"The Brickmeyers are bat-shit crazy, and I can't get a single break on them. They might not be conspirators, but then what are they doing? Fucking with me for the fun of it?"
"That's your problem," she said knowingly. "Trying to figure out the Brickmeyers. Those people are no good."
"I'm beginning to see that."
"All they do is hook people in with their bullshit and then they use them until they don't need them anymore. Then they discard them."
"How would you know?"
"I've lived here all my life, too, you know. Well, almost all of it." She pressed her lips together and searched for something to say. "Look at anybody in this fucking town. They've all been strung along, thinking the man in the big house is the savior. You need something. One of them can offer it. Look at what Leland's daddy did to his first girlfriend."
"What are you talking about?"
She took a deep breath. "When Leland's daddy graduated from college and moved back down here, he started dating this girl - whose family has since moved away - and they had a fast courtship. Her religious beliefs were dead-on with the time, and she refused to bed him, despite his advances. They got engaged, but he grew disinterested and distanced himself from her. It came out that she was pregnant, and when she wouldn't leave him, he started dating other women, throwing it in her face. He'd even take them home to their house."
"Jesus, that's awful."
"She showed up uninvited to a party one night, and when he introduced her to the woman he was at the party with - the one he would eventually marry - this poor, pregnant girl went home and hanged herself. She was six months along. They'd set up a joint account together, and the parents tried to access in order to help pay for funeral expense, but they found it only had a penny in it."
"Brickmeyer had drained the entire thing."
Vanessa nodded.
"How did this not follow him around like a bad smell?"
"They smeared that poor girl and her family. It's why they moved. Those people, the Brickmeyers, they won't stop until every single person in this town is under their thumb. That's why they're so frustrated with you. If you don't stop, you'll end up like that discarded fiancee."
"I can't stop now. You know that."
"Guilt cannot be your only motivator."
"Someone else will die."
"You don't know that," she said.
"Yes, I do. But I don't believe I'll be making any more trips out to the Brickmeyer place. My welcome has been officially worn out."
"It's about time."
"That doesn't mean the family's entirely off the radar, though. Leland's put some distance between the murder and himself, but Jeffrey's still a wild card. If only I had some dirt to use against him, I might get him to turn on his father and give me some leverage."
Van smirked. “Well, there’s one thing you can use against him.”
“What?”
Her smile widened. “You honestly don’t know?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Why do you think he moved down to Savannah?"
“To be a lawyer?”
She laughed outright. “Maybe that was part of it. But what he actually did was follow a man down there. He got fucked up on drugs and then scrambled back to the Junction.”
My heart did somersaults in my chest. I couldn't believe my ears, but I tried to keep my voice under control. "What?"
"Uh-huh," she said. Her face was the sight of someone having it over on somebody else, but I knew she was telling the truth. "Jeff Brickmeyer is the last of the Brickmeyer name, an only child, and their name ends with him."
I had to take a minute to let it sink in. "How do you know that?"
"One of the joys of drug addiction, my dear. You end up in the company of people who know everything about everybody. When I was down in Savannah, everybody I told about my hometown told me about Jeff and his lover."
"That still doesn't answer my question."
"Touchy. My God. Well, some dealers I knew down in Savannah, they told me. The gay scene and drug culture sometimes overlap, so it was only a matter of time before the big Brickmeyer secret reached me. It's not even a coincidence, really."
"How does that fit into the investigation?" I was grasping at straws.
She shrugged. "No idea. Thing about Jeffrey is, his father either doesn't know or lives in denial. Jeffrey'd rather die than give up that information. Maybe Emmitt Laveau wanted to upend Leland's boat. If it got out just as the political campaign was firing up, Leland would have a hell of a lot of explaining to do. Georgia is a conservative state."
"Uh-huh," I said. I mulled it over. I leaned back on the couch. Something that Bodean Driscoll said came back to me. He had called Jeffrey Brickmeyer a fairy but it wasn’t just a sidelong slur. He’d meant it literally.
