by Unknown
Stella didn’t have much to say to that, especially because breakfast arrived. “Grand Slam,” the waitress said cheerfully, sliding it under Stella’s nose, “and . . . Grand Slam.”
Arthur Junior stared at his plate with little interest.
“Anything else I can do for you right now?” the waitress asked.
“No, sweetie, but thanks—I think we’re set.” Stella smiled despite herself. There was nothing in the world better than eggs cooked in pools of butter, bacon finished off in the deep fryer, and pancakes swimming in puddles of syrup. Even late at night—especially late at night—breakfast was Stella’s absolute favorite meal.
“If I ever end up on death row, this is what I’m ordering for my last meal,” she said, and dug in energetically.
Arthur Junior stared at her with a look bordering on horror.
“What?” Stella mumbled around a mouthful of eggs.
“Nothing. It’s just—I mean—what I hear and all, I can’t believe you can talk that way. If they can ever pin half the stuff on you that people say you done . . .”
Stella swallowed and set down her fork. This was a bit delicate. She knew what people said—that there were bodies buried all over the state, men who’d met their bloody end at Stella’s hands. The truth was that despite beating, interrogating, threatening, and torturing her parolees; despite leaving them with scars, broken bones, burns, post-traumatic stress disorder, even the occasional missing limb—despite all of this, she hadn’t killed a single parolee, no matter how blackhearted and irredeemable he was. Other than Ollie, but she figured she’d earned that one.
But there was no percentage in quelling the rumors. They were, after all, largely responsible for her effectiveness: a man who believed her next visit would bring a bullet to the forehead was far more likely to behave.
“You shouldn’t go listening to everything you hear,” she said carefully. “I really lead a pretty laid-back life. You know, what with the shop, and—and my garden and all.”
“Well, if you’re going to tangle with Benning and them, I hope at least some of it’s true.”
Stella nodded. “All right. Let’s just say that maybe some of the ass-kicking part’s true.”
“And look, if you do talk to them, you can’t—I mean you really can’t bring me into this.”
“Okay. Noted. So we got you and Roy Dean making a little extra cash at the chop shops. How often were you doing this?”
“I only went a couple times, back in March, and then I told Roy Dean I was done. I’m getting my certification. I don’t want to mess that up. He got all pissed off and then he tells me we don’t have to take the whole car anymore, that Benning’s given him a list of what he wants, shit like GPSs and DVD players, speakers, xenon headlights. Says we can do two or three or more at a time, but we might have to go up to Kansas City. Man, I didn’t like that. I hate the fucking city. But Roy Dean kept on me until he talked me into going around and meeting Benning. Told me if I didn’t like it once we talked to him, I could leave off and he’d quit too, even told me he’d go back to helping Dad out. Like he’s any help to Dad. Anyway, like some kind of dumbass, I went.”
Stella wrote a few notes with one hand and forked up hash browns with the other. “Okay, so you went with Roy Dean out to the salvage yard? When was that?”
“I don’t know, maybe end of March, start of April, somewhere in there. So he wants to go over there late at night, and I ask Roy Dean why we can’t go during the day and he’s like, no, we got to go when Benning’s associates are there. How do you like that, ‘associates,’ my brother the damn fancy talker. Should’ve told me something. So anyway we get there and honest to fuckin’ God they got this guy down at the gate waitin’ for us. Comes out with a flashlight and shines it in our faces and talks to Roy Dean before he’ll open the gate, and he calls someone on his cell phone and tells us to go park up by the shed and I’m like, what shed, and Roy Dean tells me to shut up and so that’s when I realize he’s been here before, because he drives up past the main area back to this prefab storage building, but I’m telling you, it ain’t really any kind of shed. I mean you could park a couple of tractor-trailer trucks in there, but it’s pretty much empty except this one area they got done up kind of like a living room—they got a carpet scrap on the floor, some recliners and whatnot, a table . . . and some computer stuff. Couple of PCs and printers and faxes and all that. Mini fridge . . . anyway, I don’t know what to think of this whole thing, but Roy Dean walks right up to Earl Benning and high-fives him and already I’m getting scared, ’cause the other guys sitting around there, man, it’s like The Godfather or something.”
