Trailer Park Noir (31 page)

Andy went to the refrigerator and got a beer, popped it open, and drank.

“Well, I can’t help it,” Sherry said. “It worries me.”

“I’m gonna get started with this,” Andy said.

“Okay, Lissa, you ready to go?” She stood and turned to him. “We’re goin’ to the movies. We’ll be back in a couple hours.”

“I won’t be done by then.”

“Yeah, I know, but that’s when we’ll be back.”

“Okay.”

The wind whistled around the corners of the trailer like some kind of howling beast. The trailer shuddered against it.

“You don’t mind if we take your car, do you?” Sherry said. “You got air conditioning, I don’t.”

Lissa said, “No, I don’t mind. I’d prefer it.”

Sherry went to Andy and gave him a warm kiss. “See you later. You be careful with that shit, okay?”

“Hey, I’m always careful,” he said. “I can’t make any money off that shit if I’m dead.”

The girls got their purses, left the trailer, and went out into the suffocatingly hot, windy evening.

* * * *

Josh Garner punched in Steven Regent’s cell phone number for the twentieth time that day. Once again, he received Regent’s recorded voice, asking him to leave a message.

Garner severed the connection and looked at his watch. He could not understand where Steven might have gone all day long.

He punched in the number of Steven’s trailer. He got the answering machine.

“Jeez, Steven, where the hell are you?” he said. “I’ve been calling your cell phone all day. I’ve got this woman coming over, this MILF – she’s incredible, Steven, you’ve got to see her. I met her in the bakery at WinCo, of all places. She’s a knock-out, and she’s open to anything. I was hoping to get you over here, but she’s gonna show up any minute now, and you’re nowhere to be found. Look, just give me a call when you get in, okay? And it doesn’t matter how late it is. By now, I’m worried. Even if it’s late and you wake me up, go ahead and call. Just let me know you’re okay. Talk to you later.”

He turned the phone off and put it on its base on the kitchen counter, frowning. He’d never known Steven to simply disappear for a day. He was completely devoted to his work and would never just drop it and vanish for a while.

Garner was worried. He could not shake the feeling that something was wrong.

He decided that as soon as the MILF left that night, he would drive over to Steven’s trailer. He had a key.

* * * *

With her costume in a garment bag slung over her shoulder, Anna looked at Kendra seated on the couch.

“Now, you gonna be okay tonight, sweetheart?” she said.

“Sure, Mommy.” She petted Dexter, who was stretched out beside her, wagging his tail.

Kendra stood and hugged her.

Anna could not shake a feeling in her gut. It was a bad feeling, like something was not right.

It’s just because you’re a murderer now,
she thought.
Now nothing will ever feel right again because you’ve got
that
hanging over your head, and you never know when it’ll catch up with you, when it’ll fall and
land
right
on
your head. And it’ll be with you forever, for the rest of your life. You’ll always be a murderer.

Always.

A murderer.

“Mommy?”

“Hm? Yes? What?”

“You were ... starin’.”

“Oh. Sorry. I got preoccupied with something.”

“Mommy ... are you sure
you’re
all right?”

Anna smiled. “Yes, honey, I’m fine. Don’t wait up for me. I won’t be home till after two, and I sure don’t want you staying up that late.”

“Okay. I’ll go to bed.”

Anna left the trailer. She lay the garment bag out in the back seat of her car, got in, and started the engine.

That feeling stayed with her, the feeling that something wasn’t right, that something bad was going to happen. Or was it just guilt? She really couldn’t tell. There were so many feelings all mixed up inside her – all of them bad. As she drove out of the trailer park, she did not know how much longer she could live with them.

* * * *

Kendra waited. She was afraid to go over to Marc’s trailer. He hadn’t been in a very good mood when she’d left that afternoon, and she didn’t know if that had changed or not. If his mood had not changed, she did not care to be with him. So she decided to wait for him. If he was in a
good
mood, then sooner or later, he would come to her, she decided. But if he was still in a bad mood, he probably wouldn’t want to be with her, either. So she would leave it up to him.

Or was she going about it all wrong?

She had no idea, and her mind reeled with confusion.

In the end, she decided to wait for him.

* * * *

Reznick listened to the wind as he finished another glass of vodka. He’d turned off the TV over an hour ago and put on an old Elton John CD. Something from what he liked to refer to as his misplaced youth. He stared at the empty glass with his lower lip stuck out, Mussolini-like. He thought of Kendra next door. He looked at the clock.

8:09.

She was alone by now. By now, Mommy had gone to work, where she would take off her clothes for all the lonely, horny men. And if she was like half the girls at the Mt. Shasta Gentlemen’s Club, maybe she’d take a few extra bucks for a handjob out behind the building, or maybe a blowjob.

Reznick stood. He went to the bedroom, got a couple condoms and stuffed them into his pocket. He went to the kitchen and opened the freezer, took out the big bottle of vodka. He tucked it under his arm and took his keys from the table, put them in his pocket.

Conan was curled up by the recliner. He’d eaten recently and was napping. But when he heard the screen door open, he lifted his head and looked at Reznick.

“C’mon, Conan, you wanna go see your buddy?”

Conan stood, stretched and yawned, then followed Reznick out. He locked up the trailer.

The shadows were darker. The sun would be going down soon and it would be dark. It was already pretty dark under the ceiling of trees in the trailer park. The hot wind slapped him hard and sucked his breath away. On it wafted a strong odor that Reznick recognized immediately – someone was running a meth lab.

