The thumping music grew louder and clearer in the thick air as he walked back along Spivey to the road with the yellow house. When he got to the corner, he turned down Honeywell, keeping his eye on the house and all the cars outside. Across the road was a rundown place surrounded by a leaning white fence, an overgrown yard and a thicket of trees — where Tom realized he could take cover. He sat himself down in the dark, thinking of snakes in the undergrowth. The mosquitos whined some more in his ears. Then he brought the camera around and watched the house.
There were trees in the way. A red car, an old Dodge Charger or something like it, sat up on a pile of tires. A couple of dark figures around it smoked cigarettes. He looked at all the other vehicles and spotted the battered Honda. Wilbur Beck had arrived.
Laughter and shouts emanated from the house. The music stopped. More shouts rang out. Then the music started again, this time a traditional Mexican folk song — instrumental sections with lots of horns alternating with the singing of short poetic coplas. It was the sort of thing Nick would’ve blasted through the house when he was alive.
Someone hollered out and then shots were fired.
Tom tensed and went for his weapon. He held his breath and listened, heart thumping. More shouts, then someone laughed. He let go of the gun grip, brought up the camera and glassed the scene outside the house, where one of the guys by the Charger pointed a pistol at the sky. Dogs were barking all over the neighborhood.
Someone flicked on an exterior light, came out of the house and yelled at the shooter in Spanish. Tom got a good look at an angry-looking woman with more jailhouse tats than bare skin. Probably Maria Lucia, judging by the image Skokie sent. She yelled and scolded the three guys standing around. One of them handed his pistol to her and she went back inside.
The three banderos started cracking up, whacking one another on the back. Some of the barking dogs quieted, others kept going for a while. Tom took pictures of the guys now that the exterior light was on. His heart slotted back into a normal rhythm, but he was soaked with sweat.
The guys pitched their cigarettes off into the dark and wandered back into the house. The trees blocked most of the windows, obscuring the interior. Tom repositioned himself carefully, swatted at a couple of mosquitos and accepted that this was as good a view as he was going to get.
A half hour went by. More cars showed up. More people. An hour passed. Fuck private eye work.
The party was even louder and now the dogs were in there barking along with the horn section of the folk music. He needed to get closer. He’d been bitten all over the back of his neck and along his arms, and some of the bugs had even gotten down into his pants and sunk their little needles into his ass. His phone vibrated with an incoming text and he dug it out. Skokie.
How you doing?
An inappropriate response sprang to mind. Then Tom decided he’d better answer professionally.
On the house. No vis con yet. Hiding — no more texts.
He thought about how to get closer. There were too many people around. Maybe later when some of them started to leave. He stuck his phone back in his pocket and heard someone say, “Hey.”
Tom turned and saw a kid standing there. The door to the dilapidated white house hung open behind him. The place had been dark, no cars.
“Hey,” Tom said back.
The kid said, “Qué estás haciendo?”
Tom’s Spanish was only so-so, but he judged the kid was asking him what he was doing. “Hey . . . ah . . . just sitting here. Had a little too much to drink.” He wiggled his hand in front of his mouth to indicate tipping a bottle. He swung the camera around his torso and tried to hide it under his arm. “You live here?”
The kid just blinked and Tom brought out the best Spanish he could muster. “Vive usted aquí?”
“Sí. Es mi casa.”
Tom looked the place over but it was still dark in there. Maybe the electric was off. Maybe an adult was sleeping inside, maybe not. “Your parents home? Ah, están — tu padres en casa?”
The kid didn’t answer. He was about five or six, wearing a dirty white t-shirt, red shorts, barefoot. He scratched at his neck and looked across the road. Tom followed his gaze. Everything looked the same at the yellow house. When Tom turned back, the kid had gotten closer and was eyeballing the camera.
“Hey. Hey.” Tom spoke in a harsh whisper. “You seen a little girl over there? Ah — tu visto a una niña pequeña? Um, niñita?” He nodded toward the yellow house. “Aquí?”
