“Would it even clear?” you say, folding it back it into your chest pocket the way old men do with their pouches of chewing tobacco.
She lifts her chin to the woman behind you, holding onto the velvet rope with both hands.
You smile your way out, know better than to make a scene under a security camera.
On the sidewalk again, you count what’s left of Gwen’s retainer: one hundred and ten. Minus five for the film developing, one for the gas it’s going to take to get back to the drugstore to pick the film up. Six for the cheeseburger you’ll buy again. Twenty for beer, three for gas to get the beer.
You’re going to need that seventy-five.
Just shy of sixty miles per hour, the Ford has a definite shimmy. It could be a hundred things. You slow back down to fifty, keep on east, not sure where the turn-off for the dump is anymore until the hand-drawn arrow of a landfill sign tells you.
Coming down from highway to caliche speeds, the truck shudders, and you know it’s the front rotors, wafer-thin and warped, but at least the brakes work, right? And anyway, this truck was never meant to pull cotton trailers or deliver round bales of hay or be left in a turnrow all day. It’s a lover, not a fighter.
You hand-over-hand the wheel, hope there’s going to be more landfill signs ahead. The only other way you can stumble onto Rory’s mom’s old house is if you find some twenty-year-old cans of beer behind the seat, drink exactly the amount you used to after the Friday night football games.
It takes about fifteen minutes to get lost. Not the “not finding Rory’s mom’s house yet” kind of lost, but the “is this even Martin County anymore” kind.
You’re not sure. Your only point of reference is a yellow cropduster plane, swooping down back and forth, dropping rolls of toilet paper each time it starts to lift back up into the sky. To mark its place. Meaning the pilot doesn’t have a spotter on the ground, is working alone today. Whatever he’s spraying, you can taste it on the air. For a while you try holding your breath, but that falls apart pretty fast, just makes you pull more air in. The only solution is to punch through it all at the best clip you can manage. Several foggy years later, you step off the caliche onto packed dirt, and the surface matches up perfectly with everything broken on the Ford, and suddenly you’re driving on glass. You even let go of the wheel for seconds at a time.
Soon enough the road ends, turns into another, even narrower, and then you’re not sure if you’re on a road anymore at all. Just a glorified turnrow, maybe. But then you start picking up signs—beer bottles, faded silver cans. They’re all along the fence on your side, some of them turned upside down onto the thin locust stakes that keep the barbed wire spread.
This you remember: dropping bottles out the driver’s side window, tail lights glowing red ahead of you in the dust like a promise.
The kids still know where the old house is.
Two minutes later, it’s there, just like you remember it except even more trashed. Rory’s supercab is angled up to it from some other, probably more direct road.
You nod about this, about what you’re going to say to him: that seventy-five’s not enough, and that cash works fine, thanks. That it looks like his wife’s boyfriend’s real trouble. That, what does he want the pictures for anyway? From your limited experience, usually the pictures are just to bring into focus what the husband’s already been playing in his head.
But—he’s not even living with Gwen anymore, right?
What does he care?
You step out, the Ford off because you know more about the starter and the battery than you do about the radiator. The only sound is the plane buzzing behind you, like something you could slap to your neck if you wanted, rub onto your jeans.
Between you and the house is the old concrete tank. At one time there’d been goldfish in it, you remember—this was just after Rory’s family moved to town—but for the part of your junior year you were still a Stanton Buffalo, the tank was an ashtray, a trashcan. Down deep in it, caked in the dirt now, there’s probably some antique beer bottles, even. Some real live pull tabs. A broken rubber or two, the kid born from that already out of high school himself, making his own contraceptive mistakes.
What you’re going to tell Rory is no more St. Nick.
And that you know all he’s wanting the pictures for is to have the upper hand in the divorce proceedings.
And—how much is there to be had, anyway?
Seventy-five dollars seems a small cut.
That you know the pictures are about divorce will be a lie, of course, but the way he responds will be real.
You step onto the porch, rap on the door, have to back away from the dust packed into the grain of the wood by a thousand sandstorms. Why anybody would want to spend the heat of the day inside a broken-down old house…well, you want to say it’s beyond you. It does beat working, though. Rory’s not you, though.
Probably he saw your dust cloud coming and’s inside now, getting some new humiliation ready for you.
Not this time.
You back off, call his name through one of the broken windows in front, get no reply. You honk the horn of his truck and come away trailing webs. They’re strung from the top of the steering wheel to the headliner, then back to the gun rack, the carpenter’s level Rory keeps on the lower hooks.
You turn back to the house, less sure.
You say his name again, louder. Then, backing away, you say it weaker. And you know already that the Ford isn’t going to start. That you never should have come out here.
You breathe in, out, go back to the Ford anyway.
It doesn’t start.
You stare at the house, shake your head. Don’t even have any beer with you. Weren’t planning on making a day of the drugstore.
You honk again, only it’s not so loud anymore.
Maybe this is something that happens to all PIs. Part of the job.
And then you decide that Rory’s upstairs, watching you. Smiling.
You step out, leave the door of the Ford open, pick up the first brown bottle you find and flip it around so that you have it by the neck. You shouldn’t, but you do it anyway: sling the bottle end over end at the house.
