by David Liss
“Whoa there,” he said, taking only half a step back. He raised one hand defensively and flapped up the other, since the arm was still primarily committed to holding the beer. “Don’t be so uptight, baby. Can’t a man tell you he thinks you’re pretty?”
She was out of the booth and facing him, her switchblade out, the blade extended, before she even had time to think about it. “No,” she said. “He can’t.”
“Jesus. All right.” He took another couple of steps back and gave a half shrug to tell anyone who might have witnessed the exchange that it didn’t bother him.
Desiree watched to make sure he was gone. Then she picked up the phone and started to dial the motel. She hung up before it rang. The time had come to sever ties with B.B.- now, not some point in the near future. She’d been guilty and complicit too long.
That’s what their fight last month, over the boy at the roadside, had really been about. She’d been asked to draw a line. For as long as she’d been with him, there had been a line somewhere on the horizon, and now she’d come to it, stood over it. And once you get there, she thought, you can see what’s on the other side, and you can see what you’ve left so far behind that it’s lost in the blur.
No more. She had hardly exchanged more than a few sentences with him, but she was sure that Melford had come to tell her that. Things happened for a reason, accidents were part of the order of things, coincidence a manifestation of cosmic design. It was time to move on, and maybe, she thought, to make up for her mistakes, too. There had to be balance in the universe. She’d done harm, and now she had to do good. But what, exactly? Hurt B.B.’s business, slow down his crank trade? That didn’t feel right. B.B. was what he was, and he’d helped her. She would have to find something else. She would figure it out. Or maybe she could get some help.
***
For the second time that day, B.B. picked up the phone with his heart pounding. In his mind he’d always imagined having a hand in the Gambler’s destruction, but in the end he would almost certainly have to skip that. Why not turn things over to the mechanisms so readily available?
The ringing ended. “Meadowbrook Grove police.”
It wasn’t him. “Chief Doe,” B.B. barked in a staccato voice, base and forceful, entirely unlike his own.
“Hold on.”
There was a brief pause. “This is the chief.”
“Chief Doe,” B.B. said in his disguised voice, “I am calling to warn you. Ken Rogers, the Gambler, is setting you up. He had your meth cook killed to frame you. He is out to get you and take over your cut for himself. You’ve been warned.”
“Yeah? Who is this?”
“Someone who works with him,” B.B. said.
“And why are you telling me this?”
The question stumped B.B. Why would someone tell Doe? “Because,” B.B. said, deciding to stick to the truth, “the Gambler’s a fucking asshole who deserves what he gets.”
“Can’t argue with that logic,” Doe said.
B.B. hung up the phone. Now things would follow their course. Doe was a ruthless bastard, and he wouldn’t hesitate to take out the Gambler. He’d deny it to B.B.’s face, but that was okay. In the vacuum, Desiree would step in, and B.B. would be able to toast his success with Chuck Finn over a glass of Médoc.
***
Doe slowly hung up the phone.
“Who the heck was that?” Pakken asked him.
“A guy who was disguising his voice.”
“That’s what I thought, too,” Pakken said. “What’d he want?”
“To tell me the Gambler is going to fuck me over.”
“You think it’s true?”
Doe pushed himself down into his chair. “I don’t think so. I mean, he would if he could, but I don’t think that’s what’s going on right now. But I’ll tell you that whatever is going on, it is highly fucked up because a disguised voice don’t mean shit to me. I recognized him.”
Chapter 24
ON THE BALCONY, standing in Bobby’s massive shadow, I watched a wounded palmetto bug the size of an egg limp toward the Gambler’s door and force its way in through the crack. I’m sure there was something very clever I might have said to Bobby to defuse the situation, to make it disappear in a puff of smoke, but I didn’t know those words.
“Bobby,” I said. My voice felt heavy and stupid. “What’s new?”
“What were you doing in there?” he asked me, pointing to the Gambler’s room.
The words just tumbled out of my mouth. “The Gambler asked me to get something for him.” Why not? Bobby was already puzzled about my earlier meeting.
