The Bentley chewed up the miles and we made good time. I pulled into the gravel parking lot a few minutes before nine. The place had been called the Seldon County Social Club when I was a child. Since then it had undergone something of a face-lift and was now called the County Line Bar.
The building was made from cinder blocks with a tin roof and no windows. A blue neon sign over the door announced the name of the place. A similar strip of red tubing to one side said, OPEN. I parked between a Chevy Malibu and a Ford pickup. The parking lot was almost full, and the Bentley appeared to be the only foreign car.
“Let’s go.” I got out of the car.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
An outsider walking into a place called the County Line Club in backwater East Texas required a certain amount of swagger and self-confidence. That is, if he didn’t want to get his ass whipped when he started asking hard questions.
I pushed open the metal door and let the smoke and noise wash over me. A stage was to the left; a five-piece band in baby blue tuxedos was playing seventies funk. To the right, at the front, was a bar. Farther on were pool tables.
The room was full. The crowd was half black, half white, one of the only places in this part of the world where skin color didn’t matter.
A white bouncer-looking guy the size of a Buick sat at a table by the front door. He wore a starched denim shirt and pressed Wranglers over cowboy boots. He was staring at the door when we walked in, and his gaze followed us as we made our way toward the bar.
He stood up and intercepted me halfway there.
“Can I help you?”
“Not unless you can get me a drink.” I had to shout to be heard above the noise of the band and the crowd.
“This is a private club.”
“How much for a membership?”
He stared at me for a moment, obviously wondering who I was and where I would fit into the pecking order. Tess looped her arm through mine and said, “What’s it take to get a beer around here?”
The bouncer chewed his lip for a moment more. “You can use my membership tonight.”
I nodded a thanks and threaded my way to the bar, Tess holding my hand behind me. People were lined up, covering every inch of the bar, even the waitress’s station. The ages varied, from barely legal to collecting social security. Most people seemed to know one another, and I caught more than a couple of curious glances.
After waiting for a few minutes, a fiftyish man with dyed black hair styled in an Elvis pompadour stepped away from the bar carrying two longnecks in each hand, a cigarette dangling between his lips.
I slid into the vacant spot and waited for the bartender to approach. Tess squeezed in beside me.
“Drink a beer, then wait for me in the car.” I handed her the keys to the Bentley. “If I’m not there in twenty minutes, head toward Waco or Austin.”
“What are you doing?”
“Mixing things up a little.”
“I’m not gonna leave you here.”
“Twenty minutes.” I squeezed her hand. “I mean it.”
The bartender approached. I ordered two Coors Lights. He pulled a pair of bottles from a cooler under the bar, popped the tops in a practiced motion, and placed them in front of me. I handed him a twenty, and one of the beers to Tess. She took the drink and stared at me for a few moments before melting into the crowd.
The bartender brought my change back. I stuffed it all in the tip jar and tilted my head his way.
I leaned across the bar. “Need to talk to Mr. Barringer.”
“What?” He frowned, looking as if he hadn’t heard correctly.
“The old man,” I said. “Clayton Barringer.”
The bartender shrugged. “Dunno who you’re talking about.”
I flipped one of my business cards on the bar and walked away. There was an empty stool against the far wall, by the pool tables. I sat down and looked at my watch. Tess was nowhere to be seen.
Twenty seconds later the bouncer approached me. He pointed to a door leading to the rear of the bar. “In the back. You first.”
“No.” I remained seated.
“You asked for something.” He shrugged. “It’s this way or not at all.”
“Sorry.” I took a drink of beer. “I’m not looking for a knife in the back tonight.”
He frowned and peered at me as if I were a three-headed alien or someone from Europe, a creature completely outside his experience.
“Whoever wants to talk to me can come out here,” I said.
“It doesn’t work that way.”
“It does this time.”
He hesitated for a moment, eyes squinting. “Wait here.”
I took another swig of beer as he disappeared into the back. Some might have seen giving my name out in a Barringer-controlled operation as tantamount to a death wish. Though they saw me as responsible for Billy’s death, I knew from past experience they might also have viewed my sudden arrival in their part of the world as an opportunity for a little information gathering. Or so I hoped.
Three minutes later the rear door opened and Mr. Bouncer emerged with a smaller man wearing khakis and a western-style white dress shirt, his skin creased from the sun and a lifetime of hard choices. He was in his midforties, and had the look of one in charge of things.
The band took a break and a jukebox kicked in, playing a vintage Waylon Jennings tune, “Lonesome, Ornery and Mean.” The smaller man walked to where I sat, nursing a beer.
“I’m the manager,” he said.
“How’s that working out for you?” I put the bottle on a built-in ledge running along the wall.
“What do you want?” He held my business card between his thumb and forefinger, as if it were infected.
“You know.”
“I want to hear it from you.”
“Clayton Barringer,” I said. “He’ll be interested in talking to me.”
“Are you the same Oswald that—”
“Yeah.”
The man shook his head. “They never told me you were stupid.”
“That’s funny.” I stood up. “They never told me anything about you.”