I sank into the couch next to Vanessa, wanting to place my hand on her knee, or else to reach up and slip my fingers through her hair just over the ear, the way I used to.
But I couldn't. Most often, people attribute an inability to forgive on pride, but pride is just a byproduct of emotional scar tissue. No matter how sober, how sweet, and how responsible Vanessa became, the mental image of her fucking another man for drugs would never leave me.
"Vanessa," I said, finally, clasping my hands so they would stay in my lap, "what is this?"
"A moment between friends," she replied, her voice the very definition of innocence. "You were right the other night. Don't complicate things. You aren’t doing anything wrong, so far as I can tell. We're just, you know, sitting on the couch."
I stared at her for a while in the quiet pleasure of the afternoon. Strange as it sounded, being with her in those slowly passing moments, like sitting on a rudderless ship, felt more ghostly than any dream.
Then she said, "I don't know why you're questioning this anyway. You finally got what you wanted. You were always afraid of me running away. Now I'm tied to this couch, and I'm afraid what I'll do to myself if I leave."
"I know," I said, looking away. And I left it at that. I couldn’t quite meet her gaze.
* * *
"I gotcha all fixed up, Rolson," the voice in my ear said. There was a profane outburst in the background, and then the voice said, "Scuse me. We got you covered. We do, me and Red. My bad. Jesus."
"What's the information?" I asked.
On the phone was Lyle Kearns, and he sounded somewhere on the other end of blitzed. It was just after dusk, and Vanessa had gone to spend the night at her father's. They were attempting a fragile reconciliation and had agreed to meet with one another to talk through her situation. It seems as though the closeness of this afternoon had made her somewhat claustrophobic.
Lyle said, "H.W. is staying with some used-up old skank. Part-time hooker. Y'all still call it that? Turns tricks sometimes. She used to have a real bad man for a beau and a pimp, but we didn't see him. It's just her and Bullen."
He talked some more, and I wrote the details on a stray piece of paper. "Laina Donaldson, probably. Fried hair, sort of bleached blonde-looking, with the roots showing. Scar across her cheek?"
"That's her," he said.
"Yeah. Busted her for possession once. Maybe she's trading sex for protection, that sort of thing. She's not got a strong instinct when it comes to men."
"Maybe. Shit, I don't know. She's all dried out. Pot-smoking alcoholic. Does blow and crack sometimes, if she can afford it."
"And how do you know all this?"
“You don’t worry about that. Just know I found him." Some more screaming in the background. "We found him. He's got her buying him groceries and drugs, goes out in the evening and brings ‘em home with her. Whatever she can get her hands on. This is all coming from the guy owns the place, Kevin Weeks. Says he has to keep an eye on her so she doesn't burn the fucking place down. Plus, the men she’s let home in the past tend to beat the shit out of her, so he's had to call the police more than once."
"I see."
Lyle cleared his throat. "
Both of them spend the day getting lit up on whatever’s lying around. As long as you don't ambush them, you might have a shot at talking to H.W. I got to tell you, though, the man's keeping an especially low profile, not just for the sake of being a homebody. Snakes that crawl into holes generally don't like to be dragged out by the tail."
"I'll be all right."
"I'm just telling you to be careful, that's all. He has a violent past."
I said goodbye and hung up, lying awake in bed most of the night, watching phantasms dancing and lurching on the ceiling. It was the first time I’d felt hopeful in days.
* * *
Calling D.L. would do no good. Even if I were on the list of people he would listen to at this point - and I was not - Vanessa curried even less trust from her father. I called Deuce and asked him to meet me at the bar, and even though he acted distant, eventually I convinced him.
“Damn, that’s something I didn’t even know,” he said, when I told him the story. We were sitting at the bar but hadn’t ordered. He was taking his sweet time to digest the story.
