‘Is your bag made of human skin?’ I asked, my head bursting.
Goat Bag laughed, and laughed and laughed.
Our food arrived and the three of us lapsed into silence as we inhaled it and ordered seconds, with a shed-load of fries and more coffee.
There was something he wasn’t telling us, but that was OK because we weren’t telling him anything either. He had still climbed into a godforsaken building to get my jacket for me.
I was sorry to leave him. Goat Bag didn’t come back to the car.
I opened the door and as I got into the passenger side I woke up Luiz, who’d been passed out in the back seat.
He awoke with his fists raised, screaming, ‘Yeeeargh what!’
‘Jesus, what the fuck is he doing here?’ I gestured at Eli.
Luiz patted himself down and his eyes widened, cartoon-like.
He snarled, ‘Which one a’you sons of bitches has my facking wallet, eh?’
*
‘How well do you know this city, Luiz?’ Eli asked.
The three of us were parked in a lay-by necking three different types of energy drink.
It was the most dishevelled I’d ever seen Eli. His hair, that had been perfectly slicked back the night before, was now hanging at several different angles like the top of a pineapple.
‘Pretty well, I live here for over a year now. I move on soon, I think, but I know it well.’
‘You think you can find a way of tracking this man down?’
Luiz took the photo of Trent and examined it. ‘Maybe. How long was he here for?’
‘We don’t know. We just know he ended up here on his way west. He was a teacher for a while. Don’t know which school though.’
‘I’ll need a day or two days, maybe.’ Luiz tucked the photo inside his collar and started to roll a cigarette. ‘In return, you can find my money that was in my jacket last night. I just got paid, cash as well, man, there was two hundred ’n’ seventy-five dollars in there.’
‘Wait a second, that wasn’t your apartment?’ I rested my hands on the steering wheel, trying to get used to the idea of driving again.
‘No. I think that’s why the fuckers kick me out, after they found my money.’
‘How did you end up in our car?’
He spread his hands, cigarette between his lips. His eyes said, Beats me, man.
‘We’re really gonna stay here for a couple of days?’
Eli shrugged. ‘We have the time. We know Trent was here.’
‘What is his name?’ Luiz asked, patting his chest.
‘Trent Byrne. He might have been going by something else.’
‘What else do you know about him? Why you looking?’
‘Personal reasons,’ Eli said, searching for cheap hotels on his iPad.
‘What did he teach?’
‘English. Before that he was a publisher, journalist, businessman.’
‘What did he do?’
‘Why do you want to know?’ I turned in my seat.
Luiz held up his hands. ‘It makes it easier for me to find him, or find someone who knows him, if I know what he’s done. He’s not memorable, easy to describe. I show this photo to people, they ain’t gonna remember. I tell them something about him that stands out, it makes them more likely to remember.’
‘Honestly, we don’t know why he disappeared,’ I said, picking at the label around my drink.
Monster.
At least Red Bull had some pretensions. It gives you wings. Monster was everything it said on the label: We will pump you full of drugs.
‘So you are… gangsters, huh?’ Luiz lit his cigarette and opened his window. ‘Don’t worry, you are doing a terrible job of hiding it. But that’s good for me, you can get my money back.’
‘I think we should split up,’ Eli said, addressing the both of us. ‘We’ll all cover more ground.’
‘How do we know we can trust you?’ I asked Luiz.
‘Why not? What would I do with a photo of a man I do not know? Sell it on eBay?’
‘You have a weapon?’ Eli asked.
‘At home. You ask like I will need it…’
‘You ever kill someone with it?’
‘Yes.’ Luiz smiled, seemingly unable to find his lighter.
‘If you’re such a hippy, how do you justify killing people?’ I raised my eyebrows.
Luiz looked at me pityingly. ‘People. You say it like we are special. People. I have no place in my heart for people.’
‘We should take him with us,’ Eli remarked. ‘I like this guy’s philosophy.’
