by Matthew Iden
The man smiled. “I’ll take that as a yes. I’m Douglas Hughes. You may call me Dougie, if you like. All my friends do.” He stopped, as if he had just thought of something. “Not that we’re friends yet. But we have an acquaintance in common, Roger Holden.”
Baby Boy’s forehead wrinkled. “Bubba?” His mouth felt like mush.
Douglas Hughes beamed. “The same. He said you’d gotten into a scrape the other night and, despite the odds being against you, managed to account for yourself quite well.”
“You a lawyer?”
Hughes laughed noiselessly for a few seconds. “Oh, Lord, no. I was an accountant, it’s true. I suppose I still look like one. But I found actuarial science to be, well, a drag, a young person like you might say. No, I’m a businessman. I provide loans, products, information, that kind of thing.”
Hughes had a light, genteel manner of speaking, soft and lilting, but the roundabout way of talking had Baby Boy just about falling asleep. Hughes saw this and moved closer, sitting gingerly on the edge of the bed. Baby Boy thought, He’s so small that I could just lift my leg and boot him into the hall without even trying. But he listened instead.
“I’m prepared to offer you employment, Russell. I don’t even need to…interview…you, as Roger said you are more than capable of handling yourself. I should mention—sorry to be the one to break it to you—both he and Richard Malcolm are going to have to let you go. None of my doing, I assure you. And you shouldn’t blame them. Just the pressures of doing business in a small county when there’ve been multiple assaults and a knifing outside one’s establishment. But Roger wanted to see that you were taken care of and knew I was, ahem, recruiting. So he contacted me.”
Baby Boy had trouble forming a sentence, but managed, “Doin’ what?”
“Well, the problem is—as you can see—I’m not very intimidating. And sometimes I find it difficult to collect the fees owed me for my good services. Frankly, it’s a waste of my time to even try when I could and should be concentrating my efforts elsewhere. So I need an…associate…to collect those fees, thereby saving me considerable time and aggravation. Such a man would have to be intimidating enough that violence would not be required…most of the time. But able to handle such if the situation required. You would be that person.”
Not much was getting through to Baby Boy. It sounded like he’d lost the only jobs he’d ever had. And this little man was offering to hire him for another. “How much?”
Hughes smiled, showing gold dental work on one yellowing tooth. “Right to the point. It would depend, of course, on performance. There’s definitely room to climb the ladder, so to speak, in my little organization. Let’s say…a thousand per week? You’d have to come to Roanoke to start with, of course, but that wouldn’t be so bad. Get away from the mountains for a while, eh?”
“Two thousand,” Baby Boy said.
Hughes tsked. “I haven’t even seen you at work yet, son. Twelve hundred.”
Baby Boy frowned, his eyebrows coming down over his nose like a mantle. “I can make that at Bubba’s. Eighteen.”
“No, you cannot. How about this: fifteen hundred a week to start with. Do your first job and if you prove yourself, we’ll raise it to sixteen hundred dollars per week. Maybe a bonus thrown in here and there. What do you say, Russell?”
“This legal work?”
Hughes pouted a little, looking disappointed. “Come now, Russell, you need to be more delicate than that, even if you are going to be my…security. Let’s just say it’s all relative, eh? You just put two men in the hospital using your bare hands. One of them will never breathe quite right again, and the other has trouble remembering his name, never mind saying it. But you did it under certain circumstances—your job. That exonerate you, yes? However, if you go line dancing at a club tonight and try the same thing, you’ll do five to eight years in a fine regional lockup for assault and battery.”
Baby Boy stayed quiet.
“That’s a rather simplistic example, I know,” Dougie continued. “But think of the work I want you to do in the same way. It might run you afoul of the law were you to do it on your own, but if you do it under my protection…why, you might actually find yourself being thanked by a certain judge who happens to be a very dear friend of mine.”
Baby Boy was a little dizzy and didn’t quite follow what Dougie was saying. But he was being offered a boatload of money to do less, maybe, than what he’d had to do bouncing for Bubba. Hughes, watching the wheels turn, smothered a good-natured laugh. “Do we have a deal, Mr. Jenkins?”
