Jack Keller - 01 - The Devil's Right Hand

by J. D. Rhoades

  A red Corvette was parked in the driveway in front of the house at the end of the street. It was the newest, brightest object visible. There were still a few flakes of the original white paint clinging to the picket fence in front of the house. The rest had weathered to gray.

  Leonard picked up the bag with the money in it and got out. DeWayne followed. The two men got out of the truck and walked towards the white house, with DeWayne leaning on Leonard’s shoulder for support. He was singing again: “Heyyyy, hey, look at little sisterrrr…” All of the shades were drawn. Had it not been for the car parked out front, the house would have appeared deserted.

  Leonard pushed the doorbell button beside the door. There was no sound of a bell inside and no answer. He knocked. He knocked harder. No answer. Leonard began knocking steadily, monotonously, like a man pounding nails in Hell. Finally, a slurred female voice responded, “All RIGHT,” God damn it, I’m coming.” There was a creak of footsteps. DeWayne stuck his face up to the peephole in the door and grinned maniacally. “Oh, Jesus fucking Christ,” the voice said. It sounded very weary. There was a rattle of a chain, the solid snick of a heavy deadbolt, then the snap of the door lock. The door opened a crack.

  “The hell do you two want?” the girl said.

  “C’mon, sis, let us in,” Leonard whispered. There was a heavy sigh and the door swung wide. The two men stepped inside. DeWayne wrapped his arms around the girl and lifted her up off the ground in a bear hug. “Put me down, asshole,” she said, the words muffled against his shoulder. There was no anger in her voice, just a kind of weary amusement. DeWayne put her down and stepped back.

  She was a tiny woman, a little over five feet. It was the breasts that men noticed first, an unfortunate fact that had shaped most of her adult life. They seemed overly large for her thin body and thrust against even the shapeless cloth robe she wore, demanding attention. Her hair, cut short and parted in the middle, was dyed a dark reddish-brown. The hair was rumpled, as if she had just gotten out of bed. Her facial features were small and regular, but just enough out of proportion to one another that she missed beautiful by a narrow margin and had to settle for cute. Her mouth was drawn in a perpetual affected pout that she thought was sexy, but served only to give the impression of a sulky child. The year since they had seen one another had not been kind to her. Leonard noticed her pallor, the bags under her eyes, the slight trembling as she took a cigarette out of the pack on the hall table and lit it.

  “We need a place to stay for a couple days, sis,” Leonard said. “Can we come in and talk about it?”

  “You are in,” she said, then sighed. “Okay, c’mon. I think there’s some beers in the fridge.” She turned and walked back into the house. DeWayne and Leonard followed. A short hallway led towards the living room. A door to the right about halfway down the hallway opened into the kitchen. Leonard dropped the bag on the floor across from the kitchen door.

  “Look like you’re sleepin’ late, Crys,” DeWayne said. “Livin’ a life o’ leisure, huh?”

  “Fuck you, DeWayne,” she said. She sat at the kitchen table, which was piled with newspapers. She gestured at the fridge. “Help yourselves.”

  There was no beer in the refrigerator, and no food other than a jar of mustard and a can of cat food with a plastic lid.Finally, DeWayne located a half-empty bottle of Popov Vodka in the freezer. He made a happy noise and sat down at the table across from Crystal. He took a drink straight from the bottle.

  She looked from one to the other with a mixture of resentment and resignation. “Well?” she said. “What’s all this about?”

  Leonard explained the situation to her. Her expression never changed. He finished by saying, “So we just need to lay up here for a couple days, till we can figger out where to go. Okay, sis?”

  She blew out a long streamer of smoke. “Yeah, okay,” she said finally. “But y’all gotta be careful. This is a quiet neighborhood. People work nights, sleep days. You start raisin’ hell,” she looked at DeWayne, “and you’re gonna have the cops all over this place.”

  DeWayne gave her a lopsided grin and took another pull from the bottle. “No problemo, sweet thing,” he said.

  There was a muffled beeping noise from the handbag hung over one of the kitchen chairs. “Shit,” Crystal said. “What time is it?”

