by Chris Bauer
He maintained his distance while I climbed out. I didn’t blame him for not willing to chance another Tourette’s outburst that getting up close might have prompted. Plus I noticed some slight action going on inside his mouth. Chewing gum; a decent breath-freshener. I resisted the urge to comment, but I knew I was smiling. And McQuarters was resisting the urge to decapitate me.
I was free to go, but chances were that the van was now bugged. If it was, it had to be on the outside, considering Fungo and Tess were on the inside. Agent Van Impe returned my gun, handcuffs, keys and phone. McQuarters stayed out of the way, preoccupied with a call that sounded urgent from his side of the conversation.
“The Kugen steak house in Scranton,” he said into the phone. “Yeah, I heard. We’ll be there.”
I climbed back into my van. My waiting deputies jumped me, kissed me up big time, as much from affection as it was from their need to reassure themselves that I was okay. We drove back to my room at the B&B. I needed to assess the damages to my person, take a shower, and rub some ointment on muscles starting to ache now that the adrenaline was gone.
Out of the shower. My shoulder muscles were tight, my upper arms throbbing like I’d just left the gym. No punches were thrown back at the diner, so there was no damage to my face. I rubbed muscle ointment on my shoulders and back. Greaseless and odorless, my ass; smelled worse than original Bengay. Tess and Fungo stayed on the other side of my room, keeping their distance. They knew not to look for any pats from me whenever I slathered myself up like this. I pulled on another camouflage tee and some clean jeans, then a red blouse over the tee. My eyes wandered to the scrapbook on the dresser. The one with Andy’s father’s picture in it.
Maurice Prudhomme.
Let’s get a closer look at you, Maurice.
Thirty-two years old when you died. Prominent crow’s feet. A forehead so wrinkled and dirty from the mines, you could have passed for a mentally ill senior living on the streets. A taut body, arms like suspension bridge cables, much like Andy’s. Big, square shoulders. Shoulders, your blank face was saying, that accepted the weight placed on them, that of nurturing a struggling young family’s dreams of bettering itself. You weren’t a complainer; you were a doer. A protector. You were the type of father a kid looked up to, aspired to, emulated. Well honed, physically and mentally, for your lot in life.
In this picture we could see all this in you, Maurice, and validated twice over in the person of your wife and your son. And I wanted badly to fist bump you for whatever it was that you or a coal-miner buddy of yours did for me today inside that pothole, but a verbal equivalent directed at your one-dimensional likeness was all we had to go with.
“Thank you, Maurice.”
I affixed my Glock, handcuffs, keys, phone, and wallet to various body parts, patted my fuzzy keychain. My untucked blouse hid whatever didn’t go into a pocket.
I planned to visit a bowling alley full of seniors tonight, women mostly, to be correct. Not quite a reason to expect Mr. Linkletter to show there but hey, the place would be busy and the guy liked to gamble. At one time or another, if he were still in the area, he would stop in. Tonight could be as good a time as ever.
I added an ankle gun, plus I’d add a taser and some pepper spray when I got out to the van. Best not to be underdressed. The Suzuki needed to remain sidelined. My two deputies though, they were entirely welcome.
“Ready, team?”
Tess whimpered, my shepherd Fungo farted, neither moved in the direction of my beckoning fingers. Their way of saying wash that ointment off your hands first, Momma. Which I did as best as I could, then I lassoed them with their leashes and we headed out.
I pulled out of the B&B parking lot. My phone signaled I had a text, so I stopped on the shoulder.
Vonetta.
Feds talked with me sarge. Sup with that?
They don’t like me netta. I’m in their way
No surprise there. Got some news. They found Loretta Spezak’s body. PA turnpike exit
Too bad
Was maybe raped
I processed this. Linkletter liked kids. Adult women too?
It still fit. It was all about the control.
Sarge? You there?
Yes. Sorry. That’s terrible
Yeah. I confirmed for them you’re working for me. Feds told me you check out. You should be good now
They bugged my van netta
Aha. Where are you now?