“What do you mean? These guys . . . they were Italian? They were armed? They were wearing tuxedos?” Stella was fascinated, despite herself.
“No, just—well, I’m pretty sure they all had guns. Some in plain sight and I figure some hid. Roy Dean ’n me, all we got’s my .22 in the rack in the truck, and we didn’t bring it. This guy standing with his hand on the table, I figure him for in charge, and sure enough, later I find out it’s Funzi, even though none of ’em ever talked direct to me or Roy Dean.”
“How long were you there?”
“Not long. I was trying to signal Roy Dean, you know, like let’s get outta here, but he’s acting like some kind of hotshot, won’t even look at me. So Benning’s all, you’ve done some good work for us, and Roy Dean’s just pleased as shit to hear it. Like he’s a fuckin’ big dog, you know? And he starts saying that’s nothing, he and me can do double, triple that kind of turnaround, and I’m starting to sweat but I don’t want to say anything because, like, you argue with these guys you end up regretting it, right?”
“Yeah. Swimming with the fishes in the East River,” Stella said. She was dubious.
“Huh? Whatever. Roy Dean says he feels like he’s ready for more responsibility, and isn’t there some sort of work for us? Says he’s willing to relocate. I mean, beat that! So then I’m like, come on, Roy Dean, we need to get going and Benning’s like, you got some sort of curfew? And Roy Dean laughs like it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard, but when we’re back out in the car, out through the gates with that guard guy locking the whole thing up behind us, he nearly rips me a new one. Tells me I just blew our chance to get somewhere in the organization, and I tell him he’s full of shit and to make a long story short he dumped me out a mile from home and I had to walk and that’s the second-to-last time I seen him since.”
“So you told him you didn’t want anything to do with his . . . activities.”
“Yeah. I mean, I got this ITT course and once I get my certificate I’ll be making good money anyway, and I don’t have to go to the city or break any laws to do it.”
“Straight and narrow,” Stella agreed, spreading jelly on her toast, which had gone cold. “Not the worst idea in the world, when you get down to it. So what do you think, Roy Dean went back with these Mafia goons or whatever they are and got busy doing their errand-boy work? Or what?”
Arthur Junior shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, I was freaked out enough I asked around. You know, a couple guys I know that are into . . . some shit. And Benning’s name came up a few times. Guess he’s got his fingers in drugs, least that’s the rumor, except it’s hard to know because he’s the—what do you call it?—the middleman. He isn’t selling at the street level or anything.”
“What kind of stuff?” Stella asked, her apprehension growing. “Pot? Prescription?”
“Mostly pot,” Arthur Junior said. “I guess there’s a bunch of Vietnamese down south Ozarks as are growing it indoors. Them Vietnamese know the hydroponics and all that shit. But far as I can tell it’s not getting resold around here. Somehow it goes up through Benning and disappears, up to the city or who knows where. I mean, if Funzi and them really are mob, it could be Saint Louis or Chicago or who the hell knows—they’re all connected.”
“Hmm,” Stella said. As little as she knew about organized crime, she had trouble be
lieving that Arthur Junior knew much more. But the thought that the mob could have its tentacles here in rural Missouri—it was a possibility she’d never considered. “What else?”
“Well . . . I don’t know about this one, but this guy I know works on one of the riverboats. He says they’re running a skim operation on a lot of the mom-and-pop slots. You know, you got your low-end casino hotels, like that? Not a lot of oversight. Supposedly these guys, not Benning but some of Funzi’s guys, they come around and take a regular payout, and I guess that goes up through the organization, too.”
“So you’re telling me that Benning’s place is, what, like some kind of mob playhouse?”
Arthur Junior frowned. He’d barely touched his food. The eggs were congealing, and the bacon grease had solidified. “Mrs. Hardesty, all due respect, I think you’re not taking this serious enough. I think Benning’s place is kind of like the conduit for all their local operations. You know, out all over the county—maybe up along the river, where the gambling is—through Funzi, up to Kansas City and then who knows.”