Baby Boy nodded once. “Yes, sir.” He didn’t know why he called him sir. He didn’t even call his dad sir.
Hughes slapped him lightly on the knee. “Excellent. Here’s my card. When you get out of here—take your time, but don’t tarry, mind—come see me at my office in Roanoke. I’m sure I’ll have some work waiting for you.”
Three weeks later, his hand still in a cast, Baby Boy arrived at Hughes’s office, expecting the offer to be bogus. The office was on the third floor of a small redbrick building and shared the level with a dentist’s office. The hand-painted sign said in old-time script, Douglas Hughes, Actuary. Baby Boy opened the door and went into an unremarkable waiting room. There were several cheap vinyl chairs, some plastic plants and old magazines on a couple of end tables. A middle-aged woman with graying brown hair sat behind a receptionist’s desk. The nameplate on the desk said “Doreen Cummins.”
When he gave Doreen his name, he expected to be shown to Dougie’s office or told to leave, but instead she handed him a card with an address on it. She told him that Dougie wanted him to pick up a package there. He could hear the quotes around the word package. If they didn’t want to give him the package, he was to look threatening, but do nothing. If they still didn’t give him the package, he was to call the office. He started to ask some questions, but she shooed him out.
An hour later, he pulled in front of Pirmanni’s, an Italian bar and restaurant in downtown Roanoke. He walked in, having to duck a little to get through the second foyer door. Inside, it was like every other joint he’d bounced in—dark and smoky, even in the middle of the day. Two older men were talking in one corner at a short round table. They stopped when he came in. Green light from a Peroni sign on the wall lit their beers. There was only one guy working, wiping the bar down and emptying ashtrays. The man froze, eyes wide, as Baby Boy looked his way.
“You from Dougie?” he asked.
Baby Boy nodded and headed to the bar, wondering what the hell he was doing. The guy dropped the rag and walked over to the register, shaking his head and swearing under his breath. He took a handful of bills and counted out a stack, then slipped them into a banker’s envelope. He zipped it and without another word, handed it to Baby Boy.
Once he was back in his truck, Baby Boy opened the envelope and thumbed through the bills. About eight hundred bucks. For one second, he thought about hightailing it back home with all of it, then pushed the thought away. If this was one day’s take—no, one stop’s take—there was a hell of a lot more coming down the pike.
Dougie was in the waiting room, talking to Doreen the secretary when Baby Boy returned. He smiled like a little kid when Baby Boy handed him the envelope. “Bet you didn’t have to say a word, did you?”
From that point on, Baby Boy was Dougie Hughes’s number one muscle and had soon graduated from brainless muscle to something a little smarter and a little more dangerous…and for considerably more than sixteen hundred dollars a week. Anytime he wondered if he should be making more, he reminded himself that, so far, it was better than getting knifed in the back.
And that’s how Baby Boy Jenkins came to work for Dougie Hughes, the leading loan shark, drug runner, and small-time gangster of southwestern Virginia.
Chapter Eight
Lee and Randy moved along, leaving Virginia behind and riding the hills into Kentucky. It got hotter as they came down from the mountains, with the temperature hovering in
the nineties. The tow truck didn’t have AC, so they kept the windows down the whole time, the air roaring so loud that it was easy to forget that there was someone else in the truck.
Lee drove carefully, trying to keep the trailer from bouncing too much, now that his bike was on the back. It irritated him how everyone else seemed to treat the road like it was a high-speed chase. People weaved in and out of their lanes, cutting each other off, tailgating, and generally making it miserable for anyone driving a ten-year-old tow truck with a trailer hitched in the back. Lee just kept his cool and tried to stay in the far right lane, though he found that many people considered it their personal passing lane and would ride his ass for five or ten minutes straight before they whipped around him and passed on the left, giving him a dirty look as they shot by.
Randy was asleep most of the time, slouched in the passenger seat with his cap down over his eyes. He woke only twice in the first hundred miles or so, raising his head and looking around, nodding as if to approve, then falling back asleep. Lee hoped it wasn’t a sign of things to come. He wasn’t used to driving ten or fifteen hours a day and would need a break soon, or at least someone to talk to if he was going to stay awake.
