Perry studied his face. Oily, wrinkled, one eye more bloodshot than the other, bags underneath both. Early African American Wino, Perry thought.
Johnny, searching his memory, scratched his head, sending dandruff aloft.
“Perry?” he said. “You…uh…you…” He slapped his head, disturbing more dandruff. “You…”
“Doreen’s daughter.”
“Yeah, that’s it.” He reached out his arms. “Kinfolk. Give me a hug.”
“Johnny, I don’t do hugs.”
Johnny frowned and scratched his stubbly chin. “You the stuck-up one. The one with all the money. Come in, if you don’t mind.”
Inside was filthy and disorderly, just as she’d expected. A caustic odor, reeking of wet feet and regurgitated wine, cleared her sinuses.
Dirty clothes, pizza boxes, and empty Wild Irish Rose bottles were strewn throughout the living room. A big-screen television, cluttered with trash on top, was showing the Jerry Springer Show. A skinny white woman lay facedown on the floor, wearing only pink panties, also filthy.
Johnny slapped the woman on the buttocks. “Get outta here! I got company.”
The woman struggled to her feet, walked into a wall, said “Ooops!” and staggered down the hallway. Perry heard a loud crash and wondered had the woman fallen out of a window.
“Have a seat,” Johnny said.
Reluctantly, Perry sat on the vinyl couch.
Johnny sat next to her. “You ain’t here for nothing--what you want from me?”
“I need to buy a few things.”
“What?”
Perry reached inside her jogging suit, pulled out a paper bag and handed it to him.
Johnny looked into it. “You need bullets?”
“No, I need a gun just like that one. Exactly like that one.” Johnny reached into the bag. “No!” Perry snapped. “Don’t touch it! Can you get me one?”
“I might know someone. It’s gonna cost plenty.”
“How much?”
“A thousand.”
“Okay.”
“Maybe more.”
“Hmmph!” Perry snorted. “I heard you were kind to family.”
“I am to the ones who let me hug em.”
“If it means that damn much to you, I’ll hug you.”
He shook his head. “Nope. You didn’t wanna at first, forget it.”
“Another thing. I’m having trouble sleeping. A friend told me flunitrazepam cures insomnia. Can you get that, too?”
“Floozy-who? What the hell is that?”
“A drug.”
“Never heard of it. I can get you ludes, uppers, downers, painkillers.”
“It’s also called Rohypnol.”
“Roofies? The date-rape drug?”
“Uh…yes.”
JD laughed, a hearty hee hee. Perry noticed the lone tooth in his mouth, upper, dead center, rotten.
“Why didn’t you say that at first? That’s my old lady’s drug of choice. Lift the cushion you sitting on.”
Perry stood up and raised the cushion. Among trash was a pre-sealed bubble pack. Four of the six bubbles were burst, only two pills left.
“If you haven’t tried those before, you better take half of one. Liz, my old lady, she’s hooked on that shit. You saw her, a fucking zombie.”
“How much?”
“Fifty dollars a pill. Includes shipping and delivery. They don’t even make em here, you know.”
Perry reached into her sock and handed him two fifty-dollar bills. “Okay. Let’s do the other. I’ve got to get back to Little Rock.”
“Yeah, okay. Let me throw on some clothes.”
Later, at the car, Johnny said, “Can I drive?”
“Have you been drinking?”
“Not yet.”
Perry tossed him the keys. “Don’t wreck my car!”
Johnny drove straight to Porter’s Liquor Store and pulled up to the drive-in window.
The cashier stuck his head out and Johnny said, “Give me a thirty-pack of Busch Light, a gallon of Hennessy, a half gallon of Freiz, a pint of ten-year-old Old Charter and three packs of Salem Lights. Aw yeah, and two packs of Juicy Fruit.”
When the cashier handed over the bags and said the price came to one hundred and ninety-two dollars and fifty cents, Johnny turned to Perry: “Pay the man.”
Perry slapped two bills into Johnny’s hand. Johnny paid the man and pocketed the change.
