Blacktop Wasteland

by S. A. Cosby

  FOURTEEN

  “Ms. Lovell, we just want you to know we are sorry about what you have been through,” the first cop, whose name was LaPlata, said. He was tall and thin but had big veiny hands that looked strong enough to crack a coconut.

  “Just so you know, the Commonwealth Attorney is not inclined to press charges against you for discharging your weapon,” the other cop, Billups, said. “Mrs. Turner is going to be fine and she doesn’t want to pursue any criminal action. Since the gun was registered, you’re in the clear as far as that is concerned.” He was built like a fire hydrant and had a hairline that was retreating like Lee at Gettysburg. They sat across from her on a narrow love seat covered in a fading floral pattern. Lou Ellen sat in her recliner with her legs elevated on the foot rest. Her crutches lay on the floor next to the chair.

  “Well, that’s good to know. I mean since I was trying to save her life,” Lou Ellen said. She shifted in the recliner and felt a bolt of pain shoot through her entire left side. She grimaced and let out a long guttural moan.

  “Can we get you something?” Billups asked.

  Lou Ellen shook her head. “Docs already got me on the highest legal dosage of Oxy. They say the bullet bounced around in my thigh, bounced off my femur, and came out near my ass. It’s been two weeks and it still feels fresh. I think I’m going to be in pain for a long time. Might as well get used to it,” Lou Ellen said.

  “Ms. Lovell, can you tell us anything about the people who robbed the store?” Billups asked.

  Lou Ellen shook her head again. “They were both men, I think. They both wore masks. And gloves. They had gloves on.”

  “You’re positive they didn’t get away with anything? The safe was wide open when the deputies got there,” LaPlata asked.

  “Just a few hundred dollars in petty cash,” Lou Ellen lied.

  LaPlata stared at her. His almond-shaped eyes seemed to be studying her like a child studies an ant right before he holds a magnifying glass over it.

  “It’s just strange. There were pieces in the display cabinets worth a few thousand dollars. But they didn’t go for them. This wasn’t a smash-and-grab. They specifically went for the safe and safe alone,” LaPlata said. His eyes never left Lou Ellen.

  “I guess they thought we had the good stuff in the back, I don’t know. Look, I don’t mean to be rude but I’m really not feeling too great. Can we finish this later?” she asked.

  LaPlata turned his gaze toward Billups. After a few seconds, the big man nodded. Both detectives stood.

  “Well, Ms. Lovell, if you think of anything, please give us a call. We will get to the bottom of this, I promise you that,” LaPlata said. He handed her a business card with his name printed on it in small neat letters. She took the card but didn’t meet his questioning eyes. She could feel them boring into her skull.

  “Get some rest, Ms. Lovell. We will be in touch,” Billups said. The detectives stalked out of her apartment.

  When she heard the door shut behind them, she closed her eyes and sighed. She dug in the pocket of her lounge pants and pulled out a brown plastic pill bottle. She dry-swallowed two more OxyContin. The bitter taste soon gave way to a languid turgidity that moved through her body with a stealthy determination. She leaned the recliner all the way back and tried not to think about the cops or the store or the pain in her leg.

  Twenty minutes passed before her cell phone rang. Lou Ellen sat straight up, feeling her heart pounding like a pile driver in her chest. She pulled it out of her pocket and looked at the screen.

  The caller ID said John Elevonone. John 11:1. The first mention of Lazarus in the Bible. Getting a phone call from Lazarus “Lazy” Mothersbaugh was never a good thing. Getting a call from him after you had let one of his fronts get robbed was terrifying.

  She could ignore it, but he would just call right back and that would make things worse. As if they could get any worse. She pressed her finger against the screen then held the phone against her ear.

  “Hello?”

  “Well, well, well, if it ain’t Annie Oakley herself,” a reedy, high-pitched voice said. You could hear the mountains of Lynchburg and Roanoke in his speech. Some people would make assumptions based on that thick accent. Those people were foolish.

  “Hey, Lazy,” she said.

  “Hey, Lou. How ya feeling? I hear tell you got a bullet that took a tour of your nether regions,” he said. He laughed softly.

  “Nah. Got hit in the hip and it came out near my ass.” She heard him take a deep breath. Phlegm rattled through the phone.

