Red Dog (21 page)

B
REAKFAST WAS FINE.
C
AROL
R
AY TURNED OUT TO BE EVEN
more of a pain in the ass than I'd anticipated. Her little house on Freeman Spur had been cleaned out and a hand-lettered
FOR SALE
sign was posted in the front yard. The kid I talked to at Shotguns & Shakes said she hadn't been in for three days.

The only other place I could think to check was Dennis Reach's, but that was another dead end. The cops had left the locks open, and most of Reach's meager possessions had been carted away, either as evidence or as booty by Dennis's erstwhile friends.

Around 5:30, I called Jeep.

“How is he?”

“Shitbird? Getting there. At least he can form complete sentences.”

“Then he's better than before. What's he say?”

“It's unprintable.”

“Just as I suspected.”

“Any luck with Carol Ray?”

“No. She's gone.”

“So what's next?” Jeep asked.

“I've got an idea, but it might take a while to work out, if it does at all.” If the little rat hadn't already been hauled off, I thought. “What do you think the chances are of Sheldon's volunteering useful information?”

“Slim to none,” Jeep replied. “Unless of course you're ready to play hardball.”

“Which means what exactly?”

Jeep said, “We could cut off one of his legs with a chainsaw, threaten to do the other.”

“Perhaps something a bit subtler.”

“Hacksaw?”

“Pass. Hard pass.”

“Well, that's the best I can do.”

“Hold off on gassing up the Craftsman for now, son. I'm going to give my idea a try.”

“You'll be back,” he said. “Few more hours, you'll be begging me for my cut-off-his-leg idea.”

“Maybe,” I said. It didn't sound so far-fetched, really.

M
Y CALL WAS TO
M
ERLIN
C
OWARD, A
H
ERRIN COP
I
'D ONCE
done an under-the-table favor for. He wasn't exactly thrilled to hear my voice.

“You nuts, man?”

“Maybe, sergeant,” I said. “How's tricks?”

“I paid you, Slim. Now kindly fuck off, please.”

At least he was polite about it.

“I need you to run a license plate for me, Merlin, and I'm a little short on time.”

“You're not listening.”

I read the number into the handset, then I read it again. I had no idea whether Merlin was writing it down.

“I'll call back in twenty minutes,” I said.

“Slim . . .”

I hung up on him. It felt good, I admit. Folks were always hanging up on me, and it vexed me something fierce, but I was beginning to understand the appeal of it. There was a Country Pantry across the street. I jogged over and bought a coffee and drank it in the parking lot. When next I checked my watch, twenty-five minutes had gone by.

“You're late,” Merlin said without preamble.

“Bonus time, sergeant,” I said. “What'd you get?”

“We're even after this,” he said, not a question. I could almost feel the tension in his hand through the phone lines.

“Right. Even like Steven.”

“Rig's registered to a Rhonda Lee Tipton, 409 West Valley Road, Makanda.”

I asked him to repeat it while I scratched it all down on the palm of my hand. Must have misplaced my pocket notebook.

“Anyone else on the insurance?”

“Says Harold Tipton. Could be her husband.”

I said, “I can't imagine anyone would marry Pimples, but I guess it could be.”

“What?”

“I said thank you, sergeant.”

“And we're through,” he said.

“How's Sonny?”

The line went dead between us.

“He's good,” the sergeant said at last.

“Still off junk?”

“Yeah.”

“Glad to hear it. Give him my regards.”

“I . . . I will.”

S
O
P
IMPLES LIVED IN
M
AKANDA.
O
R AT LEAST HIS WHEELS
did. Assuming they weren't stolen. By the time what was left of my beautiful Dodge maxi-cab roared down into the little valley, not a quarter mile from Tipton's front door, late afternoon light was spreading slowly across the sky. I rolled past the frame house a couple of times, then parked a ways up the road, hopped down, and walked up. No reason to scare the little shit before I had a chance to wring his neck.

The street was one of those you see all the time in rural parts, half neighborhood with sidewalks, half forest. The big-limbed oak and elm trees formed a canopy over the asphalted street and blocked out the last few drops of afternoon sun. The air was heavy with the smell of oncoming rain, and the leaves twisted gently against their stems.

