Beluga

by Rick Gavin

  As he stood there buck naked, an old fellow at the pump island glared over at us and spat.

  “What are you going to do?” that cracker asked me.

  “Get in the truck,” I told him. When he tried to gather up his clothes, I added, “Uh-uh.”

  He whimpered a little and got on in.

  I threw his sap up on the dash. “You go straight to Lucas Shambrough’s. Don’t stop anywhere and don’t cover up. I’ll be behind you. You knock on his door just like God made you. You’ll tell him he needs a bigger fucking boat.”

  “A what?”

  I was tempted to hit him again, but I opted for considered self-restraint. “You heard me,” I said. “I’m watching. Go on.”

  He started his truck and backed out of his spot. He cleared the gutter and gained the road with enough velocity to make sparks come off his undercarriage. I climbed into my Ranchero and pulled out the other way. He was sure to suspect every pair of headlights behind him to be mine.

  I called Desmond on the way into Greenville to fill him in on what had happened.

  “Keep them in if you can,” I told him. “He’s turned his cretin army loose.”

  Desmond said that Skeeter was watching TV in a double-breasted blazer and Larry was wearing a pale green linen suit.

  “What did Gil do?” Desmond asked me.

  “Suffered Pearl,” I said. “What’s she up to?”

  “Shawnica cleaned out her icebox. Now they’re making some kind of cake.”

  “Stay on, will you?”

  “Yeah. I called Momma.”

  “I’ll get back as soon as I can.”

  I’d hit downtown Greenville proper by then. The place was little short of desolate. It was just me and a pair of radio cars out in front of the station house. The officer at the desk was watching what looked like ice dancing on his puny TV.

  “Officer Raintree’s expecting me,” I told him.

  He waved me up and went back to his set.

  The pew was empty. Teddy must have been out in the wild eating dollar bills. I found Tula at her desk doing the sort of paperwork that had finally drained the life out of police work for me. There wasn’t anybody else in the squad room. It was half past nine by then.

  “How you?” she asked me.

  I thought for a moment. I finally told her, “Grand.”

  FIFTEEN

  I dropped into the chair beside her desk, and we talked about nothing for a bit, which in this case meant we mostly didn’t talk about Dale. Didn’t talk about Shambrough either, of course, and I wasn’t going to mention Larry’s dead buddy, so instead we talked about CJ, who was sleeping at a friend’s.

  “Good kid,” I told Tula. “Clean.” I was thinking about how he’d scrubbed his hands in the men’s room at the restaurant, but before I could explain myself, Dale bellowed from his cell.

  “Hold on,” Tula said and pushed back to stand up.

  “Let me.” I followed the sound of Dale’s voice into a back hallway and down around a corner where the holding cages were.

  Naturally, Dale had taken his shirt off. Since his cell was overlit, I couldn’t help but notice he was slick and sweaty and as hairless as an egg. I caught myself wondering if Dale was suffering from the toxic side effects of mixing anabolic steroids and Nair.

  “Hey,” Dale said as if we’d run into each other at the mall.

  “What’s up?”

  Dale had to think a minute. He glanced around his cell like he was only just coming to grips with where he was.

  “What are you doing in here?” Dale asked me.

  “You’re in,” I said. “I’m out.”

  He must have believed me, because he started bellowing again.

  I rattled the door bolt against the keeper like you’d shake keys at a crying infant. Dale immediately fell silent and looked at the door, at me.

  “You taking something, Dale?”

  “Aspirin sometimes. Doctor put me on it.”

  “Anything else?”

  Dale shrugged and shook his head.

  “You know they caught you throwing TVs in the river, right?”

  Dale considered this for a good quarter minute. “What river?” he finally asked me.

  “Kalil’s TVs,” I told him. “You busted into the store to get them.”

  Dale snorted, amused I’d say such a thing. He shook his head and told me, “Naw.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “They want to send you to Whitfield. Let you stew in there for a while.”

