Red Dog (17 page)

“Special Agent Carney, you and I need to have a little chat.”

C
ARNEY DIDN'T WANT THE LOCAL SQUIRRELS TITTERING
over their nuts about the mysterious goings-on at Loves Corner, I guess. Or more likely he was worried Tremble would come home from his shift, interrupt our parley. He insisted we drive north a ways and meet at Evergreen Park, on lonely County Road 16 near the Carbondale city reservoir. I told him he was crazy and laughed at his paranoia, which got our relationship off to a great start, as you might imagine. He was still huffing about it a half hour later when we parked our trucks nose to nose on a flat stretch of nowhere and approached each other like we meant to pull pistols and shoot one another for honor or money.

Carney was around thirty, with a bland face and a short, stocky frame that made his suit seem two sizes too big for him. He was sweating like an Alabama minister in August, but at least he'd ditched the ball hat. We got close to each other, and he showed me his badge: Robert L. Carney.

F.B Fucking I.

“Just so there's no mistake,” he said.

He'd showed me his, so I showed him mine.

“Just so there's no mistake,” I said.

“You're shitting me. They gave you a star?”

“You should have seen them, too. I tried to refuse, but they persisted begging and crying until I took them up. Something about the future of law enforcement being in jeopardy if I didn't go along.”

“Christ, they told me you could talk a blue streak.”

“Those files are awfully complete.”

“You have no idea.”

“Now you're just trying to rattle me.”

Carney laughed and shook his head.

“Somehow, I think you're hard to rattle. This was that little shit Ammons's doing, I take it?”

“I honestly don't recall. The glow of my pride has blocked out the details. Memory serves, though, someone was upset you won't play nice with the other children.”

“Fucking Ammons. Look, company policy is to cooperate with local assets when cooperating with local assets makes sense and won't compromise our case.”

I nodded slowly and sucked my teeth some, doing my best dimwitted country boy act. I even scraped my foot a little on the gravel road. I'd have brayed at the moon and done a little jig, I thought it'd get me what I wanted.

“And you're not sure whether . . .”

I paused as though to fret it out. Carney smiled, but it was a certain kind of smile. It was a getting-over smile. I'd got him and got him good. Nothing lures 'em in like the ol' Simple Son of the Country. Some reason, it just makes folks want to talk, preach, explain, whatever.

“We're not sure the local assets aren't up to their necks in it.”

I guess I couldn't hide my surprise.

“Lindley?”

“Or Wince. Or one of a half dozen others.”

“Or me.”

Carney nodded.

“Or you. Someone paid for that roof.”

“So what do you want?” I asked. These bastards could have my life, but they couldn't have that new roof. “I figure you weren't waiting outside Tremble's place just to scout the local pot trade.”

“I'll be honest. It wasn't until recently that we figured out the connection. We were interested in a phone call he received a few weeks ago from a certain local character. Someone you met the other day in Marion, as it happens.”

“Tibbs?”

“What he calls himself. Tibbs is the Illinois White Dragon's chief fund-raiser. Mr. Tremble is a drug dealer with a criminal connection to his former boss.”

“I'll be damned,” I said. “And what about me?”

Carney shrugged.

“Just back off. Rather, understand that you're backing off, even if your brain doesn't know it yet.”

“Is this the part where you describe the box I'll be put in if I fuck with you?”

He grinned, and in the shadows cast by my headlights, he looked as much like the devil as A. Evan had on my front porch a few days earlier.

“I don't have to, and that's assuming there even is a box. When this thing starts to go, it's going to come down like an avalanche. Everyone's going for the ride.”

I looked at the ground again and scratched my head.

“You're mixing your metaphors like Momma's shut-up-and-eat-it leftovers,” I said. “I can't keep up.”

“And you can drop the dumb hillbilly act. It's not even summer stock caliber.”

I raised my hands.

“I'll back off.”

“And be ready for a call from Carter.”

“Jimmy?”

“My boss. He's going to want to talk to you. You won't like what he has to say. He likes people peeing in his sandbox even less than I do.”

