He looked at me a long time, half-turned to go, then paused and spoke softly.

“If you do in any way go back and cleave unto the remnants of these nations, even these that remain among you, and shall make marriages with them, and go in unto them and they unto you, know for a certainty that there shall be snares and traps unto you, and scourges in your side, and thorns in your eyes. Until ye perish off from this good land which the Lord your God has given you. Joshua, chapter twenty-three, verses twelve and thirteen. We all have words at our disposal. Pray you don't run into us again, Slim.”