It doesn’t shatter against the wood. Doesn’t even dent it, near as you can tell.
You pick up another, throw it harder, and it does break. And the next. The dirt clod you dig up out of a tractor track, though, it just goes right through the wall.
After that, standing there, breathing hard, you decide that Rory probably isn’t just a carpenter, that he’s probably a pilot by now too. It’s the natural next thing to be, after quarterbacking varsity to regionals two years in a row. Being homecoming king. Getting Gwen.
You look back to the plane.
It just keeps swooping up, back down.
“Fine,” you say, and go back to the house, push through the front door, check the first floor. It’s just like the outside: already broken. Covered in dust. You call upstairs but it’s empty too, and the stairs are rickety and wrong anyway, probably only good enough for mice and snakes.
This isn’t a joke anymore. Or, if it is, you’re not waiting for the punch line, for Rory to pull the yellow plane up to the side of the house, push his goggles up onto his forehead and ask, “What’re you doing here, Nicky?”
There’ll be no witnesses for whatever he does next.
But his keys are still in his truck. You saw them when you were honking.
It starts on the second try, glowplugs be damned, and for a long, long moment, you know you’re just going to take it instead, park out front of Aardvark Custom Economy Storage. Make him catch a ride to town.
But then, when neither of you have any jumper cables, you have to take it whether you want to or not. Out the back way, following the dirt road that’s obvious now, that swings up around the landfill. The opposite way from the yellow plane.
After a couple of miles, the dirt road becomes caliche, then the caliche asphalt, and you’re on the service
road of 20, miles east of town. A lot closer to Big Springs than you meant.
The clock on Rory’s aftermarket stereo says three o’clock.
You look right towards Stanton, then the other way, to Big Springs.
The judge didn’t say anything about not going there.
At the prison you push the visitor’s log back to the desk sergeant, give him your old badge number.
He hands you a different log.
You sign your name, try not to smile.
The desk sergeant studies it for half a second then re-shelves it, creaks his chair back to get a better angle on you. “Who you need to see then?”
You rub your chin like a homicide detective might. “It’s not like that. He’s already out, this guy.”
The desk sergeant positions his fingers over his keyboard.
“Fin,” you say. “That’s all we’ve got.”
“He’s wanted for something?”
“Just questioning.”
“Fin…” the desk sergeant says, and can’t find it, has to call a guard over. He looks you up and down. “That big-ass tattoo guy from D—what’d he do, finally twist some jerk’s head off?”
“Not yet.”
“ID?” he says then.
You do your best disgusted/impatient act, flash the shield you reported lost six months ago.
“Sorry,” the guard says, no sincerity in his voice at all.
“I just need his full name,” you tell him. “I can call dispatch for the rest.”
“Payne,” the guard says, like it’s supposed to be funny. “Full name, Anthony Robert Payne.”
You repeat it back to him, suddenly aware of the prop you don’t have: a flip notebook. “He tight with anybody here?”
The guard rubs his nose. “It’ll all be in his file, I’d figure. Right, detective?”
He stares at you after saying it.
Anthony Robert Payne. Fin. Big-ass tattoo guy from D-block. Permanent, Inc.
You nod to yourself about all of it.
“He’s in Stanton now, if you’re wondering,” you say, tapping the counter twice before pushing off, what you’ve always thought of as a parting rimshot.
The guard nods, still watching you. Says at last, his cheeks drawn up, “I know you from somewhere, right?”
You leave before he can connect you to Big 2 News.
From the phone on Rory’s dashboard, you call Melinda at dispatch. She picks up on the first ring.
“Nick,” she says, barely a whisper.
“One and only.”
“I can’t talk to you.”
“Just listen, then. I need the sheet on a—”
“Do you know what happens if they find out this is you?”
“I guess we should make this fast, then,” you tell her. “Don’t want to…get you in any trouble. Like last time.”
Last time was in the backseat of your patrol car, your second year out. Because it felt dirtier back there, criminal. Except, afterwards, the doors wouldn’t open up, and you finally had to call for help on your shoulder rig. Everybody coming out to clap, somebody throwing leftover carryout rice onto the two of you when you helped her up from the patrol car.
Melinda breathes in, out—is married now, with real rice—and you have her.
Anthony Robert Payne did eight years of a ten-year aggravated assault bid. It was on his ex’s new guy, it sounds like. Like the girl he’d divorced was supposed to stay faithful.
“What’s he look like?” you say, instead of goodbye.
Melinda hangs up anyway.
This time you let the glowplugs of Rory’s truck warm before turning the key. The gas gauge climbs to a quarter tank, stops.
Jumper cables, you say to yourself. Jumper cables could still save you. Just lay down twenty dollars for a set, ease back to Rory’s mother’s house, get the Ford started, and go back to Aardvark Custom Economy Storage. Call it a day.
Except, already you’re putting the diesel it took to get to Big Springs on your expense account. The diesel it took to run down your client’s wife’s backdoor man. Or, body shop guy—body guy.
You like that, are going to use it on Rory, you think. If he tries to call you St. Nick again.
