Beluga

by Rick Gavin

  I knew if I was either one of them, I’d be having an ordeal. But that, I guess, was the beauty of Larry, and even Skeeter a little. We found them watching a cooking show and eating icebox fish sticks on Shawnica’s sofa.

  They couldn’t even see me when I knocked on the screen door, but Beluga just told me, “Come on in.”

  The cooking show they were watching didn’t require anybody to cook. The people on it just had to argue with each other for half an hour. They seemed to be quarreling about tomato sauce when I stepped over and switched off the set.

  “You know your buddy’s dead, right?”

  Larry went bereaved. He kept eating his fish stick, but he ate it with his head low and chewed in an inconsolable sort of way.

  “Shambrough,” I told them.

  Skeeter and Larry nodded. Larry said, “Figures.”

  “And that girl he’s using is looking for you.”

  They nodded again. This was something they knew, too.

  “And when she finds you,” I said and glanced at Desmond.

  He picked it up from there. “She’s got this thing for killing folks a little at a time. We saw that catfish boy.” Desmond shook his head.

  “Heard he drowned,” Skeeter said.

  “Dead going in or near it,” Desmond told him.

  “And you guys just sitting here watching TV,” I said. “Anybody could come up.”

  “What do you care?” Larry asked me.

  “I’m going to hit him,” I told Desmond.

  I thought he’d tell me not to, but Desmond just said, “Well, all right.”

  I was still drawing back when Larry dropped to the floor in a heap.

  “What do you think that schoolgirl would do with him?” Desmond asked.

  “Not much sport to Larry, is there?”

  That’s when Shawnica came in from the back—she’d been working on her broken nails—to give me and Desmond and Larry and Skeeter one emphatic “Uh-huh.”

  I don’t think any of them quite understood what sort of peril they were in. Partly because they were not the sorts to plan ahead for things. They were all of them accustomed to doing whatever impressed them at the moment as just precisely what they’d like to do. Consequences didn’t enter into it. They had impulses they were perfectly happy to act on as if they were actual sound ideas.

  That’s how Larry and Skeeter usually got indicted and why Shawnica would get in fixes that she’d routinely come to Desmond to straighten out. Talking to them about the future was worse than talking to a child. You could have a more productive conversation with a collie. The future was generic and uninteresting to them. It was just what followed after they had done what they wanted to do.

  “Do you know who Lucas Shambrough is?” I asked all of them generally.

  Shawnica was bored before I was halfway through. Skeeter nodded. Larry told me, “Tire guy.” He started in on another fish stick. “So he’s still pissed about that boy with the broken leg?”

  “You tell them,” I said to Desmond.

  “What’s that for?” Shawnica asked Desmond, pointing at his cane. “You do know it’s pink and shit.”

  Desmond nodded. “Hurt my knee. Saw Kendell at the doctor’s. Why are you fighting with him? He’s just trying to help.”

  Shawnica wagged an index finger at Desmond by way of contradiction. She was the final judge of who was helping and who wasn’t. “He don’t talk to me like that.”

  “The man’s a Baptist deacon,” I said.

  “Didn’t see you there.” Shawnica wagged a finger at me and that was that.

  Desmond was as flummoxed as I was. They were all three used to meeting trouble as it came and couldn’t be persuaded—even by two beat-up people and another one thoroughly dead—that this was an entirely different class of upset. Larry seemed to think he just needed the chance to explain what had gone wrong, how everything had been an accident and a foolish misunderstanding.

  “Damn boy went and got up under the truck,” Larry muttered. Now it was all Bugle’s fault.

  So me and Desmond decided just to appreciate the danger for them and asked them if they’d like to live it up in the Alluvian Hotel for a week. That they understood, but we still had to stash them somewhere for a couple of days while the blues tourists cleared out of the place.

  “Pearl likes company,” Desmond told me.