The manager looked like he had a good comeback worked out but couldn’t quite remember how it went. He opened his mouth and pointed a finger at me.
The bouncer said, “You got any idea how many people in this part of the world want a piece of you?”
“Tell Moose we’re operating a little above his level now.” I pointed to the bouncer but spoke to the manager. “Where can I find the old man?”
“I’m gonna tell you a place to go,” he said. “Mr. Barringer will be nearby.”
“In case you were wondering,” I said, “several really unpleasant people know where I am and are expecting me to check in on a regular basis. Bad things will happen if I don’t.”
The manager stared at me blankly and then gave me directions to a house in the next county.
I silently repeated the information several times so it would store in short-term memory until I could get to the car and write it down. I would have made a bad spy, all that memorize-the-secret-password-and-then-eat-this-communiqué BS.
The bouncer said, “Time for you to leave.”
I sat back down, picked up my beer, and made a mental note to call Olson and Delmar and ask them to nose around a little if I didn’t surface in the next day or two. Whenever I made similar requests, Olson always seemed a tad disappointed when I was okay and denied him the opportunity to go on a rampage.
I took three swallows of beer, pausing ten seconds between each. After the third, the bottle was empty. I put it back on the ledge and stood again.
“Okay, Moose. Now I’m leaving.”
The jukebox changed songs. “Purple Rain” by Prince blared through the overhead speakers. Moose followed me to the front door. “Be careful out there.” He laughed.
I was pretty sure he wasn’t really concerned for my welfare. I was also more than a little concerned about what waited for me o
utside. Sometimes the grapevine can spread a message faster than the Internet.
I pushed open the front door and stepped out into the humid night air. The parking lot was illuminated by two weak lights at either corner of the property.
A man stood in the middle of the parking lot, his shadow canting toward me. He took a long drag from a cigarette. The way he held the cancer stick and let the smoke dribble from his nose reminded me of a guy I knew years ago, a casual acquaintance who ran with Billy.
I took a few steps and saw the man’s profile, recognized him as the same guy. I couldn’t remember his name. I did remember that nobody liked to be alone with him for any extended period.
He took one last puff from the cigarette and dropped it onto the gravel parking lot, grinding it out with the toe of his boot. “Been a long time, Hank.”
“Yeah. It has.” I tried again to recall his name. The Bentley wasn’t visible from where I stood.
“What brings you to town?”
“You already know or you wouldn’t be standing here in the dark, waiting for me.”
“Things are changing.”
“That so?” I eased my hand under my shirt toward the Hi Power.
“Population’s grown. Lots more people now,” he said. “It’s all a numbers game.”
“The old man used to say that, didn’t he?”
“Yeah.” He pulled another cigarette out and stuck it in his mouth. “It’s good for business, more people.”
“So what’s your point?” I saw the Bentley now, Tess behind the wheel, maneuvering the big auto through the parking lot toward the front door near where I stood.
“We don’t want nothing to mess up business.” The Bentley pulled up behind him but he didn’t turn around. “You get what I’m saying?”
“I’m just looking for some answers.” I headed toward the passenger side of the car.
“You don’t even know the right questions to ask,” he said.
I climbed inside the car.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Tess drove back to town. I wrote down the information given to me by the manager and told her what had happened. By the time I had finished, we were driving through Seldon, vacant and forlorn-looking on a Sunday night at ten o’clock.
I suggested going to Tess’s house and spending the night.
“No.” She shook her head.
“Why not?”
“It’s not my home anymore.”
“Is this about that guy being there?”
She shook her head, turned down a side street, and cut through a tiny neighborhood of shotgun houses. A few minutes later, we pulled up to the motel at the interstate cutoff. The throngs of people in the parking lot in front of the liquor store had disappeared. Empty ice bags and beer cans littered the ground.
Tess stopped in front of the office of the motel. “Let’s stay here.”
“Only if they have a massage bed.” I stepped out of the Bentley. The minuscule lobby stunk of curry and cleaning bleach. The Indian man behind the counter took my $29.95 and, at my request, gave me a key to a room on the second floor, near the back and away from the highway.
Tess parked the car by an overflowing Dumpster. We got our stuff and lumbered up the stairs to the honeymoon suite, 350 square feet of Triple-A-approved luxury. Threadbare carpet, stained bedspread, and a gurgling toilet; the room had it all. Even HBO on the television bolted to the dresser.
We were both exhausted. We fell into bed and tried to go to sleep.
The problem was that our room was between a guy who sounded like he was going through heroin detox, and a woman wearing a Dairy Queen uniform and living with three kids in a tiny, two-bed unit.
I knew all of this because Mr. Detox threw his TV through the window at around eleven, screaming about the ants on his body. While the one police officer on duty in Seldon chased him around the parking lot, the waitress ambled outside, told her children to shut the hell up, and then asked if I wanted to party.
Tess came out at that point. She yawned and squinted at the girl, a bemused look on her face. The waitress looked at her, then at me. She stuck her finger in one ear and scratched and said, “Well, shit.” She disappeared back in her room. A few minutes later, the cop managed to subdue the whacko in the parking lot. Tess and I crawled into bed again.