‘If I help you,’ Luiz continued, finally finding his lighter, ‘you can pay me the amount of money I’ve lost. Or you can find it for me. Your choice.’
He was like some deranged Jesus. All hair and mad brown eyes and a thousand bracelets and necklaces.
Luiz eyed Eli, taking a long-awaited drag. ‘You were named after Eli from the Bible? He was a judge? A judge, am I right?’
‘How do you know he’s called Eli?’ I tensed.
‘He tell me last night, when he was wasted.’
‘Oh… Right.’ Glancing at Eli, I nodded. ‘Seeing as we’re all on proper first name terms now, my name’s Ronnie.’
A roar of laughter. ‘Well, I am glad you are on my side, Judge Eli. This guy, he’s not feeling me so much.’
‘You can go with him,’ Eli said, smirking at us. ‘I’m sure you’ll find loads to talk about.’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I was surprised that anyone in a school would agree to talk to someone like Luiz, but the advantage of speaking English as a second language, he told me with some mirth, is that most people assumed you were retarded, and therefore harmless.
‘Where are you actually from?’ I asked, while we waited in another reception area.
Cliques of teenagers made their way to classes behind a pair of glass doors.
We’d been to four schools. It was entertaining at first, like a field trip, but the novelty had quickly worn off. I hated teenagers. Even when I’d been a teenager, I’d hated teenagers.
‘Puerto Rico,’ he replied.
‘You got family here?’
‘No, I came here to work and I send money back every month, to my mother.’
‘You came over here illegally?’
A sideways glance. ‘Yes, I came here illegally. I have a passport now though, my real name and everything.’
‘My family were Italian immigrants, so I can’t really have a problem with it.’
‘People do have a problem though. But it is better to be somewhere you’re unwelcome but you can live, than somewhere where everyone loves you, but you have no work and no money. I could have worked for the drug bosses when I was twelve, but my mother wouldn’t let me.’
‘So you came to work for the drug bosses in the US instead?’
He spread his hands. ‘What she doesn’t know, won’t hurt her. At least here you know where you stand. You’re not so much “under a thumb”, as you say. If you’re good, you can make something of yourself and people respect that. What is it you do anyway?’
‘I run a nightclub, and I… I guess I’m one of the UK “bosses”.’ I shrugged. ‘Though I don’t feel much like a boss right now.’
‘I come over to the UK and I’ll work for you, eh.’
‘It seems to be all the rage,’ I said, sighing. ‘It’s like I put out a fucking Craigslist ad.’
The glass doors were pushed open and we both fell into silence.
A woman approached us, in a long green skirt. Owl-like glasses.
‘I’m Vice-Principal Lukehurst. Can I help you?’
‘Hello, it is pleasure. My name is Luiz and this is my colleague, Ron.’ Luiz reached out a hand to shake hers, and I noticed his English became noticeably worse. ‘We are here to ask questions about former teacher here, Mr Trent Byrne.’
He handed her the photo before she could reply or take it all in. For the first time that day, recognition appeared in someon
e’s face.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, still looking at the photo. ‘Who did you say you were again?’
‘Luiz, and Ron.’ Luiz beamed at her, as if that were all the explanation she needed.
I managed a half-smile.
‘I mean, who do you work for?’ she said.
Luiz mocked confusion, so much so that I almost laughed. ‘I’m sorry, I do not understand.’
‘We’re private investigators,’ I cut in. ‘We’re looking for Trent Byrne, following some criminal allegations, and we were hoping to speak to someone who knew him.’
‘You’re English,’ she said, blurting it out.
‘Yes.’
She couldn’t work out what to make of either of us, this odd couple of Hispanic and English that had appeared in her reception, and she didn’t want to deal with us either, which played to our advantage.
She took a step back, taking the photo with her, and mumbled, eyes still on Trent’s face, ‘Wait a moment, I need to… You should speak to Principal Bosman. He might be in a meeting but… wait here.’
Luiz shook his head as she walked away, and waited until the glass doors swung shut again to speak. ‘Retarded, see. She would never have spoken to two Americans.’