He continued to stare. “Shouldn’t you be out selling?”
I shrugged. “You’d think, wouldn’t you? But you know. The Gambler and all. Anyhow, what are you doing back here?”
“I just needed to get some Tums,” he said absently. “My stomach’s bothering me.”
“Hope you feel better. I’ll see you at the pickup later, okay?” And I dashed off, leaving him in what I hoped would be a state of such perplexity that he wouldn’t say anything to the Gambler before the end of the weekend.
***
Back in my own room, still shaken from my run-in, I stared at the information I’d copied down and tried to figure out what I was going to do with it. Then, all at once, I knew.
I took out the yellow pages and flipped through it in search of “Private Investigators.” Nothing, but I was redirected to “Investigators.” There were perhaps two dozen listings, but only three ads. I wanted someone who had taken out an ad, because I couldn’t risk some small-timer running a scam- not the way I was planning on handling this. After examining the ads, I went with Chris Denton Investigations. The quarter-page ad featured the silhouette of a man crouching and taking a picture with a telephoto lens. The text assured me that Chris Denton excelled in surveillance, criminal investigations, check-mates (which I assumed had nothing to do with chess), preemployment screening, process serving, employee fraud, missing persons, child custody evidence, contested wills, and loss prevention, whatever that was. More to the point, he could do background checks and record retrieval, which I guessed might be exactly what I wanted.
It was a local number, so I didn’t need my phone card, yet it didn’t seem like a good idea to me to talk in the room, thereby leaving evidence of the call on my bill. So I wrote the information on the same sheet of paper on which I’d copied everything from William Gunn’s business card and headed outside. I’d seen a phone booth behind the motel, where the parking lot met the highway, so I strolled over to the phone booth.
A shrill voice answered on the first ring. “ Denton.”
Here I was mouthing off to Officer Toms about gender equality, and it had never occurred to me that Chris Denton might be a woman. “Oh,” I said stupidly. “I thought you would be a man.”
“I am a man, you asshole,” the voice shot back. “I’m a man who sounds like a woman, okay? Everyone thinks I’m a woman on the phone. Can we move the fuck on?”
“Yeah, sure. Sorry.”
“Don’t sorry me, douche. Just state your business.”
“Okay, can you do a background check on someone for me?”
“How’d you get my number?” he asked.
“From the ad in the phone book.”
“Did the ad say I could do background checks, Sherlock?”
“It might have alluded to something like that.”
“Then you’ve got your fucking answer, don’t you? Look, I’m just finishing up some paperwork. Be at my office in an hour.”
“I can’t,” I said. “I’m sort of in a tight spot, and I need to do this over the phone.”
“You gonna shove my fee through the phone, too?”
“I’ll give you a credit card number. You can run it first, if you like, just to make sure everything is legit.”
“Can I now?” he snorted. “Thanks so fucking much for the permission. Okay, give me what you have.”
I read him the info
off my piece of paper. “I’m looking for anything in the public domain about this guy. Does he have a criminal record? Are there any press articles about him? That sort of thing.”
“Fine,” Denton said.
“I need it pretty fast.”
“Said the priest to the whore. How fast?”
“Today fast,” I said.
A brief pause. “I need four or five hours, but a rush job will cost you. Two hundred.”
It was more than I wanted to spend, and certainly more than I wanted to put on my credit card. I knew I was going to get it from Andy. Even if I told him in advance, gave him the money in advance (which I wouldn’t do, since the last time I did that, he claimed I hadn’t given him anything when the bill came), he’d still give me a hard time, tell me I was wasting his credit (as though credit were like the elastic on a pair of briefs that could get stretched out). But the money had to be spent, so I read him the credit card information and hung up.
***
When I turned around, Melford’s car was parked directly in front of the booth. I hadn’t seen him pull up. “Howdy, stranger,” he said through the rolled-down window.
