Leaving at night in a small rental moving truck with the Taurus attached by a trailer, Lilly and Brant fell fast asleep and never made a peep most of the way down. The flat cornfields of Illinois and Indiana turned into a soft rolling landscape beyond the Ohio River where Kentucky eventually gave way to foothills in the southeast. The curtain of night gently fell away, where the first daylight revealed hilly countryside against an impossible rumpled rise of blue shadowed mountains. A road sign glowed green against a bright dawn, beckoning us further into the Cumberland Mountain Range while announcing our arrival into historic Exodus County, the county seat of Story Mount, Kentucky. Around corkscrews, winding up logging roads, and crossing a mountain spine through a set of switchbacks and stunning vistas, I finally spotted the familiar turn that led to the gravel driveway entrance. Emily and I had come here many times over the years for family holidays. My heart flinched as a new sense of loneliness settled over me.
The truck bucked and heaved along the rutted route, rocks grinding and rolling as we weaved between a row of beech trees, the elephant skin tree trunks looking alive beneath their enormous green canopies. I wondered if the trailer might come unhooked when suddenly the white, two-story Colonial came into view. I parked on a low grassy rise next to the house, adjacent to a trout pond. Killing the truck’s engine, the sudden absence of vibration roused Lilly from sleep. She sat up, dazed, her cheeks imprinted by the vinyl seat upholstery.
“Daddy,” her voice crackled. “Are we there?”
“Shhh…” I said pointing to Brant who lay motionless, his thumb poked in his mouth. The front porch light clicked on and a couple came out waving, all smiles. The female form swept down the steps, coils of bouncing auburn hair springing around her shoulders as she ran. If Emily had been ginger instead of blonde, she might as well have been alive. Right here. Right now. Resurrected back to life. If only for a split second. Growing up, they’d always been confused for twins. Vanessa bound across the front field, ran up to the truck, threw open the passenger door and cradled the kids.
“Welcome to your new home,” she cried, tears flowing. “My family is home.”
4
Dirty Deeds-
Story Mount, Kentucky
I’d known I was late. And with old Charlie Greymore that weren’t never a good thing. I blasted over that three-mile paved entrance, throwin’ my motorcycle low in turns, scraping my knees. When I come around the bend, them big terracotta peaks of Charlie’s palace come into view, settin’ up real high over the mountain valley, all colored up in wildflowers. It was said Greymore owned those mountains. And the valley below. How can a man own such a thing? A whole mountain? I bought beer, gasoline and good meth. But he bought himself rivers, lakes and mountains. We could be told apart by purchases and receipts alone.
Charlie didn’t do nothin’ special to be at the top of the mountain, he was just born that way. Nothin’ more than a spoiled, silver-spoon-fed devil. Every county had one or two. And Exodus County had Charlie. Worth a billion, I’d guess. How’ ever many millions fit inside a billion, who knew. And who cared. See me, I knew how to get by on nothin’. I was born in a trailer park a couple-few counties over. I was raised by the rod and the staff. Eye for an eye, Old Testament like. Daddy beat me out back with a mop handle so much it broke in half. And let me tell you, half a stick hurts a lot badder than a full one. I don’ know why. So that short stick went missin’, I made sure of it. Turned out to be the wrong move. I’d blown out a transformer with a shotgun leaving our trailer park with no lights or heat for a whole week. With the stick missin’ he favored a broken beer bottle, screamin’ Tadpole this and Tadpole that, the result of which gave me this long scar that run diagonal all the way from my eye, over both lips and across my chin, the way you slash across all three X’s to show you won tic-tac-to. Like that.
Me and Charlie Greymore was acquainted only business-like, we weren’t no real buddies. I come here with a serious job offer. And my daddy had some dealin’s for him way back yonder. That bitch of my baby’s mama was takin’ me to child support jail again for new money. I’d kept trying to stop but I couldn’t think without the stuff and smoked most of what I’d had. And Charlie paid in cash money. Which I needed bad. Then Lady Luck shined on me. I’d stumbled across a real dandy. Something real bad for Charlie. And worth a lot of cold hard cash.
