It was a proper date—something to take their mind off all the what-ifs—the perfect illusion. Then midway through dinner Mary Jane forked a bite of chicken fettuccini into her mouth and asked, “What are you going to do about the money?”
Mark stared at the television above the bar.
“When are we leaving, Mark? What’s the plan?”
Before the situation with Lew reached a point of no return, Mary Jane had told him he should make a run for it, that kids ran away all the time, but he’d missed that chance.
“Tomorrow is the day I usually pick up prescriptions,” he said. “So we’ll do that. Then we’ll hit up pharmacies and by the end of the day we’ll have a stash of Oxy.”
“And?”
“I’ll sell it.”
“I don’t understand why we can’t leave now.”
Mark sighed. Part of him wanted to believe they would make it no matter what, but he was a realist at heart. He knew it took means to make it on your own. “How would we survive?” he asked. “I mean honest-to-God survival. Maybe we’d have enough money to pay for gas and food to get to Canada. But what then? This way we’ll have enough to rent an apartment, get settled.”
“And we’re just going to forget about the money your dad owes us?”
“We’re moving ahead.”
“Because you’re scared of him?”
“Because it’s not going to happen.”
“Even after what we did?”
“I’m sorry,” Mark said. It was the best he could offer and it wasn’t much. “But what we did kept us together. Made tonight possible and all the tonights to come.” He stared at her, unblinking, tried to convince her he was telling the truth. There was something beautiful in the hazel eyes that looked back, the hazel eyes that had driven boys wild with desire all growing up, but there was skepticism, too. Mark wanted to give Mary Jane everything she wanted but he knew he wasn’t capable. She asked too much; he offered too little. He could only do his best. It was the try that mattered. If he could erase it all now, he would. He’d return to school, complete his degree, get a regular job, move to a town with suburbs, buy them a house, lead a normal life. He’d never wanted fame or fortune. The most he’d ever tried to weasel was a little gas money.
“What?” she said, as he continued to look into her eyes.
It was one of those questions that you don’t really answer, that you’re not supposed to. Mary Jane didn’t want to hear the what, didn’t want to know that Mark was afraid they would get caught, that even if they made it to Canada he worried they wouldn’t find happiness. “Nothing,” he said.
“Seriously. What?”
Mark didn’t know how to feel. “I love you,” he said.
Mary Jane’s face relaxed into a smile. “I love you, too.”
seven
A sad herd of bedraggled cows lolled across the road leading into Lingg Pedersen’s homestead. Harlan had to shoo them by waving his ball cap as if it were a Stetson. He’d read up on the Pedersen case since visiting the bank. Lingg’s son, Adam, was a common punk facing jail time after having swung through his third strike—the last one for carrying a couple of grams over the misdemeanor limit of dope. Lew’s letter to Craycraft had mentioned how the weighing of drugs was an imperfect science and that he might consider this when adjudicating Adam’s future. Craycraft ended up dropping the charge to a misdemeanor, and Adam walked out with a fine and community service. Not long after, Lingg sent his son on a bus to his mother’s place in Pennsylvania. A week after that, a check from Pedersen to Lew bounced. There wasn’t a second check.
When no one came to the door of Pedersen’s house, Harlan continued on to the barn. He found Lingg checking his tobacco, which hung on inch-thick poles to cure. “Good yield this year, Lingg?”
“Doesn’t matter if the market’s down,” Pedersen replied before turning to see who’d asked.
“I wondered if I might talk to you,” Harlan said. “About Adam.”
“That boy. So much potential, so little drive. He’s at his mother’s place.”
“I remember when you sent him up there. Pretty soon after his court date.”
“Yep.”
“Pretty good fortune for Adam.”
“I suppose.”
Pedersen grabbed a broom and started brewing up a dust storm of barn-floor dirt.
“Do you know why the judge reduced the charges?”
“Nope.”
Harlan pulled out a bandanna and covered his mouth, took hold of the broom to make Pedersen stop. “You wrote Lew Mattock a check around that time.”
“Now there’s a tragedy,” Pedersen said.
“We’re all broken up about it,” Harlan said. “But the check. Do you remember it?”
Pedersen scratched through his beard and thought. “Probably a campaign donation.”
