“You expecting a visitor?” Billy said as he smashed the butt of his cigarette into his ashtray.
“Can’t say I am,” I said. “Not that many people like me.”
Billy pushed himself out of his chair and headed into the house. “I know that’s true.”
26
Izzy followed me back down to the trailer. Billy palmed me a .22 as I walked out the door like it was a twenty and I was headed back to college. I shoved it in the back of my pants. The hammer jammed into my spine whenever I hit uneven ground every five seconds or so.
Brooklyn Charles stood in my driveway, leaning against a maxed-out Land Rover, smoking and looking like the spotlight dancer at a gentleman’s club. She dressed to eliminate the need to use your imagination. Her white blouse was unbuttoned enough to make the rest of the buttons unnecessary, and the strip of fabric around her waist was too short to be a skirt and too long to be a belt. I wasn’t sure I remembered enough baseball to keep my head straight.
“And to what do I owe this pleasure, Mrs. Charles?” I said.
“A woman can’t just come by and be neighborly?”
“She can if she’s a neighbor.”
Brooklyn exhaled smoke through perfectly pursed lips. “You know, any friend of Deacon’s is a friend of mine, then.” She flipped her spent cigarette into the gravel driveway. “Do you mind if we go inside, Mr. Malone? I’m cold.”
“I imagine you are.”
Inside my trailer, I closed the door and turned around, and Brooklyn Charles pinned me to the wall and smashed her mouth against me. Her breath was nicotine and whiskey, and not unpleasant, all things considered. The wood paneling buckled as she pressed harder against me, and her unnaturally firm breasts rammed into my chest with enough pressure to crack a rib.
I grabbed her shoulders and pushed her back. Her pupils narrowed into pinpoints, full of the crazed fury you expect from someone ready to cleave someone’s skull with an ax, and I bet myself she hadn’t limited herself to booze and Marlboros tonight. The saving grace was she had nowhere to hide an ax.
I struggled to get a breath. She trembled in my hands. Her bottom lip quivered as she bit at it. It wasn’t an act to be coy but to give herself a sense of restraint.
“Who are you?” she said. “What the fuck do you want?”
“Lady, the way to find things out isn’t to dry-hump someone in their entryway and then play Twenty Questions.” I let go of her and wiped my forearm across my face. A layer of lipstick as thick as mud striped across my sleeve. “I’m Deacon’s sponsor, Mrs. Charles. That’s all you need to worry about.”
“Bullshit. I realized when you came by the other night, you looked familiar. You used to be a cop.”
She took small steps backward in heels with a point sharp enough to cause harm. Her face crumbled as she started to cry. I reached for her, and she pulled away as if I were on fire.
Her breaths came in sobs and stutters, but it was over as suddenly as it had started. Brooklyn Charles understood how to shut her emotions down before they became too problematic to deal with.
“Would you like something to drink?” I said.
She wiped at her eyes, smearing her makeup. It made her look like the lead singer in a New Wave band or a warrior from Mad Max. “What have you got?”
“Water or iced tea. I can make coffee.”
“No, I mean what do you have to drink?”
“Coffee it is.”
When not trying to live up to her stereotype—somewhere between Mrs. Robinson and Stifler’s mom, with healthy amounts of cougar porn thrown in—Brooklyn Charles was a good-looking woman. She reminded me of later-era Ann-Margret, around the time she did 52 Pick-Up. That wasn’t a bad place to be at.
Brooklyn pulled out a cigarette and lit it. Her actions were smooth and practiced and sensual. The placement of the cigarette between her fingers, the drawing together of her lips, the way her eyes closed and her head drew back and her neck stretched out during the exhalation of smoke. It deserved to be lit by slanted light through Venetian blinds, with a saxophone solo playing in the background.
She drank her coffee with a measured pace, interspersed with drags on her cigarette as we sat at the kitchen table. I let her be silent, to have space in her thoughts. She’d talk when it was time. Wasn’t like I had anywhere to be.
