Red Dog (14 page)

“Seems like you might skip the oiling-up step. Feels like overkill to me.” Truth was, I could barely speak. My mouth had gone dry as powdered bone.

Bundy shrugged.

“To me, too. But Arlis likes it, and he has so little to make him happy.”

“He was my brother, I'd find that worrisome.”

“I'll be honest, I do, sometimes. But you do what you do for family. So oil you up he will, and fry you shall.”

“Nothing to be done about it?”

“Lessin you can convince me you're telling the truth. And you can't do that lessin we use the solder.”

“Vicious circle.”

“It ain't going to be your fondest memory, I'll say that,” he said. “Look, Slim, time to get real. You ain't walking out of here. Talk to us, don't talk to us. It doesn't make much difference, far as you're concerned. You're a dead man. See, you don't mean anything to us, me or my people. You got into this thing kinda on a whim, and some things have gotten tangled since then.”

“You can say that again.”

He turned his head and hocked a loogie into the dust.

“But that boy in Marion, he's something else. That one-handed motherfucker. Tibbs. He's not something you can
just push into a corner and forget about. He's the real deal. Bottom line is, I got to know what he told you, and I got to be sure about it, and that's all there is.”

“Look . . .” I said again, but it wasn't any good.

Arlis came in, like he'd been waiting nearby the whole time, the little shit. He held a glass jug of oil in his arms, cradling it like an infant. The glass was frosted with age, and the oil was grimy and there were dead flies bobbing around in it. Arils set the jug on the table, and he and Bundy used carpet knives to cut me out of my clothes. They took turns working me over as they did. I struggled against the beating and the ropes—bungee cords, I guess they were—and one of them popped loose. I shrugged halfway off the table and hit Arlis so hard in the face he fell over and jarred the table and knocked off the jug. The glass broke, and the oil splashed all over the floor. Bundy hit me from behind and I lay down again.

“He spilled the oil,” Arlis said. I couldn't see him, only hear him.

“I saw.”

“He broke my jug, too.”

“We'll get you a new jug.”

“Not like that one. That was my good jug.”

“We'll get you another good jug. Maybe even a better one. I know a place. Meantime, get some of that oil off the floor.”

Arlis got some oil off the floor. The next couple moments were unpleasant ones. Even more unpleasant, I mean. Arlis did his business. The greasing business. It was like an
eel was sliding inside of me. I gritted my teeth. Then Bundy reappeared, hovering over the table.

“Last chance,” he said.

“Won't matter what I say, will it?”

“Nope.”

“Let's get it over with then.”

I think I said that last part. I'm not sure. There was a flash, and a scream like a herd of wild animals was crying out all at once because a redneck psychopath had stuck a hot soldering gun up their ass. The metal table jumped up and hit me in the back of the head and there was a sound like a hundred metal drums banging out some fearful cacophony. The room went away and came back and went away again in a flurry like the flurry of the wings of a green bottle fly. The last time it came back, Bundy was there again, smiling at me with his knife-slashed teeth.

“Give me your thoughts.”

I opened my mouth to speak but the only thing that came out was a gasp. Bundy thought it hilarious. Finally, I said, “It ain't nothing I'm eager to do again.”

“I bet. But here's the thing. That wasn't even the full deal. Arlis likes to start off slow. That was just the edge of your bunghole. Not even really through the window. Think how bad it'll hurt when he goes all in.”

“Why don't you show me first?”

“The guy in Marion. The one-handed man.”

“I've never even been to Marion. Is that a town or a lady?”

He looked at me a moment.

“Have it your way. Arlis?”

I couldn't see him, but I could feel him drawing nearer between my legs. I was about to die and I knew it. Die or go insane and then die. I said some prayers. I said some words to Anci and Peggy. I had some words with my dad. Not all of them kind, but words. I wished things had turned out different. I wished I'd taken that job filling potholes for the county. I wished Peggy and I had gotten married, had time to do that. Make our family together. But mostly I wished I'd never met Sheldon and A. Evan Cleaves. I lifted my head off the table. Best to see it coming, I thought. Look it in the eye. And that's when I saw Jeep Mabry watching us through the window.

“Boys,” I said, “how's your life insurance?”

