by Nikki Wild
Then I heard something.
“Oh shit,” I said aloud, my voice high but soft, the words pushed from me in panic. At least I only said ‘shit’, instead of the more embarrassing alternative.
The sound was metal falling on wood, and it came from the study. A room I rarely used. In fact, the light bulb had burned out the week before and since the ceiling was too high for me to reach without a ladder, I’d just let it stay burned out. Standing in my doorway, keys in hand, I was keenly aware of my own bladder and its limitations.
Fuck it, though.
Panic dissolved in my spine like sugar in coffee, and I was crossing the living room, stalking down the hallway, and throwing open the door to the study. It had been ajar, and it banged against the wall loud enough for me to know I’d be replacing the plaster as well as the light bulb. I had my keys clenched in my hand, so any punch I had to throw would have just a little more pain to deliver. The hallway light leaked into the room, which only made the shadows seem menacing.
“Mrow!”
Dammit, Purrloin! She marched up to the doorway from the recesses of the study, looking very pissed at me, gray tail high and flicking. She gave me one long look of utter contempt before taking herself somewhere else, where stupid humans wouldn’t bang doors and shout things at her. My father’s old ashtray lay on the floor, a casualty of Purrloin’s careless treatment of my possessions.
She was a right bitch sometimes. I had half a mind to chase her down and give her a talking to, but I knew it would fall on deaf ears. Nobody told Purrloin Constatino what to do or how to behave. I sighed, my shoulders relaxing. I rolled them onto my back, and then forward again, trying to get out the last knots of tension.
Two heavy hands landed on my shoulders. And squeezed.
I screamed, twisting around and raising my key-filled hand high in the air, meaning to slam it into the nearest nose or eye.
“Shit!” Rev hollered, stumbling back with his hands in front of his face.
His heavy hands.
“What the hell were you doing?” I shrieked, somehow even angrier now that I knew it was him that scared me halfway to the grave and back.
“You looked like you saw a ghost,” he spat. “I was trying to help.”
“What? What?” That was his excuse? That bullshit was almost enough to warrant a key to the face, in my opinion.
“Jesus, Misty,” he said, dropping his defensive stance. “Calm down.”
“No!” I felt something horrible happening inside me. You know when something fucked up happens, and for a few minutes you don’t feel anything, and then you feel like you’re breaking all over? Yeah. The fear I should have felt when I first heard that noise started pressing down on me, and my tense shoulders started shaking, and my eyes were getting teary. “Why didn’t I hear you come in?”
“The door was open,” he said, seeing my distress and looking unnerved by it. “You didn’t close it behind you. That’s not very…”
Safe, I finished for him, because he didn’t finish the sentence himself. He couldn’t, not with me suddenly crying in front of him, like a lunatic. I had to get away from him before he could see how much I wanted him to lift me up and hold me tight. I barged straight past him and down the hall, not letting anything slow me down until I crashed straight onto my bed.
All of this was getting to me, more than I wanted to admit.
Even at work that night, with the company of thirty yipping pups, purring cats, and tail-wagging dogs, I’d been looking over my shoulder every five minutes.
Dad, would you have lived your life any differently if you knew what kind of damage you left behind?
After ten minutes, Rev knocked on the door. I coughed for him to come in, certain that the worst of my episode had passed.
“I’ll know better next time,” he said. “Hands to myself, scouts honor. I didn’t think you’d react so…violently.”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s alright.”
“I’m impressed, though,” he said, sacrificing a grin on my behalf. “I wouldn’t want to be in that same position if I was trying to hurt you.”
His grin demanded me to return it, so I did. And that old cliché about smiling making you feel better rang true, at least a little bit.
“So, I got a lead,” he said, and now it wasn’t just my forced smile making a difference. I leaned in. He told me about Suzy Jag and her girl, the kid on drugs and his weird fixation on being a pirate. It seemed like something - it seemed like a start. The next day, he said, he’d pick up a picture of the girl from Suzy and stake out the motel.