She said, “I’m sorry. About my behavior.”
“It’s fine. Happens all the time.”
She smiled. “I’ll bet it does.” She set the cigarette aside. She had smoked enough since sitting down that the filter wasn’t stained with her lipstick. Her eyes moved quickly to avoid having to look at me. She surveyed the kitchen. Her expression didn’t register approval of the decor. Perhaps it was the avocado-colored refrigerator.
“Your place is a dump,” she said.
“It’s the maid’s decade off.”
“It reminds me of where I lived before Robert and I hooked up, except my place was bigger. My parents gave me and my ex a double-wide and a chunk of land for a wedding present. That’s the Appalachian dream, isn’t it? That and a week at Myrtle Beach every summer.”
“What happened to your ex?”
“He liked to play rough, and he got too rough, so I hit him over the head with a frying pan and set the trailer on fire.”
She waited, gauging to see how I’d respond. When I didn’t, she said, “You’re no fucking fun, asshole.”
“I saw the Farrah Fawcett scenario play out as a trooper. Can’t say I ever laughed over it.”
She pursed her lips as though she had been sucking lemons. “Goddamn but you can bring a room down to nothing.”
“I don’t get to be the serious one often.”
I refilled her coffee without asking her if she wanted more. She held the cup in her hands and ran her thumb over the rim.
“I left him once things got going with Robert. I worked at the bank as a teller, and Robert’s first wife had only died a few months earlier, when he called me up to his office and asked me if I wanted to get dinner sometime.”
“Nothing going on between the two of you before that?”
“Not a thing. Robert is a complete fucker, but he loved his first wife. Jean—that was her name. He said he was faithful their entire marriage.”
“You were the rebound then,” I said.
“In essence. I heard with couples where one of them dies, the happier that marriage was, the quicker the surviving spouse marries because they’re trying to recreate that happiness. Might be bullshit. Who knows?”
But then there was Billy Malone, alone for more than thirty-five years.
“How’s things been between you and Robert since Meadow’s murder?” I said.
“I tried to suck your dick for a hundred bucks, so you imagine it’s not been going well. I was never going to win ‘Mother of the Year,’ but no matter what type of cunt the world thinks you are, it’s not easy to bury your child. Robert, he had nothing to offer me in the way of support. He had a dynasty to maintain. Meetings and golf games and dinners and lunches, and children with lives and an active disdain for me, and it left a lot of hours in the day for me to fill.”
“Which you didn’t spend doing volunteer work.”
Brooklyn ignored me. “I was prepared for Meadow to be gone to college, but not—” She swallowed words. “She was gone. No visits home on weekends with dirty laundry. No questions about boys. None of that.”
“How much were you offering in the way of maternal advice?”
“Fuck you. I gave up a good husband to be with Robert because . . . hell, I don’t know why. He was rich and handsome, and we’d be like those couples on TV. I had no clue how to be a mother or a stepmother though. I barely understood how to be a wife, and I failed at it the first time, and I didn’t do such a grand job the second time.” She took a deep breath. “Do you know Meadow was a whore?”
“I know she hooked in Charleston for a while.”
Brooklyn blinked eyes that had grown large and
wet. Thin slivers of black tears ran down her face. “I was ashamed of myself at first. My little girl selling herself to strangers. Robert, he was ashamed of her. It’s why we sent her to rehab in Connecticut after she OD’d; he didn’t want that shit on the family. He was afraid business would suffer. That’s what mattered to him—what people would think of him. Like one junkie child was sufficient, and he wouldn’t let Meadow drag him down any further.” She wiped snot away from her nose. “I’ve got nothing else, Mr. Malone. My life is nothing but a goddamn sham, and Meadow was all I had, and I fucked up every opportunity with her every time it showed up.” She turned away from me. “I should go home. I’ve got some important drinking to do.”
She took her purse from the table and headed for the front door. I followed her.
On the porch, I said, “Is there any chance the men you’ve slept with might have something against your husband?”