The door slammed open so hard it came off its top hinge. Jeep came in like a devil harvesting sinners. There was an ax by the door and he grabbed it and swung hard as Bundy turned and rose from his place near the table with a cry of alarm. He was fast, but Jeep was faster. Twice as fast. The ax hit Bundy in the neck near the top of his right shoulder and damn near severed his head. Arlis screamed. He lunged at Jeep with the soldering gun, but he slipped a little in the puddle of spilled oil and lost his footing. Jeep kicked Bundy loose from the ax's beard with a sickening crack and stepped forward smartly, almost casually. He might have been going for the last gallon of milk in the dairy aisle. Arlis tried to get up, but he was too slow. With a hard downward stroke,
Jeep buried the ax in his brain. The boy spat some words you couldn't quite make out and then died right there in his own mess of oil and dirt and dead flies.

Then Jeep was at my side, untying me.

“Hope you didn't need one of them alive for anything,” he said.

“Now that you mention it,” I said, but truth was I wanted those monsters dead, too, so I didn't pursue it further, or regret the leads we'd certainly just lost. “How the hell did you find me? Even I don't know where I am.”

“I didn't,” he said. “Anci did.”

I sat up. It was agony. Breathing was, too. I didn't dare try to turn my head. The ribs on my left side were broken, and everything below my waist was on fire.

“Anci?”

“She put an app on your phone that lets her track you. Parents use them these days to keep tabs on their kids. Guess who's the kid in this situation.”

“I'm getting a sense of it.”

“She's scared you'll be mad at her,” he said.

“Mad at her? I'm going to raise her allowance. By tomorrow morning, she'll be bathing in orange soda.”

“You're a good papa.”

“I know.”

He helped me off the table, slowly. There were some coveralls hanging from a nail near an empty horse stall, and he fetched them for me and helped me get dressed. They were absurdly big on me, and they smelled like shit, but they
hid my shame good enough. I looked at the Harvels on the floor. They weren't getting up anytime soon.

I felt Jeep leading me away from the sight.

“Doctor?” he said.

I nodded.

“Doctor.”

“T
HIS IS MY FAULT,
” A
NCI SAID.

We'd retreated to Lew and Eun Hee Mandamus's place near Tolu. A regulation hospital would have raised too many questions and made too many witnesses. We didn't want either. Thanks to some medic training during his days in service, Lew had me stitched up good, treated my other wounds. Eun Hee administered some homeopathic stuff she said might help. I took it all and was grateful. I was grateful not to be dying, hog-tied naked to a metal table at the mercy of the nightmare Harvels.

I said, “It is not your fault. Stop saying that.”

“It is. It was my idea, and it's my fault.”

“Nope. Listen, squirt, only bad actors are responsible for their bad actions. No one else.”

“You're sure?”

“Completely and entirely.”

“I'm going to give you a hug now,” she said.

“Okay, but go easy. I'm fragile.”

“I promise. On three?”

“On three.”

She didn't wait for one. The hug hurt like hell but felt like heaven.

The remainder of my convalescence, I was surrounded like a city under siege. Jeep was there and Anci, of course, and Jeep's wife, Opal. Jeep snuck off not long after dropping me off to dispose of the Harvels' bodies. I didn't ask what he did with them, but if Jeep didn't want bodies found, they never would be.

Periodically, Lew appeared with pain meds and other medicines. He seemed worried especially about infection. No telling what was growing in that barn, or on the Harvels.

“You looking thoughtful, Slim,” he said, changing the bandages on my ribs. “What's on your mind?”

“Lew, what kind of a thing might a dog have sewn up inside her?”

“Come again?”

“The dog. The Cleaveses' dog. Shelby Ann. She had an incision under her collar, like someone sewed something up inside her nape. I didn't think much on it at the time. Now I'm thinking on it.”

“Could have been a tracking chip. Those are pretty standard these days. Help you to locate a missing pet. A runaway.”

“Not the Cleaveses' style,” I said. “Besides, if she had a tracking chip, they wouldn't have needed me to look for her in the first place.”

“I guess not,” he said. “Well, when you find her, we can find out together.”

“First I have to find her.”

A
LITTLE WHILE LATER,
P
EGGY FINALLY SHOWED UP, MADDER
than I'd ever seen her. Her Charger roared up to the gates of Shinshi in a bellering sandstorm of shredded road gravel and river loam. Then the real storm arrived.

“Those goddamn pieces of pig shit ought to be glad they're safely dead,” she said.

“Believe me, they're dead. They're deader than Trotsky.”

“That's not dead enough.”

“Deader than Trotsky's pet turtle, then.”

“That's closer,” she said, and calmed herself down some. “I'm just satisfied they didn't do serious damage to your rear end.”

“I am, too.”

“It's such a cute rear end.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Pretty fond of it my own self.”