The yellow Ford I'd seen the night before at the Black mine was in a dirt swath on the east side of the house. Near the truck was a fat woman with dirty blond hair and a red dress strapped so tightly to her round form that parts of her seemed to be trying to escape. She was too old to be Pimples' wife; mother, I guessed. She was bent over a washtub, saying sweet, soft things to a dog she was bathing. When
the dog saw me, it set to barking in a high-pitched voice and suds went everywhere. The dog jumped the lip of the tub and scurried around the house. The big woman looked up at me. She stood up and wiped her forehead with the back of a soapy hand and said, “You got some timing on you or what, son?”

“You want me to go get him?” I grabbed my lower back, hoping she'd get the hint.

She didn't get the hint.

“Her,” she said, “and, yeah, I want you to go.”

It took nearly a half hour. The rain came. Sweetie—that was the dog's name—had gone under the house, through the crawlspace access. Rhonda Lee Tipton—that was the lady—assured me that Sweetie would stay in there all night if someone didn't climb in after her. She said this like I should care.

“What about your son?” I asked.

“He's passed out in the shed, probably. Back property. There were some strange men here earlier looking for his worthless butt, and I guess Harold's trying to keep out of sight best he can.”

“You mind if I talk to him?” I asked. She hadn't asked what I wanted and probably wasn't going to, either. She looked at me like a grocer looks at a head of cabbage.

“You don't look like one of them.”

“The men from before?”

“They were in suits,” she replied. “You look like one of Harold's shit-kicking buddies, no offense.”

“None taken. Where's that shed?”

“My boy in some kind of trouble?”

“Maybe. Let's put it this way. It's better for Harold to sleep in the shed for the next few nights.”

Rhonda Lee squeaked out a laugh.

“He sleeps out there every night. Got to where I couldn't allow him in the house no more.”

“Mind my asking why?”

“It's personal.” But she answered anyway, with a shrug of her fat shoulders. “I'm not crazy about his friends.”

“That all?”

“You ever met his friends?”

“Some of them.”

“That's all.” She clucked her tongue against her false teeth, flicking them up and down with a loud, wet snap. “You going to get my dog, or we going to stand here yakkin' all day?”

I could barely tear myself away. The underside of the house was as dark and wet as a turtle's ass. Red nails, dripping rust, smiled down from rows of rotted wooden planks. Something bit me in the dark. And then Sweetie did. Twice. On the way out, my hands slipped in something foul, the exuviae of Rhonda Lee's life. I dropped flat on my chest into the muck. Sweetie tore off toward the little rectangle of daylight at the edge of the darkness. When I made it there myself, Rhonda Lee was back at the washtub, scrubbing furiously.

“She come out on her own,” she said, without looking at me.

“Lucky fucking day.”

She stopped scrubbing.

“I don't hold with no swearing.”

“Sorry.”

“You got dirt on your face.”

I touched a hand to my forehead. Sure enough.

“Mind if I have that talk with Harold now?” I asked.

“Suit yourself.” She was bathing the damn dog again.

“Where's he at?”

A soapy hand dribbled thick white dollops toward a hole in the tree line behind the house.

“Like I said, back there behind the house.”

“Thanks.”

“Stop by on your way back through,” she said.

The shed was at the far edge of the property, as far away from Rhonda Lee as it could get. Harold wasn't inside, just a mattress and some blankets and a small television. I was just getting ready to give up and try Rhonda Lee again when Pimples came tromping through the tree line, zipping up with one hand, scratching his nuts with the other.

He was shirtless and shoeless, and he didn't look any smarter than he had the night I'd met him at Black #5. He saw me. He turned and bolted back into the high growth. I knelt down and took careful aim with the 9000S, and when I was good and sure I had a shot I put one in his ass. Actually, it was just below his ass, in the meat at the top of the back of his leg, but the effect was the same. The boy shrieked like a tropical bird and grabbed hold of his behind so hard he flipped completely over—ankles over bald spot—and landed in the dirt with a thud.