  “This a mess, Lou. A big ol’ greasy killing hog of a mess,” Lazy said. Lou didn’t respond. “You done good by me, Lou. That’s why I let you work that store.”

  “I don’t know what happened, Lazy. Those guys they just came busting in and … I just don’t know,” she said. She didn’t really know. She had her suspicions, but she didn’t know anything for sure.

  There was silence on the other end of the phone. A loud banging came from her front door. It sounded like someone was trying to hammer through the door frame.

  “Yeah, ya do. Horace and Burning Man gonna ask you about it and you gonna tell them. I tell you, Lou, I wish it didn’t have to come down like this. But if wishes were horses, beggars would ride,” he said. The line went dead.

  Lou Ellen turned her head in the direction of the door. They were still pounding on it. Lou closed her eyes. “It’s open!” she yelled. Fuck them. If they were coming to kill her, they could open the goddamn door themselves. She heard heavy steps and then she saw them come around the partial partition in the hallway.

  Horace was grinning with a smile that made him look like a jack-o’-lantern that had been carved by a Parkinson’s victim. His salt-and-pepper hair was piled up on top of his head in a bedraggled, greasy mop. He wore an old Texaco T-shirt and denim jeans. His arms were covered in Nordic tattoos. Vikings and battle axes and skulls. Billy “Burning Man” Mills stood next to him. He was a foot taller than Horace and half a foot wider. He wore a white button-down shirt open at the throat and a pair of wrinkled khakis. He had lank black hair with wisps of gray that was parted down the middle. His Vandyke goatee was still more black than white. His green eyes were flinty flecks of jade. If not for the scar on the left side of his face he would be considered a ruggedly handsome man. A burn mark stretched from his chin over his cheek up to his eye and around what was left of his ear. Lou knew he wore his hair long to obscure the scar as much as he could.

  “Hey, Lou Ellen. How ya doing?” Billy asked.

  “I’m alright, considering,” she said. She realized Lazy had only called to make sure she was home and not in the hospital. Lou dropped her hand to her right side. The cops had her gun, but she had a switchblade that she carried with her nearly all the time.

  “Yeah. Getting shot hurts like a sonofabitch. Feel like somebody sticking you with a hot poker all the way down to the bone,” Billy said. He sat in one of the chairs the cops had retrieved from the kitchen. He leaned forward and let his hands hang loosely between his legs.

  “Makes you think it’s the most pain you ever gonna feel,” he said. Horace tittered.

  “Yeah,” Lou Ellen said. Her mouth was desert dry.

  “It ain’t, though. There’s always more pain,” Billy said. He ran his hand through his hair and she saw the rest of his scar.

  “Billy…”

  “Shh. I just gotta ask you two things, Lou. Just two questions. Then we gonna be gone,” he said.

  “The cops were just here. I didn’t say anything. You know I didn’t,” she said. She felt tears building up in her eyes and hated herself for it.

  Billy smiled. “Aw, I know that, Sis. We watched them leave. They long gone now. But thank you for answering my first question,” he said. The smile seemed to make his scarification more disturbing. It was as if the ghost of his old face was rising from the grave. Billy scooted his chair closer to her recliner.

  “Now my second question is the humdinger. Who
’d you tell about them diamonds? You know, the ones Lazy was using to pay for them girls?” he asked. He smiled again and the skin around his eye crinkled like crepe paper.

  Lou Ellen felt her tongue squirming in her mouth. She could tell the truth. Just let it all out and hope for the best. Or she could lie. Just pretend she had no idea how those guys knew there was almost two million dollars’ worth of diamonds in the safe. Or she could try and find some middle ground.

  “I didn’t tell nobody. But there’s this girl that work there,” she said.

  Billy leaned forward. “Aw Sis. Not another girl with a pussy that taste like cotton candy and dreams,” Billy said.

  “I didn’t tell her nothing. Not really. We just kinda hung around each other. She might have picked up on some things,” Lou Ellen said.

  Billy nodded sagely. He ran his right hand along Lou’s left thigh. “Lazy got a friend in the hospital. She says a little to the left they could have hit your femoral artery.” His hand stopped at her wound.

  “Yeah,” Lou Ellen said.