Deuce was a thoughtful guy, and he wasn’t quick to siphon off new information so that it was forgotten. Watching the dude take in someone else’s story was like watching a scientist keep up with records. For every detail he was given, he seemed to catalog it and place it in its own file for later use.
“What do you make of it, though, Deuce?” I asked. It was one hellacious revelation, and yet I didn’t quite know what to do with it. Kind of like walking around a playground with lit dynamite.
Louis came over and took our orders - I just got a Coke - and then went away. Deuce continued to slowly shake his head, in time with some internal rhythm that did not match up with the jukebox.
“I don’t know,” he said, at last. “I’ve got mind to believe Van on this one, Rol, but she might have moths up there when it comes to her memory of Savannah.”
“She swears up and down it’s the truth,” I responded. “I believe her. I don’t know. Part of me thinks she might have dreamed up the whole thing, but part of me is like, ‘why the hell not?’ Why not believe her?”
“Either way, doesn’t mean it has any connection to the corpse,” he said. “Not every thread is tied off at both ends.”
I sort of clicked my teeth together while I draped myself in that information. Could be true, I suppose. But he and I knew that wasn’t the truth.
“Of course,” he continued. “Could mean he’d have motivation to have someone shut up.”
“If he went to that party a few years back, maybe he caught Jeff in the bathroom with an illicit party guest. That’s reason enough.”
“Yeah, but years ago? Political scandals, sure, but that piece of information isn’t a ‘dump the body’ kind of discovery, is it? Maybe twenty years ago.”
“Maybe ten.”
“Maybe,” he said. “Listen, but even the event was a couple of years back. Why would he wait that long to get his revenge? Or to shut his file completely?”
“Seems like it would be a case of the cover-up being worse than the crime, yeah,” I said. It made a certain amount of sense, if somehow Laveau had reason to blow up the Brickmeyer political machine. Wait until a crucial moment, and then light the fuse.
“If the Brickmeyers are wound as tight as you say, then perhaps what happened was a sad, violent overreaction.”
I sighed. “Seems like a shame that someone’s life could come down to that.”
The bartender brought Deuce his beer but only gave me a dour look. “I ordered a Coke,” I said, not unkindly.
“Can’t serve you no more,” Louis said, though, and he turned on his heel and went the other way.
“I’m not even drinking,” I said to his back.
“Damn,” Deuce said, “Things is fucked up when a white dude gets refused service right in front of a black man holding a beer.”
“The progress of society,” I replied. Thinking about having a beer still made my stomach do gymnastics, but somehow my misery was stronger than my instincts and my will to do good.
“Circling back to the Brickmeyers. ‘Overreaction’ is a strange word to use.”
“Why’s that?”
“You know they didn’t do their own work,” he said. “If somebody had tied Emmitt Laveau up, had beaten him within an inch of his life to keep him quiet, it wasn’t the Brickmeyers-”
“But who the Brickmeyers hired.”
“Right. And so it would be someone with a temper. Someone with an edge toward being irrational.”
“Well, the hulk they hired to be Leland’s bodyguard fits that description. He’s big, and he’s got eyes like a viper. I can imagine he’d roid out if he didn’t get something he wanted.”
“Like a promise to keep his mouth shut.”
“Right. Bodean Driscoll. Word is, he retired from MMA after injuring his back, so he took to being hired muscle for assholes and rich paranoid types.”
The Brickmeyers certainly fit that description. “He ain’t so tough,” I said.
“Until you get him frothing,” Deuce replied. “He probably’s just waiting for the opportunity to tune you up. I bet he’s got all kinds of ways to do that.”
“He and I have come to an understanding,” I replied.
I wished for a beer to materialize in front of me, and when that didn’t happen, I started watching the bartender real close.
Louis waited a few minutes before he slipped up, but nevertheless he slipped up. The bar phone was in his hand, and he was talking to someone when we made eye contact, and he hung up. “You see that?” I asked.
