Beluga

by Rick Gavin

  He spat a stream. He told us both, “Well, shit.”

  TEN

  For a few minutes there, I was even actually planning on going home. Then I reached the turnoff up around Isola and found myself working west with Greenville in my sights. I decided I was going to have a word with Kendell face-to-face. Get a read on him, a feel for his personal opinion of Lucas Shambrough.

  You couldn’t tell much about Kendell on the phone. He was short with everybody. A face-to-face, I told myself, that’d be worth driving for. Then there was the Officer Raintree factor that I thought about a little, too.

  So I both drove and rationalized. I even took the chance of swinging north up by Geneill on the way. I found a spot where I could get a good look at the Lucas Shambrough homeplace without running the danger of anybody glancing out the window, seeing my Ranchero, and deciding, “There’s that fucking guy.”

  There were more cars parked in front of the house now, most of them trucks and 4 × 4s. I had to figure Shambrough was holding some sort of powwow in my honor, guessed if I rolled on down the driveway, I’d get turned right into soup. Instead I continued out to Hollyknowe, hit the truck route, and went west. I was in downtown Greenville in twenty minutes, just me and the half-dozen crows perched on the meters and the trash cans out in front of the Greenville precinct house.

  Kendell was working a split shift. That’s what the sergeant at the front desk told me. I recognized him. I’d watched him beat up a guy at the hotel bar over in Greenwood once. A loud, drunk guy from Madison, a suburb north of Jackson that attracts the sort of people who get loud and drunk in hotel bars. They usually wear loafers doing it, and they almost never wear socks.

  I saw the whole thing by accident. The sergeant, a McCarty who was off duty, followed the loud drunk guy into the men’s room, where I happened to already be. I was washing my hands and probably would have been gone, but the drunk guy started talking to me. He parked himself in front of a urinal, groaned once, and then said, “Hey, sport…”

  Since it was just me and him, I had to guess I was the sport he meant. He burped before he bothered to even try to tell me something, and that’s just when McCarty came in. He approached the vacant urinal like he meant to use it, but instead he punched the drunk guy in the kidneys one time hard.

  That gentleman went down and stayed down. Whimpered a little. Started talking about his lawyer.

  The sergeant relieved himself and flushed. He told the drunk guy, “Go somewhere else.”

  I don’t know what he’d done or how bad a day the sergeant had been having, but I couldn’t even muster the barest twinge of sympathy for the guy. He was one of those fellows who’d be improved by a kidney punch three or four times a day.

  I yielded the sink, finished drying my hands, and said to the sergeant, “What are you drinking?”

  So we had kind of a relationship after that—I stood him for a couple Jack and Gingers—which meant I could pry and meddle a little.

  “When does Kendell come back on?” I asked him.

  “Around eight,” he told me.

  “How about Officer Raintree?”

  “Right,” he said. He had eyes just like me. He knew what I was up to and why. “How about Officer Raintree?”

  “Still here?”

  He nodded and pointed at the ceiling.

  “You mind?”

  He didn’t and let me go on up. Teddy was shackled to the bench again. He must have been Greenville’s only vagrant, or at least the only ill-mannered and lawless one, or maybe just the easiest to catch. He would need to have been up to some powerful crime before I would have hauled him in since he served to perfume the place to a fare-thee-well. Urine and feet stink and human clothes grease.

  I told him, “Hey,” as I walked past, and he asked me for a dollar. He didn’t even have a southern accent. Teddy had come here to be poor.

  I gave him five dollars. “Where do you sleep, Teddy?”

  Teddy pointed nowhere much. “Back in there somewhere.”

  I gave him ten dollars more. “Did you eat today?”

  Teddy broke savage wind and said something phlegmy.

  “What did they pick you up for?”

  “I ain’t done it.”

  I gave him twenty and nodded. “I hear you, brother.”

  I turned around to find Officer T. Raintree standing in the squad room doorway. She was half out in the hall, watching me and Teddy.