“That’s my change,” Perry said.
“Finder’s fee.”
“You haven’t found shit yet, Johnny, but a free drink! Don’t think you’re going to keep bullshitting me, you hear?”
Johnny responded by unscrewing the Hennessy bottle while steering with a knee, held it overhead and guzzled, the amber liquid running down his chin. He burped loudly. “It’s coming.”
Johnny steered the Cadillac down a dirt road and stopped in front of a shotgun house where mostly men and a few women loitered on the porch and in the front yard.
“I’ll be right back,” he said, exiting the car.
Perry heard someone say, “Who that with you, JD?” When Johnny replied “Go see,” she locked the doors. Three men strolled over, staring at her as if she were an exotic bird.
Perry eased her right hand into an Isotoner glove.
“What’s your name?” asked one of the men, pressing his inebriated face against the windshield.
Perry slid her hand into the paper bag.
One man, shirtless, tapped on the driver’s-side window. “Hey, sugar, is JD your man?”
He waited for Perry to respond. She didn’t.
“You too pretty to talk to me, huh? Look at this.” He wiggled his tongue at her and licked the glass, leaving a long saliva streak. “Can JD do that? Huh?”
“Naw, man,” another man said. “She wants the real deal,” fondling his crotch. “Sausage! Good hot sausage. Smoked-link. Hickory flavor. Zero saturated fat.”
In a flash Perry hopped out of the Cadillac, Glock in hand. She pointed it in the air, fired twice, and aimed it at one of the men, the one who suggested pork.
“The fuck away from my car!”
The man garbled, backed away with hands held high, mouth opening and closing, and tripped on a Wild Irish Rose bottle.
The other two men disappeared, one inside the house, the other a half mile down the dirt road, running, a cloud of dust chasing him.
All the loiterers had scattered, most inside the house, and a few into the woods in back, one rotund man behind a thin pine that didn’t conceal his frame.
A single motion, Perry backhanded the man over the head with the Glock as he tried to regain his footing and fired into the air again.
He yelled “Oh, she shot me!” and with renewed vigor took off running, blood pouring down his head.
Johnny came running out of the house and stopped a few feet short.
“Uh…is something wrong, cuz?”
“No,” Perry said, holding the gun to her side like a gunfighter. “Did you get it?”
“Yeah, I mean, no. Almost had it, got him down to five hundred. Then we look out the window, see you popping his friend upside the head. Why you do that?”
“Because I felt like it. Go get it, so I can get the hell outta here!”
The final offer was thirteen hundred dollars. Firm. Perry paid it and told Johnny to get his shit out of her car and find another way home.
Driving, she inspected the gun. It was an exact duplicate of Tasha’s gun, except for an inch-long scratch along the barrel and, of course, the serial numbers.
She sped by a Dawson County cruiser parked southbound on the highway. She noticed the speedometer. Shit! She slowed down and stared into the rearview, hoping the cruiser would not follow. It did.
She dropped both guns onto the floorboard, pushed them under the seat with her foot, and steered the car onto the shoulder.
In the side mirror, she watched Sheriff Ennis Bledsoe waddle up to the Cadillac. She palmed the Rohypnol
package in her hand.
“Ma’am,” he said, a hand covering his revolver, “may I see your license and regist--Why if it ain’t Miss Perry!”
Perry gave him her best smile. “Why if it ain’t Sheriff Anus.”
His expression turned sour. “License and registration, please?”
Perry dropped the package in her purse as she retrieved her license.
He studied the license for a long while. “What you doing down here?”
Perry laughed. “Can’t a girl visit her hometown?”
“Yes, she can. Who you come to see?”
The question caught her off guard. “Well…no one in particular.”
Sheriff Bledsoe grunted. “Your immediate family’s gone, who did you come to see?”
“Sheriff,” Perry said, irritated, “did I do something illegal?”
“You were going sixty-five. Speed limit through here forty-five.” He studied the license some more. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to search your vehicle.”
Perry’s mouth dropped. “Why you wanna do that?”