  I’d been afraid he’d say something like that. I’d imposed on Pearl’s hospitality before with a couple of Delta swamp rats, and she had succeeded at civilizing them a little. Pearl had a gift where it came to people. She was the anti-entitled planter. Pearl treated everybody exactly the same. If you had ears she could pour prattle into, she didn’t care what color you were.

  Larry was messing with the TV remote and even managed to turn the set back on before I snatched the thing away, took the batteries out, and told them all, “We’ve got to get you out of here to give us time to straighten this out.”

  “When?” Shawnica asked me.

  “Right now.”

  “To the hotel?” Skeeter wanted to know.

  “Day after tomorrow was the best we could do. We’ll put you up at Pearl’s until then.”

  Shawnica’s hands found her hips. “That bony white woman you live with?”

  “Yeah.”

  Shawnica did that thing she does with her neck sometimes. She must have picked it up from a rooster. It’s always followed by a decisive “Nuh-uh.”

  FOURTEEN

  Pearl saved us a lot of grief with her gold-plated cable package. Her husband, Gil, had been the TV nut, and Pearl had just left everything as it was. She was hardly the sort to park herself in front of the set and watch, but she turned it on when she got up and let it play throughout the day. I didn’t know she had two hundred channels, including all the premium stations, but Larry discovered it almost straightaway.

  He told me and Desmond, “This’ll work.”

  We weren’t even in the middle yet of giving Pearl the lay of the land. Shawnica wasn’t helping any. She wouldn’t let me talk to Pearl without coming in behind and over top of me to tell Pearl how none of this was her idea. She was all sassy about it, too, the way Shawnica likes to be. Then she stepped over to the refrigerator and started poking around inside.

  “You know witness protection?” I asked Pearl.

  She nodded and told me, “No.”

  “They’re people the criminals want to get at, the ones who saw a crime or something.”

  “What did they see?” Pearl asked me.

  I heard Desmond mutter, “Iron Chef.”

  “They saw somebody get knocked on the head,” I told Pearl. “The police’ll sort it out, but they need a place to park for a couple of days.”

  “Here?” She didn’t say it like I would have said it. She said it like I’d just told her the queen and prince consort were passing through the Delta and hoped to hole up for a little while at her house. It was an optimistic Here? A grateful Here?

  Pearl reached up and fooled with her hair, not that she could have done much good since she’d put her curlers in it already. She was wearing her housecoat and her ratty slippers that once had cat faces on them or something. Now there were two beady eyes between them, and one serviceable ear.

  “I should dress,” she told me.

  Just then Shawnica held up a plastic container with something purple and green inside it.

  “Miss lady?” she said.

  “Trifle,” Pearl told her. “You have all you want, sugar.”

  Me and Desmond tried to warn her off. We shook our heads at her, anyway, but Shawnica peeled off the top and went hunting for a spoon. She’d almost even eaten a little before the smell impressed itself upon her. That item might have been trifle once, six or seven months ago. That was the trouble with Pearl’s refrigerator. Archaeological cuisine.

  Skeeter and Larry had found some soft-core porn. I could tell by how quiet they’d gotten. Out-and-out pornography doesn’t require so much attention as
the half-cooked semimodest brand. It calls for sustained hopefulness. They were watching a spot of congress. We could hear the moaning a little. They were willing it to get more lurid than it was.

  “Is this all right, Pearl?” I asked her. “Two nights?”

  She laid a hand to my arm. “Those boys in there, don’t they look about Gil’s size?”

  Every man looked Gil’s size to Pearl. She was sure to go into Gil’s closet and fit Larry and Skeeter into Gil’s trousers, Gil’s sport coats, his suits. It was the Jewish mother in her, and she was Presbyterian. So you didn’t get brisket. You got a seersucker jacket from Pearl and pleated pants.

  My phone rang just as I was feeling like me and Desmond had accomplished something, had bought a little time until we could get our Shambrough problem in hand. At that point I didn’t care if the whole business ended with Lucas Shambrough in the back of Kendell’s cruiser or underneath a swamp somewhere. That went double for the ninja schoolgirl assassin. I couldn’t see how this world needed her.