  He squeezed her thigh. His hand closed on her like a bear trap as his thumb dug into the wound. The pain was a living thing that grabbed at her throat and choked off her breath. She instinctively pulled out her knife. Billy’s left arm shot out and caught her wrist as she came up with it.

  “Come on now, Lou,” he said. He gave her wrist a hard twist and the knife fell into her lap. “What’s her name? The girl who must have a pussy that taste like magic and star-shine?”

  “Lisa,” she wheezed.

  Billy let go of her leg. He plucked the knife out of her lap.

  “Lisa’s the blonde, right?” Billy asked.

  Lou Ellen nodded.

  “That means it was the other one. The redhead. Jenny,” he said as he sat back in the chair. The biscuits that held it together creaked. Lou breathed heavily through her mouth. “I didn’t think you’d give the real one up. You a bad liar, Lou Ellen. You always had a soft spot for a fat ass. Lisa too skinny for you.” Billy stood.

  “No, Billy, don’t hurt her. Please.”

  “If it was just a jewelry store, this could go another way. But them cops gonna start poking around. They gonna be looking at the books and seeing the math don’t add up right,” Billy said.

  “I ain’t gonna say shit,” Lou Ellen said.

  Billy frowned. “I know you good people, Lou. But them boys gonna lean on you hard. If it makes any difference, I told Lazy it should be me. Seeing as I done known you the longest,” he said. He walked around to the back of the recliner.

  “Billy, just tell Lazy I can explain. I can make this right,” Lou Ellen said. She twisted in her chair, so she could see what he was doing behind her. It hurt like hell, but she contorted her torso and tried to look over the top of the chair. Her eyeballs bulged from their sockets as she strained to see. Billy pulled a rolled-up black plastic bag out of his back pocket.

  “Nah, ya can’t, Lou. Some things when they get broke, you can’t put them back together.”

  He slapped the bag over her head and pulled it tight around her neck. Lou Ellen bucked up out of the chair and tried to stand as she clawed the bag.

  “Can you get her fucking hands, please?” Billy asked. Horace ran over and straddled her hips and grabbed her arms. Horace thought he could see the outline of her nose in the dark plastic. A bubble rose and fell where he thought her mouth was. Lou screamed but the sound was dampened by the bag. Her screams became a desperate squealing. The squealing devolved into animalistic grunts that became increasingly desperate. Her gesticulations slowly became less frantic. Her grunts slowed and became nearly imperceptible gasps. A few minutes passed, and her legs stopped kicking.

  A few more minutes passed, and she stopped moving completely.

  A pungent stench filled the apartment. Neither Billy or Horace were too perturbed by this. It wasn’t the first time someone had voided their bowels in their presence. Billy removed the bag, rolled it up and shoved it back in his pocket. Lou’s head lolled to the right. Her tongue protruded from her mouth like a turtle’s head from its shell.

  Billy reached into his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief. He wiped his forehead and put the cloth back in his pocket. From his other pocket he pulled a flat silver flask, a pack of cigarettes and a book of matches. He lit one of the cigarettes with one of the matches and dropped it on the floor between Lou’s feet. He hadn’t put it in his mouth. He’d just held the match to the tip until a small cherry appeared. He poured the contents of the flask on the floor and the curtains. He poured some of it directly on Lou Ellen’s body. The acrid smell of moonshine overtook the scent of shit that had filled the air.

  Billy let out a sigh and gently stroked Lou Ellen’s cheek.

  “Dammit, Sis,” he mumbled.

  He tossed another lit match onto her body. The flame started slowly, shyly. Then it spread quickly up her leg. He tossed another match near the curtains. They went up like paraffin. Billy watched the flames dance across the fabric like zealots full of the holy ghost. The flames reminded him of the snake handlers at his grandfather’s church. Gyrating across the rough-hewn wooden floor boogying for the Lord.

  “I guess we better get going,” Horace said. Billy blinked his eyes.

  “Yeah. You go see the redhead. I’m gonna talk to Lisa.”

  “I thought Jenny was the one.”

  “Yeah, but it doesn’t hurt to cover your ass. Come on, let’s get the fuck out of here. I don’t want to watch her burn,” Billy said. He pulled his sleeve down over his hand and opened the front door. He and Horace strolled to the Cadillac. By the time they left the parking lot and turned onto the street, the first plumes of smoke were just beginning to pour from under Lou’s front door.