The truth? I was happy to see him. Clearly he’d had no problems with Doe and made a clean escape. But that didn’t mean I was ready for more adventures. “No thanks,” I told him.
“We’ve been through this,” Melford said with mock gravity. “Let’s cut to the place where you get in the car.”
“Forget it,” I told him. “I’ve seen people killed, I’ve broken into buildings, I’ve been harassed and hurt by cops and nearly arrested. And you know what the worst thing is? You hung me out to dry, Melford. You were going to let me go down for your crimes. So, if you think I’m getting back in that car with you, you’re crazy.”
“I hung you out to dry?” he asked. “Lemuel, I was right there, every step of the way. I wasn’t going to let anything happen to you.”
“Yeah, what were you going to do about it?”
“Who do you think called the sheriff’s department in the first place?” he asked. “You think that nice lady cop just happened to show up? I knew getting someone from the county cops would defuse the situation, so I got them there. I’d have put a bullet through Jim Doe’s head if I had to, but I was hoping to avoid it. I thought you’d want me to avoid it.”
“Wow, that’s kind. No one’s ever refrained from killing a cop for me before.”
“Look, you were in a tight spot, I don’t deny it. But we’re already in a tight spot. You didn’t choose to get into this, and I’m sorry that you’re in it, but you are. You are just going to have to accept that. And when things got hairy, I got you out, didn’t I? You were in trouble, and I fixed the situation. Right?” He grinned at me. “I did, didn’t I?”
He did, but I didn’t quite want to admit it yet, even though I was pleased, maybe even delighted, that I no longer had to believe Melford had betrayed me. The truth was, the Gambler and Jim Doe were looking at me now, and they’d be looking at me regardless of whether or not I was spending time with Melford. Going it alone just didn’t make sense- not when having Melford around would actually keep me safer.
More out of frustration with myself than Melford, I kicked at the dirt and then walked around to the passenger side. “I’m not happy about this.”
“What can you do? You can either watch the world come tumbling down on your ass or you can get the hell out of the way of the rubble.”
“Keep the aphorisms coming. They’re cheering me up.”
Melford studied me, looked me up and down. “You’re very cynical. On the other hand, you’re also perfectly presentable. All washed up, blood off your face. I’m glad to see you’re ready to go.”
“Go where?”
“To play detective.”
Chapter 25
H IGH NOON was on the TV, but B.B. didn’t much feel like watching it. He could remember once liking that movie, thinking that Gary Cooper was cool and efficient, bucking up to do what he had to do, but now it seemed dull. Cooper was old compared with his earlier movies, as tired and irrelevant as his character. And as westerns went, it didn’t stack up against the really good ones. Now, Shane. That was a movie.
Feeling good about himself, his future, his phone call, B.B. strolled over to the closet to examine himself in the full-length mirror- not out of vanity, but to make sure his linen suit wasn’t too wrinkled. Always the problem with linen. “Wear it once and throw it in the trash,” Desiree liked to say. He’d been keeping on his sunglasses, even inside, since calling Doe, but now he removed them. The suit looked good, and the black T-shirt, too- crisp and right around his neck. He hated a T-shirt with a sagging neck. The hair was okay. A bit long in the back and thinning in the forehead, but that was that. The leather brown color was more real than nature herself.
He did a half turn to make sure his ass didn’t look big. When he moved he caught a glimpse of the phone on the nightstand. The one on which he’d placed his defining call to Doe. The one on which Desiree hadn’t called him. Where in the hell was she? What was she doing?
Now that his revenge against the Gambler was in play, he needed her to keep an eye on things, make sure all went as he intended. He supposed that maybe if the kid kept moving, she might not have had a chance to check in yet, but he didn’t quite buy it. Nor did he believe that something had happened to her. Not Desiree. No, she was punishing him. She was still angry with him over that business with the boy.
