"Of course not, Mother," said Flint. "How can you think such a thing?"
"I can think all sorts of things," she answered.
"So can I," Kendle interrupted. "Right now, I'm thinking what a crappy show you're putting on. If this was Broadway I'd get up and leave. I'd demand my money back and shoot the actors. Cm'on, I've been on this file too long already. Hand over the stolen property and you'll get off with being accessories. It's not like you were involved personally with the Brinks job. You won't get more than...well, I'm no judge, but it can't be more than a few years."
"You're popping smoke." Flint got technical. "Where's your warrant?"
"I could get one, easy." Kendle either shrugged or shifted position. It was hard to say which. "I can email the judge and he can use an electronic signature pad to sign the warrant. I've got my e-machine and printer in the van, all charged up. Just have to print it out."
"Then get off our couch and go print!" Mrs. Dementis said. She was technologically savvy for a gal who grew up with Model T's. I was surprised she knew what a laptop was, or that there were such things as portable printers.
"Please..." the copwoman moaned, spreading her arms. "As you can see..."
"You're incapacitated?" Jeremy said.
"No way!" Kendle pushed herself up in an attempt to give her posture an appearance of angularity. "I'm a crackerjack investigator. But between you and me and the fencepost I'm...a little encumbered. My boss says, 'crack this cold case or lose a hundred pounds and walk the beat'." She gave Jeremy a curious look.
"Lose the weight," said Flint in a respectable imitation of an ice pick. I knew he wasn't that cold-hearted, or else he would have smacked us around when he caught us doodling on his shed.
"I'm working on it," Kendle said. "Why do you think I'm wearing these duds? I even registered at Gold's with my own money. That's in addition to working out in the police gym."
I found it hard to imagine her lactating sweat with all the other humphers. She could barely lift her feet over a doorsill worn to a nub.
"The only money in this house is my Social Security and my check from the VA." Flint lifted his tough chin at Mrs. Dementis. "And my mother's change jar."
"You rat!" said Mrs. Dementis. A hundred years' worth of loose change was her Fort Knox.
"I'm not here for chump change." Kendle cupped her hands, catching invisible manna from Heaven. "I want the real deal."
"Can I use your little girl's tinkle room?" Barbara asked in an aching tone.
This helicopter business was serious. She had shipped a load only an hour ago, causing a mass evacuation and putting a downward spiral in Starbuck's S&P rating. Jeremy gave me an alarmed look, then clamped a hand around his neck. Barbara didn't see his mime show, her back being to him.
"Hold your water a minute," Kendle said nastily. I decided then and there she didn't deserve sympathy. Which was just as well, seeing I didn't have any for her in the first place.
"You all meet at the coffee shop," Kendle went on. "You log onto some temporary website called 'www.treasure447.com', and then you all show up here. Give me a break."
"Fuck my stick," said Flint abruptly.
Grounds for arrest, for sure, but Kendle chose the low road. "I leave twigs to the kiddies."
Some people are just born to make enemies. Of course, Flint had been no fount of sociability, but I wasn't in a mood to see the other side. I waited eagerly for him to slam the cop with a comeback worthy of a war-salted veteran.
He stared hard at Kendle as he marshaled a host of possible insults. I cast unspoken suggestions his way, as though I could telepathically plant a zinger or two. Admittedly, I wasn't very inventive. All I could come up with were variations on bulk and body odor, all of which Kendle had no doubt heard before. But what came out of the old man's mouth was something neither of us had intended. His face went momentarily slack, his deformed forehead almost seemed to slip on a thought, his lips churned. And he said:
"What were we discussing?"
Even Kendle could see the confusion wasn't feigned. Shooting blanks at a blank target would be a waste of time. She rolled a wad a phlegm deep in her throat and let it settle back down in her stomach. She surveyed the room for a worthy adversary and settled on Jeremy.
"The money...?"
"If you were eavesdropping on my computer, you know as much as we do," my brother said.
"Don't make me bring in the K-9's," Kendle growled.
"I'm not making you do anything," Jeremy said amiably, easing back in the chair. Finding his view of Kendle was blocked by Barbara, he gave her a tap. "Didn't you say you have to go?"
"Yes," she hissed.
"I don't think Flint minds you taking a whiz in his bathroom," Jeremy said.