“That’s strange,” Harlan said. “It didn’t go into a campaign account. It went into Lew’s personal savings. And then it bounced.”
“Did it now?” Pedersen shrugged. “I never put much stock in banks.”
“None of this sounds familiar?”
“It sounds familiar,” Pedersen said. “But that doesn’t mean I recollect it.” He was playing dumb but he’d perfected the art.
“That check wouldn’t have anything to do with Adam’s arrest, would it?”
Pedersen started fiddling with the engine of his International. He couldn’t keep still.
“Did you know Lew wrote the judge a note on Adam’s behalf?”
“Is that right? Maybe he was a better man than I thought.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Pedersen pulled a rag from the pocket of his overalls and rubbed his face. “All these questions.”
“I’ll stop asking when you start answering.”
Pedersen methodically folded the sweat rag into a pocket-sized square with his gnarled but nimble fingers, then slipped it back into his overalls and focused his attention on Harlan. “Lew asked for a campaign donation around the time of Adam’s court date. He didn’t say anything about the donation getting Adam off the hook but I knew it couldn’t hurt. When the check bounced, Lew was some kind of angry, so I offered to butcher him a couple cows instead. Damned if he didn’t pick my two best heifers. I butchered one that day but he asked me to fatten the other one up, came over a couple weeks ago, told me it was time to bolt the poor girl. Adam wasn’t locked up, so I figured I owed him what was due and paid.” Pedersen pulled a flathead from the back pocket of his overalls and continued to tinker with his tractor. “Look, I’m sorry Lew’s dead, but what kind of asshole takes advantage of a down-on-his-luck farmer?”
“Sounds like you had an ax to grind.”
“Naw. It worked out in the end. Adam, he’s doing better. Wants to write poems or something. I might be out two cows but I don’t need much to get by.”
“You own any guns, Lingg?”
“Yep.”
“How about a 30-06 or a .308?”
“Probably.”
“You mind if I take a look at them?”
Pedersen put the flathead down. “You got a warrant?”
“Nope.”
“Then I suppose I mind. On principle. But you don’t need to worry about me, Sheriff. I didn’t want to hurt Lew. Hell, the fact you told me he wrote that letter for Adam makes me feel like this was all worth it.”
“It’s a crime. What you did.”
“You wouldn’t have done the same?”
Harlan shrugged. “If I called you into court, would you tell the truth about the bribe?”
“Campaign donation,” Pedersen corrected and reached above him to finger some still green tobacco. “Besides, what are you gonna do? Dig Lew up and put him on trial?”
“No. I don’t know. But maybe not all the people Lew wrangled campaign donations from were so forgiving.” Harlan put out his hand and gripped Pedersen’s calloused paw. “I’ll be back with that warrant,” he said.
* * *
<
br /> Mary Jane rubbed the goose bumps along her pale arms warm. Mark had cocooned himself in the sheets and slept as if he were a rock, so she settled for big spoon and dealt with the cold, and when she couldn’t fall back asleep, she tickled the bottom of Mark’s feet with hers. He squirmed and fidgeted and eventually sat up, his dime-sized nipples erect from the cold. “You need to turn on the heat,” she said and ran her fingers through his tousled hair. “It’s not like we’ll be here when the bill comes.”
Mark glanced at the alarm clock. “Shit,” he said. “We need to get moving.” He jumped out of bed, tucked a button-down into khakis, and told Mary Jane to wear her new dress.
She’d never seen how Mark’s business worked up close, but he gave her a crash course as they got ready. It was all about acting, he said. They’d have new names—Stephen and Ashley—and new personalities. They were two college kids out doing a good deed.
The first house they visited was a two-story brick with plantation windows. Elm trees lined the street and neglected flower beds led to the front door. Mark carried a couple of flowers he’d stolen from the bouquet he’d bought Mary Jane. Black tape covered the doorbell, so he used the knocker, which was shaped like the head of a Labrador. When the door opened, a woman with a bathrobe draped loosely over her wrinkled body stared out. Gray hair twisted atop her head. Behind her the house was shrouded in dark.
“Good morning, Ms. Morrow,” Mark said, exaggerating the southern lilt to his voice.