“I don't want to die,” he said as I stood over him. I'd hit him with a rubber bullet—not the real kind—but in his panic he didn't know that. Far as he knew, he had a fancy new hole in his butt, one he could tell tales about down at his favorite watering hole or brag about to whoever was unfortunate enough to see him in a romantic way. He looked up at me now a little more closely, licking his dry lips.

“You were at the fight last night,” he said, voice like a bullfrog. “The Black mine fight. I remember you.”

“And I remember you,” I said. I crouched down beside him and stuffed the barrel of my pistol against the underside of his chin. “But you're going to help me forget.”

A
FTER A WHILE,
I
CAME BACK UP TO THE HOUSE.
R
HONDA
Lee was sitting on the stoop with a can of beer. Sweetie was sighing contentedly in sleep at her bare feet. It was dusk, and the light was turning purple and grey in the sky.

“Heard a shot,” she said. She didn't look too upset about it. “He's not dead, is he?”

“No, ma'am. He might walk with a limp, day or two, but otherwise he's fine.”

She nodded, thought about it.

“I guess that's good.”

I shook my head. “You got a cold heart, Rhonda Lee.”

“Let me tell you something, son . . .”

“Don't bother, sister. I've heard them all.”

“You're not being polite anymore. Before, you were polite at least.”

She sounded depressed enough about it to curl into a ball and cry. Everything, everyone was letting her down. I thought of the boy in the field, thought of the story he'd told me.

“I ask you something?”

She shrugged. “Make you a deal?”

“Okay.”

“You ask me yours, I get to tell you a thing or two.”

That was maybe the worst deal ever. I glanced at the watch on my wrist. In another half hour, it would be dark. No time for sad stories or whatever she had in mind. But I still needed to ask my question.

“Deal,” I said.

She looked at me until the suspicion had drained out of her face.

“Ask.”

“Dumbshit back there . . .”

“Yeeeah?”

“You know about his dogging, right?”

She looked down at the ground. “Yeah.”

“You ever see a guy named Dennis Reach around here?” I gave her a quick description of him.

“Maybe.”

I said, “Any idea what he wanted with Harold?”

“Harold was growing a dog. Dennis come out to take a look, I think,” she replied, then added quickly, “I don't hold with it myself. Sweetie . . .”

“Did he come alone?”

“What?”

“Reach. Did he come alone?”

“He was with someone.”

“A woman?”

“You know everything. Why not just talk to yourself?”

That made me love her. I laughed.

“You know her name?”

“The dog or the woman's?”

“The woman's.”

“I know. I was kidding.”

“You ought to do the Borscht Belt.”

She sucked from her can.

“People think I'm funny.”

I wasn't about to go there. “Carol Ray?” I asked.

“Something like that.”

“Blond?”

“Yep. That's the one. Snooty thing with a face like TV.”

Okay. Shit.

I sat down beside her on the stoop. She nudged over and made room. My head was swimming. I guess I'd hoped to be wrong. I tried to imagine what I was going to tell Anci that wouldn't touch off an I-told-you-so for the ages. Rhonda Lee brought me out of it.

“Your turn to listen,” she said.

“Okay.”

It took me ten minutes to actually begin listening, but then listen I did. Night came. Lightning bugs sparked to life and darted around the yard and up and down the road. Rhonda Lee talked for about half an hour.

She'd led one hell of a goddamn life.

I
SPENT THE NEXT DAY WITH
A
NCI AT
P
EGGY'S PLACE, HELPED
her with her summer reading homework, cooked her favorite meal. Anci played with Shelby Ann. She wanted to
go home, but there wasn't anywhere else to hold Sheldon Cleaves, and as long as A. Evan was still out there running around loose, taking her back to Indian Vale was out of the question.

I slept over, too. Peggy and I made love that night. Afterward we lay in bed, under a thin sheet, sweating and talking.

“Dogfighting,” she said. “It's hard to believe that folks could find pleasure in something like that. Something so wicked and hurtful.”

“I don't understand it, either.”

“And you think these Cleaveses were working with Dennis Reach?”

“Working for him,” I said. “Reach and J.T. Black were in business together, but Black was the muscle and the protection. Being a former sheriff's deputy gave him another layer of protection, too. But then Black wanted out. Reach was left in the wind, so he hired the Cleaveses to do the nasty work.”