I was awake now, more than a little wired after the evening’s excitement. I reached across the lumpy mattress. Tess rolled over, kissed me on the cheek. “Let’s pretend we don’t know each other.”
“Huh?”
“My husband thinks I’ve gone to see my sister.” She snaked one hand down the front of my boxer shorts.
“U-uh, okay.”
“Please. Let’s just do it.” She placed her index finger on my lips. “No names, okay?”
I nodded and we had sex by the light of the flickering neon outside the window.
The next morning we woke at about seven as the Monday-morning traffic rushed by on the highway outside the window. We showered and ate breakfast at the “café” part of the convenience store across the parking lot, a series of wooden booths overlooking the gas pumps. The food was hot and the coffee strong. We finished, got our stuff from the room, and went to the car.
I opened the trunk and rooted around.
“What are you looking for?” Tess asked.
“Not sure.” Delmar always had interesting things stashed here and there. The last time I borrowed his car, I had a flat and found a grenade launcher and a five-foot-long elephant tusk in the trunk.
“Want me to help?”
“No.” I found a tool kit next to a can of fix-a-tire stuff and a roll of duct tape. Next to that were two boxes of ammunition for some obscure Eastern bloc military rifle. A shoe box in the back had a dozen or so switchblades. They were Microtechs, expensive little buggers that retailed for about four hundred a pop. I stuck one in my waistband. Delmar wouldn’t miss it.
Underneath the jumper cables on the other side of the trunk I found a padded briefcase made out of black nylon. I opened it and pulled out a Dell laptop.
“What are you gonna do with that?” Tess said.
I turned on the machine without replying. After it ran through its interminable boot-up procedure, a tiny blue light winked on the front. A small screen popped up and said, “No wireless networks in range.” A click on the battery icon showed a full charge.
“Let’s go.” I shut the trunk and hopped behind the wheel. Tess slid in the passenger seat, and I pulled out of the driveway.
She gave me directions. A few minutes later, I pulled under the shade of a sweeping elm tree in front of a faded redbrick building. The structure was old, mortar missing between some of the bricks. A stone inset sat over the front door, identifying the library as a gift of the Carnegie Foundation.
“They were supposed to get a grant and build a new one,” Tess said. “Don’t know what ever happened.”
I opened the laptop without replying and held my breath. The hard drive whirred. A screen popped up: “Wireless networks available.”
Tess leaned over and looked at the screen. “Checking your e-mail?”
“No.” I surfed my way to Google and typed in the address given to me by the manager the night before. I hit the FIND button and waited.
Nothing.
“Crap,” I said.
“What?”
“It was a long shot.” I threw the piece of paper with the address on the console. “Wanted to see if I could get a phone number to the place.”
Tess picked up the paper. “Try River Bend Road.”
“Huh?”
“This says County Road 191.” She tapped the slip of paper. “They also call it River Bend.”
“Okay.” I typed in the same address with the new street name. Nothing happened. The wireless connection was lost.
“Damn,” Tess said.
I took a deep breath and hit REFRESH. The wireless screen appeared, showing a faint signal. I pushed the search button again. Five seco
nds later I was at a Web page for Burt’s River Bend Kennels. At the bottom was a phone number.
“You ever heard of this place?” I pointed to the screen.
“Uh-uh.”
“What about Burt . . .” I squinted at the screen. “Gomez?”
“Never heard of him.”
“Let’s go say hello.” I shut down the laptop and we pulled away from the Seldon library.
Tess navigated. We headed east by southeast on a two-lane road badly in need of patching. The countryside changed as we drove. The impenetrable mass of oaks gradually gave way to pines. There were no more new subdivisions, just miles and miles of trees with the occasional double-wide nestled deep in the shadows.
We drove through several tiny towns, if that was the right word. Each was nothing more than a small collection of frayed and decrepit buildings clustered at a deserted intersection. These communities were so small, they didn’t rate population signs, only small white-on-green markers denoting the name.
I stopped at a service station to fill up the gas-swilling Bentley. The pumps were the old style, digits twirling mechanically behind the glass. An old man in overalls and a greasy Houston Astros cap came outside and asked if I wanted my windows cleaned. I shook my head, topped off the tank, and paid him.
Twenty minutes later we drove past a one-story brick home that appeared to be relatively new, that is, built in the last forty or fifty years. There was a picket fence in need of a coat of paint running along the front of the property. The gate was padlocked.
Behind the house I could see a long building with chain-link fencing serving as the outside walls: the kennel.
I pulled the Bentley into a driveway about a quarter of a mile down the road and parked behind an oleander bush, leaving the car unable to be seen from the street. There was no house here, just a vacant rectangle about the size of a mobile home where the vegetation didn’t grow.
Tess said, “What are you gonna do?”
“You stay with the car.” I handed her the keys. “Give me one full hour this time.”
“And then what?”
“Get the hell out of here.” I grabbed the roll of duct tape. It was about nine-thirty now, pushing eighty degrees. The sun cut through the pines to the southeast, narrow beams of light reflecting on the dust in the air.
The Next Time You Die Page 16