I was friendly with Suzy but never even thought to ask her. I guess Rev was starting to be worth his while, after all. When he was through talking, I sighed and leaned back against my pillows. I’d been sitting up in bed while Rev stood in the doorway. The moment I reclined, though, I saw something dark flash across his already-dark eyes. Like seeing me laid out on a bed triggered some animal instinct inside him. I sat up again, but not before some small, desperately wicked voice in my head said why not invite him to come lie down beside you?
“Thanks,” I said. “That’s…pretty comforting, actually.”
He nodded.
“You’re working tomorrow?”
“Yeah, during the day. Um. I talked to Janie. She’s going to drop off the keys to her car in the morning, and you can use that.”
He quirked an eyebrow.
“She’s trusting a total stranger who just got out of prison with her car?”
“Well, I trust you, and she trusts me,” I said. It had occurred to me that giving Rev the keys to a car might be the dumbest thing I ever did. After all, he was a getaway driver by trade. There was nothing he did better than drive fast in cars that weren’t his. But I wasn’t going to be his chauffeur. I couldn’t be his chauffeur.
“That’s sweet,” he said. “But Mickey is going to pick me up. Got some catching up to do, and he agreed to be my strong arm.”
“Mickey Tucker?” I asked, taken aback. His name, to me, was synonymous with “dirty rat bastard”. In fact, I couldn’t even think his name without hearing the way my father always spit it out like the worst curse in the world.
“Big Mickey,” Rev said, and that made a lot more sense. I knew him as Michael, though. We didn’t exactly grow up together, but he and I were something like friends, back when I was trying to make it through high school yoked with my father’s name.
With him being the only black kid in his grade and me being the daughter of one of Sorghum Bend’s most infamous criminal, we were both keenly aware of our status as others. We’d lost touch, though. My father had a lot to do with that. He never did like to see a boy hanging around me, no matter who they were. And I guess he smelled the bad boy inside Michael before that bad boy was even born. Suffice to say, our friendship was not encouraged.
“Tell him I say hi,” I said without really thinking. I was bone tired. I felt like this new information, vague and unsatisfying as it was, was going to keep me up all night despite my exhaustion. I was wrong. Rev said his good night and retired to his own room. I wondered if he’d sleep well, and if he’d have any dreams. I wondered if he’d dream differently now that he was out of prison. And right before I fell asleep, when I was only just barely clinging to the real world, I wondered if he’d dream of me.
Chapter 13
Rev
“Well, she was always a cutie,” Mickey said through a mouthful of McChicken. “I was a year older than her. And everyone agreed she was cute as hell. But no one wanted to touch her because of her old man, you know?”
“Because of his rep?” I asked, slurping on a milkshake. My first since getting out of prison, which made it the best milkshake I’d ever had.
“Well, yeah, but not in the way you think. I mean, what kind of high school boy gives two shits about what a hot chick’s dad does? Would you have given up on a girl just because her dad was a cop or something?”
I grinned. No, I would not. At sixteen I
was the perfect mixture of stupid, overconfident, short sighted. I felt bad for the fathers who found themselves dealing with me. I could remember jumping out of more than one girl’s window in the middle of the night.
“So what was it, then?”
“Millions scared the shit out of me. It was pretty much drilled into every little boy’s head that touching Misty was the quickest path to an early grave. Some kid tried to force a kiss on her in seventh grade and ended up drinking his meals out of a straw for the next couple of years.”
“Huh,” I said, reflecting on this. It made sense, in a way. Millions cherished his little girl. But it was also kind of psychotic. And it made me pity her a bit. Being a teenager is supposed to be about making mistakes and getting laid and making mistakes while you get laid. I didn’t think Misty got to do much of the first two, which automatically cut out the third.
Still, she had her old man. That was something more than a lot of people could say. Someone was looking out for her. Someone cared enough to threaten strangers’ sons with a swift and violent justice if they crossed a line with her.