“And then they betrayed him?”

“That's sure what it looks like. Question is, who did they go to work for? They don't seem quite like criminal-mastermind types. And I don't think Leonard Black would trust those psychos with a piece of his coal mine, not the way he talked about them the other day, anyway. There's somebody else at play here.”

“This Carol Ray, then?”

“I'm not sure,” I said. But I must have hesitated a little too much.

“You ain't got a thing for her, have you?”

“No,” I said. “Honestly. She's pretty, but you're beautiful. Plus, I'm afraid she might actually be evil.”

“She comes sniffing around here,” Peggy said, “she'll be evil in a body cast.”

“Quite a cast of characters, isn't it?”

Peggy thought about the cast of characters for a moment. Then she said, “You know what I think, Slim?”

“Tell me.”

“You know I'm not religious. I ain't been inside a church since I was a teenage prom queen, and even then it was only because my daddy died. I ain't never read the Bible, either, and as far as belief . . . well, I just don't know what I believe.”

“It changes some as you get older.”

She nodded.

“That and plenty of other stuff, too,” she said. “Sometimes, though, I think the world really is fallen. You see things like this going on, people hurting the innocent for their own pleasure, they're more than a crime or wrong. They're a sin. And all the things we do to police ourselves—work like yours, even—well, it ain't for nothing. Fallen we are, and fallen we remain.”

“It ain't a very nice thought, is it?”

“No,” she said. “No, it is not.”

E
ARLY THE NEXT MORNING, MY LAWYER AND
I
SET OUT
looking for Agent Carter. On the way, the boy told me
about a recent road trip on which he'd stuffed himself with ephedrine and driven down to Florida in search of his abusive wife.

“Didn't know she'd taken off,” I said.

“A few days ago. Not the first time.”

“You find her?”

He nodded, slid lower into the Lincoln's bottomless leather buckets, sucked a toothpick.

“Eventually. She'd holed up with a Bible salesman. I mean, you dig that? A fucking Bible salesman.” He looked at me through the widescreen panels of his sunglasses. I nodded my head to let him know that I dug it.

“I didn't even know they still had those,” I said.

“Me, neither. They do, though. So they're at this hotel, right? Not even a hotel, a motel, like this skeevy roadside thing. Gross. Anyway, the motherfucker has her tied to a bed. Handcuffed, actually . . .”

“Oh, hell.”

“But like she wants to be handcuffed, you know?”

“I follow you.”

“And I go in to get her.”

“Armed, I take it?”

“You heard me say he's a Bible salesman, right?”

Armed.

“Any fatalities?”

He swerved through a patch of traffic so fast I thought I'd spill my coffee. The kid was a test pilot inhabiting the body of a mere mortal.

“No, but get this: I step in the room, and there's that
moment when everything freezes, right? I'm looking at them, they're looking at me, that kind of thing. They're naked. I'm in my suit. My finest suit. It's embarrassing for all of us. Stressful. So I want to break the tension. There's a book on the nightstand.”

“A Bible.”

“What I thought. So I lower the Python . . .”

Again, hell.

“And, you know, bang, and the book just blows up and there are bits of pages floating around like it's a parade or something. The dude—he's in his boxers, right?—the dude pisses himself and runs like hell. Truth, man, I almost did, too. I've never fired the Python in an enclosed space like that.”

“Loud?” I asked.

“So loud I almost shit myself.” He dug around in his right ear with his pinkie as though in memory of it all. “So anyway, assface stuffs himself out this little window in the shitter. Had to break ribs getting through it. Sherea starts screaming, and there I am, standing with this gun, like I've made this big gesture or whatever. And then I look down at what's left of the book.”

“Not a Bible.”

“Fucking
Dianetics
, man. I almost wasted a brother.”

The idea of pursuing that line of thought made my head hurt, so instead I asked, “Cops?”

“Don't know. I got the hell out of there. Fuck it. I came home.”

“When did all this take place?”

“Few hours ago.”

“You dumb motherfucker!”

“What?”

“Pull your goddamn ass over.”

I drove us the rest of the way. The kid huddled in the passenger seat and just shook with it all.