When he felt himself start to fade around Frankfort, he pulled over into a rest stop and they grabbed lunch from a vending machine. After eating a plastic-wrapped turkey sandwich of questionable age, he felt good enough to drive again. He fiddled with the radio, trying to find a decent country station to help him stay awake. It seemed like a good omen when he found one playing the Clinch Mountain Boys until he realized the song was “Old Richmond Prison.” Spooked, he turned it off, waited ten minutes, then cautiously turned it back on. Shania Twain. That was better.
“Man, I don’t like her music, but she’s not hard to look at,” Randy said, breathing deep and sitting up. “Used to watch her videos all the time in the joint. Turn the music down and just look at her.”
“Morning, sunshine,” Lee said, looking over. He closed the window so they could hear each other. “True, she ain’t hard on the eyes. I don’t mind her singing, though.”
“What do you think about Tim McGraw?” Randy said.
“S’alright. Not exactly sure how much cowboy he is.”
“McGraw is for sissies. You can tell he ain’t even used to wearing that hat. Next thing you know, he’ll be wearing makeup.”
“Well, who’s your favorite, then, Mr. Critic?” Lee asked. He glanced in the rearview mirror and put his signal on to pass a station wagon doing fifty.
“Alan Jackson,” Randy said, smiling. “You can tell he’s country born and bred. Probably keeps a refrigerator on his porch and a ’79 Camaro on blocks in the front yard. I can sing ‘Chattahoochee’ all day long.”
“I’d rather you didn’t.”
They drove on in silence for a while after that, both of them checking the mirrors and the traffic around them. Once they got onto an open stretch of road, Lee cleared his throat.
“What do you think you’ll do with your share?” he asked.
Randy glanced over at Lee. “Well, now, that’s a good question. When I was in lockup, I’d think about it all the time, you know. Not just about getting out—you do that twenty-four seven—but being free and having the cash to do whatever you want. Drives some guys crazy. They make these plans, you know—the next job they’ll do, or how they’ll score some cash quick and legal, like in real estate or a lawsuit. You can’t do that or you’ll truly go out of your skull.”
“Yeah?” Lee said. “What about you?”
Randy considered for a minute. “I think I need a change of scenery, like the beach. I been to Norfolk, the Outer Banks, Hilton Head. They’re nice and all, but I been hearing about Mexico, you know, Cabo San Lucas. They say Sammy Hagar has a bar down there. That would be cool to see. Maybe hang out for a while or, hell, open my own place. Them beach bunnies come in, I’d swagger over with some rum drink and say, ‘Can I help you, ladies? I’m the owner of this fine establishment.’ I’d knock ’em over like duck pins.”
Lee raised his eyebrows. “You can do all that on sixty, seventy thousand?”
“Well, probably not. It’s cheap down there, I hear, but probably not enough to buy my own place. It’s nice to think about, though, huh? What’re you going to do with your share?”
Lee gave a short laugh. “You already know, partner. I got to pay off the trailer, make a dent in the loan I had to get for the garage, too. Got to be careful I don’t let everyone know how much money we made, but that’s why I’m in this.”
“Yeah. Seems like a waste, though, don’t it? Here you’re on your way to go steal a couple hundred grand in bikes and you’ll essentially throw it away when you get back, give it to the bank man.”
“It’s not throwing it away,” Lee said, indignant. “It’ll give us the push we need, let us get our heads above water.”
“Us?” Randy asked. “You and Raylene? You going to marry her?”
“If she’ll let me,” Lee said before he realized what he was saying.
“Let you? Damn, boy, who wears the pants in that house?” Randy crowed. “I knew she had you whipped but, my God, I had no idea how badly.”
Lee made a face. “It’s not like that. I can’t promise her much with the bank showing up, calling, sending letters about foreclosing on the trailer, repo’ing the bike or closing down the garage. I don’t hardly blame her. If I can’t give ’er her a future, why should she marry me?”
“Does she work?”
“No.”
“Uh-huh,” Randy said, tilting his head. “What’s she bringing to the table?”
Lee shrugged. “She shouldn’t have to. I’m supposed to be providing.”