  Even in his addled state, Dale knew what Whitfield was—the big hospital out by Jackson where the head cases ended up. Nuts went in, and dull, medicated people occasionally came out.

  Dale made a sort of Scooby-Doo noise.

  “You don’t want that, do you?”

  He watched sweat drip from his shiny bicep. “Uh-uh,” he finally told me.

  “So how are we going to keep you here instead?”

  Dale pointed at the floor.

  “Right here,” I told him. “Until maybe tomorrow morning when you’re feeling better. How are we going to make sure nobody knows to come haul you out of here?”

  Dale couldn’t say. He tried to, but he just shook his head and moaned a little.

  “If they don’t hear you, they can’t find you. Might forget you’re back here tonight.”

  That made a kind of sense to Dale. He nodded.

  “Then I’ll come get you in the morning, and me and you’ll go see Kalil. Figure out what to do about those TVs.”

  Dale cleared up enough to say, “K-Lo.”

  “Yeah. First thing. But you’ve got to be here when I come. How are you going to do that?”

  Dale put his finger to his lips.

  “That’s right.” I pointed at his bunk. “Let me see if I can get these lights switched off.”

  Then I stood and waited until Dale grew convinced I’d keep standing and waiting unless he went to his bunk and sat down.

  “No more racket, right?”

  I got an outright nod from Dale.

  “I’ll come get you in the morning.”

  I slipped out slowly. Before I got entirely out of sight, Dale had tipped over onto his bunk. I found the light switch at the end of the hallway and plunged the lockup into darkness but for the orange glow of the mercury lights outside.

  Tula was just signing off from a phone call when I finally returned to the squad room.

  “Just checking on CJ,” she told me as she pocketed her phone. “You know,” she added. “The clean one.”

  Then she headed for the door, and I followed her down the steps and out of the station house into the street.

  “Glass of wine or something?” she asked me.

  “You’re off duty?”

  “Better be.”

  “Sure. Where?” I glanced around like I might spot an open nightspot there in Greenville. Aside from the casinos beyond the levee, there wasn’t anything open at all. That’s when I saw them. There were at least two, sitting in a shiny Impala. It was parked on a side street with the nose out so they could watch the station house door. I caught the glow of a cigarette. Saw their shadows shift a little. Maybe somebody in the back. I couldn’t be sure.

  “Nothing here,” Tula said. “I was thinking you could follow me to my place.”

  I wanted to, all right, but if I followed her, they were sure to follow me. So I had some responsible thinking to do and no real time to do it. I was half tempted by the noble thing, just begging off for the night. Like usual, though, the noble thing didn’t hold much interest for me.

  Then Tula reached back and unclipped her hair, gave her head a shake to make it fall, and I was weak against any course of action but following her after that. I just had to decide how to do it. Did I excuse myself long enough to slip around to that Impala and have a chat with the gentlemen inside it, or did I let them trail us to Tula’s and take care of them out there? That would require some explaining, and I flashed on how Tula might react.

  I
could be sure, from past experience, that she would put me in cuffs if she had to. Then I wondered if maybe those boys weren’t even interested in me. It could be that sitting in that Impala and smoking was their idea of a night on the town in Greenville. I liked the idea of that and was trying even to believe it when Tula broke the spell by saying, “So maybe another time.”

  “What? No. Now’s good. Just thinking I might need gas.”

  “Quick Stop,” she told me and pointed vaguely toward the truck route.

  I asked her, “Which way are we heading?” like I didn’t know where she lived.

  “Toward Leland,” she said. “Have you eaten?”

  I tried to remember. “Not since lunch.”

  “I’ll pick up something. Meet you at the pump.”

  I glanced again at that Impala. I nodded. I guess I seemed distracted.

  “Somewhere else you need to be?”

  “Know those guys?”

  She turned and looked. The driver’s arm was hanging down the door. He flicked his cigarette away, and it kicked sparks up on the street. He dropped that Impala into gear and pulled into the boulevard proper, heading west toward the levee, just creeping along away from Tula and me.