The road ran out, so I kicked the engine down to the smaller gears, pop, pop, pop. I swung off the bike at the big tennis court, the one with real grass in it, the low kind, white stripes running every which way. It was hard to believe all the money, the swimming pools all around, and a waterfall, hot tubs, a huge outside porch, a dance floor and a full bar looking over the Cumberlands. The horse barn in the back pasture had stained-glass windows, and was bigger and fancier than most rich people’s homes. I was here. My stomach flopped, like I could puke. My nerves went all cold and hot. See, there had always been rumors that swirled around this place. People were told to have come in and never left back out. Shit Tadpole, fuckin’ focus man.
Not to be seen by the doorman, I crouched down against the bike peerin’ over my shoulder at a camera mounted in a tree and reached low out of sight, feelin’ for my .38 pistol, pulled it from my waistband and stuffed it inside my tall racing boot, the kind the Moto GP riders wore. A quick check and the brown paper package still sat safe in my rear pants pocket. I lifted the gold cross hung on my chest, closed my eyes, and kissed it. God don’t let me fuck this up. Pop always said a man born with nothin’ would die with nothin’…unless he risked everything. And so, here I was.
Across the cobblestone and onto the huge porch with big columns, a fat Cherokee Indian with a huge hook nose, black pants and a hunter-green sport jacket pulled the tall door open before I could even ring the bell. Shit they’d seen me as soon as I’d turned into the front gate a few miles out. He looked at his watch and frowned, making a study of my face, his eyes getting into my old wound, like he was judgin’ me by it. I was used to it, people lookin’, but not like the way he did it. My voice broke, came out like a half-shout. “What’s the matter, you never seen a scar before?” I got snake fangs in the gut, tense all over, like I might turn and run. But…
“Greymore is eager to see you.” He waved me through into a huge front room, all marble white, like a huge library, or maybe like Congress even. A gigantic staircase rolled down, wide enough to drive a truck up, I swear. Big paintings of horses and hunting parties hung here and there, and a naked statue of a woman with no arms seemed to stare at me. Run. The doorman nudged me forward with the flat of his palm. I spun around and snatched his wrist.
“Watch who you’re pushin’, Mister.” His face didn’t flinch. It didn’t make no expression at all. Not even a blink. Just stood looking at me like I was a sack of mud. I let go of his wrist, and stepped back. This place and this guy, I was second-guessing everything. Even if daddy had done some things for Greymore back in the day. I wasn’t safe. The doorman knew it. I knew it. He waved me on.
We disappeared under the stairs, into a windowless hallway where cold air found me huggin’ myself. Tiny dim wall lights with tiny shades hardly lit the way, like torches about to go out. There we come to a vault-sized door wrapped in leather, giving off a polished horse saddle smell. The doorman slapped the door twice with an open palm, a green light beeped where a doorknob should be and he pushed it open. Old Charlie sat behind his desk with eyes tight like pinpoints and glaring like a hawk, not happy.
“Late I suppose?” he growled. “Sit.”
I took the only set centered and facing his desk. “The bike wouldn’ start and the battery on the damn…”
He held is hand up. “Just shut up.”
His blue eyes came on shining, sharp like a pair daggers. It was too late to turn back now but I thought it over, noting that Cherokee had shut the door but remained inside, standing right behind me. I wanted to apologize but I knew better. That’s not the way it
worked with Greymore.
“Yes sir, Charlie.” I was wringing my hands. Where was that doorman? An inch away. So close I couldn’t even see him.
“You call me Mr. Greymore at all times,” he said flexing his jaw muscles. “Understand Billy Harmony? Or Tadpole, or whatever the fuck it is they call you these days.”
“Yes sir,” I said, my heart trying to climb out my throat. “Mr. Greymore.”
He leaned back, running his fingers through a shock of white hair. “You’re lucky you are your daddy’s boy,” looking annoyed, staring low at my shoulders, concentrating his eyes. “Jesus boy. What the hell does that say on your neck?”
“Katie,” I said and my head dropped to the floor. “It’s my baby’s mama.”