Of course, you’re willing to erase that expense, too. Not just because you didn’t pay for the diesel in the first place, but because, really, it makes sense to take Rory’s work truck instead of the Ford. If he wants you to solve the case, you have to have transportation. While the Ford’s good enough for Stanton, getting all the way over to Big Springs is another story.
And, anyway, sitting high up in the supercab, you feel like a landowner.
And landowners, where do they go when the work’s done? The bar.
On a good day, you can rationalize just about anything. Sitting in the parking lot in front of the bar—Wagon Wheel, Broken Spoke, something like that—moving Rory’s house key over to your key ring, you even take it a little further: because the bar is the first one you see, driving away from the prison, it’s probably the closest too, the one a prison guard or two is bound to stop at after a hard day of cracking heads, just to wind down, depressurize. Remind himself that the kids he has at home aren’t inmates, haven’t been convicted of anything yet.
You tell the waitress you’re going to be needing your receipts here, thanks.
Twenty minutes later, one guard creeps in.
You buy him his second drink, show him your badge, and by eleven o’clock, after he’s sure you’re going to put in a word for him with your captain, he’s rolling up his sleeve to show you the work Fin’s done on him.
It’s a skull, a dagger in the right eye socket, a snake coiled around the handle.
“What about him, though?” you say. “He get a lot of visitors?”
The guard has to focus deep into his coaster to remember, then starts nodding, slowly. Looks up to you with a smile, says, “Yeah, that’s right. That one—the teacher lady. Holy hell, man. Like to teach her some grammar.”
“Conjugate a verb or two,” you add.
“Get sent to the back of the class…”
Your tab, you know, is already at seventy-five. Eighty if you tip the waitress.
“He ever a discipline problem?” you say.
The guard laughs, swirls his drink. Says, “He was the discipline, man,” then falls into a coughing fit that almost ends in vomit.
You come back to him, wait until he can hear. “What do you mean ‘he was the discipline?’”
The guard takes a long enough drink that his eyes water.
“You can feel it when he’s working on you,” he says, touching the skull under his shirt sleeve to show what he means. “That he’s like—that it’s all—” He stops, starts again. “Like strong, I mean. All wound up inside.”
“And he’s big, right?” you say. “Like farm-boy big?”
“More like military,” the guard says, rocking on his stool some. “Special…green…ranger…”
You push the rest of your drink over to him. He sips it down, has to concentrate to get his throat to go along with him.
“Never sleeps, either,” he says, laughing, then staggers off to the little caballeros’ room.
Fin, you say to yourself for the thousandth time.
Ex-special forces, bleeds tattoos, did eight years inside for beating a guy who maybe had something going with his ex. This is the guy whose girl you’ve got designs on. The one she wants you to break her up with.
You laugh to yourself, about yourself, then leave the guard in the bathroom, sign over Rory’s check to the bar—no tip, just the check, slid under an empty glass—and stand in the parking lot by Rory’s tall truck wishing it were cold, that there was a wind to sober you up.
Failing that, you do what you learned from your dad: open the door wide, put your fingers in, then, before you can even think about, slam the door shut.
It sobers you up so much you want another drink, for the pain. A bottle.
You don’t even look a
t your index finger until you’re up on 20 again.
The nail’s purple, going black, blood seeping out on all sides, outlining it. Because the doors of the trucks your dad taught you on were old and loose and never fit that well in the first place. The cab on Rory’s truck is airtight.
You laugh again, still at yourself, then stay five miles under the speed limit the whole way to the Martin County line, miss the exit for business 20—highway 80—find yourself looping over the north side of Stanton. Just to stop on top of the bridge.
From here you can see the whole town, the blanket of lights. Napkin of lights, you correct.
You follow the front of the truck around to the guard rail, lean against it with your shins.
The military surplus place is right below you, almost. The rocket pointed up over the fence like the Buffaloes are about to wage war on…you turn your head to follow the arc of the rocket—who?
Before you can tell, remember what’s out that way—Lenora, maybe? Tarzan, if you go far enough?—Toby Garret’s baby brother coasts in behind you, blue lights flashing. Up here on top of the world, they’re a beacon.
“Nice out,” he says, approaching.
You smile, can’t help yourself. Say, as if about to zip up, “Is nice out, yeah. Think I’ll just leave it out.”
Toby Garrett’s baby brother doesn’t even flinch.
Not good. You direct your eyes down to the rocket.
“The Lawler kid, right?” you say.
Toby Garret’s baby brother looks too. “Gene Lawler’s been dead for thirty years, Mr. Bruiseman.”
Mr. Bruiseman: worse.
“You thought I was gonna be Rory, didn’t you?” you say.
Toby Garrett’s baby brother shakes his head no, he didn’t.
“Do you need medical assistance?” he says about the index finger that won’t ball up with the rest.
“Nothing I couldn’t fix with the right screwdriver.”
“Have you been drinking, sir?”
You don’t answer, just track north on 137. Think maybe you can see the lights of Lamesa up there. Their drive-in, maybe four cars spaced out on the packed dirt.
“I guess you know I’m going to have to take you in,” Toby Garrett’s baby brother says.
Not for Nothing Page 5