The Yards

by The Yards (epub)

  But he’s not moving. Instead, he lifts his drink, sips, and again makes brief eye contact before looking away. I’m not fooled. I know he’s seen my wedding ring. It’s on the hand raising my drink. There’s only one reason a married woman would be in Randy’s on a Saturday night, sitting by herself, no husband in view. Another man would already be standing next to me.

  My first suitor—I love that word, though it has nothing to do with the situation—approaches a few minutes after I sit down. He’s got recently divorced written all over him, from the frightened smile to the carefully tailored comb-over.

  “Buy you a drink?”

  “I’m good for now.”

  A little more experienced, and he’d understand the signal and head off to greener pastures. But he’s not, and he pours out the bio he decided to reveal on the way to the bar. Recently divorced, as I predicted, his name is Owen and he’s originally from Baxter. He teaches American history at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and he’s come home to visit his folks.

  Encouragement is off the table, but I can’t make myself tell him to get lost either. I look past Owen’s left ear at the man in the silk T-shirt. He’s smiling that same narrow smile, watching the show, in no hurry. What would he do if I took off with the college professor? If I had long-term plans, I just might do that—Owen’s a mate-for-life kinda guy—but I’m not in search of a life sentence, and I take advantage of a pause in his monologue to spin back to the bar.

  “Another, Shiloh. On my tab.”

  I can feel Owen’s crest as it falls. Rejected, again. Can’t help it, though, and I watch him drift away. He’s replaced within a minute, this time by a paunchy middle-aged man wearing a gold chain thick enough to anchor a cruise ship.

  “Buy you a drink?”

  Shiloh chooses that moment to lay my drink on the bar.

  “Thanks,” I say, “but your timing’s off.”

  “Franklyn Wallace here.” He offers his hand, which I barely touch. No matter, Franklyn’s quick to lay his credentials on the table, what he has to offer. He owns houses in Prairie Meadows, a gated community outside the city line, and in Boca Raton, Florida. He can afford these properties because he also owns the largest car dealership in the county, Toyotas, Chevys, Hondas, Audis, hundreds of cars. I should come by if I’m in the market, ask for Franklyn.

  Franklyn’s wearing a diamond ring, the diamonds arranged to form a horseshoe, and I instantly make him for the guy who never got the girl in high school. He’s a winner now, right? Maybe?

  I don’t wanna hurt the guy, any more than I wanted to hurt Owen. I hold up my left hand. “Married.”

  “Me, too. I left my ring in the car.”

  “So what? Is that the question?”

  “Yeah, like so what? We both know what we came for.”

  “You’re right. I do know what I came for, and it isn’t you.” I look into his eyes for a moment. “Nothing personal, but my fantasies for the night run in another direction.”

  That gets me a shrug and a little speech I’m thinking he’s made before. “All right, I could live with that, and thanks for not wastin’ my time.” He tosses a business card on the table. “Call me if you’re in the market for a car, new or used. I’ll beat any deal on the table.”

  Franklyn walks away, and I’m wondering if I made a mistake. Franklyn’s not much to look at, but I know he’d be a by-the-books lover trying to make up for lost time. That we’d never meet again wouldn’t matter. He’d go at me stubbornly, trying this, trying that, until he finally pushed the right button.

  He’s gone, though, and my attention returns to my boy toy. He looks at me for a moment, then stands, a leather gym bag I hadn’t noticed before in his left hand. If the bag’s snakeskin, which is what it looks like, it has to be worth a few hundred dollars. At the least.

  Time to make his move? I’m expecting him to approach me, but he takes a step toward the door before looking over, a question in his dark eyes: Yes or no? He’s taller than he looked sitting down, his shoulders broader, but something nags at me, some measure of doubt. I get up anyway, pausing long enough to leave a twenty on the bar top. Shiloh nods to me, then looks at the man, now standing halfway between the bar and the door.

  “He okay?” I ask.

  “Seen him before, honey. Name’s Bradley Grieg and he comes in pretty regular.”

  Feeling safer now, and a lot more confident, I follow Bradley out of the bar and into the parking lot. I think he means to have me trail two steps behind, but the sex-slave thing doesn’t get me off.

  “That’s far enough, Bradley.”

  He turns to me, smiling at the sound of his name. I come straight up to him. “We gonna play tonight, Bradley? Because if the answer’s yes, then I gotta tell ya, I’m not into handcuffs or ropes or calling you master. You need that, better we should part friends.”