“I ain’t seen anything but the Hawks give up thirty in the fourth quarter. Any luck tracking down H.W.? I’d have helped you, but my dance card is full right now. Bunch of weed peddlers growing plants in their fields decided not to show up for their court dates. That’s getting really interesting.”
A woman sauntered up on the far end of the bar, opposite of where the bartender had been standing, and was drunkenly trying to flag him down.
“H.W. is a non-starter right now. I’ve got a bead on him, so I’m going to stop by where he’s squatting after I leave here. Give him some time to work off a hangover I’m sure he’s got.”
“And you think he’s involved?” Deuce asked.
“He’s got the benefit of being out of sight, which means I’m not fucking with him.”
“I bet he’d appreciate that.”
“But he’s also a variable. I feel like he might fit in this thing somewhere. If he doesn’t, no skin and all that, but if he can find something interesting to say, I might be able to use him later.”
“He’s a big one,” Deuce said. “He could probably lay the pipe to some poor soul. Has done it, I know for a fact.”
“But I circle back to that idea of him being Ron’s brother. What reason would he have helping out the Brickmeyers? Old feuds don’t just clear up.”
“Unless he’s two-timing his brother. Ron’s playing a dead hand right now. Could be because he wants to keep the old boy from getting in trouble-”
“Or it could be because he genuinely doesn’t know what H.W.’s up to,” I replied. “They’re pretty tight, so I don’t think that, but who knows?”
Deuce finished his drink and signaled for another.
When he finally made his way down, I said, “Bossman making you do this?”
He ignored it, so I kept at him. “Or is it someone else? You guys worried about your liquor license, or maybe some competition springing up? That it? All to stay on the right side of a grudge.”
He placed a Bud Light in front of the woman, ignoring her pleas for a shot of Jager, and then said, under his breath, “I’d get up and go - now - if I were you. Five minutes, and you’ll wish you weren’t here.”
When his eyes met mine, his countenance was earnest. He wasn’t a bad guy, and though it was obvious he was caught in a fight he didn’t want to be in, he was still taking sides.
Man’s got to keep eggs in
the fridge and bread on the table, I reckon.
“You go ahead and go,” Deuce said. “I’ll cover for you here. They can’t be desperate enough to try to go through me to get to you.”
I couldn’t just leave him here. He was a respectable guy, and getting caught up with me was only going to get him hurt. “I can’t let you do that,” I said.
I thought about how well he was liked around town. How people still asked for his autograph. How he still signed every one of them as though they were his first.
“No. Uh-uh partner. You’re already up to your ass in the swamp. You get any more stink on you, and it’ll never come off. I know how to deal with lowlifes.”
I stood up. “I owe you one.”
Before I left, Deuce caught me by the elbow. “You mind loaning me twenty?” he asked. “To pay for my tab?”
His eyes were full of trouble, so I nodded and handed him what cash I had. He must have been having a down week with his bookie.
Seems like I wasn’t the only one getting my roots hacked up. There was something he was hiding, too, but since he didn’t want to tell me, I didn’t pry. He’d get into it when he was good and damn ready, when it was too late to help him.
I slipped out the back door and came face-to-face with a dude I’d never seen before. He had one hand held out, and for a moment I thought he was holding a pistol. I recognized the car behind him, and I suppose I’d noticed it following me around town.
“Rolson McKane?” he asked.
“Yes,” I kind of stammered. My instinct was to put my hands up.
He smiled and pulled one hand from his pocket. He was holding an envelope. “This is a restraining order. You’ve been served.”
He placed it in my hand and walked back to his car. A moment later he was gone. “Doesn’t matter,” I said to the empty parking lot.
A slip of paper wasn’t going to keep me away now.
* * *
A couple of cars pulled up as I made my way around the side of the building, and two or three big dudes wearing Brickmeyer Ag & Timber overalls sauntered into the bar.
Boogie House: A Rolson McKane Mystery Page 24