  Leonard looked at the clock over the stove. It was stopped. “Ahhh…about five-thirty,” he guessed.

  Crystal swore under her breath. She pulled a small black beeper out of the purse and looked at the screen. She shook her head. She picked an old-style rotary phone up off the floor next to the table and dialed.

  “Yeah, it’s me,” she said. She listened for a moment. “I can’t tonight,” she said. “I got company.” There was a burst of angry speech on the other end. “No, no, it’s notI’m not she was having trouble getting a word out. Finally, the voice on the other end said something that caused her eyes to widen. “Okay,” she said. “Okay, I’ll be there as soon as I can. I just got up. I will. I will, I promise.” She hung up the phone and looked off

  into the distance for a moment, chewing her lower lip. “I gotta go,” she said, and stood up. “I gotta go to work.”

  Leonard and DeWayne looked at each other. “Hey, Crys,” DeWayne said finally, if your boss is givin’ you any trouble, we can, you know…”

  “No, no,” she said. “It’ll be alright. It’s okay. They’re just— short-handed.”

  “At a titty bar?” DeWayne said.

  Her eyes narrowed and snapped around to bear on DeWayne. “You mind your own damn business, DeWayne, you hear?”

  Both of the men put up their hands. “Easy, Crys, take it easy,” Leonard said. He used the soothing tone of voice he had developed through years of intercession between his sister and their cousin. Crystal got up and walked out of the kitchen.

  “The fuck’s eating her?” DeWayne wondered. Leonard shrugged. “Whatever,” he said. “We need to get us some food. And we’re outta beer.” He stood up, put his hands in the middle of his back and stretched. “Gettin’ too old for this shit,” he muttered. He walked into the living room, with DeWayne following.

  The old farmhouse was in the middle of what John Lee referred to as “Bum-fuck Egypt.” It fronted on a narrow two-lane road and was surrounded on the other three sides by tobacco fields. An enormous oak tree dominated the front yard. A row of crepe myrtle obscured the lower half of the screened in porch that ran along the front of the house. The crepe myrtle was beginning to bloom, with long strings of bright-red and pink flowers bowing down the branches with their weight. The thick greenery had been allowed to grow long, so that the screen door in the center seemed to peek out from a flowered jungle.

  As the truck pulled into the driveway, an old man came to the door. He was of medium height, with white hair that stuck out in unruly tufts from beneath an ancient gimme cap from a long-defunct seed company. The cap was as lined and creased as the hand that rested on the jamb of the screen door, holding it half-open as the man waited. In contrast, the old man’s bib overalls seemed brand new, with a knife-edged crease in the pants.

  “Stay here,” Raymond muttered. John Lee nodded once. Sanchez looked worried.

  Raymond got of the truck and walked towards the old man, smiling like a door-to-door salesman. “Hep you?” the old man said as he approached. His voice was neutral, but his eyes flickered warily between Raymond and the two men in the truck. A Latino traveling with a pair of Indians was an unusual sight outside of the realm of manual labor. People tended to stick with their own kind. Raymond was too well-dressed for picking cotton or priming tobacco.

  “Nice farm,” Raymond said, still smiling.

  “Ain’t mine no more,” the old man said. “Got too old to work it. Had to sell ever’thing but the home place.”

  Raymond nodded. “That’s too bad.” The old man said nothing. “DeWayne around?” Raymond asked.

  The old man’s face seemed to close up, as if steel shutters ha
d suddenly dropped down across it. “He ain’t here. He an’ Leonard done took off somewheres. Ain’t seen him in a couple weeks.”

  Raymond had arrived at the door. He slowed down rather than stopping, crowding the old man until he stepped back out of the doorway. Raymond replaced the old man’s hand on the door with his own. The old man looked at the rings on Raymond’s fingers and back to his eyes, which were obscured behind his tinted glasses. The old man swallowed nervously. “He ain’t here,” he repeated in a smaller voice. Raymond continued to shuffle forward, forcing the old man to retreat farther into the cool darkness of the screened porch. “We kinda need to talk to him,” Raymond said. “It’s about a job he applied for.” He put a hand on the old man’s shoulder and turned him slightly, guiding him into the house. John Lee and Sanchez saw the door close behind them.