At the b&b for an amorous encounter
Figures
Not what you think
Splain
I found the bug and put it on another b&b guest car. New guests are screwing themselves silly in the room next to mine. Newlyweds. Feds will think it’s me
☺ Honeymooners, she texted back. They won’t come up for air for days.
Older couple. Old as you netta, you zombie bitch
Stfu sarge. Go find my bail jumper. You’re costing me money
Fuck you netta
Fuck you fungo
We were done here, me and Vonetta, with our sexting, but before I put the phone away, I checked my voicemail for messages. The sheriff and I were squared away about the pharmacy mugging, but still no contact from the State Police. I supposed I should have been happy about this, but it surprised me.
Another text from Vonetta. Be careful honey
Will do netta
33
Randall had trouble finding parking at the bowling alley. Even the handicapped spaces were taken, all fifteen of them. Of course, it was Seniors League night.
He looped the lot again. A forest of Pocono evergreens bordered the single-story building on three sides, the trees old and tall and full, with white halos circling their tops from a descending mountain fog. On one side the trees stretched out below the alley, down and away and well beyond what his eyes could see in the evening’s declining light. Dense and uninviting, the swells were thick as Christmas tree farms, but also with dips and a few small, craggy trenches—sinkhole craters—where trees were sparse or conspicuously missing. Randall navigated the parking lot a third time.
Still no empty spaces. He retreated to just outside the lot’s entrance, drove a short stretch to where an overflow of cars lined the highway. Too visible on the main road, the stolen Caddy would be an issue, but there was nowhere else to park. Four hours had passed since he’d helped himself to it, a beautiful late model CTS coupe. Drugs in mass quantities in the glove compartment. The motel partyers he’d ripped off were for sure dealing, and apparently cavalier about it, considering that people who tried to rip off drug dealers tended toward stunted lifespans. An implied deterrent, yet deterrents didn’t mean shit to Randall anymore. He grabbed the next open spot on the shoulder. The parking lot should thin out as the night progressed, the senior patrons’ earlier bedtimes a factor. Then he’d come back out and find a less conspicuous parking space closer in.
Two guns went into his sport coat, one of them the ugly Flash Gordon–looking Rhino magnum. They took up the two vest pockets, his jacket now evenly ballasted. A pair of light-colored slacks, a white button-down shirt, and boat shoes gave him a clean look. Classy. Older women, bowlers or otherwise, liked classy. Squirty mouth spray for his breath. He was dressed for a night at the casino or the yacht or the lake house. There would be some laughing, some chatting, some charming, maybe even some cheering at strikes and spares if he could get himself into it. And reconnaissance. On the lookout for a mid- to late thirties female bowler; his Regina. And, of course, a sexual liaison or two, at gunpoint if necessary.
He checked himself in the sun-visor mirror. A distinguished older gentleman with strawberry-blond hair, cheerful eyes and a white mustache. His persona oozed a taste for the finer things in life. These lonely small-town senior bitches didn’t stand a chance.
What happens in Rancor…
… had no chance of staying in Rancor. Not after tonight. Tonight would make headlines.
The bowling alley was noisier than what Randall had
anticipated. A far cry from the reverence he remembered during TV bowling tournaments in the seventies, coverage he’d turn past on the dial on Saturdays so he could find cartoons or Three Stooges shorts while his barfly foster mom banged someone in the next room. The only quiet came before each rolled ball while the bowler set herself up, the silence broken by pin concussions then minor cheering on solid pocket strikes, major cheering on executing difficult spares, and grimaces from pins left standing. Rancor’s Summer Mixed Senior League Championship had center stage on lanes twenty and twenty-one out of forty. The five lanes east and west of the championship match were dark, showcasing the lanes the two teams occupied. Left and right of the darkened lanes was the bowling public, where business as usual provided the white noise of rolling balls, thundering hits, gear-driven pin-setting machines, and ball returns.
“What did you do with my sister?” she said.
