Ima gasped with such a start that she lurched forward with her walker and fell into the blinds. She grabbed them to steady herself, and they crashed to the floor. Barbie Fogg peered at the Clot sisters peering at her through the suddenly transparent kitchen window and waved at them as they scurried out of view.
"Lennie," Barbie called out when she walked through the mudroom into the kitchen, where her husband was rooting around inside the refrigerator. "You'll never guess what happened tonight."
"You're probably right," Lennie testily replied as he popped open a Budweiser. "And I'm not going to guess."
"A figure of speech." She said what she always did.
"What took you so long? I thought you'd be home hours ago."
"Traffic and those poor people in the nursing home," she said. "Oh, Lennie, I made a new girlfriend tonight and have a rainbow on my minivan!"
"What'd you do, drive through a thunderstorm and now you're gonna find a pot of gold?" Lennie gulped the beer and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.
"Are the girls asleep?" Barbie inquired as she looked inside the refrigerator, too, deciding she would celebrate her rainbow with a Mike's Hard Lemonade. "Wouldn't a pot of gold be wonderful?"
"Yeah, yeah. Listen," Lennie said, "you know, one of my clients has got extra tickets for Saturday night's race, and as you know, I got to be in Charlotte at that real estate conference. So you want the tickets, or should I give them to someone else?"
"I'll get a sitter and maybe take a girlfriend," Barbie replied, failing to add that she wouldn't miss a race for the world and was delighted that her husband couldn't go.
Barbie had a secret passion for driver Ricky Rudd, who had the most flawless creamy skin and cute blond hair. Whenever she saw pictures of him wearing that big Texaco star on the front of his colorful racing suit or watched his number 28 bright red Monte Carlo roar around on TV, she felt tingles all over her body and would send him another letter. She had been writing to him for years, sending him weekly epistles when he lived in North Carolina and then trying to figure out how she might get his phone number after he moved back to his home state of Virginia. He never answered, of course, but she believed he would if she didn't use a pen name and fail to include a return address.
Along with Ricky, Barbie enjoyed an obsession with Bo Mann, whom she'd noticed when he was driving the Monte Carlo pace car at the 2000 Chevrolet Monte Carlo 400 last year. When Barbie made numerous inquiries in the pits and begged for her photograph to be taken with Bo, she was clever enough to trick him into giving her his address.
"If I send you the photo with a stamped return envelope, will you autograph it?" she had said to Bo as they posed together in front of the pace car, after the race.
"Sign the envelope or the picture?" he had asked, and oh how Barbie loved a man with a sense of humor.
"I heard a man got blowed up by the river tonight," Lennie was saying. "I guess that means there's another psycho on the loose. Let's go to bed and have sex."
The lemonade was mounting straight to Barbie's head.
"Oh, dear," she sighed. "I don't think I'm up for it tonight, Lennie. I've got rainbows on the brain and just want to relax a little and bask in it, if you don't mind."
Lenny did mind. Frustrated, he finished the beer and got out another one. He popped the top and eyed his wife's trim figure. She spent so much time taking care of herself, but then she didn't want him to snatch her clothes off and explore what she worked so hard to maintain. It didn't make sense. Why does a woman bother looking good if she doesn't want sex?
"I think I need to check on the girls and go to bed," Barbie announced. "Oh my! This lemonade's making me swoon."
"Glad something does," he muttered as he thought of how seldom he complained about his wife's shopping sprees or what she spent on cosmetic surgery and injections and God knows what all she did when she visited that doctor of hers once a month. Lennie was good about sending her flowers, too, even when there was no special occasion, and he never complained about babysitting the twins, Mandie and Missie, who were almost five. He just wanted his wife to let him touch her and at least pretend she liked it or didn't mind.
Lennie got her another lemonade and helped himself to another beer. Getting her drunk used to work, but now all it did was make her groggy and distant.
"I can't keep on living like this," he said. "I work my ass off selling real estate and half the time come home and babysit while you visit with invalids or your lady friends up and down the street. Then you're too damn tired for me, or maybe you're just tired of me."
"A girl needs her girlfriends, you know." Barbie was having a hard time enunciating. "I don't think men understand about our need for our girlfriends. How many extra tickets did you get?"
"Yeah, well, maybe I need a girlfriend, too," he said in a sharper tone.
Barbie began to cry. She simply could not endure his temper or ugliness, and she wilted in the heat of his fury. "I don't know," she sobbed. "I'm sorry, Lennie. I try so hard to please you, honey. But ever since I turned forty, I just haven't felt like it, you know, like doing it at all. It's not your fault. I'm sure it can't be your fault. Maybe I need to see someone and talk about it."
"Oh God." Lennie rolled his eyes. "Now I'm going to pay for a therapist, I guess! And what sense does that make? Here you are a volunteer counselor. Why can't you talk to yourself?"
She cried harder and he felt awful. Lennie hugged her and begged her to be happy.