“Well, now I have something to look forward to.”

Carney sniffed. He climbed back in his truck and turned over the engine. I walked over to the driver's side door and he rolled down his window.

“That's it?” I said.

“For now that's it. I wouldn't get too comfortable. And you better have paid your taxes on that hundred grand.”

“No worries,” I said, and winked. “I'm laundering the money through a number of fake charities for wayward federal agents.”

“Jesus . . .”

“Is my bagman.”

“See you around, Slim.”

“Hey, one last thing?”

“What now?”

“Dennis Reach,” I said. “You haven't asked me about him. I assume that means you know who popped him.”

Carney sniffed and shook his head and looked at the windshield like he meant to drive away. Then he turned again to me and said, “You heard of Helen Dees?”

“Nope.”

“She's the woman who reported the AR-15 stolen.”

“The one used to kill Reach? I was told it wasn't stolen.”

“You were told wrong,” he said. “Helen Dees is the mother of Amanda Dees. Amanda Dees used to be married to a guy called Jacob Terrence.”

It took me a moment.

“J.T.?”

“Yup. Amanda got the gun in a very nasty divorce. She didn't want the piece, so she gave it to her mother. Mother doesn't really want it, either, but she hates Black and she'll do a headstand in cow shit to let him know it. Your pal Black shows up one day in a huff and collects it. Helen Dees reports said crime to the Jackson County sheriffs . . .”

“Who refuse to do anything about a theft involving one of their own.”

“You really are sharp, hayseed.”

“If I were really sharp, would I have stepped into this nest of vipers?”

“That hurts.”

“It was supposed to.”

“Whatever. Warning delivered. Now go somewhere else and stay out of our way,” he said. “Stay out of jail.”

He rolled up his window and drove away. I stood there thunderstruck.

B
Y THE TIME
I
HEADED HOME FROM MY MEETING WITH THE
mean FBI man, I was plumb tuckered. Seriously, you could have put me to bed for a year and when I woke up I'd have hit snooze. Anyway, despite my weariness in both mind and spirit, I stopped by the Huck's for some replacement sodas and ice cream, hoping to make it up to Anci. She likes that fancy Ben and Jerry's, and I do too—I'm American enough that I like it when even my ice cream is attached to some cause like saving the rainforests or fighting various kinds of cancer. Makes me feel better about my waistline. The problem with the Huck's was, they only carried those lowbrow ice creams, big boxes or those plastic gallon drums, from creameries that didn't seem to care about anything but profit. I thought about driving to one of the big stores, but that was a half hour in any direction, so I finally settled for some chocolate for me and some strawberry for Anci. As the clerk was ringing up my stomachache, my phone rang.

“Yo?”

“You
hit
Leonard Black?”

“I said yo. You're supposed to say yo back.”

“Stuff your
yo
s,” said Carol Ray. “You did, didn't you? You sonofabitch. Hit him, and with his own rifle, no less.”

“Technically, I think it was a musket. I had this funny urge about keeping him from shooting me with it. How'd you find out, anyway?”

“Spike called me with the after-action report.”

“So his name really is Spike? I'll be damned.”

“Of course his name's really Spike. Why? Is it important?”

“I don't think so,” I said. “It's just a neat name is all.”

“Oh, Slim . . .”

“Bad?”

“Well, I don't really know yet. I haven't spoken to Leonard, just Spike. Leonard's still snoring and farting.”

“Okay.”

“But yeah, it's shitstorm bad.”

“Maybe I can find a way to make it up.”

Carol Ray snorted.

“With what? Flowers?”

“I don't think Leonard's much of a say-it-with-flowers kinda guy.”

“I meant for me, stupid.”

“Ah.”

“Let me work on it from my end,” she said. “I'll let you know. Until then, stay tight.”

“Speaking of your end.”

“Not tonight, darling. I've got a headache.”

“That's not exactly what I meant. You don't know Amanda Dees, do you?”

“Nope.”

Click
.