All he’d wanted was to help him, give him a ride, a good meal at the house, and then get him to wherever he wanted to be. How could it be that even Desiree doubted his motives, that even she saw something sinister where there was only kindness? And what would she say about his wanting to taste wines with Chuck Finn? He shook his head. No, his plan was perfect. Get rid of her by promoting her. It would be a hard transition, but he’d live with having to pick up his own dry cleaning. Hell, maybe he could give Chuck a little part-time work as a valet.
Everything was on the verge of falling apart, and everything was on the verge of being fixed. How ironic and how pleasant that it all hinged on doing to the Gambler what he ought to have done two or three years ago.
Just like that, there he was, only for a second, back in his Las Vegas apartment, falling back hard, knocking his head against the wooden frame of his futon, blood from a cut on his forehead dripping in his eyes, blood from his nose dripping into his mouth. Above him, broom handle brandished like a Homeric warrior, the Gambler squinted in joyless intensity.
For too long he’d held off on dealing with the Gambler, who now was making money, enjoying power, and oblivious to the fact that he lived by B.B.’s grace. No more of that. Doe would solve the problem, and if he dug his own grave in doing so, then B.B. could live with that.
Something- something bad- had evaporated, fled his body. It had been weeks, maybe months, since he’d felt this energetic. B.B. replaced the sunglasses, stepped outside the room, and gave his eyes a minute to adjust to the blazing sun. It was another scorcher today, close to triple digits and humid enough for fish to swim through the air. Reflected light shot off the cars in the parking lot. With one hand to his forehead, he gazed across the courtyard and at the mostly empty pool. This wasn’t much of a vacation motel- the guests were people who stopped for the night out of desperate fatigue. Still, the owners, a bunch of Indians, like more and more hotel owners these days, optimistically kept the pool up, waiting for that better class of clientele that would surely arrive when Ganesha so ordained.
Right now, the only adult by the pool was an enormous woman in a lavender one-piece, a year or two on either side of forty, lying with shades over her eyes, chewing gum, smiling into the heat. B.B. gave a slight sympathetic shake of his head. The poor pathetic thing, a baking seal with a bleached blond bob, legs like condoms overfilled with curdled milk. Across the pool from her, playing loudly, were two boys he’d seen before. The two aimless, neglected boys who, if left to follow their sad course, would
lead empty, disappointed lives. These were boys, he knew, in need of mentoring.
Part of him felt he ought not to be looking for new mentees. He had Chuck Finn waiting for him at home, after all. But he was here, and the boys were in need of a guiding adult presence. It would be wrong, selfish, to fail to do what he could.
B.B. crossed the parking lot and shuffled over to the woman on the chaise longue and blocked her sun. She lowered her sunglasses and squinted up. He smiled his most ingratiating smile. “Excuse the interruption,” he said, “but are those your boys?” Of course they weren’t, but B.B. knew the drill. Show her some respect, and she’d defer to his charitable impulses.
“They bothering you, too?” She wrinkled her nose as though she had to sneeze.
He shrugged. “I’m just wondering.”
“They ain’t mine,” she told him. “I wouldn’t let my boys act that way if I had any. I think they’re with their father, and I saw him leave early this morning in his truck. Left them alone, I guess. He was kind of cute,” she added thoughtfully.
This was all good news. No parent around to impose misguided values on the children. No hypocritical guardian of right and wrong to impose the pinched morals that denied boys what they needed.
“I’ll go talk to them,” B.B. told her brightly, as though volunteering to do the dirty work. “Ask them to quiet down.”
“Kind of you.”
An awkward pause. “I like your sunglasses,” he told her, not able to think of anything else to say.
“Thanks.”
“I’ll let you get back to your sunning.”
“You bet.”
Though B.B. couldn’t see her eyes, he felt sure they were closed now, and the gum chewing resumed with its lulling bovine rhythm. He stayed a moment longer than necessary, staring in train-wreck style at the folds of fat emerging from under her white suit. Her breasts were surprisingly small considering her magnitude. It must be hard on a woman, he thought, to be so massive and not even have the bust to show for it. Still, there were some men who found obese women attractive. It was a funny world.