A
GENT
C
ARTER WE FOUND IN A COFFEE-AND-DONUTS PLACE
in Marion, tucked into a corner booth, reading the local paper. He laughed when he saw us standing over him.

“I can't figure out which of you homos is supposed to be the sidekick. That Mabry?”

“My lawyer,” I said.

He actually looked sorry for me. He blew his nose into a paper napkin.

“I didn't really think it was Mabry. Sit down.” I sat. My lawyer started to slide in beside me. Carter raised a palm. “Not him. He can sit over there.”

“You don't like lawyers?”

“I don't like lawyers. And I sure as hell don't like whatever he is. Did he really go to law school?”

Before I could answer, a kid in an apron came over. I ordered a coffee. My lawyer sat huddled in a booth opposite with his knees pulled against his chest and his face between his knees. Carter elected to ignore him.

“Talk,” he said. “You're ruining my breakfast, boy.”

I nodded.

“Carol Ray Reach,” I said.

“We talked about her already.”

“I think I know where she is.”

Carter put down his coffee and stared at me.

I said, “You've already got her, right? I mean, that's really the only thing that makes sense. At first, I thought Reach was your inside man, but he wasn't, was he? It was her.”

“And how'd you come to that brilliant conclusion?”

“Dunno. Leap of faith, maybe. I just can't believe that she'd be mixed up in something like this.”

“As opposed to, say, moving guns and powder?”

“Even bad people have limits,” I said.

“I think we're done here.”

“Goddamn it, Carter.”

A couple of old ladies raised their heads to look daggers at me. Carter chuckled. “They're going to throw you out of here one day, boy,” he said.

“Who gives a shit? I've never even been in here.”

“I mean the state.”

I let that pass.

“Where is she?”

He shook his great mass of gray hair. My lawyer was asleep. His snoring filled the little room.

“You goddamn redneck idiot. You never really have figured this shit out, have you?”

“Didn't have to,” I replied. “Harold Tipton knew all about it.”

He didn't look shocked. He didn't spit out his coffee. He didn't jump out of his seat and spin on his head.

“You talked to Tipton?”

“I talked to whatever it is lives in Harold Tipton's brain, yeah.”

Carter heaved a sigh. For a moment, he looked almost human.

“There's not much left, is there? The kid fried himself early. Not for that mother of his, he'd probably be wandering the street.”

He'd probably be dead, but I didn't say so. Instead, I nodded for a coffee refill and reached for the cream and sugar.

“This game, the dogfight, it's big business?”

“Turns out. One of those weird things in the online world. Caught on somehow. Word of mouth. Dumb luck. Who can say? Something about it appealed.”

“But they didn't expect it to?”

Carter replied, “Not big enough to attract our attention, no.”

But it did. It had. According to Pimples, it was a trickle at first, the Black Games, as they were called. Later the trickle turned into a stream, then a rapids. Reach had set it up through the Dragons, and Carol Ray had gotten dragged into it. But she didn't know just how deep Black had gotten himself and Reach into the shit with Tibbs and his men. Without her knowledge, Reach subcontracted out to the Cleaveses. When the Cleaveses turned out to be batshit crazy and started freelancing, Dennis withheld payment, touching off a pissing match that ended with him snatching Shelby Ann. And then someone popped him.

“Meanwhile,” Carter said, finishing my thought, “Tibbs
and the Dragons have taken over the games. They're pissed that the whole thing has attracted the law.”

“They put out a hit on Carol Ray?”

“How'd you know?”

“Something made you pull her out.”

“Yeah, on her. And on J.T. Black, who was more or less an innocent bystander.”

“First time for everything.”

Carter sipped his coffee. “Reach used Carol Ray to get the keys to the mine from Leonard Black. He had a thing for her from way back, and he's half nuts these days anyway. So J.T. just happened to have the wrong last name. And of course, the sad sack of shit owned the gun used to kill Reach. The funny thing is, Reach himself owned the weapon. It was right there in his house the whole time. The killer just happened upon it. Imagine, he comes in, and his target is handcuffed and helpless, and there's even a gun handy so he doesn't have to burn his own piece. He must have thought he'd forgotten his own birthday.”