I
DROVE HOME.
I
FELT WORN OUT.
D
EPRESSED EVEN.
I
F
I
'D
had a spoon, I'd have opened the ice cream, eaten some
along the way. The ice cream boxes were sweating through the plastic bag, so I rolled up the windows and turned on the truck's AC, but it was still so hot outside that the windows fogged over, so I turned it off and gave up. We'd just have to settle for melty ice cream. I was pretty close to Shake-a-Rag when my phone rang again.

“What's the scoop?” Anci.

“Funny you should mention. I'm on my way home with ice cream.”

“Strawberry?”

“What else?”

“It's a start,” she said. “By the by, there's someone waiting for you in the driveway.”

My throat seized up a little. Anci wasn't alone, but the idea of someone hanging outside the house wasn't something I was too thrilled about.

“Who is it?”

“Dunno. Opal talked to her, wouldn't let her in the house.”

“I'll be there in five.”

I made it in three. There was a woman standing in my driveway beside a Dodge Rambler so big it looked like two cars masquerading as one for Halloween. She was wearing jean shorts, a cutoff T-shirt, and a sneer.

“Where the Sam Hill have you been?” she asked before I could step down from my wheels. She snapped some chewing gum at me. “I been standing here a fucking hour already.”

“I'm . . . sorry?”

“You don't look it.”

“Likely that's because I don't feel it,” I said. I looked at her more closely, hoping for a twinge of recognition. Nothing. It wasn't the sort of face you easily forgot, either, lean and as long as a Wagnerian opera. She wasn't pretty, but she was trying hard to be. Her hair was the antigravity marvel favored by southern Illinois cheerleaders, but even that and her high-school-senior fashion sense couldn't quite disguise the fact that she'd long since crossed the thirty-year mark. “I don't believe we've been introduced.”

“Mandy.
Duh
.”

“Okay.”

“You're Slim,” she told me. “Who's the redhead in the house?”

Her gum went
snap snap
.

“She's a friend.”

“Yeah, well, she wouldn't let me in. Kinda rude about it, too. Tell your friend her day's gonna come.”

“I wouldn't bother with it, Mandy.”

“I ain't afraid of her,” she said. “I ain't afraid of nothing.”

I thumbed back toward the house.

“She's Jeep Mabry's wife.”

“Don't tell her I said nothing, okay?”

“Okay.”

“I was only kidding.”

“Your comic stylings are a mystery to me,” I said. “What do you want?”

“I don't want nothing,” she said. “J.T. wants to see you. He's been wanting to see you for a couple of days now. You really ought to come home more often.”

“In many ways, I'm a troubled person,” I replied. “But I want to see J.T. Just say where and when.”

“He's been hiding out at the Elks in Z.R. for about three days. He's there now.”

“Hiding in plain sight, eh?”

“What?”

“Nothing,” I said. I kissed her hand, and she blushed.

“He said he'd wait until I called,” she stammered.

“Okay, go ahead and call. I'll head right out.”

“I will,” she said. She took out her phone and then looked up at me, as nervous as a June bug in a room full of ducks. “That really Jeep's wife?”

“Yeah. You ever met him?”

“No, but I've heard tell. I'd like to see it for myself one day. See him in action, I mean. But it's like deciding where you'd like to watch a fertilizer plant explosion from.”

“It is that.”

I thanked her and walked up to the house with the ice cream. Opal and Anci were reading in the kitchen. Nice as pie.

“Purple eyeliner still out there?” Opal said.

“I talked to her, but she's gone now.”

“That the aforementioned ice cream?” Anci asked.

“Strawberry and chocolate, as promised.”

She collected the boxes and put them in the freezer. When she came back, she kissed me on the cheek.

“What's that for?” I asked, mildly shocked.

“For not being a total dummy.”

“Well, thank you. It's the ice cream, isn't it?”

“It's not the ice cream. Well, not just. Don't let it go to your head.”

“I won't.”

“It's not like you brought Ben and Jerry's, after all.”

“I'll do better next time.” I said to Opal, “All quiet here?”

“Yes,” she said. “We've got our books and DVDs and a lot of music I've never heard of.”