Skunk Hunt (34 page)

"No. Yes."

"I would have to make something up, then,"
Flint said. "I know a lot more than you do, but not about this."
Pulling back from the box, and from me, he yawned broadly. "Past
midnight, and long past my bedtime."

I shouldn't have been startled. Time for me
has always been elastic. The hardest thing about holding a job was
enforced obedience to the clock. Nine AM was a cliff that I fell
off more often than not. My boss was my safety net, seeing me as a
feckless bundle of apathy who posed no threat to his own lack of
ambition.

"You thinking of going out to River Road this
time of night?" Flint asked. "You start walking around there now,
you'll trigger every home alarm and pucker every asshole in the
Neighborhood Watch. They have very sensitive anal hairs in that
part of town."

"I don't guess you'd drive us out there," I
ventured.

"Got my license yanked years ago. I think the
DMV figured I was ready to plow through the crowd waiting outside
the DMV." He wiped his weary eyes. "Looks like you'll have to go
back home, after all. If the goons aren't there, you'll have to
deal with your sister's fecal syndrome. I don't envy you."

Put that way, neither did I. After collecting
the photos and papers into the cash box, I said, "Can you find a
safe place to hide this for us? Not in your old ammo chest, but
somewhere no one knows about?"

"There's the toilet tank..." he speculated
out loud.

"Somewhere dry?" I added.

Suddenly and horribly aware of my anal hairs
clawing their way to my sphincter, I departed Flint's house with
his cheerful benediction: "Don't go getting your throats cut."

I wished I hadn't seen Don't Look Now. I
wished I hadn't loafed half my life away watching video mayhem and
relishing the gruesome extinction of actors paid by the ounce of
fake blood that they surrendered to the camera. I'll never again
pop slasher films into my VHS or incorporate murderous thoughts in
my daydreams or fine-tune mortality on my agenda.

Unfortunately, implementing these healthy
injunctions would have to wait until Skunk's legacy was settled. It
was sort of like going to Europe. You might look forward to walking
the streets of Paris, but you have to fly there first—no trivial
feat for an aviophobe. Not only that, but the whole time you're
staring at the tomb of Napoleon, you're thinking: "I have to fly
back."

It was a little after two. A stroke of luck,
seeing as the bars had closed and students were flooding the
streets in search of new waterholes. Actually, it looked like the
entire hill was the hole, with kids staggering in all directions,
smashing bottles, pissing in the alleys, throwing up on the
sidewalks. Devolution 101, the one and only college course they
took seriously, and which they seemed to be passing with flying
colors. I adopted the pose, lurching ahead for the entire three
minutes it took to get to my house.

I surveyed the block carefully, hoping that,
in the poor light, Dog or whoever else might be watching would
mistake me for a future ambassador to St. James Court. No one
appeared to be scoping my front door, but I thought it best to
strike out across an empty lot to the alley and enter through the
back. It was a tricky proposition. Once I had hefted the sagging
gate off its broken hinge, I had to maneuver through all the junk
Skunk had deposited in the yard: decrepit sawhorses, Budweiser
empties, waterlogged (and very slippery) magazines, a broken
birdbath that he had found in the alley. Our yard was a monument to
stillborn notions. Skunk might have intended to mend that birdbath,
but once he had it he discovered he hated birds. You don't leave
things behind without rationalizing the mess. The path of logic was
inescapable. He didn't care for those old Playboys anymore, but in
case of emergency it was good to keep them around, but once they
were tossed under the open sky they became worthless sludge,
leaving indifference as the best option. You might say my life
followed the same pattern. My body and soul were discards that I
was too lazy to drag out to the garbage.

Yeah, I know--I belabor the point.

Shifting past a couple of rusting outdoor
barbecue grills, I inserted my key in the back door and gave it a
shove. The door bottom sucked and cracked across the decaying
threshold as I maneuvered my way past a trash can mewling with
life. I opened my mouth to call out to Barbara, then zipped. Dog
could be in the house again and it would be dumb to announce
myself.