“It’s charming you think I’ve limited myself to men, but no, there’s not. I’ve grown accustomed to a certain standard of living, and I suppose I have set that same standard for my fucking, so I’ve swum in the same pool Robert draws his business partners from, since they seem to have whatever little money there is in Parker County.”
“Is one of them Mitch Gillespie?”
She smiled. “Dear Uncle Mitch.” She ran her hand along my face and leaned in and kissed me on the cheek. “Get answers about all of this, Mr. Malone. Dagny’s paying you something, but I think I can offer you better than just dollars and cents.”
She turned and got into the Land Rover and drove away. She left lingering the scents of alcohol and cigarette smoke, an expensive perfume I couldn’t identify, and a sadness I didn’t want to contemplate.
27
The next morning was a trip to the grocery store. I pushed the buggy down the aisles, rolling through my skull what I knew about Meadow, about Deacon, about the Charles family, and how regardless of geography, money fucked you up in deep and sincere ways. Money in a small town just meant your fuckups felt played out on a larger scale.
I got Izzy a bag of food that almost needed its own cart. Damn dog ate like nothing I’d ever seen, all the while never getting fat. I wished like hell I knew her secret, or she’d share it with me. My forties hit me like I wouldn’t hand over my lunch money, and it took everything to hold the damage at bay. It wasn’t terrible, and by West Virginia standards I was fucking petite, but things could have been better. Woody dragged me into exercise on a regular-enough basis I wasn’t punching new notches in my belt. Not that Woody cared how I looked; seeing me get the shit knocked out of me wore him out, he said.
And then there was my nervousness around Lily. We still hadn’t made the beast with two backs, and I couldn’t keep putting her off. That’s how you know your life has gone tits-up: when a gorgeous woman wants to fuck you until your IQ drops, and you put her off. Sixteen-year-old me would have beaten the fuck out of me if he could have seen this shit.
Of course, it didn’t help that Lily was so far out of my league, we weren’t even playing the same sport. My addled imagination had conjured her past as a cavalcade of guys with perfect hair and tans and teeth as white as fresh paint. Guys with names like Chip or Brent—asshole names that told you they checked their stock portfolios regularly, or that they had stock portfolios, or fuck it, that they knew what a stock portfolio was. Guys who associated with people like the Charles family or the Gillespies or the other handful of well-to-dos in Parker County who took vacations on islands where brown-skinned people brought you drinks, and high walls kept the blisteringly white beaches separate from the third-world village a mile down the road. These guys were assholes, but assholes with money, and money buys you penance for a variety of sins.
I moped around on this string of thoughts through the coffee aisle where I picked up a few bags. Woody taught me not to buy the stuff that came in the big cans but not to buy the most expensive stuff, either. The store had taken out the bean grinder a few years ago, opening more space for boxes of K-cups, so options were sparse. Between this and gas stations charging you to put air in your tires, civilization was collapsing around us.
I walked out of the store lighter in pocket and with the saddest assortment of single-guy foods imaginable. Sandwich meats. Condiments. Chips. Frozen pizzas. Microwavable single servings of stuff somehow defined as food. Spaghetti and sauce for whenever I felt fancy. Popsicles because it was hot, and I still thought I was five years old.
I noticed the black SUV in my rearview mirror once I pulled out of the Walmart parking lot, and they were on me like stink on shit. They didn’t work to be discreet, and no one goes in my direction without a reason. To make life interesting, I took some unnecessary turns to test the theory. The Range Rover kept right behind me.
I could have kept it up for a while, except my popsicles were melting so I pulled into the parking lot of a dollar store. The SUV took a place two over from mine.
I took Billy’s .22 from the glove compartment and clipped it to my hip, pulled my shirttail over it, and walked over to the SUV. The window tint was five shades past street legal, so the outside looked like a sheet of black cardboard. I tapped on the driver’s side window. The motor whined, and the glass vanished into the door.