"You need to talk to someone, sweetpea, you go right ahead," he softly assured her. "I got two tickets and could probably get a few more from that General Motors executive who just retired down here and bought that big house on the river."
Andy and Hammer turned into the alleyway behind Freckles and noticed that all the streetlights were out. Trader, covered in filth, was sitting on a package by a Dumpster that was spilling over with sour-smelling garbage. Trader was out of ammunition and still fighting with his zipper, near hysterics and desperate to pee.
"For God's sake," Hammer said to her least favorite government official. "What the hell are you doing sitting out here on a package and firing a gun? And why is your suit so dirty?"
"My zipper's stoppered shut!" Trader exploded in rage.
Hammer bent over to inspect the problem as Andy noticed a woman lurking in the shadows a safe distance away.
"That's because you've managed to zip your underwear in it," Hammer said. "How'd the little slide get all dented up?"
"I been trying to shit it off!"
"Now settle down," Hammer ordered. "Let me see what I can do."
She touched Trader's zipper slide, careful not to touch anything else. Within seconds, she had unsnagged Trader's underwear and the zipper smiled open. Trader darted behind the Dumpster and began to pee like a horse.
"Jesus Christ," Andy said in disgust.
He inspected the package and shook his head as he counted five high-powered pistols and several boxes of ammunition.
"Looks like he's got all kinds of little businesses on the side," Andy said.
"Huh," Hammer remarked angrily. "What a disgrace."
"Hey!" Andy called out to the woman hanging back in the shadows, unable to make out anything except a silhouette of dreadlocks and high heels. "Come here!"
Hooter wobbled through the dirt, a little nervous that she might be in trouble, too, but not sure for what.
"Oh, I recognize you two," Hooter said in surprise. "You that woman police chief, only you ain't the chief no more 'cause you took over the troopers. And you the nice trooper who tried to help me when that man with the bag on his head tried to stick me up at the tollbooth last year," she declared to Andy.
"What do you know about this?" Andy nodded in the direction of Trader, who was still relieving himself.
"I just know I come out the bar and he was hopping around in the alleyway and then sat hisself on a package. Oh my Lord, look at all them guns! Why he was out here sitting on guns by a Dumpster, I'll nev
er know. I told him it was dangerous, but he wouldn't get off the package and was holding hisself. So I don't know nothing more than that 'cept all a sudden he started shooting all over the place and I ran for cover and yelled for help."
"What were you doing out here in the alleyway?" Andy asked.
"Getting a little air."
"If you were getting a little air, then you must have been inside some place that didn't have much air. So where were you before you walked out here?" Andy inquired.
"Having me a little drink." She nodded at Freckles. "It was mighty smoky in there, 'specially 'cause that big trooper never puts one out without lighting up another one."
Andy immediately thought of Macovich. So did Hammer.
"Check to see if he's still in there," Hammer said to Andy.
He trotted around to the front of the small old neighborhood bar, and scores of bleary eyes turned on him as he walked through the door. Macovich was sitting in a booth by himself, drunk and sucking on another cigarette. Andy slid into the seat across from him.
"We just picked up Major Trader in the alleyway," he said. "Didn't you hear all those gunshots?"
"Thought they was car backfires," Macovich slurred through a cloud of smoke. "And I'm off duty," he sullenly added. "I know Trader was in the area, though. 'Cause he was sitting up there at the bar for a long time, drinking beers all by himself. Now, I didn't speak to him or draw no attention to myself."
"Did you notice him interacting with anyone or talking on the cell phone? Anything that might give you reason to believe he was here to meet someone and maybe buy a package of guns?"
"Wooo! Ain't nothing but trouble these days," Macovich said, turning a beer bottle in little circles on the table. "Much as I don't like that man, I can't say I saw him up to nothing."
"Then we can't prove he had anything to do with those guns," Andy said, disappointed. "At least not at the moment. And it's really not our jurisdiction to charge him with promiscuous shooting. The city police will have to do that, if they are so inclined. Were you in here with Hooter?"
"Wooo, that was a mistake. She don't hold her beer worth a damn and got nasty. That's what I get for picking up a toll lady."
Macovich tried to act as if he didn't care at all for Hooter. She was beneath him--a lowly tollbooth operator. So what if she got ugly and stormed out? He could find women every minute of the day, and he sure didn't need a tollbooth operator, senior or not.
"Guess I'd better give her a ride home," Macovich said. "She don't have a car."
"I think a better solution is for me to call both of you a cab," Andy replied. "But she may have some explaining to do to the police."
Hammer was asking Hooter about the police even as Andy said this.
"Are you the one who called them?" Hammer inquired. "Because somebody must have."
"I yelled up at all them helichoppers." Hooter looked up at a Black Hawk thundering overhead. "So I reckon one of them radioed for help."
"It's not possible that people in a helicopter heard you yelling down here," Hammer pointed out as Trader continued to splash the alleyway behind the Dumpster.