  “Nope,” she told me. “Why?”

  I shrugged like I couldn’t really say, but I had to guess she was too good a cop not to have her antennae up by then.

  “Quick Stop,” she said.

  “Yeah,” I told her and tried to walk her to her car.

  She snorted. “Right. See you there.” She left me at the curb.

  So I had the chance to lose those boys. I went the way they’d gone, hoping they’d fall in behind me and I could take them across the bridge, tangle with them in Arkansas, and leave them busted up over there. I didn’t spot them anywhere. I went coasting all through town. It was a little past ten by then, and there was nobody on the streets. So I headed out Washington and turned east on the truck route. I pulled up to the pump island at the Quick Stop and topped off my tank.

  I left the nozzle in and leaned against the quarter panel. I watched what little traffic there was passing on the four-lane. Semis mostly and chromed-up coupes. I’m pretty sure I saw Larry’s Tercel. No sign of that Impala, though.

  I half thought I was overreacting and it was just a bunch of crackers out for a night, but my earlier run-in had served to key me in to what was up, so I was primed to think everybody who glanced my way had been sent by Shambrough to do me harm.

  Tula pulled in with a pizza box on the passenger seat beside her.

  “About two miles,” she told me, “and then we’ll turn right, just past a pair of old silos.”

  I followed her, checking my mirror. I felt foolish enough after a while to spend most of my energy gaming out where pizza and wine might lead. I didn’t want to assume too much, though. Tula didn’t strike me as the sort who’d let even an authentic prize of a guy into her affections straightaway, and while I might have been rugged and impeccably well-meaning, I knew I wasn’t much of a prize. So I figured we’d eat pizza, drink a little wine, and chat, and then I’d get a chance to run the gauntlet of Shambrough hooligans back to Pearl’s.

  It was just me and Tula on the road. I signaled when she signaled. I turned where she turned and finally followed her into her drive. Her house was dark. The yard, too. She pulled her service flashlight and lit our way. I heard frogs somewhere and crickets, the yelp of a hound but no car engine. I followed her inside and took a last look before I shut the door.

  Tula switched on a couple of lamps and went back to crank up the AC. I was looking out the front window for any trace of car headlights when Tula came in from the kitchen.

  “I’ve got red and red,” she said.

  “The red, then.”

  “And you can fill me in whenever you want.”

  I gave her my Whadda you mean? face but for only a couple of seconds. I already knew it wouldn’t work on her. She didn’t hang around long enough to see it anyway. I followed her into the kitchen.

  “You’re not going to like this,” I told her.

  She pointed in a way to indicate all of my peeking and lurking. “I don’t like that,” she said. “Somebody’s husband after you?”

  “I wish.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “At least that’d mean I’d made a different mistake.”

  Tula fairly tossed a slice of pizza on a plate and shoved it at me across the counter. She poured herself a glass of wine and set the bottle back down, didn’t offer to pour me one. She sipped. She waited. I’d had a wife once and so recognized this sort of chill. There wasn’t anything for me to do but give her what she wanted.

  “You know Desmond, right? Kendell’s cousin?”

  Tula managed a curt nod. She was especially beautiful irritated. Her eyes were almost black. She was a little short of simmering in her preemptive disapproval, as if she knew Desmond and me well enough to know we weren’t up to anything good.

  “Know Shawnica?”

  She nodded. “Seen her around.”

  “She’s got this brother. Calls himself Beluga.”

  “The holdup guy? The car thief?”

  I nodded. “Been in and out of Parchman.”

  “Buddy of yours, too?”

  “No,” I said, and a car went by out front, which stopped me cold. I glanced toward the street even though I couldn’t hope to see a thing from the kitchen.

  “Me and Desmond kind of lent him some money. He said he had this business thing.” I reached for the wine and poured myself a glass.

  “What thing?”

  “A line on some tires. Was going to get them cheap and sell them dear. Like that.”

  “Define get.”