“That her?” Mickey pointed with a french fry to a mini-skirted woman at the soda machine.
I blinked, calling up the picture Suzy had shown me. Turns out she didn’t have a printer, all her pictures were online, and the shitty burner cellphone I’d picked up wasn’t going to be taking any snapshots. It was alright though; I could remember. Having a good memory for faces is a desirable trait when you deal with people who like to use pseudonyms.
“No, I said. “She’s got a tattoo on her bicep, and her nose is longer.”
“Anyway, I was friendly with her, and obviously would have liked to be more than friendly with her, but her old man wasn’t having any of it. It was a I’ve-got-a-dick thing.”
I nodded along wondering what Millions would think about me if he was still breathing. Here I was, living under her roof, sleeping a few feet away from her and letting my imagination get away from me more often than I cared to admit.
“Well, I guess he’s not around to keep the men away anymore,” I mused aloud.
“I guess not,” Mickey smirked. “Or you’d be sleeping under the house rather than in it. You think she’s gonna cave?”
“Cave?”
“C’mon. You just got out of prison and you’re living with some of Sorghum Bend’s most eligible pussy. Unless your time in the joint made your swing set change directions, you’ve gotta be jonesing.”
“Sure,” I said. “But she’s a goddamn nightmare. Last night she damn near made a shish-kebab out of my eyeball just for putting my hands on her shoulders.”
“That’s further than any guy I ever knew got with her,” Mickey grinned. “Hey… is that her?”
The Dragonfly was downright teeming with filth. The girls were the best of them. I spotted at least four tweakers picking up from the dealer behind the front desk, a few black-eyed women following big-fisted men, a portly guy looking for a little extracurricular love, and a few rail-thin young lovers who were probably not long for this world.
I felt like a prince by comparison.
The girl Big Mickey pointed to wasn’t the one I was looking for, but she had a friend coming out of the room behind her.
Jackpot.
“The other one,” I said, tossing the last of my fast food back into the sack. “That’s her.”
“Double trouble,” Mickey said as the girls waved bye-bye to a man old enough to be their father. They stood in the doorway for a while, talking. Not-Tallulah scratched at her face in a way indicative of heavy addiction. After a couple minutes, she gestured to the front desk, and headed across the parking lot. I’d seen the look on her face enough times to know she’d be off getting a fix.
That was well enough for us. I needed answers, and I’d have a better chance of getting them so long as Tallulah was alone.
“Hey,” Mickey hung out the side of the car calling to our girl. The one on her way to the office turned but barely acknowledged us, apparently content to let Tallulah handle us herself. And like any good working girl, Tallulah wasn’t too good to deny us her company. Sauntering over, she was a long-legged stick bug in daisy dukes. A pretty girl, at least for now. She wouldn’t be pretty for long working out of a place like this, a fact made all the more apparent once I noticed the thin line of track marks running along the inside bend of her arm.
“Hay is for horses,” she rasped, coming to the window and lighting up. She gave Mickey and I each a good look.
“I don’t do doubles,” she said. “But my friend will take…”
“Nah, honey,” I said, leaning across Mickey’s bulky form to look her in the eye. “That’s not why we’re here.”
“I don’t sell junk,” she said. “Talk to Donny in the office for that.”
“Not that either, Tallulah.”
Well, that got her. It got her eyes narrowing, and her hand shaking a bit, and her mouth screwing up in distaste.
“Who sent ya? I never signed no contract with Suzy. I’m a free woman. You can tell her she can’t scare me.”
“Suzy didn’t send us,” I said. “If you’ll stop trying to guess why we’re here for five seconds, I’ll happily tell you.”
“Twenty bucks and I’ll shut up,” she snapped. Hell. You had to admire her. Chuckling, I drew a twenty from my wallet - I’d cashed the check that constituted my remaining commissary money first thing this morning, and I still had most of my release cash… but at this rate, I’d be shaking an empty wallet by sunset.