“Just a routine check, won’t take a few minutes.”
Fat asshole! He could just write me a ticket and be done with it. Nooo! He has to throw his fat ass around!
She smiled at him again. “Okay. You mind if I take my purse?”
“No, go right ahead.” She got out and stood behind him. “Would you stand behind the car, please?”
Perry stepped to the rear of the Cadillac. Thinking the cruiser had a surveillance camera, she gave it her back. Sheriff Bledsoe started searching under the passenger seat.
Perry reached into her purse and gripped a butcher knife.
The police radio squawked. “Unit one…come in please…” The dispatcher paused, waiting for a response. “Ennis, pick up, please!”
“Fiddle faddle!” Sheriff Bledsoe said, getting out of the Cadillac. He crossed to the cruiser and picked up the mike. “Unit one, go ’head.”
“Ennis, we’ve got a disturbance out at Jake’s place. Caller said a woman brandished a gun, pistol-whipped him with it.”
Sheriff Bledsoe groaned. “Ten-four, I’m en route.” He gave Perry her license back. “Somebody out at Jake’s acting a fool.”
Perry winked at him. “I understand, Sheriff Anus.”
“The name is Sheriff Ennis Bledsoe. I’d really appreciate it if you address me accordingly.”
Perry nodded. He got back into the cruiser and just as he was driving away, Perry, waving, said, “Be careful, Sheriff Anus.”
The cruiser accelerated, kicking up gravel.
Moments later, Perry was back on the highway, rolling the tip of a paper straw between her thumb and forefinger. Her fifth attempt to open a straw without damaging the paper.
The paper broke once again. “Damn!”
She defenestrated the damaged straw and picked up an
intact one. The paper broke as before. Perry tried again and again…and again.
Frustrated, she turned the radio on, found nothing she particularly liked and turned it off.
Perry sang: “You’re going down, ba-by…six feet in the ground, ba-by…I’ll still be uptown, ba-by…” She picked up her cell phone and thumbed her home number.
“Pick up the damn phone!” she said after the sixth ring.
“Hello,” Neal said.
“Hey, baby. I was just singing about you.”
“I overslept, didn’t know you were gone.”
“You had one helluva night, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, I did.”
“Did you get my note? It’s on the mirror.”
“I see it. Wait a minute…got it.” She could hear paper rattling. “Thanks.”
“Hey, baby, let’s get married, okay? Listen, we get married, the only thing I’ll expect from you is to fuck me all day and all night…twenty-four-seven…three hundred and sixty-five.”
No response on the other end.
“Neal?…Neal?…Neal, you still there?”
“Yeah,” he said dryly. “Yeah, I’m still here.”
“Well, what you think?”
“I…” He sighed. “I don’t know.”
“Listen to me, Neal, I’m serious here. I love you more than anything in the world. I know in my heart that you and I are soulmates.”
“Don’t you think it’s a little too soon. Marriage? Perry, we just met. Don’t you think we oughta give the boyfriend-girlfriend thing a go first?”
“Neal, listen, just listen, hear me out. I’ve got almost a million dollars in the bank. My stock portfolio is estimated at half a million. Baby, my house, the cars, they’re all paid for. Neal, alone, by myself, it all means nothing. Neal, honey, I wanna share it all with you…you, Neal, nobody but you, the man I love. Baby, please don’t break my heart telling me you don’t want me.”
Neal cleared his throat. “When do you want to get married?”
“Today!”
* * * * *
When Neal hung up the phone his hands were shaking. He’d just agreed to marry a woman he met a day and a half ago.
Yeah, and she has a million dollars.
He said it aloud: “A million dollars!” Feeling faint he sat down on the edge of the bed. “A million dollars!”
Nervous, ecstatic, and scared shitless, he didn’t quite know what to do with himself. He stood up and put on his underwear…and then took them off.
I’m going crazy!
She said a million dollars, not fifty dollars but a million dollars.
He thought of Derrick. The boy ain’t over the divorce yet.