  “What is he doing?” Sanchez asked.

  John Lee shrugged. “Gonna ask him where this Puryear guy might’ve gone, I reckon.”

  Sanchez shook his head. “I don’t like this,” he said. “What will he—”

  “Don’t worry,” John Lee said. “Nobody’s gonna do anything. Just relax.”

  Sanchez looked at the house. His brow furrowed. “Your brother is a dangerous man,” he said. “He is a narcotraficante, a smuggler, no?”

  John Lee’s eyes went cold. “Where’d you hear that?”

  “Your father, he worried about this,” Sanchez replied. “Sometimes I heard him talking on the phone about how worried he was.”

  “And what the hell business was that of yours?” John Lee said.

  “I have sons,” Sanchez said. “In Colombia. I know what it is to worry. I felt bad for him.”

  “Well, he don’t worry no more,” John Lee said. “And you don’t worry neither. You just mind your business.”

  “If I was minding my business,” Sanchez pointed out, “I would not be here.” John Lee had no answer for that.

  They sat in silence for a long while. Sanchez watched the front door. It was late afternoon and the shadows were beginning to deepen beneath the trees.

  There was a sound from inside the house, a wordless cry of pain. Then a sharp bang.

  Sanchez jumped, sitting up straight in the seat. He looked around frantically. “Que? Que pasa?” he said. “What is happening?”

  “Nothing,” John Lee said, but his own agitation robbed the words of all calming effect. He drew his pistol from beneath the seat. He slid over to the driver’s side door and started to open it. There was another cry, then a sound like someone weeping. John Lee stopped, half in and half out of the open door of the truck. A louder wail came from the house, an unmistakable sound of pure agony and despair.

  “Do something!” Sanchez cried. He reached for the door handle. John Lee swung the pistol to bear on Sanchez. “You stay there!” he said. His voice shook, but Sanchez heeded the message of the gun rather than the sick look on John Lee’s face. The two men stared at each other, each straining their ears, wanting to hear what was happening and desperately afraid of the what the next sound would bring. The silence roared in their ears for what seemed like hours. Another flat bang, then the faint sound of a voice. It was pitched high and fast, with a note of desperation. Then there were two more bangs and the silence closed down again.

  After a few minutes, Raymond came out of the house. He was folding a torn piece of paper. He put the paper in his jacket pocket. John Lee and Sanchez noticed the pistol was stuck in his waistband.

  John Lee slid back over to the middle of the seat as Raymond got in. Sanchez was staring at him, eyes wide.

  “What happened?” John Lee asked.

  “Nothin’,” Raymond said. He drew the gun out of his waistband, laid it on the seat between himself and John Lee. “Found out he has a sister in Fayetteville. We’ll try there.” He patted his jacket over the pocket. “I got her address.”

  “How did you get the address?” Sanchez demanded. “What did you do?”

  Raymond smiled. “I asked. Nicely. But I had to ask a few times.” He started the truck.

  Sanchez shook his head. “No. This is not right. This is not what I agreed.” His accent had become thicker with agitation.

  Raymond put the truck back in park and looked at Sanchez. His face was expressionless. “You want out, you can get out here.”

  Sanchez looked at the pistol on the seat. He swallowed hard. After a few moments, he looked into Raymond’s eyes. He saw there what would happen to him if he got out of the truck. He shook his head again. “No. I stay.”

  Raymond smiled again. “That’s what I thought,” he said. He started the truck and drove off.

  DeWayne leaned over the mirror with the intense focus of the truly wasted. He stuck the rolled up twenty into his left nostril and slowly hoovered up the first of the thick white lines laid out on the mirror. Then he switched nostrils and did the other one. He straightened up, threw his head back, and howled like a dog.

  “God Damn it, DeWayne,” Crystal’s voice came from the next room. “I told you to keep quiet.”