  He looks at me for a minute, looks directly into my eyes, like he’s checking me out. But then he smiles and says, “I aim to please.”

  My internal alarms are ringing. He hasn’t even asked my name, though I’ve said his aloud. Those fears vanish, replaced by a quick flush that reminds me of why I’m here, when he takes me in his arms for a gentle, lingering kiss that only gradually becomes more probing. I feel him stiffen as we press into each other.

  “We good?” he asks.

  “Yeah,” I tell him, “we’re good.”

  Bradley already has a room at the Skyview Motor Court on Baxter Boulevard. The Skyview may not be the Hilton, but they don’t rent their mini cabins by the hour, either. I follow Bradley’s Audi along Baxter Boulevard, the only surface street that crosses the entire city. Traffic lights on every block slow us down, raising expectations, my impatience somehow erotic. I open a window, then close it when I hear thunder roll in the distance. We’re close now, and I imagine, in a few seconds, a joining that takes hours, everything and anything. It’s my outing, and I plan to work it hard.

  Bradley turns into the Skyview’s parking lot and I follow, not quite riding his bumper. It must be a slow night because only a few cars front the cabins, none close to ours. Bradley’s standing in front of our cabin, holding the door open when I get out of my little Ford. As I slip by, he slaps me on the ass. And then . . .

  Less than ten minutes later, he’s on his way, naked, to the bathroom. I’m still bent over a small dresser, half paralyzed. Bradley hasn’t spoken a word, hasn’t kissed or caressed me, and I have to think he bothered with me only because I was better than a sock. I hear the shower running, hear it shut down a minute later, then nothing.

  My brain’s a supercharged roulette wheel, spinning, spinning, spinning. I need to get out of here while some little piece of my dignity remains intact, but I can’t seem to move. And my panties are nowhere in sight. I vaguely remember throwing them toward the bed, but I can’t see them, and I can’t leave without them. They’re too fucking expensive.

  Instead of crying, which is what I want to do, I drop to my knees and search for the damned panties. They’re behind the headboard, and I’m holding them, standing in the middle of the room, when the bathroom door opens. Still naked, Bradley staggers into the room, stoned out of his mind, his eyelids at half-mast. His voice, when he speaks after a long moment, is slurred.

  “You still here?” He flops onto the bed, then sits up. “Wait a minute.”

  Bradley’s jeans are next to him on the bed. He reaches into a pocket, withdraws a roll of bills, peels off three twenties, and tosses them in my direction.

  “Fuck off.”

  I watch the bills flutter and separate as they fall to the carpet. Bradley snorts once, then falls onto his stomach and begins to snore.

  It takes a few minutes, but I recover. Furious, I look around for some heavy object, something I can smash into his helpless skull, maybe a lamp. But the lights are attached to the walls or in the ceiling. There’s only the chair I’m sitting on.

  My brain still roiling, I head for the bathroom. I’m thinking I shoul
d clean up before I go home, but the cigarette lighter, the burnt spoon, and the syringe on the edge of the tub stop me in my tracks. I turn around, catching sight of the leather gym bag on the room’s small table, then quickly check on Bradley. He’s halfway to an overdose and won’t be conscious anytime soon.

  Where I grew up, honesty was rarely considered the best policy. My mother lied so often I lost count. She lied to me, to social workers, to Granny Jo, to my teachers, to the boyfriends she cheated on.

  The first thing I see when I open the bag is a large handgun, a semiautomatic. I don’t flinch. They call my part of the country the Bible Belt, but they could easily call it the Gun Belt. Pistols don’t frighten me, rifles or shotguns either, just ask my ex-husband. Anyway, I’m a lot more interested in the banded stacks of twenties and fifties beneath the gun. There’s enough here to alter the course of my life, and much for the better.

  Charlie’s, too.

  My day-to-day schedule wouldn’t change all that much, not at first. Quitting my job would attract too much attention. But I could probably take enough part-time classes to earn my RN. As a registered nurse, I’d earn enough to get out of Baxter before it falls apart. I could set up a new life in a new city where nobody knows where I came from or how I grew up. I could free myself and Charlie from the chains that bind us.

  At one time, herds of cattle were driven through Baxter’s streets. Nowadays they come by truck and rail. Either way, on quiet mornings you can hear the animals wailing as they’re led to slaughter, the bellow of the steers, the screams of the hogs.