  So I had a moment of good feeling about what we were up to, most especially once I looked at the caller ID and saw it was Tula Raintree.

  “How’d you get this number,” I said to her, giving it back just like I’d gotten it.

  She laughed about like I’d hoped she would. “Sorry,” she told me. “I was caught in the middle of something, wrangling a couple of shitheads.”

  “The Lord’s work.”

  I stepped out on Pearl’s back porch for a little privacy. I hoped maybe Tula was coming off shift and seeking me out for company. The truth was a little different the way the truth too often is.

  “Got some guy here. Says he knows you.”

  “What guy?”

  “We caught him throwing TVs in the river.”

  I felt a lot less good than I’d only just felt. “Dale?”

  “That’s the one. He said you’d bail him out.”

  “He used to be a trooper.”

  “Told me that, too. He told me all sorts of things. Is he a tweaker or something?”

  “Might be these days. I don’t know. A stone cold idiot, I can tell you that.”

  “When did you last see him?”

  I checked my watch. “About five hours ago.”

  “Know where he got the TVs?”

  “Got a pretty good idea.”

  “You anywhere near Greenville?”

  “I’m about to be,” I told her.

  Desmond agreed to babysit. If I’d been thinking at all, I would have taken his Escalade instead of my conspicuous Ranchero. But then I had my A-5 behind the seat and my Ruger in the glove box, my .308 still on my ankle, and a deputy waiting for me in Greenville. So I wheeled straight through town on the truck route, not worried about who might see me. I was focused instead on T. Raintree at the end of the road.

  It wouldn’t usually pay to notice in the Delta if there was a pickup truck behind you. The place is lousy with them. It’s a pickup part of the world, so the one behind me didn’t register for the first twelve miles or so. But the fool at the wheel stuck to me so close, I couldn’t help but notice in time.

  We sped up together. We slowed down together. We changed lanes at about the same time. There were two of them in the cab. I recognized the type. Gritty lowlifes. Self-inflicted haircuts. One of them even had a phone, and he got on it while the other one drove. He couldn’t seem to help but point at my Ranchero while he talked about it.

  I caught up with a semi hauling chickens as we approached the town of Leland. I rode along in the left lane beside it until we’d closed hard on a turnoff to the right. I waited as long as I dared and then whipped over and turned on the side road. Those boys couldn’t get around that truck, and so I bought myself some time. They’d have to go down and make a U-turn. I figured I had two minutes.

  I drove into Leland proper and stopped at a Double Quick on the bayou. I parked right out front where those boys were sure to catch sight of my Ranchero. I took the Ruger with me and slipped around behind the place.

  They didn’t disappoint. They pulled in shortly. I could hear their muffler. That old Ford they were driving dieseled and sputtered when the driver switched it off.

  I slipped down the side of the building until I could see a piece of that truck. The back quarter panel. The thing sank and wallowed as the driver climbed out of the cab. I heard the sound of one door slamming. The passenger, still in the cab, said something I couldn’t make out.

  The driver told him back, “All right.”

  I gave him time to go inside before I came around the building. I lurked at the corner of the Double Quick. The guy in the truck was smoking a cigarette and fooling with a pistol, an old Buntline revolver, dull and rusty. He kept dropping the cylinder out and slapping it back like he’d seen in the movies. He was so happily occupied that he didn’t notice me coming until I’d swung open the driver’s door and slipped in under the wheel.

  He told me (or maybe just told himself), “Shit!”

  I reached over and grabbed his pistol. The cylinder was flopped out, so all I had to do was tilt the barrel up to dump the bullets into his lap.

  “Now what?” I said.

  He did the typical weaselly redneck move of trying to go everywhere all at once. It’s the sort of thing that looks to the untrained eye like a spastic fit with freshets of profanity.

  That boy was telling me, “Motherfucker,” and reaching around like he had something down by the door to harm me with when I took full advantage of the vintage truck they were driving.