The black-haired waitress from the diner had materialized next to Randall at the bar. No intro but they knew each other from the casino room, where he’d first noticed her noticing him while he pumped tokens into the slots. Now that he could see her closer up, the resemblance to her sister was obvious. Exposed shoulder ink and face piercings said she was younger, or wanted to look younger, than the impression she’d left on him at the diner. Her skin-tight, short, club-hopping sequined outfit with a tube top showed she was gifted above the waist like her sister, but was more substantial in the booty department. Or perhaps it was just how it spread itself on the barstool.
She stared at him expectantly, tapping her manicured nails on the bar.
“I’m sorry,” Randall said. “You are?”
“Pissed at my sister is what I am. She picks up a high roller, bolts from her shift at the restaurant, leaves us short-staffed while she goes off and parties with a sugar daddy. So, what did you do? Have some fun then chop her into little pieces?”
Screw them, kill them, sometimes twist their bodies to fit into places where they shouldn’t, but he’d never chopped any of them up. That was just too barbaric. He maintained his smile.
“So you’re from that diner,” he said, staying with his clueless and refined older gentleman routine. “I’m sorry, but yes, she was extremely flattering to me over dinner. Made me feel like a million bucks. I don’t usually take chances, but—”
“Can it, tiger. She told me about the fifty-dollar tip and the coke. And your bragging about your pecker.”
“Look, Miss—?”
“Stella.”
Now for his busted-but-fun-loving, innocent-party-guy routine. “I’m Howard. Yes, we were naughty in my car. Afterward she made some calls then had me drop her off at a motel in Dickson City. She said her friends would bring her back to the diner.”
“Yeah, well, she never came back. She’ll be out all night, bingeing,” she said, pouting, “without me.”
More nail tapping on the bar, with Stella stewing while she was thinking. She dished. “We were supposed to go clubbing in Manhattan after Mom’s bowling final tonight.”
“Huh. Bummer. Which one is your mom?”
She pointed at lane twenty-one. “The tiny one with the red hair and the nice tan,” she said, gesturing with her drink. “She wears too much make-up for her age. She’s part of Clooney’s Concubines, the team in pink. They used to call themselves Lethal Women. Then Mr. Mel fucking dickhead Gibson torpedoed his acting career. Before that they were Newman’s Own until, you know, he died. Guess her average, Howard.”
“Her what?”
“Her bowling average. Guess it.” Stella already seemed to be past missing her sister, was partly drunk, and was now flirting.
“Okay.” He focused on the skinny, tiny mother. “I’ll go with one-ten.”
“You’re definitely not from around here, are you, Howard? Christ, with an average like that you might as well not even show up. She carries a one-seventy-four bowling average. She’s seventy-two years old and weighs a hundred pounds, but she’s still a player. Order me another gin and tonic, Howard.”
Randall heard about the diner, about how her mother raised two precocious girls and two older boys who all worked in the family business. He heard about the diner’s famous rice pudding and how its preparation, when it was her mother’s turn, kept Mom’s upper torso in shape. “A lot of stirring,” she volunteered. “The woman’s biceps and shoulders are scary.”
Randall nodded politely, listened for any leads, glanced some at her tits, endured more bowling bullshit from her, and started thinking this was going nowhere until Stella blurted, “I’ve got it. How about you take me to the City instead?”
Randall was in the driver’s seat of Stella’s VW Beetle, in the far reaches of the bowling alley parking lot, her head in his lap, a slight chill in the mountain air, the motor running. At this distance the alley’s rooftop marquis had lost its battle with the fog, its lighting so fuzzy it looked like a hovering aircraft in a grainy UFO photo. His eyes were on the car’s digital clock; 8:45. Still plenty of night ahead, although he had no plans to spend any of it in New York City. He patted the top of Stella’s bobbing head hovering over his crotch. She was good at this, he’d give her that, but she had a lot to work with. Randall closed his eyes, still feeling the rush from the line of coke he did with her. She made cooing noises while she worked on him. His eyes reopened, returning him to the foggy night dreamscape that surrounded them. So thick, someone could, yes, commit a murder in the car right next to them without discovery.
She came up for air. “Uno momento, big boy,” she said, wrapping her fingers around where her mouth just was. “Home stretch in just a sec, right after I get another taste.” She was adept at setting up another line while working him with her hand.