  I could free myself from that, too.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  DELIA

  When Chief Black phones, I’m not busy in the squad room, although I’m the chief of Baxter’s detectives and always on duty if an emergency warrants my presence. No, I’m sitting in the pastor’s office at Trinity Lutheran Church, answering for my son’s unacceptable behavior. Trinity’s one of Baxter’s more prosperous churches. Upper galleries run the length of the church on both sides, and chandeliers hang from a coffered ceiling. The altar is flanked by stained-glass windows, the maple pews are highly polished. Trinity’s congregation reflects the church’s sedate prosperity. Baxter’s mostly a city of poor and poorer, but what middle class we have attends Trinity or the local Catholic churches.

  Religion holds no great attraction for me, but a number of my twelve-year-old son’s buddies attend Trinity Lutheran, so I dutifully drive Danny to morning services every Sunday. I don’t want to know what they’re teaching him, but I’m pretty sure it hasn’t affected his behavior. This morning he punched a kid in the mouth for still unexplained reasons.

  “Your son is quite intelligent, Lieutenant Mariola,” Pastor Grange tells me. “But his attitude is . . . how shall I put it? Not quite belligerent, I won’t go that far, but certainly on the edge.” He smiles, revealing yellow, uneven teeth. “Yes, that’s perfect. Daniel is an edgy child with little respect for authority.”

  Grange’s smarmy tone pushes me to my own edge, and I have to fight an urge to say something obscene that I’ll later regret. I am, after all, a respected public servant, the first female detective on the Baxter Police Department. Now, I’m the head detective no less. True, the city’s population is only a bit over a hundred thousand. True, the Detective Division’s limited to six investigators. True, the department emphasizes moneymakers like traffic and parking violations. But I’m still the officer Chief Black chose when Tommy Harrigan retired.

  “A wop for a mick, Delia,” was the folksy way he explained it. “And a girl wop at that.”

  Pastor Grange isn’t too happy when my cell runs off the first few notes of “Fast Car,” a Tracy Chapman tune. He’s unhappier still when I answer. Too bad. It’s my boss and I can’t ignore the call.

  “Where are you, Delia?”

  “Trinity Lutheran. My son—”

  “Forget the kid. We got a body out at the Skyview, a homicide. I need you on it. Like yesterday.”

  It should be a joke, but it’s not. In the last year, little Baxter’s seen ten overdose deaths and five drug-related suicides. No big deal. No rush. Now we have our second murder, and the chief’s sweating. That it’s Sunday and my scheduled day off matters not at all.

  “I gotta go,” I tell Pastor Grange. “Duty calls.”

  On the way to my car, I stop in the room outside Grange’s office to confront my son. Dan’s wearing a resigned expression. He knows he’s in for a lecture, and he doesn’t like it.

  “You wanna tell me what happened?”

  “Barry called you a dyke.”

  “He did, huh? Well, I hope you at least broke his legs.”

  Danny finally grins. “Nah, I just ripped off his ears.”

  Tall for his age and blond, Danny’s a natural athlete. He plays Pop Warner football and Little League baseball. A perfect life . . . except for his mom’s inconvenient sexual preferences. Not that I bring women home or hang out in Baxter’s one gay and lesbian bar. No, I’m discreet, an absolute necessity in a Bible Belt city. Still, my preferences are no secret, and Danny’s adolescent world is honor bound. He had to respond to Barry’s taunt, true or not. Either that or be marked a coward, a punk, a target for bullies. That’s not a fate either one of us is prepared to accept. You back away from a confrontation once, you’ll back away forever, a chiseled-in-stone truth familiar to every cop. Character counts.

  “Let me tell you a story,” I say, ignoring his resigned expression. He’s been here before. “You know how I used to play junior varsity baseball in high school?”

  “Yeah, second base.”

  “Right. So, there was this one boy who stayed on my case every second.” I have to think for a minute before his name comes back to me. “Jimmy Leland. He never let up, kept calling me Butch Mariola when the coaches weren’t around. So one day we’re playin’ an inter-squad game and he’s on first base with nobody out. I’m shaded toward the middle when the batter—I don’t remember his name—slaps a ground ball past the pitcher. The ball takes a big hop right into my glove, and I step on second, then turn to complete the double play. At that point, Jimmy Leland’s supposed to get out of my way. He’s already been called out. But he’s blocking a throw to first, and he’s got this big smirk on his face, and he’s screaming, `Yah, yah, yah, yah.’ Well, I threw the ball anyway, and it hit him square in the forehead. Trust me, the jerk dropped like a stone.”