‘She wouldn’t have spoken to a crazy bearded semi-literate fucker on his own either.’
‘You may be right there. Eh, look, here she comes.’
Vice-Principal Lukehurst indicated her head at us, and we let ourselves into the now-empty corridor.
We were led past a gym and outside into another building. Across the way I could see kids running around a track.
It took a while, but Vice-Principal Lukehurst hung back and said, in a conspiratorial tone, ‘I didn’t know Trent that well, but I knew he was strange, from the start. If you want to ask any more questions or you don’t think he’s being straight with you, come and find me after. Some people here don’t like to talk about these things. They worry more about the press than the kids’ welfare.’
‘We’ll keep that in mind, thanks,’ I said.
The sign above the entrance to the school had said Owen Whitfield High School, ‘Believe & Achieve’.
Vice-Principal Lukehurst knocked on a door to an out-building.
A voice replied, ‘In a minute.’
‘Who’s Owen Whitfield?’ I asked, to pass the awkward time standing just off the racetrack, in view of the science labs.
To my surprise, Vice-Principal Lukehurst smoothed down her skirt and checked the ground before sitting on the concrete steps. Evidently ‘In a minute’ translated to quite a while in her mind. I was tempted to sit with her, but thought it might be inappropriate.
‘He was a leader in a roadside demonstration protesting the eviction of local farmers from their homes, right here in Missouri in 1939.’ A small smile. ‘It was partly because the school was named after him that I applied to work here.’
‘Were you saying earlier that you don’t think Principal… Bosman was likely to speak to us?’
‘He won’t be eager to talk about the Trent business. He hired and fired him. Didn’t even speak to local press about it when they asked.’
‘What happened?’
‘Later,’ she said.
Not long after, the door opened and a gym teacher in absurdly short shorts left the building. We were left standing in front of a short and ill-looking man who had one too many buttons open under his blazer.
‘Principal Bosman,’ he introduced himself, reaching down from the upper step to shake both of our hands as Vice-Principal Lukehurst hurriedly stood up from her seat on the ground.
Even standing above me, he only drew level with the top of my head.
He said, ‘You fellas want some coffee?’
‘Um, no, I’m good.’ The building we were led into was a temporary classroom, and it smelt damp.
‘Should I stay?’ asked Vice-Principal Lukehurst.
‘That won’t be necessary.’
If I wasn’t mistaken, Principal Bosman actually waved her away, like a toddler.
‘I’ll have coffee,’ Luiz said, curling the tips of his moustache.
There were rows and rows of wooden desks, a few old computers, and a coffee machine at the front of the room where a projector should be. It looked like the only thing still used on a regular basis.
I sat on the edge of a desk and Luiz sat at one of them with his fingers linked, like a student.
Principal Bosman turned on the machine, and it sputtered to life with dry rasps.
‘Takes a while to warm up,’ he said, patting it. ‘How do you know of Trent Byrne?’
I wasn’t sure how to answer this. It seemed like an odd question to open with.
‘I don’t know him, but our client does. There have been some criminal allegations that we can’t go into, and we’ve been trying to track him down. The last anyone heard of him he was teaching here.’
‘That was a while ago.’
‘Yes.’ Luiz frowned. ‘Why did you fire him?’
‘I thought you’d already know.’
I offered, ‘There’s not much record of it in the press, anywhere really. We thought it best to come to you, in the absence of much public information.’
Principal Bosman looked pleased with himself. ‘Well, I worked hard to keep all that… unpleasantness out of the papers. Terrible for the school, and not fair… not fair on the good teachers who work here and not fair on the kids, to tarnish them with that. Personally, I think it would be for the best if Trent were locked up.’
Luiz looked about him for the photo but it was still with Vice-Principal Lukehurst. ‘So, what happened? He wasn’t no sex predator, was he? He didn’t touch the kids?’
‘God, no.’ The principal recoiled from the suggestion. ‘No, nothing like that, thank Jesus. No, he was… inappropriate but, I like to think, never in that way.’