“When were you born, son? Nineteen fifty?” Randy asked, incredulous. “You sure got some old-timey ideas. This is the age of women’s lib. Let Raylene go make some money, help the cause. Damn, if I had an old lady, not sure I’d be the one working at all. I’d just sit at home, drink beer, and watch NASCAR.”
“That’s pretty much what Raylene does,” Lee said with a sour look. “’Cept it’s chocolates and daytime television.”
“I don’t know, bud. Don’t they say marriage is a joining of equals or some such thing? Maybe she should be helping haul the load and not just your ashes, if you know what I mean.”
Lee was quiet for a while, thinking about it. He’d thought about it before, asking Raylene to get a job to at least bring home some groceries. But he took pride in playing the breadwinner, letting his little darling sit at home all day if she wanted to. It sounded good in theory, but when the bank statement arrived in the mail at the end of the month, he wasn’t so sure. Or, say, when she was standing on the trailer steps, screaming at him to bring home some money or else. Yeah, that’s when it didn’t seem like such a grand idea.
“You ever play house with anyone, bud?” Lee asked Randy.
“Hell, no. Slept around, stayed a couple of nights at most. I told you about those college girls. They’re easy, but they want you in and out. Literally. Especially when they discover you’re a hick from down near the Kentucky line. But shack up with someone for a year? Or life? I’d rather go back to the joint.”
“I heard you can get a wife in there, too,” Lee said, grinning. “Or be one, if that’s your preference.”
Randy turned to Lee, his good-natured look suddenly gone. “And what the hell would you know about it, Lee?”
Surprised, Lee said, “It’s just a joke, Randy.”
“Ain’t no joke when you’re in there, trying to keep yourself straight,” Randy said, and that ended any conversation for the next half hour. They both looked out their respective windows and stayed quiet.
Lee finally got a break when they crossed the Indiana state line around five, pulling into a rest stop for a few minutes to relax and switch seats. He was yawning and stretching by the truck when Randy came out with a package of Ho Hos and a Coke.
“You mind driving?” Lee asked, walking around
to the passenger side.
“Sure thing,” Randy said. “I don’t have a license, though. You okay with that?”
“Uh,” Lee said, stopping. “I guess. What happened to it?”
“Expired while I was in. Didn’t have a car and it still works to get in bars and buy booze, so why bother?”
Lee thought about it, then shrugged. “Hell, you know how to drive and I’m too beat to argue. Just be careful.”
They got back on the road. Lee was tired but too keyed up to go to sleep, so he settled for watching the countryside pass by. “Sure is flat here,” he said after about twenty minutes of seeing what he thought was the same farm for the fifth time.
Randy grunted. “I heard it’s worse further west you go. They put curves in the road just to keep you awake.”
Lee laughed a little and was quiet, going back to watching the cornfields roll by. After a while, to make conversation, he asked, “You remember your parents much?”
Randy was quiet so long that Lee wondered if he’d heard the question. “Some,” he said. “Mostly I remember my pop beating the hell out of me. He’d come home, slip off his belt and tiptoe around the house, try to catch me by surprise. He’d swing that belt like his life depended on it.”
“What’d you do?”
Randy shrugged. “I got wise. When I was a little kid, I’d hide things for him to knock over so I’d hear him coming. Or I wouldn’t go home after school at all, just hide in the woods. After a couple years, when I put on some size, I beat the shit out of him. Big surprise for him.” Randy reached for his pack of cigarettes and lit one, blowing the smoke towards the crack in the window. “What about your folks?”
“My mom. She took care of me as long as she could.” His dad was someone he could barely picture, in life or death. The funeral had been a closed-casket affair, since there wasn’t much to see when a skidder grapple lets loose an eighty-foot pine log on a man. He remembered the insurance man, though, a tall man in a mouse-gray suit, standing on the porch with an envelope a few days after the funeral. His mother had thanked him, accepting it, but not inviting him in, keeping the screen door shut. She had sat down on their faded paisley couch and stared at the envelope for what had seemed like hours. Lee had been the one to finally open it, handing her the check inside. She’d smiled at him then, cupping the side of his face in one hand, stroking his cheek with a thumb. She had smelled like rose water.