Stella thought that through. Conduit—now there was a ten-dollar word. Much as she hesitated to admit it, Arthur Junior was a shinier penny than she’d expected. Which made his anxiety that much more striking. A dumbass gets scared, you can chalk it up to cowardice or sheer stupidity. But a guy like this . . .
“Tell me, Arthur Junior,” she said, voice low and serious. “What do you think has happened to your brother? I mean, leave off for a minute whether he took Tucker or not.”
Arthur Junior shook his head. “I think he figured he could outsmart Benning. Roy Dean’s played both sides of everything since we were in grade school. Hell, he double-dealt me out of my allowance more times’n I can remember. So I guess he probably talked them into giving him some sort of job, running packages—”
“By which you mean drugs,” Stella interrupted.
“Drugs, sure, or maybe those stolen car parts, load ’em into a truck or something, drive them to some central location. Or money—it’s not like they deposit all that cash down at Sawyer County Bank, you know? Roy Dean can be convincing. So if he started that in April, that’s a couple of months he could have been trying to work his way up until one day he figures he’ll just keep a little for himself or hold back some of the load to resell or something. I mean, if there’s an angle, Roy Dean’d find it.”
“But—what then? What are you thinking?”
“Mrs. Hardesty,” Arthur Junior said miserably, pushing his coffee cup in a circle on the table, “I’m thinking it’s possible he got himself killed, the dumb shit.”
Stella sat with that a minute, considered the angles. Sure, she’d read lots of crime novels; they were her favorite. But that was the kind of thing that happened in L.A. or New York—if it really ever happened at all. Would anyone bother to kill a local loser over a few hundred bucks worth of swag?
“Seems kind of . . . ruthless. You know: overkill.”
Arthur Junior was silent a moment, but then he looked Stella in the eye and said, “Some might say the same about your methods, Mrs. Hardesty. I guess it’s all a matter of perspective.”
Well. Now that was saying a mouthful. Stella resisted the urge to protest, and wondered. Was it really possible the mob had taken up residence here, not ten miles from where she was born and raised, without her knowing?
She had to talk to Goat. If anyone knew anything about it, he would. But how was she going to pull that off without tipping him off to everything else?
“Go back to the Tucker thing for a second,” she said. “You can’t think of any reason—any at all—he might have had for taking him? Getting back at Chrissy, maybe?”
“No, that’s just crazy,” Arthur Junior said. “It’s not like he was all that fond of the kid. I never saw Roy Dean give him a second look, anytime they were over at Mom and Dad’s. I just don’t think he’d go in for the inconvenience, diapers and feeding him and all, when there’s other ways he could’ve messed up Chrissy’s life easier.”
“I’m inclined to agree with you, but Chrissy thinks Roy Dean might’ve took Tucker with him. He came over to the house on Saturday morning, and there was a, call it a short discussion, and then Chrissy got called away for a bit, and when she got back they were both gone, and Roy Dean’s car, too. And the diaper bag.” Stella didn’t mention the fact that another, equally viable suspect had hidden naked on the premises during this exchange, before making a stealthy and unexplained exit. No need to cloud the issue.
“Well, I don’t know. Maybe Roy Dean figured, if he was in trouble, they wouldn’t off him in front of the kid, or something.”
“Damn it all,” Stella said, with conviction. “Look, Arthur Junior, this has been a lovely meal, but I’m afraid we got to hit the road here. Tomorrow’s gonna start early, and at my age, it takes a while to get my beauty sleep in.”
She threw some money down on the table and stood up.
“Yeah,” Arthur Junior said, giving his untouched meal a forlorn glance as he followed her. “Only I don’t think beauty sleep’s gonna help this time.”
FOUR
You sure you got all that?” Stella asked, watching Chrissy’s stubby fingers, with their sparkly lavender nails, move over the keys of the old cash register. It was nearly nine o’clock, Hardesty Sewing Machine Sales & Repair’s official opening hour, though the street outside wasn’t exactly overrun with eager customers.