"But it's not just—"
"Do you, Flint?" Jeremy cut her off.
Flint rocked his head forward.
"See, he doesn't mind," my brother said, giving her a push to send her on her way.
"Well, if you really don't mind..." Barbara gave Mrs. Dementis a wary glance, but received only a faint scowl in return. The old woman was deflated by her son's bout of confusion. Maybe she was reminded that this was not the same young man she had seen off to Vietnam all those ages ago, full of verve and confidence—a man I had certainly never known. It was hard to imagine her having heartstrings to tug at, but that seemed the case.
"I'll only be a minute," said Barbara, scooting out of the room.
I gave Jeremy a questioning look. He answered with a smug grin. When I realized what it meant, I grinned back.
"What are you two smirking about?" Kendle demanded.
"I was just thinking about a joke," said Jeremy.
"And you?" Kendle said, turning to me.
"The same joke," I said.
"Brotherly telepathy, huh?" Kendle battled with her pouch and pulled out a notepad. "Why don't you shoot some of those thoughts my way? Think about where the money is."
"You want something to drink?" said Flint courteously.
"Are your mood enhancers kicking in or something?" said Kendle, shooting him a wary glance.
"He's just being polite," said Mrs. Dementis in a startling voice that begged forgiveness.
"How did you find out what I was doing on my laptop?" Jeremy asked. "Van Eck phreaking?"
"You were using the coffee shop Wi-Fi. We had a couple of techs sitting a few tables down from you with a PowerBook. That place has a wide-open node. Any website you visited, we saw."
"But you didn't see what was on my screen," said Jeremy smugly.
"Just the graphics..."
I had no idea what they were talking about, but Jeremy seemed pleased. I recalled the two boyfriends sitting near us and fingered them as the techs. There was a time when I would have said the perverts had been sent to hunt the perverted. I wondered why Kendle was showing her hand this way. It dawned on me that she was sure the case was cracked, that she was going to find fistfuls of cash in our pockets. Well, you know what they say about assumptions.
"If you're not here for the money, then what are you here for?" Kendle said.
"Just looking up the old neighborhood," Jeremy shrugged. He twisted in his chair to face me. "Who's next on the list? Or is the old crowd totally gone?"
I gave him a blank stare. He had caught me flatfooted.
Mrs. Dementis gave a cough. She shot a 'what the hell?' glance up the hallway. Relief was on the way.
"Don't worry about me absconding with the loot," Kendle said casually, much more assured of her footing. "I'll tag the money...Jesus!"
Barbara returned, her head hanging like one of the eternally damned. "I'm back," she said. I guess she thought we were all blind.
"You mind closing the door to the john?" Mrs. Dementis said.
"What's wrong, Mother?" Flint asked.
"Don't you smell...?"
"I don't smell a thing," Flint said.
"I did close the door," said my sister in abject embarrassment.
"Jes
us," said Kendle, gasping. "Jesus!" She pointed her notebook at Jeremy. "You knew—"
Mrs. Dementis staggered to her son. "Get me out of here! She lit off a stink bomb!"
Old Flint wasn't used to being astonished. His face cracked under the strain. "Mother, are you sure? You want to go out? Outside?"
"A stink bomb..." Kendle speculated, struggling to her feet.
Asafoetida my ass. We were being subjected to the hoary remnants of Attila the Hun, extinct dinosaurs, ancient Babylonian sewage, the Great Dismal Swamp and every other bit of nastiness, recycled through the ages that had concentrated in Barbara's fetid bowels. My own sister! The cesspit of history! I almost felt honored to know her.
Flint was already guiding his mother through the front door. We were hard on their heels, with Kendle bringing up the rear. It would have been the perfect opportunity for her to hold back and search the premises, if she hadn't valued her olfactory receptors so much. Self-preservation nearly always drops the ball.
Outside on the sidewalk, the reclusive Mrs. Dementis blinked in the afternoon sun. Young people on skateboards and bicycles floated by. They looked like demi-gods, until you began itemizing their waste. Between the smashed moonshine bottles and ragged porch furniture of the previous residents and the discarded Evian bottles and upscale porch trash of the current denizens there wasn't a lot to choose. Even the sense of superiority was similar. The haughty students you could understand. The whole universe was heaped up before them, waiting to be devoured. But the booney-trash of previous days had also cocked their snoot at the world. Drunk, deranged, poor and generally worthless, conceit was the only option to suicide.