She smiled and leaned over and kissed my hot forehead. She said, “You're going to hunt these men now, aren't you?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Don't suppose you'll let me talk you out of it?”

“A few days ago, you might have,” I said. “But now I don't think I've got a choice. Not if I want to live any kind of life worth living. Besides, Dennis Reach might not have been worth much, but he didn't deserve to die like that, and not because of me.”

“You're a good man.”

“I don't feel like one.”

“That's how good men always feel,” she said. “Take Jeep with you at least?”

“If he'll go.”

“He'll go. You'd have to tie a safe to him and throw him in a lake to keep him from going. And even then he'd still go.”

“Course then he'd be wet. And still tied to a safe. And madder than hell about it.”

“Situation like this, these kind of people, a little hell is called for,” Peggy said, “you want to know my opinion about it.”

T
HE FOLLOWING MORNING,
I
THANKED
L
EW FOR ALL HE'D
done. I hugged Eun Hee and accepted her care package of homeopathic pills, potions, and unguents. Then I drove over to Shotgun & Shakes, where Carol Ray was back in her office, sipping coffee and being adorable.

“No offense,” she said, “but you look kinda beat up.”

“I feel kinda beat up. It's a set.”

“You want some coffee?”

“I wouldn't say no.”

She got me some coffee, then leaned against the front of her desk, crossing her long bare legs at the ankle. If I'd had a pen, I'd have written a poem about it.

She said, “Let me ask you a question, Slim.”

“Shoot.”

“What makes a man go into your line of work? Private-eye work, I mean.”

“Dunno. All kinds of things. Boredom. A yen for troublemaking. Professional misfortune, maybe. I used to be a coal miner.”

“Pull the other one.” She blew on curls of steam rising from her mug.

“I did.”

“Shaft, low, or slope?”

“I'll be damned. One of the cognoscenti.”

We toasted our shared misfortune.

“A gal doesn't marry three times in southern Illinois without a coal miner being in the mix somewhere.”

“Maybe I know him.”

“Don't all you guys?”

“It's a curse.”

“What is? Having friends?”

“Depends on the friends,” I said. “Let's take this J.T. Black, for example. Now, way I hear it, he's got a pretty rough history.”

She nodded.

“J.T.'s been into a little bit of everything. I agree, some of it was on the rough side.”

“I hear tell he ran a little meth with Dennis Reach, one time or another. Back during their days with the White Dragons.”

“I don't know anything about that,” she said, but I could tell that she did.

“I suppose it's stupid to ask whether J.T. was one of your three husbands.”

“Pretty stupid,” she said, and smiled and blushed some. “Another of my youthful mistakes.”

“I'm not here to judge you.”

“Thank you.”

“Well, maybe a little.”

“We're in a fight now.”

“R.L. Lindley told me that Black had fallen out with the Dragons. Any idea what happened between them?”

“Not specifically, no. Except someone high up in the organization was trying to horn in on one of their rackets a little more than comfort allowed. Dennis never wanted to rock the boat, but J.T. pitched a fit and brought down hellfire and damnation on himself. It got pretty ugly for a while there, too, I can tell you.”

“Wasn't anything to do with their dogging, was it?”

She actually looked ashamed.

“Know about that, do you?”

“I'm figuring a thing or two out. Kinda unusual, ain't it? You being married to Reach and Black both? Guy might get the idea you were the brains of the operation.”

“If I was the brains, I wouldn't have been married to Dumb and Dumber. But I can see how a body might be led in that direction, yes.”

“What'd J.T. do before deciding to take a stab at law enforcement?”

“He worked in one of his daddy's tool-and-die outfits. Ran a punch press, as I recall. I think that's how he lost part of his right pinkie finger.”

“Lost his concentration?”

“Lost his ass,” she said. “Funny thing is, the old man has a missing finger, too. Left ring, I think.”

“He run the press, too?” I asked.

Carol Ray shook her head. “Dog bit it off. And swal
lowed. If memory serves, it was a full-grown bitch Rottweiler. Name of Truman.”

“Truman?”

“No one ever accused Leonard Black of being too snuggly with his feminine side.” She chuckled, but the sound was full of rue. I don't guess a gal gets married three times in southern Illinois without letting all kinds of things into her life, some of them a lot more lowdown than a bunch of scruffy in-by dudes, roof bolters, and fire bosses.

“Think you can get me an audience?”

“With J.T.? I don't . . .”

“With his daddy. Leonard.”

“You're sure that's something you want to do?”

“No,” I said. “But it might be useful. Besides, I've always wanted to get a look at him up close.”