  I pointed at Teddy and told her, “He ain’t done it.”

  I think she smiled. I couldn’t quite tell. She went back in the squad room. I found her at her desk.

  “Kendell’s working splits,” she told me.

  “Back at eight, right?”

  She nodded.

  “You?”

  “I’m done.” She closed her warrant book.

  “Anywhere to eat around here?” I was laying the usual groundwork. I was expecting the usual result, which would be me finding out where to eat and then going there all alone.

  She’d been tidying her desk, but she stopped. There was only one other officer in the room, well away from us and over against the far wall and on the phone. Officer T. Raintree named a couple of local restaurants, and then she waited.

  “You think maybe you want to get some dinner or something?” I had to hope it was only half as painful to hear as it was to string together. I tried to say it while looking pleasant and hopeful and ready for rejection, which I was prepared to tolerate with a jolly shrug.

  Officer T. Raintree didn’t help me much. She just let it sit there for a bit. When she finally spoke, it was just to ask me, “Why?”

  “Why … dinner?”

  She nodded.

  “With you?”

  Kept nodding.

  I hadn’t worked up a why. I knew I found her beautiful and exotic and was hoping to get a chance to see her outside of her official duties where I could try to be at least a little winning on my own. That kind of thing’s tough in handcuffs.

  “Well,” I said. “I thought we could talk.”

  “About what?”

  “Just, you know, get to know each other.”

  “I know a lot about you already.” With that she opened her middle drawer and drew out a manila folder. It had a few typed pages in it. “Kendell gave me this.” She ran her finger down the top sheet. “Born in March of 1975. Roanoke, Virginia. Four years in the marines. Six different police jobs in twelve years. One ex-wife. One daughter. Deceased. Independently wealthy somehow. Kendell had thoughts on that.”

  “‘No thanks’ would have worked just fine,” I told her and stood up like I’d be leaving.

  “Sit down.”

  I did.

  “June 1980. Clarksdale, Mississippi. Two years in the marines. Two different police jobs—Baton Rouge and here. One husband. Deceased. One son. He eats, too.”

  I was upset with the woman for not just saying no. So it took me a quarter minute to figure out what was going on.

  “That’s a yes?”

  “Let me change. Pick up CJ. Shotgun House all right? He’ll eat about anything there.”

  “Yeah. Great. Am I meeting you there?”

  She nodded. “When you hit the levee, turn left.”

  She shut my folder, dropped it into her drawer, and closed it.

  “What else did Kendell tell you?”

  “Told me you’d ask me that.”

  I headed for the squad room door.

  “Hey,” she said.

  I turned around.

  “Keep your money. Teddy eats it.”

  Damned if he wasn’t chewing my twenty when I passed him in the hall.

  * * *

  The Shotgun House turned out to be a joint—barbecue and burgers and even alligator, battered and fried. There was a bar crowd drinking Bud Lights and eating crawfish straight off tin trays and then a room to the side with tables where there were a few kids eating already.

  “One, hon?” The waitress was the hostess as well. She had a co
uple of pencils stuck in her hair and a basket of fritters in hand.

  “Three,” I told her with, I guess, comical manly pride.

  She winked and said, “All right.”

  I read the menu about fourteen times and drank two huge iced teas. I’d already switched tables once and then switched back again.

  “You okay?” the waitress swung by to ask me. I knew by now her name was Holly.

  I nodded, but I must not have looked it. She lingered. I said, “A little edgy.” That’s when Officer Tula Raintree and her son came in.

  Tula had changed, but not the way most people change. Your dentist out of his crisp white tunic still looks like your dentist in his tailored suit. The Tula in the restaurant hardly resembled the Tula at the station. She was what she had to be on duty. Downtime, she was something entirely else.

  Holly knew them. She picked up CJ, and when Tula pointed my way, Holly said, “Him?” with what, to my ear, sounded a touch more incredulous than I’d have liked.

  I was standing with my napkin in hand when they finally made it to me.

  “CJ,” Tula said. “This is Mr. Reid.”