"Well, all I know is I was yelling up at them and waving my arms, so it had to be the helichoppers who called the police 'cause I didn't call nobody. I never heard nobody pee that long before, either." She stared off in the direction of the noise. "That one strange man. I think you better check him out. Bet he done other things that ain't right, you ask me. Maybe he's a homosensual, too, 'cause he was trying to shoot his privates off like he hate his manhood. So that probably mean he got AIDS and lots of dirty money in his pockets. I wouldn't touch him without gloves, you want my advice. I got a pair in my purse, you want to borrow 'em," she offered Hammer. "I figure you gonna have to lock him up," she added as Andy emerged from the back of Freckles.
"Trader was inside drinking," Andy told Hammer. "Macovich saw him. Did you?" he asked Hooter.
"I didn't notice him, if he was in there," Hooter replied. "There was too much smoke hanging over the table."
"I'll call the city police and see what they want to do," Andy said to Hammer. "But I don't think this is our case at the moment. And we need to get you a taxi," he added to Hooter.
"Now you listen," she said indignantly. "I ain't drunk."
"I didn't say you were. But you don't have a car."
"He got a car and is the reason I got here." She jutted her chin in the direction of Freckles, obviously referring to Macovich.
"He's in no condition to drive," Andy said. "He's had way too many beers and is in a bad mood. I think his feelings are hurt."
"Huh," Hooter said as interest lit up her eyes. "He too insens'tive to get his feelings hurt."
"That's simply not true," Andy replied. "Sometimes the biggest, toughest men are overly sensitive and keep everything inside. Maybe you can drive him home in his car?"
"Then what do I do?" she exclaimed. "I ain't staying with no man who still live with his mama!"
Cruz Morales would have given anything for his mother as he sped around half the night. At 3:00 A.M., he glanced around furtively as he shut a pay phone booth door and pulled out the dingy paper napkin the tollbooth lady had given him. She seemed like a nice enough person, and Cruz needed help. He was never going to make it out of the city in his Pontiac with its New York plates--not with cops and helicopters everywhere. Now he at least understood what all of the commotion was about.
While speeding away from the bar where that wild man was hopping around the Dumpster, Cruz heard on the radio that someone had been burned up down by the river and everyone was looking for a Hispanic suspect from New York who might be the serial killer that had been committing hate crimes that could be traced all the way back to a shooting at Jamestown, which was unsolved because some lady police person wasn't doing a good job, according to the governor. Cruz had no idea what all of this was about, but he was Hispanic, and he was at a loss as to how he had suddenly become a fugitive for crimes he knew nothing about. So he pulled into a 7-Eleven to make an urgent phone call. Cruz squinted at the napkin and noticed there were two phone numbers written down--one on one side, one on the other. He could have sworn the tollbooth lady had written down only one number, so what was the other one and which one was the right one? Cruz dropped a quarter in the pay phone and dialed the first number. After three rings, it was picked up.
"Hello?" a male voice asked.
"I look for the toll lady," Cruz said, assuming the toll lady must have a boyfriend.
"Who is this?"
"I can't tell you, but I have to talk to her. She say for me to call," Cruz said.
Andy was sitting at his computer, working on the next Trooper Truth essay, and he had a feeling the toll lady in question was Hooter. But why was anybody looking for her at his house?
"She's not here at the moment," Andy said, which was misleading but true.
Hooter had taken Macovich home, and what happened after that was anybody's guess. Then Andy had called the city cops, who came and got the package of handguns but decided not to arrest Trader with so little evidence to go on, especially since he was an important government official.
"But if we trace these guns back to you," one of the cops had said to Trader, "then you're in a shitload of trouble. I don't care who you work for. So I recommend you go on home and don't try to leave town or anything unwise like that."
"Of course I wouldn't leave town," Trader had lied. Remarkably, wires had reconnected inside his head and he was talking normally again. "I will be at work with the governor tomorrow, as usual."
"Well, I guess you'd better ask the governor that," Andy had told Trader. "He's not too happy with you right now."
"Nonsense," Trader had retorted. "We have always been on good terms, and in fact, he considers me his closest friend."
"Maybe he won't if Regina's blood work turns out in an unfortunate way for you, Trader," Andy had replied. "I understand from the news she was rushed to the E.R. a little while ago with a seve
re gastrointestinal attack that you and I both know was precipitated by cookies you were witnessed to bring into the mansion kitchen and set down on a countertop. You were overheard to say that the cookies were for the governor only, but Regina got into them anyway when no one was looking."
"No one's ever gotten ill from my wife's cookies," Trader had said.
"When she get back?" the unidentified person with a heavy Spanish accent was asking over the line.
"I'm not sure, but is there something I can help you with?" Andy tried to get this evasive, suspicious-sounding caller to talk.
"It's just I'm concern, you know? They say this Hi'panic kill someone at the river, and I didn't kill no one and the po-lice, they be looking for me." Cruz was out with it as he huddled in the phone booth and noticed a black Land Cruiser parking at the gas pumps.
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