There were no lights on. Had Barbara come and
gone? Working my way to the dining room, I took my courage in nose
and sniffed. Mold and mildew—nothing more. Had my sister taken
Flint's suggestion and used the empty lot? With her condition, she
probably kept a roll of toilet paper in her bag at all times. God,
I could have stepped in the mess while walking to the alley. It
wouldn't have been the first time shit had been tracked in this
house.

I checked every room and closet. There was no
sign, odiferous or otherwise, that Barbara had come back to use the
facilities.

Peeking out the upstairs window, I looked for
her car. I saw a Sentra that could have been hers across the
street, but I preferred to think it belonged to someone else. She
would not have left it behind unless someone had snatched her.
Either way, the money from the island was gone.

The money should not have been my primary
concern. But we had staked our lives, meaning our identities, on
the Brinks haul. Let's face it, we would never have heard of
Croesus or Rothschild if they hadn't been loaded. Ms. Barbara
McPherson had become $$$ Barbara McPherson, aka Enchanté "Euro"
Chanel, aka Big Bucks Sweet Tooth--we shall discard Possum Butt.
Same woman, different titles of courtesy. I could bemoan the money
and my sister in the same breath.

CHAPTER 18

Mortified into a ludicrous lump. A little
tinny, true, but that was one of the lines that streamed through
the cold alpha soup of my brain as I slept away what was left of
the night. It was the only line that remained coherent when I
opened my eyes around nine.

Mortified into a ludicrous
lump
.

Maybe it wasn't the same head. Maybe it
wasn't a case of being unable to control my dreams. Maybe I was
someone else when I nodded off. It gives a whole new meaning to
sleeping with a stranger. While catching a few z's, you're liable
to intercept all sorts of crazy signals from the wacky station that
broadcasts the Top Ten Archetypes. I once woke up convinced I was
William Shakespeare, a notion that stuck with me a good ten
seconds. In all the cerebral noise, our personalities slip into new
personas. And right now I was Joe Schmuck, a ludicrous lump. It was
a notion that stuck with me for the rest of the day.

What might or might not have been
Barbara's Sentra was gone when I walked outside. How fitting. I had
missed the opportunity to confirm its ownership last night, when I
was too afraid to step over my own front doorsill. That meant I was
a schmuck
before
I went to
bed. My dreams were just being consistent.

I don't know why my courage picked up that
morning. Anyone could have stopped me as I walked to my car. But
all sorts of craziness can result from a good night's sleep.
Besides, I didn't have much choice. If I wanted to go anywhere, I
needed my wheels.

I thought this early in the morning I would
have James River Park to myself. It wasn't exactly the crack of
dawn, but in my universe if you weren't headed for work by now,
your time was best spent staring at the ceiling. The kayak and
bicycle lunatics gathered at the 22nd Street entrance came as an
unpleasant surprise. In their tight-fitting outfits and safety
helmets, they looked like a quorum of hard-headed aliens preparing
to vote on the best way to conquer Planet Earth. I nudged my Impala
as gently as I could past boats and bikes, across ruts and exposed
tree roots, until I was at the far end of the parking lot. A couple
of squirrels—real squirrels, without helmets—chattered indignantly
at me for poking a car so close to the woods. Getting out, I leaned
my back against the door and watched the entrance for any unwanted
nature lovers. After a very long five minutes, I went down on my
knees and began goosing the bumper.

"You'll need an RF detector to find it."

I fell back on my ass in surprise. A girl was
standing next to my car, jogging in place. Her ponytail flopped up
and down in the air, giving her head a vibrant lashing.

"You're looking for a GPS, right?" she said
gaspingly.

"I thought I ran over a squirrel," I said
quickly, sharp as a Milk Dud.

"Yeah, well I searched my car and didn't find
a thing, but my husband still tracked me down. That asshole had
stuck it under the brake pedal. The brake pedal! What if it had
come loose and I couldn't stop? I could have run down someone!"

She had not stopped jogging in place as she
spoke, giving her words a huffing urgency. I nodded agreeably, with
nothing else to add. I had been completely flat-footed by her
assertion that I was looking for a GPS, as though it was a
commonplace problem, like an oil leak. It removed some of the
menace from the cameras that had been scanning my life. See?
Everyone's spying on everyone. Nothing out of the ordinary. Not
that it's a pleasant experience, as evidenced by the girl's
screwed-up expression. She wasn't suffering from cramps, but from
memories.