  “Nick,” I told him. He had a firm shake for a kid.

  Then CJ said, “I’m going,” and he went scampering off toward the toilet.

  “I’ll go with him,” I said.

  I like kids. I think I like kids. CJ made it easy on me. It was all I could do to keep up with him. He knew right where the men’s room was. The door was locked, and he banged on it until the guy inside shouted, “Give me a damn minute.”

  CJ looked up and told me, “Oooohhh.”

  The guy came out angry but softened straightaway. “Go on, then,” he told CJ and held the door for him.

  I couldn’t say much but “Sorry” and followed the kid inside.

  He had no need of me beyond escort. He wiped the seat. He got undone. He perched on the toilet and told me, “Peeing.” More a point of information than anything else. He finished. He flushed. He fixed his trousers. He went to the sink and soaped and washed while I went over to do my business.

  He just stared at me until I said, “Peeing.”

  CJ was a happy, well-behaved boy. That made itself plain right away. He went back to the table in decent order, no running through the place. The black woman who cooked in the tiny kitchen came out to give him a hug and a corn dodger fresh from the fryer. His mother had fixed a chair for him with a booster seat, to my left and to her right so I’d be looking at her right across the table.

  She was something to see out of uniform and not trying to look all mannish. I was trying not to stare at her, but the transformation was pretty stunning. In her uniform, she wouldn’t let herself project much beyond handsome. No makeup to speak of. Tight hair. Only the occasional, hard-won smile. She was all undone in the restaurant. Beautiful black hair sweeping across her face. A little eye shadow or something that brought out the girlishness in her. Her dark skin against a white blouse. She was wearing a locket or something. She sipped her tea, glanced at the menu. It was a pleasure to see her up to something other than writing me a ticket.

  “So,” I said. “Glad you guys are here.” I turned toward CJ. “What’s good, buddy?’

  “Burger.”

  “He’s kind of a specialist,” Tula told me.

  CJ was singing to himself and playing with his fork. Officer T. Raintree leaned my way. “Got a whiff of something on the radio this morning. Kendell thought maybe you could clear it up.”

  “I’ll give it a shot.”

  “EMTs got called to a house out by Geneill. Elysium. Know it?”

  I gave her my best blank stare and casual shake of the head.

  “Shambrough plantation. Ringing a bell?”

  I went with my sad smile. “Can’t say it is.”

  “They treated a girl on-site. Stitches in her head. She wouldn’t let them take her in. Said she fell down. The techs said Shambrough looked like he fell down with her. For some reason or another—he wasn’t exactly clear on this—Kendell thought of you.”

  “Huh,” I told her. “Can’t see why.”

  “I couldn’t either until he filled me in. Kendell thinks you and Desmond have been up to all kinds of no good.”

  “That’s just the Baptist in him talking.”

  “And he’s still fond of you. That’s what I don’t get. You might start by explaining that to me.”

  I sipped my tea and thought about it. “Kendell knows I’m one of the good guys,” I said.

  CJ had been saying for a quarter minute there, “Momma, momma, momma.” Tula had ignored him, boring in on me instead. She gave me a final hard once-over. “You’d better be,” she told me. Then she turned to her son and asked him, “What is it, sweetie?”

  The rest of dinner was given over to small talk and general chatter. With CJ. With Holly, the waitress. With some whiskery old bar rat who came in and knew Tula one way or another. It was easy enough as first dates go. That’s how I thought of it, anyway.

  I saw her out to her car, an impeccable little Honda. I helped strap CJ in. She was half under the wheel before I could get around to her side of the car. I ended up laying a hand on her shoulder like I was her priest or something.

  “See ya,” she told me.

  I think I said, “Yeah.”

  And that was pretty much that.

  ELEVEN

  I drove past Officer T. Raintree’s house to make sure she’d gotten home all right. Then I headed straight home and watched the Braves play a meaningless late-season game against a team a little deeper in the basement than they were.