“Um-hum. Unit price, then that dept shift key. Then dept number and, um, PLU . . .” She tapped the keys slowly and deliberately until the drawer popped open. “And personal checks okay if I know the person.”
“Not if you know the person, Chrissy, if you trust the person. There’s a difference, remember?”
Chrissy knit her eyebrows together. “I still don’t get how I’m supposed to know if somebody’s going to try and write a bad check. I mean, there’s been times I’ve wrote one and never even knew it, ’cause I just didn’t tote up how bad off we were in the account.”
“Well, think, sugar. Like, you wouldn’t take a check from Crandall Jakes, now would you?”
Chrissy’s eyes widened. “Oh no I wouldn’t. That man lets his dogs get knocked up and then drowns the puppies, I know it for fact. Don’t even try to find ’em homes.”
“Well, yeah, but . . .” Stella considered trying to explain that it was Crandall’s two stints at County for tax evasion and social security fraud that were more to the point.
“What do you suppose he’d want to buy here, anyway?” Chrissy continued, looking around the shop at the walls hung with racks of sewing notions, the quilting and embroidery machines set up with sample scraps of fabric under the presser feet, the racks of books and patterns.
“Forget him, he was a bad example. Oh, Chrissy, just use your judgment. I won’t be gone all that long anyway.”
“Okay.” Chrissy hitched her feet up on the rungs of the stool and patted the stack of magazines Stella bought her at the 7-Eleven. “I’ll just read and maybe dust a little and be fine here.”
“I know you will, darlin’.”
“Wouldn’t it be just great if they got Tucker up in the trailer out there?” Chrissy asked with a little smile. “Like if maybe Roy Dean asked ’em to babysit while he did some errands for Mr. Benning and them all? Heck, you know how men are, they’re prob’ly feedin’ him those little powder sugar doughnuts and lettin’ him watch pro wrestling.”
“Uh . . . yeah, that would be nice,” Stella said, slinging her big old brown leather purse over her shoulder. It was a little heavier than usual today since she’d taken the precaution of adding the Ruger. She’d picked it more for luck than anything—it reminded her of her dad, though she’d never seen him fire it. She’d cleaned and oiled it when she got home from dropping Arthur Junior off, listening to the radio and thinking. “But don’t go getting your hopes up, hear? We got to be ready for the possibility we’re in for a bit of a haul here, remember, like we talked about?”
Chrissy nodded but refused to look at Stella. She used a long lavender nail to scratch at the sales tax chart taped to the counter and pursed her sticky pink-glossed lips. “I know, I just said it would be nice. You know.”
On the drive to Benning’s Stella wondered if she’d done the right thing, soft-pedaling the information she’d wrung out of Arthur Junior last night. She’d told Chrissy that she’d run into someone at the divorce party who told her Roy Dean was just helping out some friends of Mr. Benning with some business that might include trips up to the city, which could explain why he was away. Stella allowed as to how Benning’s business might not be on the proper side of legal, but that didn’t faze Chrissy in the least, seeing as how her brothers and cousins and uncles had already done a fair job of setting her expectations for the conducting of business firmly in gray territory.
Stella hadn’t mentioned Arthur Junior’s fears that Roy Dean might already be dead. Chrissy, convinced as she was that Roy Dean had her son, would no doubt make the intuitive leap straight to real, frightening danger for Tucker. And Stella needed the girl to stay calm, if only so she didn’t have to stay home and babysit her.
She also didn’t tell Chrissy about the visit to Pitt Akers’s apartment. Stella was more than a little concerned about the empty rooms, the cat food stockpiled with what looked like several weeks’ supply. She’d snuck a look at the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children web site while Chrissy was busying herself at the cash register, and she didn’t like what she saw, not one bit. All those sweet faces—all those big trusting eyes—and the terrible facts: “Last seen with her mother’s live-in boyfriend . . .” “Last seen with his non-custodial mother . . .” If Pitt truly believed the boy was his, who could say what lengths he might go to?