  FIFTEEN

  Beauregard sat in the Duster and tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. The skies were overcast, threatening to release a deluge of much needed rain. In the distance a water tower emblazoned with the name CARYTOWN stared down at him like an iron giant. An abandoned train trestle bisected the horizon to his left. All around him the remains of an old factory were scattered like the bones of dinosaurs made of brick and steel.

  He checked his watch. It was five minutes after four. Ronnie was supposed to meet him at two on the dot. He wasn’t surprised he was late for the meeting. He had been a week late getting the money from his “guy” in DC. The delay had made Beauregard’s already desperate situation worse. His suppliers were blowing up his phone like a spurned lover. The mortgage on the garage was due in three days. Not to mention the deadline for Ariel’s college registration was approaching quick, fast, and in a hurry. The nursing home staff was gleefully packing his mother’s bags, anticipating her imminent removal.

  “God, Ronnie, don’t fuck me on this. I think I just might have to make you into a paperweight if you do,” Beauregard said to no one. He checked his watch again. It was ten minutes after four. He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. He heard the rumble of a big-block engine. He opened his eyes and saw a black Mustang rolling across the pavement. The driver navigated the vehicle around cracks and potholes with the gentle ease of a new car owner.

  The Mustang pulled up alongside the Duster. Ronnie Sessions grinned at Beauregard from behind the wheel. Beauregard lowered his window as Ronnie did the same.

  “What the fuck is this?” Beauregard asked.

  “What? It’s a car, man. A BOSS car. 2004 Mustang.”

  Beauregard leaned out the window. “Have you been watching the news? All they been talking about is that someone died, and two other people were shot in a brazen jewelry store robbery. The police are on this like stink on shit and you go buy a new car,” he said. He said each word slowly and distinctly like he was biting them out of the air and spitting them at Ronnie.

  “It’s not new. I got it used from Wayne Whitman.”

  “What you pay for it?”

  “I got a deal. $7,000. He even threw in a set of rims.”

  “And you don’t thi
nk broke-ass Ronnie Sessions throwing around money ain’t gonna attract some attention?”

  Ronnie rolled his eyes. “Bug, will you get that six-foot-long stick out ya ass? We did it! The cops ain’t releasing any information cuz they ain’t got no information. They chasing their fucking tails. So, relax.”

  Ronnie leaned over and grabbed two cereal boxes out of the passenger’s seat. He handed them to Beauregard.

  “Go buy yourself something nice. Take your wife over to Barrett’s. Go have some nice quiet married people’s sex at the Omni Hotel.”

  “Don’t talk about my wife, Ronnie.”

  “Hey, I ain’t mean no harm. I’m just saying Captain Crunch and Toucan Sam are holding $80,000 that belongs to you. Enjoy that shit.”

  “$87,133.33. It’s supposed to be $87,133.33.”

  “It is, Bug. Jesus, I was just talking.”

  Beauregard put the two boxes in the back seat.

  “Hey, man, maybe down the road we can talk about working together again. We make a good team. I can get somebody to replace Quan. I know how you feel about him. To be honest—”

  Beauregard cut him off. “No. We done. And keep my name out ya mouth, Ronnie.” He wound the window up and started the Duster. He hit the gas and tore out of the lot. The sky began to cry as he passed the water tower and turned onto Naibor Street. As he merged onto the interstate a sign to his left thanked him for visiting Carytown, Va. He turned on the radio and settled in for the two-hour ride back to Red Hill County. Felt like the bear crushing his heart began to relax a bit. No one had seen him in the store. Only Ronnie, Reggie and Quan knew he had driven for the job. If his name ever came up, he knew who he had to go see.

  And who would have to disappear.

  * * *

  Ronnie passed a box truck on his way down 64. He had Jenny’s cut in the back seat and an overnight bag in the trunk. He didn’t know about Bug, but he planned on partying like Tony Montana all weekend. Ronnie steered around a ramshackle SUV while taking a sip from a pint of Jack Daniel’s. He put the bottle back in the cup holder and popped in an Elvis CD. The King’s deep baritone rumbled through the speakers.