“Niña pequeña?”
“Yeah. Sí.”
“En la casa al otro lado de la carretera?”
“Have you seen a little girl? Okay? Her name is Lemon Madras. You know that name? Sabes su nombre?”
The kid shook his head.
“Have you seen her? Over there? Is there a little girl over there?”
The kid looked across the road and blinked, then looked back at Tom. “Sí.”
“Sí? There’s a little girl over there? How old? Seven? Is she siete?”
The screen door of the yellow house banged open and someone clomped down the three wooden steps. The music played on, but someone had lowered the volume. Tom crawled deeper into the shadows while trying to see through the trees. A guy stood in the yard, unzipped his pants and started pissing in the dirt.
The kid was watching Tom now and he knew Tom was hiding. Enough. Tom got up and started across the road. Forget this sitting around in the dark taking pictures — if there really was a little girl in that house, he was going to see who she was.
He tromped into the yard and pushed through the tree branches and shimmied past a couple of parked cars. Startled, the guy peed on his feet then tucked himself back into his pants as he interrogated Tom in Spanish. “Who are you? What are you doing here?” Tom showed his badge and the guy started yelling immediately. “Policía! Policía!”
Tom took his phone out, ready to call in backup. But he waited, listened to the commotion inside as the dogs barked harder and the music stopped and people came to the door.
The first guy to emerge was wearing a tight white tank top and had a NATAS tattoo across his upper chest. Alejandro Colon, if Tom had to guess. NATAS was a Latino prison gang. More guys crowded in behind him, along with one of the dogs, straining against its leash. The dog barked at him, spit flying.
Colon narrowed his eyes. “Help you, officer?”
Tom made a quick decision and showed Colon a picture of Lemon Madras on his phone. “You recognize this girl?”
Colon glanced at it and then looked back at Tom. “What’re you doing here? You’re looking for a little girl?”
“Yeah. You recognize her?”
“Why would you come here, bro? Why would you come here looking for her — you some kind of talent scout or what?”
Tom pushed the phone toward his face. “I’m just asking if you recognize her. She’s missing.”
“Ohhh, she’s missing. So you mean, like, have I seen her on the news?”
“She hasn’t been on the news yet. Maybe tomorrow. Cops are out looking for her.”
“And you’re one of ’em.”
“I’m one of them.”
“So if she ain’t been on the news yet, and we couldn’t have known about her, why are you looking here, eh? We look like kidnappers to you?”
Tom studied the faces in the doorway that surrounded Alejandro Colon and the faces peering from the windows. He didn’t see Wilbur Beck among them. “I’m here because someone called in seeing the girl in one of the cars in your front yard,” he lied. “You got any little girls in there?”
Colon stared. “You know we don’t have any little girls in here, bro. Everyone here is totally of the appropriate age.”
“Listen . . .” Tom glanced back and saw the kid from across the street standing close to a parked car. Tom pointed toward the rundown white house and said, “I been sitting over there for over an hour, getting eaten alive by bugs. Maybe you’re telling me the truth. I’m sur
e you are. But I’ve got to check it out, okay? You got any little girls in there? I need to see their faces. Right now.”
Colon pushed the door back and took one of the three steps down toward Tom. Tom was on the tall side and this guy was shorter than him, but with Colon up a couple of steps they were at eye level. “You’re out here all by yourself,” Colon said. “Peeping at us from across the road, eh? No backup or nothing? That’s nuts, man. You one of them nothing-to-lose cops or what?”
“I have mental health problems.”
Colon grinned and laughed, then grew serious. “But you’re not here because someone said they saw something. I don’t think so. Cuz, we have no little girls here. Everybody got babysitters tonight. Isn’t that right?”
The people in the house agreed.
Maria Lucia came to the door and pushed her way forward. “Who the hell is this?”
“He’s a cop looking for a little girl. He’s a renegade cop, I think. See right there? He’s got tattoos and everything.”
“What’s he doing here?”
“Says he’s following a tip.”