Mickey had on one of his sickeningly genuine million-watt smiles. Like I said, he was a nice guy. As far as muscle goes, he was only good for looks - if he ever actually had to get physical with someone, I think he might claim to be Buddhist. Tallulah studied the bill like it might be counterfeit, and she might be able to tell. Her pink shirt said Cowgirl in rhinestones, surrounded by swirly designs.
“What?” she spat.
“A while ago you had a client…”
“I got a lotta clients!”
“What’d I just pay you for?”
She sneered, but she closed her mouth.
“You’ll remember this one. He was flying on something crazy and talking about pirates. You remember?”
“Clint?” the name flew right out of her mouth, bing bang boom. I saw the regret in her eyes; her knee-jerk reaction just lost her the chance to make some more cash.
“If you say so, doll,” I said. “Clint, huh?”
“Maybe,” she sneered. I didn’t wait for her to raise the price, but put another two twenties in her hand. She glanced at Mickey.
“You don’t talk?”
“No one’s paying me to talk,” he said smoothly. “Unlike some people here…”
Tallulah grunted, sliding her cash into the back of her shorts.
“Name was Clint. I had him four or five times as a client. 21 if he was a day. Red hair, freckles, cute kid. One milky eye, though. Kind of grossed me out. I’d turn the light out and…”
“I don’t need to know how big his dick is Tallulah. Does Clint have a last name? Do you know who he worked for?”
She seemed to be considering the chances that I’d throw some more cash her way, but the expression on my face convinced her she’d gotten all she was gonna get.
“Last name was something Irish. O-something. Worked for an Irish guy, too. I don’t know. He never said who it was, but he talked about how he liked working for one of his own kind. I think he was a little zebraphobic.”
“Xenophobic,” Mickey said, translating for her.
“No, dumbass,” she smirked. “He wasn’t afraid of no fuckin’ TV character. He was afraid of foreigners and shit. He said he liked bein’ Irish and workin’ Irish, but he wished his boss would be more selective. He believed me when I told him I was a Mick. I’m not.”
“Was he straight off the boat, or second generation?”
“He talked as straight American as me or you,” she said. “That’s all I
’ve got for you. Now, either you buy what I’m trynna sell here, or get out of here before I get my man on your asses.”
I believed her. Even if she knew more than she was saying, I could tell she was shutting down on us. I could throw my whole damn commissary balance at her and not get anything useful.
“Thanks, love,” I said, nodding my chin at Mickey to get us out of there. We didn’t speak again until the Dragonfly was well behind us.
“Irish, huh?” Mickey mused aloud. “That narrows it down.”
“Heh,” I said. “Yeah, right.”
Sorghum Bend had always been split down the middle, Italians and Irish. Afflicted with that particular homogeneity that curses many a small Southern town. Frankly, no one had any reason to move to Sorghum Bend, so it was mostly the same families living in the same neighborhoods for generations.
Most of the Italians had come up from Mississippi and Louisiana after the Civil War, when those states became particularly inhospitable to the established population. The Irish came to work the railroad. And since both were generally ill-regarded by American society at large, and could abide the other with a decorum of polite disdain, they settled together in Sorghum Bend.
The Irish could have their farms on the hilly lowlands, and the Italians could set up their shops, and both could work for the Redfern Timber Company. Least that’s how things got started… Logging wasn’t so fashionable anymore, but the Irish still farmed and the Italians still ran the downtown district.
To make a long story short, there were a shit ton of Irish people in Sorghum Bend. A certain cliche about needles and haystacks drifted through my mind.
“Listen, thanks for the ride,” I said, sighing. “You got someplace to be, or can I buy you a beer?”
“Free as a bird,” Mickey said with a smile. “Two heads are better than one, right? You’ve been away for a while. Let me catch you up on some of your suspects.”
“Can we make one stop?” I asked.