“Well, hell, I can try. Honestly, though, I don't know if I have that kind of pull anymore,” she said. “Once upon a time, the old goat liked to watch me dance at the barbecues he'd throw at his place out in Cape Girardeau. Juice Newton records and cheap semiautomatic pistols ruled the day, if you can believe it. Anyway, the dancing about drove J.T. fucking nuts, but it kept me in smokes, and at least he never tried to touch me.”

“I don't suppose anyone named Cleaves was ever at one of those shindigs.”

“Who?”

“Just somebody I'd like to run into again one day.”

“Another someone from the mines?” she said.

“I guess you could say that,” I said. “Though maybe not the way you're thinking.”

I
SPENT THE REST OF THE DAY HUNTING
S
HELDON AND
A
.
Evan Cleaves: Bridgetown, Elizabeth, Colton, New Delta, Madrid. I talked to anyone I thought might know something about the connection between them and J.T. Black. In the afternoon, I rushed home to relieve Peggy from watching Anci and to let in the contractors. I'd already got them going on the cleanup. When they were done, we'd see about the roof, the kitchen, whatever else. The insurance would ultimately pay, but in the meantime it was going to amount to real dollars.

“And you'll have to pay for most of it out of pocket, too,” said my agent. “Hope the homeowner's policy eventually covers everything.”

“Well, that's a kick in the privates.”

“I knew it wouldn't make you happy, Slim, but you've got yourself a documented arson here. The insurance company won't pay out until the investigation comes back with a determination that you didn't set it yourself.”

“Me? But I'm not even a suspect. Not in the arson, anyway.”

“You and I know that. The company knows it, too. It just don't care. You'll have to wait until the police make a final determination.”

“What if they never do?”

“Well . . .”

L
ATER,
I
TALKED TO
A
NCI AND
P
EGGY ABOUT IT ALL.

“I don't know how we're going to do it,” Anci said. “Right now, we can barely afford the stuffing in our pillows.”

“I can help some,” said Peggy. “Not as much as I'd like. I got to help my sister move, and my savings account is already thin as a promise.”

“You should keep your savings,” I said. “But thank you.”

“Then how?” Anci said.

“I think I know.”

I
PAID THE ROOFERS AND CLEANERS IN CASH.
A
.
E
VAN'S CASH.
The roofers came in and strung together some giant blue tarps and were ready to tear out the burned sections and install the new rafters and braces. But first the cleaning people arrived to fight the smoke monster.

“You'll want to be out of the house,” an old woman in a white lab coat explained. You always know you're about to be taken for a ride when they're wearing that white lab coat. Her boys weren't wearing coats, at least, but probably only because they couldn't find any to fit. These were some big boys. Basically bank vaults with legs. When they lugged in a metal contraption just slightly smaller than a VW Bus, it looked like a jewelry box between them. “It's an ionizer.
It'll take away the smoke smell, but it'll give you one hell of a headache.”

“How long?”

“Twelve hours is best.” Her head tilted back so her nose could sample the air. “Maybe longer. Every job is different. I ain't saying you have to go. You could stay. You'll just have the headache of your life is all.”

I said, “I've been running around like the proverbial one-legged man lately anyway. Another few hours on the road don't seem like too much to ask.”

“Hectic life.”

“Can be.”

“Listen,” she said. “Smoke odor can hide just about anywhere in a house. Especially an old place like yours. Cracks in the wall, the insulation. Hell, even under the switch plates. You got pets?”

“I've got pets.”

“I've known pets to hold onto smoke for longer than you'd think. Dogs, especially. You got dogs?”

“Cats.”

She wrinkled her nose.

“I never could figure them out. They're like a four-legged puzzle. They don't like you and they let you know it, too, so that reduces my willingness to scoop their shit.”

“That's not my favorite part, either.”

“I knew a guy once had ducks. Pets, too, not farm-type ducks. Smoke hid in their feathers.”

“What'd he do?”

“Butchered them. He loved those ducks, but that smell
will turn you into a killer. You need to, you give us a call. We'll come out and run that machine again.”

“Sure those boys of yours won't eat me for dinner for squawking?”

“Freddy and Teddy?” she asked. “Hell, those two only look like trouble. You should have seen their daddy.”

“He must have been something.”

“He was,” she said. “Something and then some. Fought brain cancer for almost a year before it took him down. Doctor said he shouldn't have lasted three weeks. Freddy and Teddy barely made it through the funeral.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Hell, don't be.”

But I could tell she didn't mean it. You drilled down to it, loss was one of the few things we could ever really share with one another.