  “I feel good, da-da-da-da-da-da-da,” DeWayne sang. “I knew that I would, y’all—”

  “Hey, James Brown,” Leonard said. “Shove that mirror over here.” DeWayne obliged him, placing the small bag of cocaine on the mirror. “Man,” he observed. “This is some good shit.”

  Crystal came out of the bedroom, dressed in a plum-colored low-cut dress. Her mouth dropped open in shock at the sight of DeWayne and Leonard demolishing her stash. Her face turned red with anger. “What the hell do you two think—”

  “Easy, Crys,” Leonard said. He pulled the fat roll of bills out of his shirt pocket and waved it at her. “We gotcha covered,” he grinned.

  She looked at the cash, suspicion and avarice warring for possession of her face. “How much of that do you still have left?” she demanded.

  “Less you know, little sister,” DeWayne said, “the—.ahhhh—less you know.” He giggled.

  “More’n that in this here bag, darlin’,” Leonard promised, holding up the money bag. “Think you could get us some more o’this good toot?”

  “Yeah,” Crystal said, her eyes still fixed on the bag. She tore her eyes away and smiled at him. “I gotta run a couple of other errands first though.”

  “Ain’t you gonna be late for work?” DeWayne said.” You been in there an hour.”

  She laughed. It was a bitter, humorless sound. “They’ll wait,” she said. “They always do.” She held out her hand and Leonard counted off several bills into it with the flourish of a king rewarding a favorite courtier. “We need some more beer, too,” he said.

  Crystal nodded. “I’ll be a couple hours,” she said. She picked up her purse and walked to the door. “For Chrissakes, try to stay quiet.” As she walked out, she pulled a cell phone out of her purse. Leonard went to the window to watch her go. He saw her talking on the phone as she walked to the car.

  “We oughta eat somethin’,” DeWayne suggested. “How ‘bout we order a pizza?”

  Leonard thought it over. It seemed reasonably safe. “Yeah, all right,” he said. He picked up the phone.

  “And see if they’ll bring us some more beer,” DeWayne suggested. “I don’t feel like waitin’ two hours for Crystal to get back. I got a thirst.”

  Leonard sighed. “They don’t do that, DeWayne,” he said. “You can’t get no one to deliver beer.”

  “Shee-it, cuz,” DeWayne replied. “One thing I know, people’ll do damn near anything if the money’s right.”

  Leonard picked up the phone.

  Keller pulled over and parked halfway down the block on the dead-end street. He noticed a rusted pickup truck parked in front of the white house. The truck had not been there when he had checked the house out before. He didn’t recognize the truck or the license plate as any of the ones that Angela had supplied him with as being registered to DeWayne Puryear. The truck could have belonged to any resident of the street. Still, Keller felt his heart quicken. There was
no logic to it, he knew, but some instinct made the hair stand up on the back of his neck. He took a second to savor the anticipation. The takedown was just moments away. The adrenaline began to course through him, singing in his bloodstream. It was the reason he did the job. He reached for the cell phone. As he picked it up, it buzzed softly. He silently thanked the reflex that had caused him to turn the ringer off and set the phone to “vibrate.” The sudden quivering sensation, however, made the phone feel like some small and frightened animal in his hands.

  “Keller,” he said softly into the phone.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Angela’s voice demanded. Her voice sounded strained. There was none of the usual banter.

  “Sorry,” he said, still almost whispering. “Turned the ringer off. And I had to run a few errands.” He looked at the truck. “I need you to run a plate for me.”

  “In a minute,” Angela said. “You need to hear this. DeWayne Puryear’s parents have been killed.”

  Keller tensed. “When?”

  “A few hours ago. Both of them, shot in the back of the head. Execution style. It was on the radio.”

  “They think he did it?”

  “No.” her voice was shaky. “I know a couple of people on the Sheriff’s department down there, so I made some calls. I got a couple of details that weren’t on the news.” He heard her take a deep breath. “They think the father had been tortured. The fingers on his left hand were broken, like somebody bent them back till they snapped.”

  Keller winced. “Any idea why?”

  “There was some money stashed in a coffee can under the sink, so that’s not what they were looking for.”

  Keller thought for a moment. “DeWayne? They think someone else is looking for him?”