Greymore waved me off for silence. I hated the tattoo, come to hate it more every day in the mirror, ever since that bitch left me for a two-bit, black drug dealer and starting taking me to court.
The old man folded his hands against his mouth. “You better start talking there, Scarface.” He threw a glance over my head at the Cherokee doorman standing close behind. “And for your sake, it better be good.”
I reached for the ass of my jeans and the Cherokee shoved something cold and small into my neck. My stomach fell into spikes. I known what it was. Greymore smirked, his face relaxing with the power. “Careful now, boy. Nice and easy. Who knows what you’ve gone and gotten yourself into.”
I laid the package on the desk gentle and slow, thinking more serious about the gun stuffed in my boot. There’d be no way in hell I could get the jump on him if it come down to it. My chair was probably already sitting on a sheet of plastic. Greymore slowly ripped the paper open, lifted the box and shook it. A small thumb drive bounced onto the desk. He held it under his lamp, slowly turning it, glancing at me with an eyebrow raised. I looked away, all casual like, to mind my own business and such.
“What have we here?”
My voice cracked and nothing came out.
Not breaking his gaze, his eyes burnin a hole in me, he slid his laptop front and center, where he inserted the drive. The screen flickered alive and all the moanin’ started. He watched himself mounted on top of Dr. Carlina Malhotra, flexed up like a dog on the couch. Pumpin’ away. My heart raced. The lid was open now. No way to screw it back on. What was done was done. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t take it back. Everything was in the open.
He flicked it off and stared at me, his face all blacked-out like cigarette ashes. He squeezed his hand into white-knuckled fists and held there like for a full minute. My veins chugged in my throat, my brain ticking with pressure. Why had I stuffed my gun so far down in my boot? No way I could get it. So I just sat there…and waited to be shot.
“How did a trailer puke like you wind up with something like this?” Greymore whispered, frozen in place. We all waited. We could have been three strangers at a bus top. The old man was thinking. And what happened next I never saw comin’. His face turned red against his silver hair with a soft chuckle. He waved above my head and the gunpoint came off my neck. I gave a huge sigh, letting go of a deep breath I didn’t know I’d been holdin’ the whole time. My arms and legs went floppy.
“Who recorded this shit?” Greymore asked, his eyes narrowing at me. Maybe I wasn’t out of danger. But he needed me comfortable enough to talk. The man was a snake and operated like one. Any offering of comfort and safety could instantly go all bang, bang, bang. “Start talking.”
“Ricky Stopher and Fast Eddie had it,” my voice broke. “Long before I come along to notice. They don’t know our connection through pop, like from the work he done for you. Fast Eddie saw it as a chance for blackmail money, hoping to use it against a man, especially if he was married, under threat to send a copy to the wife. Then I watched it. Seen it was you. And I’m loyal, for you and my daddy.” I acted agitated and all sad about it. “It just ain’t right, goddammit.”
Greymore tilted his chair toward the window, staring over the craggy Cumberland mountaintops, his face a blank slate. I realized I wasn’t safe yet. My heart started pumping all crazy again. I crossed my legs, and scooted my boot with the gun an inch closer, and made a study of the man. Silver-white hair waxed slick, wearing a fancy suit and a watch filled with diamonds. A perfect human money machine, with dollar signs floatin’ out his ears, eyes tightened up perfectly with surgery and tanned. Outside a leaf blower turned on and whined high-pitched like a lost dentist drill. My heart swelled up and I found it hard to draw breath, ice in my veins. It would go very good or very badly. I couldn’t wait to get the fuck out of this house.
“Is this the only copy Billy Harmony?”
“There’s more copies,” I grinned, knowin’ that he knew I’d be keepin’ one for myself as life insurance. The old man was known to erase evidence, then erase the people around the evidence. I wasn’t no stupid boy.
Greymore smiled, still staring out the window. I rubbed the knot in my throat. “I ain’t shown up with the only copy. And come up buried under that horse barn drowned in the bottom of a lake.”