He stopped walking and turned, tried to figure out from which direction it was coming. But he could not tell. He only caught the smell now and then, caught it on the buffeting wind. He didn’t like the idea of a meth lab in his trailer park. In fact, it pissed him off. But what the hell was he gonna do about it? There was no way the managers – those two drunk, fat, albino manatees – didn’t know about it. If they didn’t care, nothing was going to be done.

Reznick’s sigh finished as a low growl as he headed for Kendra’s door.

Twenty-Five

He didn’t bother to knock. He opened the screen door and went in.

Kendra was seated on the couch watching TV.

The swamp cooler rattled annoyingly.

Reznick went to the kitchen and put his vodka in the freezer. He returned to the living room, went to Kendra, clutched her upper arms, and pulled her to her feet. He put a hand over her crotch and squeezed brutally as he held her head and gave her a hard, punishing kiss. She moaned into his mouth.

When he finally pulled back and let go of her, she whispered, “You didn’t eat any peanut butter.”

“I’m not worried about Mommy finding out I’ve been drinking.”

He went back to the kitchen and searched the cupboards for glasses, found one. He got some ice, took out the bottle and poured. Returned the bottle and closed the freezer, then took a couple healthy swallows.

He went to the couch, put his drink on an end table – there were no coasters and from the ring stains, he saw that nobody cared – then kicked off his flip-flops. He fished a condom from his pocket and dropped his shorts, stepped out of them, and sat down. He slapped his thigh and said, “Take off your shorts and come sit on my lap.”

Without hesitation, she did as she was told.

* * * *

When Sherry and Lissa returned to the trailer, Sherry was glad to find that Andy had set up the fans that blew the terrible smell out the open windows. But even that didn’t help much. The smell was awful.

“How can you stand it?” Lissa said.

“I can’t. That’s why I try to get out of the trailer when he does it. You wanna beer?”

“Yeah, but I don’t think I’ll stay long.”

As Sherry got a beer, Andy came into the kitchen.

“Like the movie?” he said.

“The movie sucked,” Sherry said. “But it was a Tom Cruise movie, and I don’t like Tom Cruise, so I should’ve known better.”

“I thought it was okay,” Lissa said.

“Blech,” Sherry said before taking a couple gulps of beer.

“God, it’s windy out,” Lissa said.

“And it’s such a
hot
wind,” Sherry said. “Like it’s comin’ right outta hell.”

“That’s good,” Andy said. “It’ll blow the smell of this lab around, maybe. Make it harder to pinpoint. Oh, by the way, while you were gone, two guys dressed in black came lookin’ for ya.”

Sherry gasped and put down her beer.

“Yeah, said they were from the Secret Service.”

She stared at him a moment, then her eyes narrowed. “Andy, you cruel shit. Don’t
do
 that. It
scares
 me.”

Andy laughed. “You’re so easy to scare,” he said before turning around and leaving the kitchen, laughing.

* * * *

The wind knocked over a few of the big green garbage cans, the ones that were empty. Dry, brittle branches, especially from oak trees, were broken off by the powerful wind and dropped on top of trailers or in the middle of the road that looped through the trailer park.

The speckling of light that came through the swaying trees was in constant movement as it was gradually extinguished by the setting of the sun.

Sunset did not bring a respite from the heat.

Trailers shuddered and shook in the wind.

Inside the trailers, people were on edge.

In unit thirteen, Roderick Cramer and his wife Chrissy argued loudly as their baby wailed in its crib.

In unit two, Donna Huber slapped her eight-year-old several times, her hand flying back and forth, because she caught her getting into her makeup.

In the Snodgrass house, Hank shouted at Muriel, “Shut
up
woman, my God, can’t you just shut the fuck up for five Goddamned
minutes
? My ears are
ringin’
from all your fuckin’
yappin’
! And you can’t stay on one topic for more than thirty seconds. Just give it a fuckin’
rest
for God’s sake!”

The wind clawed at tempers and made emotions bubble to the surface like blood from a cut.

The darker it got outside, the darker it got inside.

* * * *

Anna danced to an old Rod Stewart song with a strong beat. She was topless, and she danced to emphasize her breasts. She worked the pole for a while, then moved slowly across the stage, peeling off pieces of her costume. She made her way down the runway, where there were already a lot of dollar bills, and some fives.

The whole time, there was a man seated at the runway bar, on the left, who seemed to be enjoying her performance more than the others. He was beefy and balding and he had a beard and mustache. He wore a blue shirt open over a white T-shirt. He kept whooping and hollering as she danced, raucously encouraging her to continue disrobing.

She’d been there for a couple hours. The hardest thing had been to keep smiling while she was dancing. That was important, smiling. But it was hard to smile when your mind was full of blood and gore and death.

Anna moved out on the runway, down to her G-string and heels.

The beard-and-mustache whooped and slammed his hand down on the stage, slapping a ten-dollar bill down.

Anna danced his way and shook the merchandise just for him.

“Yeah!” he shouted. “Fuckin’ beautiful!”

He reached out and wrapped his big meaty hand around her calf and moved it up and down.

Her smile cracked. She tried to pull her leg away from him.

He closed his hand on it and pulled.

Anna started to fall backward and her arms flew out at her sides. She tried to compensate by throwing herself forward, but she overcompensated.