  I held up my hands and showed her my palms—the universal gesture for I feel like a dick in retrospect. “Shawnica wanted us to bankroll him, which means Desmond wanted us to bankroll him, which means there wasn’t much I could do but go along. Family, you know?”

  “Kendell told me you two were flush. He said you took off some Acadian meth guy.”

  “I love Kendell, but sometimes he doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about.”

  “He said you’d say that.”

  I waited. I breathed. “We gave Larry some money,” I told her.

  “So you’re bankrolling Beluga.” She was enjoying herself now.

  “Could be we’re just thrifty, you know? People save up money sometimes.”

  She sipped. She nodded. She smiled and said, “All right.”

  “So anyway, the tire thing’s not exactly as advertised.”

  “Go figure.”

  “I know. Big surprise. Beluga takes them off a guy who doesn’t have much patience for shit like that.”

  “Vindictive streak?”

  I nodded. “Sends some muscle after Beluga.”

  “I heard it was a girl.”

  “First one, yeah. Cyborg in a skirt.”

  Tula came out of her uniform top. She hung it on the kitchen doorknob. She had on a gray Delta State T-shirt underneath. She was all lanky and brown and distracting.

  “And the Impala guys?” she asked me.

  “Want to…?” I pointed at the dinette. This was all going to take the sort of explaining I thought I’d best sit down to do.

  She hit me with the odd question, but mostly Tula let me talk. About Shawnica and Beluga. About Pearl. About Lucas Shambrough and his ninja schoolgirl assassin. About me and Desmond and why I do for him and him for me. She’d had a female version of Desmond herself, down in Baton Rouge, so she knew all about asking no questions and doing what had to get done.

  I told her about the naked guy in the pickup truck in Leland.

  “That’s just going to make them madder,” she said.

  “I kind of know that now.”

  I was leaning her way by then. I was trying to be suave and failing at it, and I’d reached an age where I knew I was failing at it in real time. So I was either going to kiss her awkwardly or pitch
over onto the floor. She just sat there and saw me coming. When I couldn’t quite reach her, she giggled.

  “You could scoot a little,” I told her.

  “You’ll figure it out,” she said.

  I had to shift my chair and start leaning toward her all over again. I’d raised a hand to steady myself and maybe put it somewhere. Not that I had a clue where it ought to go. She just smiled and didn’t help me a bit, and I had closed my eyes a little when the bay window exploded all over Tula’s front room.

  I was still puckered when she was up fetching a shotgun out of the pantry. I pulled my .308 from my ankle holster. She switched off the kitchen lights, and we both charged out the back door into the yard. I caught the chrome flash of some sort of sedan roaring away with no lights on. I leveled on it, but Tula reached over and pushed my aiming hand down.

  We went back inside. Tula’s big front window had gone to shards and bits. A hunk of brick had done the damage, about three-quarters of a paver. There was a message for me, I had to think, scratched on the thing in pencil.

  I showed it to Tula. The message read, “Your dead.”

  SIXTEEN

  I slept on the sofa once we’d finally cleared all the glass off of it. I wasn’t being noble or particularly gentlemanly, but there was no glass in the window anymore, and any damn thing could have come in.

  Tula gave me a pillow off CJ’s bed and her pump-action 20-gauge shotgun.

  “Want me to spell you around three?” she asked me.

  I shook my head and got a kiss on the cheek goodnight.

  I only sort of dozed on Tula’s sofa. Mostly I’d drop off and come lurching awake, half expecting to find a bear or an alligator or maybe a cracker pinhead in the front room with me. It was not a good night. Not truly much of a good morning either. I was napping lightly when a fellow showed up, some guy in a straw fedora. He was peeking in at me over the windowsill by the time I’d noticed him.

  “Hey,” he told me.

  I went scrabbling for the shotgun.

  “Ain’t this some shit?” he added, then turned his head and spat.

  “Who are you?” I asked him. I could barely see the guy below his ears.

  “About to ask you that.”