Maria Lucia bent to eye level with Tom and stared. “Verdad? You following a tip?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Where’s Wilbur?” Lucia asked the group.
People started looking around. Even the dogs shut up.
“Hey! Wilbur!” She glared at Tom. “You didn’t get no tip. You got that fucking pinche güero southern redneck is what. He’s fucking working for the cops. I knew it.”
There was a bang as someone took off out the back.
Colon jumped to the ground and sprinted away around the house. The guys behind him dispersed, hurrying every which way.
Tom lunged up the steps and into the house. The place was wrecked and smelled like good food and marijuana. Maria Lucia ran after him yelling about a warrant and clawing at his arm. He shrugged her off. “Lemon! Lemon Madras!” His boots knocked against empty bottles and cans as he looked in each room: two bedrooms, a long kitchen and an L-shaped living room. There were people on the couches, mostly women, but no little girls. He finally found the kids in a small back room sitting around a TV playing a video game: two boys and a girl. The girl was white and definitely not who he was looking for.
Lucia was right behind him still jabbering in his ear and whacking him on the arm. He moved away from her toward the front of the house, stepped back outside and listened for gunshots. He heard an engine racing in the near distance and someone shouting. He got his bearings and hurried away back to Spivey road and turned down it and kept going — sprinting.
After a few seconds he turned back and saw the five-year-old kid standing there, just the shadow of him, watching him go. It took a minute to get back to the truck. He didn’t bother clambering into the bed but shoved his way through the brambles, popped the door handle, gave it a hard yank, squeezed in and shut the door behind him. He wiped the sweat running into his eyes with the back of his hand. Goddammit.
He dug out his keys, fired up the truck and turned it around — branches squealing and cracking in his wake — and then nosed out of the dead end and got going down Spivey. The headlights shone down the road and it looked like the kid was gone. Tom made a right at the next corner and hit the gas, swinging hard around a bend in the road. Someone was coming fast down the narrow road in the opposite direction — and they weren’t slowing or getting over. Tom jerked the wheel and jammed on the brakes.
He watched them go by and saw a man in the passenger seat who looked like someone from the yellow house. Tom cranked the window down and leaned out as the car engine faded. He heard shouting from a couple of streets over. He hit the gas, sped up to the stop sign and pushed the brakes again, listening. Something smashed, possibly a window.
He took a left and got up to speed again. As he rolled past a mobile home park, he saw a guy running. He checked the mirror and saw the same car that had nearly run him off the road turning around, as if to pursue the lone figure. The driver goosed the gas and peeled rubber. Following him. Tom spun the wheel in the direction of the mobile home park and bounced over the dirt road. He came up on the heels of the running guy.
“Wilbur Beck! Get in!”
The car behind them was closing in. Beck glanced back at it, looked at Tom, and yanked open the passenger door. Tom hit the gas as Beck climbed in. He jumped a curb and a patch of lawn as Beck got the door closed. Then Tom floored it and checked the mirror — their pursuer was close. Maybe the driver knew he was a cop but didn’t recognize this as his truck. Or maybe they did and they didn’t care.
Tom saw the sign for a Shell Station and Highway 301 with an entry ramp. His arm was bleeding from where Maria Lucia had raked him with her nails. He took 301 north for a couple miles, rolled onto the interstate and kept checking the mirror. There was no more sign of the car. He let the truck really stretch out and did ninety-five on the way back to Tampa.
“You strapped?”
Beck just started.
“You heavy? Let me see it. You got a gun on you, let me see it.”
Beck stared some more and lifted his t-shirt.
Tom got a look at the silver-plated handgun then kept his eyes on the road. “Pretty nice. You gonna shoot me?”
“You blew it for me, man. You really blew it for me. I’m a dead man now. Because of you I’m a dead ass man.” He spoke with a thick southern drawl.
“I didn’t blow anything for you. I told your friends that I was following a tip. You’re the one who took off running.”
“A dead man.”