It was time, Randall knew, soon as she was back on him. He reminded himself not to strangle her while her mouth was occupied.
She went back to work, got schoolgirl giddy, and finished him off. She disengaged, and at that moment he wrapped his large hands around her throat. He fended off her thrashing and punching, squeezing her neck until she, too, was every bit of finished off.
He was in a small car with a dead woman in it. He’d rather be in a larger car without a dead woman in it. Randall reclined the seat next to him and rearranged the body, belting his sleepy passenger in. He drove the Beetle out to the road so he could swap it for the Caddy. He tapped the brake at the exit then waited, needing to make sure an approaching car did what its signal advertised, which was to turn into the bowling alley lot.
The car executed its turn. Not a car, a van. Randall checked out the driver as the van glided by. A woman with dark, short hair, and the van a custom black-and-gold paint job. Randall remembered it from the diner earlier tonight. It had a cute dog in the passenger’s seat.
34
He admitted it to himself. Now that it was after eight p.m. and the match had started, Andy was keenly interested in each person who entered the bowling alley, hoping one of them would be Counsel. His woe-is-me bluster about keeping his distance from prospective suitors… at fifty-six, it was equal part altruism and equal part that he found most eligible women under forty lacking substance. Few had what he needed: a compassionate disposition; a hard shell, but with a soft and gentle inside; the patience and understanding that came from great personal loss and one’s own need for healing; and, his sheepish admission, a slam-bam-thank-you-ma’am boner-worthy physical presence. For him it wasn’t practical to let women get too emotionally close. Still, when dealing with the prospect of being partner-less ad infinitum, his idealism sometimes lost out.
“You’re up, Andy,” his mother said. She sat in the scorekeeper’s chair for lane twenty, near the ball return chute. For the most part, Charlie was behaving herself.
“Thanks, Ma.”
Andy blew on his fingers, grabbed a small towel and wiped off his silver ball, all part of the delivery ritual.
Charlie called to him. “She’ll be here, honey, she likes you. Now go fuck up all those pins.”
35
Almost an hour late. Goddamn feds. Fucking fog. And now a crush of cars in the bowling alley’s parking lot. No, wait. A space, far right corner, rear. “Here we are, deputies.”
An excited Tess sat upright in the passenger seat, readying herself for her leash.
“No, Tess, sweetie, not now. You guys need to sit here quietly while I go inside. Think you can do that?”
Tess’s head lowered, awaiting a pat or an ear scratch. I gave her both, plus a smooch on her mouth after I cupped her face. Yes, I kissed this Tasmanian Devil in the same place she utilized to rip and shred different members of the rodent family, plus smell Fungo’s ass. It’s a dog-owner thing.
I opened all the van’s windows a few inches for air. My mental check-down: guns, cuffs, taser, pepper spray, phone, ID. Fuzzy keychain. Medication. I took another look at the Stephen Linkletter mug shot. Long, gray-white hair, a chubby face, a white beard, brown eyes. Height, six-one. Weight, anyone’s guess, but at six-one and bearded like the Jolly Old Elf, he was probably two-forty. Age, forty-five, but the hair and beard made him look older. Nice-guy older, the crow’s feet next to his eyes suggesting he liked to smile a lot. Could definitely play Santa. So dangerous when they looked like this.
Fungo left his crate and wandered forward, poked at my shoulder and snorted. His body language—his butt shaking back and forth, a counterbalance to his wagging tail, him all nudge, snort, shake and wag—meant only one thing. A grunt through his pursed dog lips suffixed by an overpowering stench validated it.
“Fine, you guys need to go. Tess, let’s saddle up.” I grabbed and leashed her. Fungo, forever dressed for the occasion in his lead, waited alongside her.
A small patch behind a row of evergreens did the trick for them, but it was a nasty mess from Fungo. Ugh. Late at night, some out-of-the-way weeds… Damn, son, this one needed to stay where it was. At the rear of the van, I waited for the parking space next to us to empty as an older couple backed out and pulled away.