"I never thought that creep..." she continued
briefly.

"The man you married," I said
objectively.

"That asshole. What if I had
bugged
his
car, huh? I
wouldn't have heard the end of it!"

I found this a bit duplicitous, seeing as her
husband, or former husband, had probably never heard the end of it.
I made the universal gesture of showing I was a busy man, much as
it dismayed me to be rude. This consisted of a rueful smile and
continuance of what I was doing before I was so rudely
interrupted.

"Check the pedals!" the girl emphasized
before darting past a gaggle of kayakers on her way to the river
trail.

Crooking my fingers under the bumper, I ran
my hand the width of the car. There was a lot of road crud, tar and
dried mud, but no knobby anomalies. My knees sore from the gravel,
I lay on my side and stared up. And there it was, a surprisingly
bulky rectangle slapped on the gas tank. Stretching out, I tugged
at the box until the magnet gave way. Sitting up, I gave the GPS a
cursory inspection. StreetEagle. It looked expensive. Someone had
invested a fair amount in the hope I would lead them to a big
score. I was comforted by the prospect of putting a loss on their
ledger.

I'm sure I looked suspicious as hell as I
sauntered to the other side of the lot, but no one was looking as I
planted the device on a small pickup.

I was a boy the last time I had been to River
Road. For some reason, our father had taken it into his head to
give us (Barbara and me—Jeremy wasn't on the scene, yet) a quick
tour of the area.

"This is how the other half lives," Skunk had
orated, putting on the airs of a tour bus guide. He inserted a few
oaths that verged on jailbird socialism, then amended: "This is how
two percent of the population lives. One day..."

"One day what?" Barbara asked as she sucked
on a Sugar Daddy.

"We might just move here."

This was received with the bland
skepticism we reserved for all of our father's grand
pronouncements. He was going to make millions, he was going to
register us at the YMCA, he was going to excavate a swimming pool
in the back yard, he was going to take us to church, he was going
to take us to the circus, he was going to
join
the circus.... These and a million other
promises remained unfulfilled. We learned not to complain, seeing
as most of the promises he broke were those he made to himself. But
when he swore he would beat the living daylights out of
us...
that
we took to heart,
and scampered out of arm's reach.

River Road's snobnabobs did not appeal to me.
I can handle the mansions, which have their own kind of indiscreet
charm. The lesser houses, in the $600,000 to cool-million range,
belonged to the local peasantry who had to work for a living, and
were undoubtedly sneered down upon by their upscale neighbors. I
suspect that, like me, Skunk had been put off by the gated
communities. Those sequoia-high iron wrought fences could just as
easily hold someone in as keep yokels from going beyond the curb.
The numerous churches were in stiff competition to see which would
be the next Notre Dame. They didn't bother me much. I could pass
them without stopping.

There were far more buildings in the area
than when Skunk had bought us out here twenty-three years ago. The
long row of fat-cat communities was a money sump, draining
Richmond's tax base and leaving isolated old dry scabs with
laughable infrastructures. The downtown university, which hogged
millions, was rimmed by sorry-ass shantytowns. Last year one of the
main streets, Belvedere, was practically blocked off for a year
while construction crews plied their earth-movers down the middle
of the road. It was a big production and we anticipated a grand
result, maybe even the hub of a new subway. What we got was a new
median strip with a handful of bushes that stretched all of four
blocks. In the meantime, River Road gained new mansions, new
churches, and a lot more resentment from the have-nots. The
Belvedere project was a sham to show our few remaining tax dollars
at work. The flowers died within three months.

Well, it's an old story, here and everywhere
else, and bitching won't change a thing. Let's face it, my own
contributions to the tax base are minimal, maybe even negative. I
don't deserve more than what I've got, and until the Brinks money
reared its green head, I had been thriving in poverty. Even old
reruns of The Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous couldn't rouse me
out of my contentment.