‘Derrick, meet my new wife. She’s got a million dollars. Derrick, do you know how many zeroes are in a million? A bunch of em.’
He still might not like her. What’s not to like? She’s rich…and she’s beautiful…and she’s rich…and she’s beautiful…He couldn’t think of anything else.
Would she accept Derrick? She’d have to.
He looked around the room. The armoire, the chifforobe, the numerous porcelain lamps and the two matching nightstands were all antique. Old folk’s furniture, Neal thought.
The king-sized four-poster bed with gold satin sheets, the two ceramic statues of naked men with preternaturally long phalluses, the mirrors adorning every wall and the large watercolor depicting two women kissing suggested a sleazy salaciousness that he didn’t want to think about.
Tasha?
He put his pants on and then realized he’d forgotten his underwear. “Damn!”
Tasha’s gonna be mad…fighting mad.
‘Tasha, I know I was just with you the other day, but this woman has a million dollars, and she gives hellacious head.’
That definitely wouldn’t work. No matter what he said Tasha would still get pissed and probably demand her keys back.
And that would be the end of our monthly interludes.
“Damn!” He noticed that he’d put his underwear on backward.
Chapter 17
Tasha blew the horn, the fifth time. Still no response from inside the garage.
“Where is your Daddy?” she asked Derrick.
Derrick shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Unusual, Tasha and Derrick both knew, for Neal not to show up in the last four days. If he’d left town, surely he would have informed them. Tasha had been worried about him ever since she had that nightmare.
“Go knock on Miss Mabel’s door and ask her if she’s seen your daddy.”
Derrick jumped out the car and ran to the house.
Maybe, Tasha thought, I’ve been too hard on Neal. Derrick thinks so. I’ll take him and Derrick to that new seafood restaurant in Cabot. Neal loves shrimp.
Derrick came back. “She said she ain’t seen him.”
“She hasn’t seen him.”
“Yeah. She thought he was with us.”
“That’s strange.” To herself: “Where has he got his sorry butt off to?”
“What you say, Momma?”
“Nothing. Where do
you want to stay? Here or at home by yourself?”
“At home.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. I’ll call you, and I’ll try to come home for lunch, okay? You know who to call in case of an emergency?”
“Momma, you think something bad happened to Daddy? He’s been gone a long time.”
“Derrick, a few days isn’t a long time. He’s probably--why you say that?”
Derrick shrugged. “I don’t know. I just think something might have happened to him. Something bad.”
“No, Neal’s okay. Maybe he found a job.”
Derrick stared hard at his mother. Tasha, feeling the heat of his gaze, studied the road.
“Run that by me again,” Derrick said.
Tasha looked him in the eye, and they both burst out laughing.
* * * * *
There were five messages on her desk, four of which from Doris Davis. Tasha moaned.
“She’s been calling you all morning,” Bob said. “Maybe you should break the bad news to her.”
“You’re right. I’ll call her later this evening.”
“Oh, I almost forgot. There’s a local yokel waiting for you in the break room.”
“Who?”
“A sheriff. He’s been here all morning.”
Sheriff Ennis Bledsoe was reading Helaine Freeman’s column in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette and sipping coffee when she walked into the break room.
“You’ve come a long way for free coffee,” Tasha said.
“It’s worth it,” he said, folding the paper. They shook hands.
Tasha sat next to him on the wooden bench. “What brings you to these parts, partner?”
He took a sip and smiled. “You city folks make darn good coffee.”
“You should have called, and I would have mailed you a bag.”
He took another sip. “I’m here to chat with our friend Perry.”
“About what?”
“Forgive me for asking. Did you change something?”
“New hairstyle. Tell me, what’s up with Perry?”
He stared at her hair. “It looks good.”
“Thanks,” Tasha said. “What’s going on with Perry?”
“A few days ago a woman pulled a gun on three ginheads down in Dawson. She popped one upside the head pretty good, had to have thirteen stitches. Prior to my responding to the call, I was in the process of searching Perry’s vehicle, a black Cadillac Escalade.”
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