  The dashboard vinyl had long since rotted and curled, and the thing was steel underneath. So I reached my hand behind that fellow’s head and slammed him forward until he bounced. One time proved enough. The air left him, and he collapsed onto the seat. I leaned him up against the door as if he were relaxing, reached over him, and pulled out the machete he’d been reaching for. It looked like he’d made it out of a mower blade and shaped it on a grinder. The edge was so dull, you couldn’t have hoped to cut suet on a hot day.

  I left it on the floorboard and ducked back around the building to wait for the driver. He was probably parked outside the men’s room and hoping to waylay me there.

  I called Desmond. I guess I was warning him, but I was venting a little, too. “I can’t believe the crackers they’ve put on us.”

  “You all right?”

  “I’m damned insulted.”

  “Shambrough’s boys?”

  “Probably, but they sure don’t speak well of him.”

  “Need me?”

  “No. One down. Just waiting for the other one.”

  “Why don’t you put that thing of yours in the car shed for a week.”

  “Probably should,” I told Desmond. “Think the other one’s coming.”

  He came out of the store and went peeking around the far end of the building. He pulled something out of his jeans waistband. I couldn’t quite see what it was. When he didn’t find me down there, he came back toward his truck, talking to his buddy along the way.

  “Where the hell is he?” He paused to cup his hands and look in my Ranchero. He got the driver’s side glass all greasy. That was another mark against him. “Wasn’t in the crapper.”

  His buddy just kept lounging against the door and being unconscious. “Lady at the counter said didn’t nobody like him come in.”

  He’d just drawn open the driver’s door when I slipped up behind him. He felt me there. I had to figure he would. “You, ain’t it?” he said without looking.

  I’d expected to find a gun in his hand—a pepper pot or a Mauser or something—but it wasn’t even anything that ambitious. Just a homemade sap instead. He’d fashioned it out of a stiff steel spring with blue electrical tape for a handle.

  I told him, “I’ve never been so irritated with two pinheads in my life.”

  He put his hands up like we were in a Western. “Got a gun on me, don’t you?”

  “Put your hands down.”

  “I ain’
t making no moves.”

  “Down!” I told him. He dropped them to his sides.

  “He dead?” he asked of his partner.

  “Not yet,” I said, and he raised his hands again. It doesn’t pay to have a thing in this life to do with cracker pinheads. “Down,” I told him.

  “You the one with the drop.”

  “For fuck’s sake. What did I say?”

  He put his hands down.

  “Shambrough send you?”

  He decided to clam up, so I tapped him once on the back of the head. “Don’t you raise those hands.”

  He told me, “Ow, buddy.”

  “Shambrough,” I said.

  “Wasn’t him. No sir.”

  I had to figure he was getting literal on me.

  “Did Shambrough tell somebody to send you?”

  I had to tap him again.

  “Yeah,” he finally told me. “Maybe.”

  “You know where Lucas Shambrough lives?” I asked him.

  He nodded. “Been by there,” he said.

  His buddy started groaning and stirring in the truck.

  “Bang him one time on the dashboard,” I said.

  “I don’t want to be—”

  I tapped him again. He grabbed a fistful of his colleague’s hair and slammed his forehead against the dash. Hard enough to lay him open and make him bleed.

  “That do?”

  I told him, “Yeah. Now take off your clothes.”

  He didn’t do anything for a moment, beyond getting cracked in the head.

  “All right, all right.” He stripped out of his sweaty T-shirt. He had enough hair on his back for a throw rug.

  “Pants, too,” I told him.

  He grumbled but kicked out of his shoes and peeled his jeans off. Clearly his mother had never instructed him on the value of clean briefs.

  “All of it,” I told him.

  I got an incredulous cracker glance from over his shoulder. All I had to do was draw back, and he came out of his underpants, too.

  “Throw the hat down.” It was a blue Dale Earnhardt tribute cap that I’m sure he cherished or I wouldn’t have bothered to make him leave it behind.