The coffee machine whirred like a spaceship.
‘No, it was brought to my attention by one of the teachers who no longer works with us, and then later on by several of the children, that Trent was using his class time to give ungodly lectures.’
‘What’s that meant to mean?’ I asked, not liking where this was headed.
‘When I say “ungodly”, I mean just that. He was giving lectures about… about Satanism.’
He said the word ‘Satanism’ in a whisper. It was almost lost in the roar of the coffee machine.
‘Satanism?’ Luiz almost had to shout.
‘Yes, the worship of Satan, the devil, whatever you want to call him.’ The principal pulled at his tie. ‘I never heard any of them myself, but I did see some of the literature he began distributing. It was then I was forced to fire him. Some parents called in, asking why their child had been given these blasphemous pamphlets, asked me if it was my idea of a joke…’
The memory was clearly still a sore one.
The coffee machine reached its anticlimax, with a sigh, and spat out some coffee. The principal took the resulting mug and handed it to Luiz, who looked unimpressed with its contents.
‘Do you have any of the pamphlets left?’ I asked. ‘Are any of the students who heard those sermons still here?’
‘No and no. For obvious reasons, we didn’t keep anything.’ He sat on the edge of the desk at the front, lost in thought, and then rubbed his hands together. ‘Is there anything else you wanted to know?’
Luiz took a sip of coffee and winced. ‘Do you know where he go after you fired him?’
‘No.’
‘Was he friends with any of the teachers here who might know?’ I added.
‘No. Sorry.’
Luiz and I looked at each other, and I stood up first. ‘Well, thanks for all your help, Principal Bosman. We’ll see ourselves out.’
‘No, I wouldn’t hear of it,’ the principal said, as though anxious to make sure we were off the premises in person. ‘I’ll walk you to reception.’
On the way out, Luiz lagged behind and tipped the remainde
r of his coffee onto the edge of the playing field.
We never did manage to find Vice-Principal Lukehurst again, but we left a message for her with reception just in case.
We suspected she was being watched.
*
There were a group of young ’uns in their twenties sat not far from us in the bar, barely seven feet away. I was finding it hard to keep up with what Eli or Luiz were saying, too distracted by their smartphones.
I hated them now. I hated how the species had evolved to depend on a permanent black rectangle stained into the palm of your hand.
‘I have family in LA,’ Luiz was saying. ‘Well, friends who are like family, as good as family.’
Eli was picking the label off his bottle of beer. ‘It doesn’t matter how you know them, it only matters that they won’t say anything, no matter who comes asking after us.’
‘These people are trustworthy.’
Eli looked at me.
I shook the trance out of my expression and said, ‘Huh?’
‘These people are trustworthy,’ Luiz repeated.
I shrugged. ‘That’s great, right.’
Eli didn’t look convinced. ‘Maybe we should just stick to the plan—’
‘Eli, nothing we’ve done so far has remotely resembled your fucking plan,’ I snapped.
‘How do we really know we can trust you?’ Eli directed at Luiz, ignoring me.
I spread my hands and returned to eyeballing the smartphones.
A waitress had been standing by their table waiting to take their food order for what felt like several years, her smile becoming less and less sincere, reduced to a human lampshade in the face of social media.
‘How do you know you can trust anyone?’ Luiz was saying emphatically.
‘Well—’
‘Have we not already helped each other?’
The group were now getting the waitress to take photos of them posing with their drinks.
I realized that both Eli and Luiz were waiting for me to answer a question. I turned, picked up my beer and went, ‘What?’
‘Are we fucking boring you?’ Eli asked with insufferable slowness. ‘Do you want to move to another fucking table?’
‘I don’t get your point, that’s all. You’re happy to go to this guy’s party, take his ketamine, have him go around schools waving Trent’s photo and carry a gun for us, but you don’t want him in the car and now you don’t wanna stay with people who are vouched for.’ I shrugged.
Road Kill Page 10