“Oh my, Stephen. I forgot you were coming,” the woman said. “And you have a friend?”
“This is my girlfriend, Ashley.” Mary Jane gave a polite half wave and a wide smile. “We brought you some flowers.” He checked the time on his watch as he handed them over.
The stately brick of the house gave way to a run-down interior. The woman led them through a shade-drawn living room flooded by the rank odor of cats to a kitchen of peeling wallpaper and chipped tile. A tabby rubbed against Mary Jane but hissed as she bent to pet it. Three plastic tubs filled with kitty litter and shit sat before the stove. The cats had kicked large piles of litter to the floor, though the barefooted Ms. Morrow didn’t seem to notice or care. “I’ll be a minute getting dressed,” she said.
Mark stopped her. “You know, Ms. Morrow, I have class today. Do you mind if we chat another time?” He winked at Mary Jane as a sadness stretched across the woman’s face. How terrible to be so old and alone.
“I understand,” she said. “Young people keep very busy.” She tightened the bathrobe around her sandbag breasts. “The prescription is on the counter.”
Mark picked up the bottle and took three twenties from his wallet. A dollar a pill he’d explained to Mary Jane. “I hope this helps,” he said. Ms. Morrow nodded and assured him that it would, it would. Then Mark pocketed the pills, took Mary Jane’s arm, and guided them out as quickly as they’d come in. Mary Jane glanced back at the woman—stranded in the kitchen—the cats swarming her like sharks.
Outside, Mark explained that Ms. Morrow had been selling her belongings to pay for a degenerate son’s legal fees. When Mary Jane told him she found the woman and her cats depressing, he said, “We need the Oxy, don’t we?” Mary Jane couldn’t help feeling he’d missed the point.
Their second stop was in a black neighborhood on the other side of town. Every third house looked empty and run-down but none were empty. Mark called the pickup a twofer since both husband and wife had prescriptions. The third stop was an old Victorian, not unlike her parents’ house in Marathon. An older, half-deaf man lived there. He wore a big, bushy beard, carried a cane, and kept calling Mark “dahling” in a long southern drawl. At each pickup, Mark presented himself as an eager student doing a public service. If anyone asked, he had a lie prepared about giving the drugs to cancer patients without insurance, but no one ever asked. They just needed the money.
Mary Jane asked if he ever worried about getting caught, and Mark explained that dealing drugs wasn’t like in the movies. He didn’t stand on street corners and run from cops. “The reality isn’t very exciting,” he said. “I’m a middleman. I collect pills in bulk and sell to dealers. It’s hard to bust someone like me. I barely pop up on the cops’ radar. I make sure my suppliers have other pain meds and tell them about doctors that are sympathetic to pain. The dealers need me because the suppliers wouldn’t trust them. It’s symbiotic.”
“What’s that mean?” Mary Jane asked.
“Mutually beneficial. See, a lot of these old people don’t have enough money to pay for basic shit like food and electricity. Apparently, Social Security doesn’t cut it. Selling their Oxy is good income because Medicare covers the cost of the drug, but they need me to get their pills into the hands of the dealers. I’m a pharmacy student, so I seem legit.”
Mary Jane nodded as if it all made sense. Drug dealing was nothing like she’d expected. Driving around dressed in their finest, she felt more like a yuppie than a criminal.
As Mark headed out of the city, Mary Jane opened one of the new prescriptions and held a blue forty between her thumb and forefinger. “You know,” she said, “my tongue hurts pretty bad.”
“Didn’t I give you some already?”
“I used them for the pain from my tattoo. And I tipped one for good service.”
“You shouldn’t sell to strangers.”
“I didn’t sell it. I tipped it.”
Mark rolled his eyes, but he wasn’t mad. Not really. He put out his hand. “Give me one, too,” he said. “But don’t crush it. We need to be functionally high.”
They each swallowed a pill, and while Mark focused on passing a hay truck, Mary Jane pocketed a couple extra for later. “That stranger invited us to a party,” she said. “If we’re still in town, we should go. It could be a last hurrah. Goodbye, Kentucky. See you never.”
“Sure,” Mark said. “Whatever you want.” He drove them north along the road that led to Marathon, which made Mary Jane anxious, and she told him as much.