The driver was big and hard-muscled, with a shaved head resting on top of a neck about the same width, creating an almost uninterrupted path from the top of his skull to his shoulders, with his ears there to break up the monotony. He wore wraparound sunglasses and a full beard and an expression that begged for someone to say something stupid so he could smack them into extinction. For the sake of having something to call him, we’ll say his name was Milo.
Peering at me from behind him sat a dude about a micron smaller, clean-shaven, and also ready to knock your head so far down between your shoulders you’d have to unzip your pants to eat. This one we’ll call Otis. Fuck it, not like I’d be sending them Christmas cards or anything. They both kept a straight-forward focus through the windshield.
I leaned a forearm on the rearview mirror. “Good afternoon, gentlemen. I’m collecting for the Strippers for Orphans Fund. Every year, thousands of orphans never get the opportunity to have a woman named Diamond or Velvet grind against their crotches while sharing their daddy issues with one another. For only a dollar a day—”
Milo said, “Get in back.” He didn’t turn to face me when he said it, but Otis was already in the passenger seat, so it seemed a safe bet he meant me.
I ignored him. “But you haven’t let me tell you about the letters you’ll get from your orphans, with photos taken in the strip club champagne room—”
“I said get in the car. Mr. Gillespie wants to speak to you.”
“I’m thrilled for Mr. Gillespie.” I lifted the tail of my shirt to show my pistol. “Gimme a reason to listen to you.”
Otis reached past Milo and pointed a howitzer of a pistol two feet from my face. It was a gun large enough to bring down a plane. NATO had rules about a gun that big. Milo remained calm and expressionless. I wondered if he had any expressions. I also wondered how far pieces of my skull would scatter after I got shot in the head by that goddamn gun.
“You make a compelling argument,” I said.
I heard the power locks click, and I got into the SUV in back. Otis situated himself in his chair. He cranked his head toward me and said, “Put on your seat belt.”
“Of course,” I said as I clicked in. “Safety first.”
Otis handed me a black sack and said, “Put it on.”
“Are you serious? I’m not much to look at, but this is insulting, don’t you think?”
Otis’s expression—or lack thereof—indicated that he was serious and had the gun to prove it and also that he didn’t think I was very funny, so I did what he asked, tugging the sack over my head until I was enveloped in darkness.
28
I didn’t expect Milo and Otis to be chatty, and they did not disappoint. We rode in stark silence, without even the radio
on. At least the SUV was pleasant. I hadn’t been in a car that nice since . . . well, I had never been in a car that nice. Leather seats. Climate control in the back. I bet the stereo was good. Probably had satellite radio, too. Not that they’d tell me.
We drove for a while. I couldn’t see shit through the sack and tried to pick up on audio clues. I knew we were through and out the other side of Serenity—since there was only so much town to drive through anyway—when the incline of the drive changed, and we traveled uphill.
“You guys keeping up with WVU this year?” I said. “How you thinking they’re looking this year?”
Silence.
Maybe they were Marshall fans.
We stopped, and I heard tapping and beeping that sounded like a code being punched into a keypad, and a gate opening. After about another five minutes, we stopped, and someone said, “Take it off.”
The explosion of light blinded me for a moment. I blinked and struggled to let my eyes find their focus. Milo opened my door.
“Thanks, Buster Brown,” I said as I clicked the harness loose. Milo grabbed me by the arm and jerked me from the vehicle before the seat belt had let go.
Mitchell Gillespie’s house was to Robert Charles’s house what Robert Charles’s house was to my house. GPS would be needed to keep track of the bathrooms. Children would graduate from high school by the time you got back from the kitchen for a snack. You crossed time zones doing laps in the pool. Everything sprawled out across a stretch of property like real estate porn, teasing and inviting and denying you all at the same time.
Milo and Otis led me inside. They rushed me through polished wooden halls and paintings college art classes taught you to appreciate. We got into an elevator—an elevator, for the love of Christ—and ended up on the third floor, where they navigated me with no sense of gentleness down a rat’s maze of hallways until we stood in front of a door tall enough to haul redwoods through.
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