Greymore didn’t bother to look my way, seeming to take in all the possibilities. Then he started talking, basically just to himself. “Bury you under the barn? You think I am an animal?” He swiveled his head, and looked right at me. “I would never do that to my horses. Think of the stench.” His voice dropped. “No Billy, out here we’d dissolve you in a bucket.” His hand swept across his visual field. “And just pour you out into the forest.”
In my mind I traced my route back out of the mansion and kicked my boot even closer to my hand and tucked in my fingertips. I had friends out west. I’d go west. Greymore’s voice cracked and I jumped. “Dr. Carlina Malhotra is the woman with me. “Were you going to blackmail her too?”
“Fast Eddie and Ricky Stopher didn’t say.” I shrugged to look relaxed but pushed my hand deeper into my boot. I could feel the butt of the pistol now. “Plus I know Carlina back from Beauty County, from being kids. I’m loyal to her like I’m loyal to you.”
“Oh I see, yes of course,” he said. “Old friends from the trailer park, how romantic.” He frowned. “Tell me, was Carlina behind this?”
“No sir,” I said.
“Hard to believe.”
“She don’t know nothin’ sir.”
“Well then Billy, who exactly set up the camera?”
“I’m just guessing but that probably is between Fast Eddie and Ricky, one or both,” I stammered. “Or maybe they stumbled across it. I don’t know. They won’t talk.”
“Maybe you recorded this.” Greymore grumbled. “Maybe you set the whole thing up?”
“You goin’ to crucify me for coming to you?” My confidence growing, I had to close this deal or shoot my way out. “I saw you was the mark, and I go behind my friends back to set this appointment? Put myself in danger from all sides? And this is the thanks I get?” Greymore raised his eyebrows on the last part. A sweat bead glided down the trough of my scar and filled the crease of my lips. Now I had a full grip on my gun inside my boot. I swallowed hard.
“I tell you what, Billy,” he said, laying eyes on me with moderate disgust. “Here’s exactly what I have for you.”
At once, Greymore ripped open the top desk drawer, his hands dancing where I couldn’t see them. I jerked the gun from my boot, to start blasting. But it got hung up. Too late. He came up with a fat envelope and tossed it to me. I caught it. The gun stayed jammed my boot
“That’s five-grand for a retainer.” He slapped the drawer shut as a matter-of-fact. “You work for me now. Be like your daddy, keep your mouth shut and follow my rules. There’s a lot more to be made just like this. You ever cross me, and well, a bucket of liquid poured into a forest never talks.” He gave me a quick wink, no smile, and held out his hand. “Do you understand me Billy?”
I shook it. “Yessir.”
He began to crush my hand, not l
etting go, giving me a hard look. “Now, go kill Eddie and Ricky. And bring me every last fucking copy of that video. Including the one you’re holding back.”
I wanted to feel bad, takin’ the full measure of murderin’ my two best friends. I hadn’t thought this part through. But kill them? Yeah. We was men of business. My father’s words came to me…
A man born with nothin’
will die with nothin’
less he risks…everything.
5
A Rural Way of Living
I did my best to settle in. But my expectations weren’t just mildly inflated. They were preposterous. Sobriety gave me a new self-awareness. And 48 hours just wasn’t long enough to navigate the full spiritual arc from the old life into the new. Using some of my recovery tools, I stepped back from the mural, and took a hard look at my present situation. This wouldn’t take days or weeks. It would take years to heal.
The realization hit me as soon as I pushed open the door to my new living quarters at Luke and Vanessa Bodwell’s home. This was the same guest bedroom where Emily and I had shared every Thanksgiving and Fourth of July together. I sat on the bed, taking a deep breath through my nose. I was unprepared. The smell of antique furniture and dusty lace curtains triggered intense memories. I closed my eyes, and felt Emily sit beside me, the pressure on the mattress taking her weight, her hand squeezing mine, the lingering wet warmth of a kiss on my neck. We’d made love in this bed once or twice. I chuckled out loud. She felt doing that here in her sister’s home, the entire act committed in total silence, was some kind of sacrilege. Emily lay on her side, clinging to the anchor-shaped headboard, struggling against me. Too real to bear, I opened my eyes.
Skin the Cat Page 4