“That woman, Maria, she wasn’t exactly giving you the benefit of the doubt. She would’ve found you out in time and cut your heart out. I saved your ass.”
“Bullshit, man.”
The city of Tampa was ahead of them, spread out and glowing in the heat of the night. Tom gave Beck a look as they trucked along. “How old are you? Twenty-five?”
“I’m twenty-six, man.” Beck fell silent and looked out of the window. “You gonna let me out or what?”
“I’m going to take the next exit. I can drop you off in the middle of downtown — give you a head start on all your buddies who want to hurt you. Or you can answer my questions.”
“They ain’t my buddies.”
Tom itched from his thousand bug bites. “So you’re down here in Florida . . . a year ago, you came down to sell some meth. Where you from? Georgia? Alabama?”
Beck swore and looked out the window some more.
“Here comes the exit,” Tom said.
He swore again, hit his open palm with a fist and shook his head. “I ain’t from Alabama, okay?”
“You’re not a tweaker. You don’t look like a tweaker. You look like you weigh a buck-seventy, at least. So you’re a businessman. But you take your girlfriend and her kid along with you. That doesn’t sound very smart from a business point of view.”
“Man, I already heard all this shit. From that asshole, Jarvis. And the fat one before him — whatever his name was . . . Coburn.”
Tom reached out and grabbed Beck by the back of the neck. “You watch your mouth. You watch your fuckin’ mouth or I’ll kick you out of this truck while it moves.”
Tom let go and stared ahead at the road feeding into the truck grille. Beck shrank back in his seat.
They passed the exit. Tom took a slow breath and let it out. His therapist said he had an anger problem. And that he hadn’t been well socialized as a kid. People who were naturally disagreeable and weren’t well socialized often turned angry, even criminal. He was in the process of re-socializing and it had to extend to dope-dealing informants. Everybody was born with a degree of luck, but some had far more than others. You had to have compassion. Fuck.
Calm down.
“Okay,” Tom said. “This is what we’re going to do. A little ways up here we’re going to pull off the interstate. I haven’t eaten in a few hours. I get a little bit testy when I’m hungry, you know what I’m saying? Have you, ah — ea
ten?”
Beck continued to sulk in silence.
Tom gritted his teeth, scratched his mosquito bites and took another breath. “I’m sorry I got rough with you. Sergeant Coburn was a friend and he’s no longer with us. You couldn’t have known that.”
Beck continued to look away. Milking it a bit. Whatever.
“We’re going to pull off and get something in our stomachs and I’m going to ask you some questions. There’s a little girl missing. We’re going to talk about that. We’re going to talk about a few things.”
CHAPTER SIX: PAIN BODY
They found a diner near Tampa Bay International Airport. Tom rolled the truck to a standstill and they sat together in the cab, looking out across the dark water at the twinkling lights of Clearwater and Largo.
“You want to run, now’s your chance,” Tom said.
“I’m thinkin’ about it.”
“Let me have the piece.”
“That’s for my safety.”
“Right now, I’m your safety.”
“Until you bring me back to jail? You think I’ll be safe there, forget it.”
“I’m not taking you back to jail.”
Beck scowled. “I thought you was a — what is it? — bounty hunter.”
“I’m not here for your bail bond, either.”
Tom held out his hand. When Beck handed over the gun, Tom ejected the magazine and racked the slide to pop the round from the chamber. He slipped the round back in the magazine and stuffed the whole thing in his back pocket. He put the gun in the space behind the truck seats and opened the door. Then he walked toward the diner and didn’t look back.
The passenger door of the truck opened and slammed shut. Beck followed him inside.
Tom found a free booth in the corner and sat with his back to the wall and a view of the door. Beck slid in across from him. He was a homely kid, going bald already and saggy around his eyes, but otherwise in decent health. His fingers were black from the rim shop. After a few seconds, a waitress handed out water and menus and asked for their drinks order. “Take a Coke, please,” Tom said.
DEAD OR ALIVE a totally addictive thriller with a breathtaking twist Page 5