“We’re just going to Paris,” he said.
“My mom begs my dad to take her to Paris,” she replied. “You’d think he wouldn’t mind since it’s only an hour away.” It was an old joke but Mark laughed anyway.
The sun beat into the dash, beat into Mary Jane’s skin. Oxy always seemed to suit her mood and today it offered a mellow, mature high. Her bones radiated a steady pulse, as if plucked like strings from a bass. Her insides turned watery and slushed through her undammed.
Driving the state highways reminded Mary Jane of those end-of-summer days when she and Mark would go to an abandoned farm and practice shooting watermelons nestled in the branches of trees. The plan to get rid of Lew had still seemed like a game then; it was as if they were living in a movie. Mary Jane would teach Mark to measure his breath and keep his hand loose, but he proved a terrible student. He possessed a restless energy ill-suited to aiming a weapon and each miss seemed to sap his confidence. A couple of weeks into their lessons, Mary Jane peppered the targets to demonstrate, and Mark admitted he was hopeless, which only made her love him more. When Mary Jane could prove to Mark there were things he didn’t know, things he couldn’t do, he turned soft like putty, and she liked when he was putty. “You’re amazing,” he said after she sent three straight bullets into the target. “I wish you were there to pull the trigger.” And that was all it took. It wasn’t much. Mary Jane said maybe she should. She saw the logic in it but that wasn’t the real reason she said yes. She said yes because she yearned for a moment like this, a time and place where she could take center stage and do something grand. Most people wanted the same. They were just too afraid to admit it, to follow through.
In the weeks that followed, Mark crafted plans and burned the evidence as Mary Jane bull’s-eyed targets. Afterward, they’d fuck in the backseat of his Mustang. Life had never been better. If ever Mary Jane had a moment of pause, if ever she thought about how in movies criminals get caught, she convinced herself that they would be the exception, that tog
ether they were unstoppable. And if that didn’t soothe her, there was always an Oxy nearby.
Now they were on the road again. Working together. Partners. Mark stopped at a pharmacy in Paris and grabbed a cane from the backseat. “I should do this one alone,” he said and pulled a prescription from the glove box. Mary Jane watched as he faked a limp into the pharmacy. Across the street, people went in and out of the Get-on-Down Deli, and Mary Jane stepped out to buy lunch.
By the time she returned, Mark had the engine running. The cane sat passenger-side and she moved it to sit down. “Bonjour,” she said. “I got us some sandwiches. I wanted wine since we’re in Paris, but the clerk asked for an ID.” Mark dug into the grocery bag and shoved a ham and cheese into his mouth. Mary Jane looked up at the soft blue sky, the bare sun. The piercing made it difficult to eat, so she picked at her sandwich like a bird. Her new diet. Mark finished his in a few minutes and started the car again. “Back to work,” he said. Mary Jane had barely touched her lunch and ended up tossing it out the window for the animals to eat.
They drove to towns all around Lexington—Winchester, Richmond, Versailles. Mark perfected his limp as the day lingered. He pretended he was new to town, pretended he was a traveler passing through. He’d been in a wreck. Been hurt on the job. Each time, he came back with another prescription.
Mary Jane wanted to help, so Mark taught her how to hustle a pharmacist. If the pharmacist seemed skeptical, she was to insist on getting her medication—always use the word medication—and cause a scene. The pharmacist would fill the prescription just to get her out the door. In the end, Mary Jane didn’t need antics. The pharmacists barely looked at her. A couple of times, she found a way to mention bone cancer or a tragic accident to make the game more interesting, but the pharmacists barely reacted. They were numb like cows.
And by the time the sun set and the small-town pharmacies closed, Mary Jane and Mark had more than two dozen prescriptions—orange plastic bottles rattling with opportunity.
* * *
Harlan didn’t consider Lingg Pedersen a serious suspect. Pedersen’s bounced check was a pittance compared to the amounts coming in and out of Lew’s bank account. What Harlan really wanted to know was why the Silver Spoon extended Lew such a large line of credit, but his messages to Little Joe O’Malley had gone unanswered. The Pedersen check opened one other avenue, so Harlan walked across the street to chat with Wesley Craycraft.
The More They Disappear Page 16