  Desmond woke me with a phone call. It was going on eight in the morning by then. I figured he had some K-Lo work he was waiting on me to show up for.

  I told him, “I’m coming,” instead of “Hello.”

  “We’ve got a problem,” Desmond said.

  Our lives at that moment were little more than a tapestry of problems. So having a problem sounded to me like a noticeable improvement.

  “Larry?” I asked him.

  “Belzoni,” Desmond told me. “Kendell wants you down here in half an hour. Out at the catfish ponds.”

  “That’s not even his county.”

  “Just get in the damn car and come on.”

  So I drove out to that catfish farm. I needn’t have worried about the tires. The trailer was gone. The blue tarp we’d covered it with was piled on the ground. There was a fire truck parked by the tractor shed, a trio of county cruisers, a couple of rescue squad trucks, what looked like a state sedan, and a 4 × 4 with its back hatch open. I’d seen that vehicle before. It belonged to the gentleman who served as crime scene coroner for four contiguous counties. I’d met him over breakfast once. Kendell had introduced him. He’d told two lame jokes right in a row and then had hit us with a pun.

  “Gallows humor,” Kendell had said by way of apology.

  “Hell, man,” I told him, “don’t blame the dead for that.”

  Kendell and Desmond were standing with a guy in a necktie up past the tractor shed. Kendell whistled and waved me over. Somebody was sure to be killed.

  He was wet. They’d fished him out of a pond. I realized I didn’t even know his name. He was just Larry’s con friend with the snuff box and the honest wage. He was laid out faceup on a scarlet blanket from one of the EMT trucks, and he clearly hadn’t needed to drown because he’d probably died from the beating he’d had.

  “Know him?” Kendell asked me.

  “Friend of Larry’s.”

  “Yeah, but do you know him?”

  “Just to say hey. Couldn’t even tell you his name.”

  Kendell consulted his notepad. “Jonathan Randolph Simms.”

  “What the hell happened to him?”

  Kendell turned to the guy in the necktie. “Show him,” he said.

  The gentleman handed me a digital camera and showed me what button to hit. I got a parade of images. They’d stuck him in the nearest pond headfirst. There were a couple
of shots of just his boots poking out of the water, his pale shins exposed. Then photographs of a couple of EMT techs hauling him up and placing him on the blanket they’d spread out for that purpose.

  As I was handing the camera back, the guy in the necktie told me, “Fish went at him a little. Something else went at him a lot.”

  “Who are you?”

  He dug out his state police badge. An Arkansas state police detective.

  “What’s Little Rock want with shit like this?”

  “Tell him,” that guy said to Kendell.

  “Izzy’s girl,” Kendell said. “They’ve been onto her for a while.” He pulled a mug shot out of his notebook. It was her, all right, but with peroxided hair. She was wearing a jailhouse jumpsuit unzipped to reveal her neck tattoo.

  “Who is she?” I asked.

  “Gloria Marie Johansson,” the Arkansas cop told me.

  I glanced at the girl in the mug shot and then handed it back to Kendell. “This the girl that did the number on Izzy?”

  Kendell nodded.

  “Ever seen her?” the guy from Arkansas asked me.

  I’d become awfully glib at lying. I shook my head and told him, “Not sure I’d want to.”

  I can’t say why exactly I didn’t tell them what I’d gotten up to out at Shambrough’s. Now that we were all agreed they were treacherous lowlifes and possibly homicidal, there probably wouldn’t have been much harm in me confessing what I’d done. I suppose it was habit by this point. I’d learned to hold everything close.

  Desmond hadn’t uttered a word. I was waiting for him to chime in so I could get a read on how much he’d let out of the bag. If anybody was going to give up Larry and Skeeter, it had to be Desmond.

  I just waited. There was plenty to look at. The coroner was kneeling beside the body. He had his liver probe in hand and showed it to us. “Water’ll throw everything off.” He plunged the thermometer probe straight through the skin before I could turn away.

  “What do you figure they wanted?” Kendell asked me.