  “So what happened?”

  “That’s what I’m getting to. Jimmy was okay, but the coach sent him to the emergency room to be checked out. And it didn’t matter that he was supposed to give me room to throw to first, that he was wrong. I got tossed off the team, and that was the end of my baseball career. You understand, Danny? It felt good takin’ the jerk out, but what did it really get me?”

  Give Danny credit. He doesn’t go with the first thing that comes into his head. He thinks it over for a minute. “Mom, I couldn’t let it go.”

  “True enough, but you could have waited until you got him alone. Reverend Grange, he’s got the power, like my coach. If he kicks you out, you’re out.” I give it a couple of beats, then change the subject. “I just got a call from the boss. A murder, okay, at the Skyview Motor Court. Tonight, when I get home, I’ll tell you all about it.”

  Dan’s face brightens at the prospect. This is something he can brag about to his friends. A real murder. He kisses me on the cheek—too old, apparently, for the mouth—and I’m out of there.

  The sad truth is that Danny’s the product of an acquaintance rape. Or so I’ve come to believe. In fact, I found out I was pregnant only after weeks of morning sickness. Shock doesn’t begin to describe my reaction when the doctor delivered the news. I was nineteen, a freshman studying criminal justice at Southern Illinois Community College. I was also a committed (if still closeted to all but my parents) lesbian. This commitment followed my only experience with a male, a true disaster that resulted in the loss of my virginity and a determination never t
o repeat the experience.

  So . . . pregnant?

  Two months earlier, I’d been to a party. At the time, I was drinking pretty hard and doing the occasional line of coke, just like most kids my age. When I woke at dawn on a made bed, I simply assumed that I’d passed out. I was drinking gin that night, mixed drinks poured by a man I’d known for years. A mentor, almost.

  I’d like to claim that I sought and got revenge, but the reality was that I could do exactly nothing. I couldn’t be sure I was drugged, or that Kyle Spyros was the father. I couldn’t accuse him, either, not without proof. No, I had only one question to answer: whether or not to abort.

  My parents were devout Catholics, yet they’d accepted my gay orientation. That’s how much they loved me. But abortion was a step too far. Way too far. This was back in Centralia, Illinois, a town of twelve thousand in the very conservative, southern part of the state. Unwed mothers were too common to reject altogether, but abortion was unforgivable. If I didn’t feel that I could raise the child, my parents would take on the responsibility.

  Maybe they feared that I’d resent having motherhood forced on me, that I’d reject my baby. In fact, I loved Danny without reservation from the first day, though I didn’t make an especially good mom. Too selfish, really, and too committed to a job that forced me to work odd hours. That first year, while I finished my education, I relied on my parents for childcare. It was only after I took the only job offered to me in faraway Virginia that I learned how hard it is to be a single mom. There’s the never-ending guilt about leaving your child in someone else’s care and the unending financial burden. You learn to muddle through, juggling bills at the end of every month, always looking for the next opportunity. My move to Baxter was all about money.

  The city of Baxter was built in pieces, neighborhood by neighborhood, as the packing plants went up, leaving Baxter Boulevard the only through street. The boulevard runs ten miles from the southeast corner of the city to the northwest. Except for a cluster of municipal offices downtown, it’s bordered by strip malls, car lots, gas stations, and fast-food joints. Empty stores and weathered For Rent signs confirm an economy on the permanent downside. We’d been well on our way before the virus hit Baxter Packing, but Covid-19 was the last nail in the city’s collective coffin. Baxter Packing closed and opened, then closed and opened again. This was before testing determined that more than eighteen hundred of its three thousand employees had been infected. They carried the virus to every corner of the community, and I ceased to be a detective. Instead, I spent my days, like every other member of the force, responding to the 911 calls of the desperately ill, so many that our volunteer ambulance corps was overwhelmed and we often transported the sick in the backs of our patrol cars. We transported them to our one small hospital, Baxter Medical Center. Each trip had the feel of an execution. Gurneys filled the parking lot, the coughing of the men and women who lay on them sounding to me like the babble of geese on the Southern Illinois lakes where I grew up. Sure of one thing only, that my time would come, I worked day after day until my knees buckled.