"So this is what it all looks like," said Mrs. Dementis.
"Yes, Mother," said Flint. "This is what it looks like."
"I'm not giving up on you," said Kendle as she stormed to her van.
"I appreciate that," Jeremy said with a broad smile. "I hate being ignored."
CHAPTER 11
For Questions or Comments
Travel West past Short Pump
Stop at First Cross
That was what was at the bottom of Flint's bottle of Jack Daniels, so neatly printed and integrated with the design that it seemed fresh from the Tennessee bottling plant. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to forge that label, which put it beyond the realm of Skunk or Skunk's acquaintances, none of whom had been sticklers for detail—the Brinks job being the sole exception. I've never turned a scholarly eye on a bottle of hard liquor, but I doubted there was any need for questions or comments. JB Black is God's Chosen, period.
When Barbara suggested we should pile into her pimply Sentra, Jeremy drew a face of profound disparagement. That he considered her a mental lightweight should not have mattered, since we encounter perfectly brainless drivers on the road every day. But it was a good idea—not through any commonsensical notion of consolidating resources, but simply to keep our eyes on one another. After the congestion of the Short Pump Town Center, Route 250 squiggled out into the countryside, offering plenty of scope for one of us to lose the others.
But Jeremy drove a Cayman Coupe, an outrageously pricy two-seater that I could only gape at in amazement, but which left my ancient Impala as the only alternative. I wasn't very keen on the idea of clearing a space through the dirty laundry, Wendy's cups, festering napkins and spontaneous terrariums for a third passenger.
"This was Papa's car," said Barbara lowly, staring at the Impala.
'Papa' now? What next? 'Sir Skunk'?
"So?" I asked. "No one else wanted it."
"Got that right," Jeremy nodded. "You use lead additive?" This was either idle curiosity or a sly dig at the method of Skunk's demise. My younger brother being as clever as a bent nail, I concluded it had to be former.
"Skunk would've beat the tar out of us if we used his car," Barbara continued in the spooked vein.
"He's not coming back from the grave to spank you," I reasoned.
"Yeah, we'll you're not so hot in the 'proving' department, are you?" she shot back.
What was it I hadn't proved? That Skunk wasn't Lazarus?
Jeremy threw up his hands. "Okay, Sweet Tooth's car."
Barbara danced a little jig of glee at the prospect of chaperoning her brothers—as if, for once, she would have us in her power.
"I drive," Jeremy added, holding his hand out for the keys.
Barbara skewed her eyes up at him, as though he'd asked her to commit an unnatural act. "Why should you?"
"Because I don't trust your driving."
"We haven't seen each other for years." Barbara paused. A chagrined glance in my direction confirmed the sensitivity of the topic. If ever there had been an occasion for a reunion, Skunk's departure from this morass of tears would have been it. But my brother's and sister's all-too-predictable absence scored points on the scale of indifference, leaving me to deal with the crummy remains. Barbara gave a small shrug—I could see clearly the whoosh of spilled milk under the bridge. "What do you know about my driving," she continued. "Which happens to be fine and dandy, thanks for asking."
We had parked in front of my house—my house—after leaving Flint and his mother swooning on the sidewalk.
"No offense, Sweet Tooth," said Jeremy, "but what if your helicopters start acting out while we're on the road? You wouldn't be able to concentrate."
"I'm OK for now," she answered, with a walloping gape that said no human could hold more than the two loads she had eliminated that morning. She jumped into her Sentra and switched on the engine. Lowering the window, she said, "Me or nothing."
"Or we each go our own way," Jeremy scowled, put out by the thought. With a snort of contempt he strode to the passenger side. I got in the back.
The quickest way to Short Pump was by I-64. Through some misconceived Wonderland concept of beginning at the beginning, Barbara chose Route 250.
"That's where we have to go, anyway," she reasoned with a brain the size and consistency of a knuckle. "That's how Skunk always told us fairytales: 'In the beginning.'"
"That's the Bible," said Jeremy, slapping himself in lieu of his sister. "You mean 'Once upon a time.'"
"When did Skunk tell you fairytales?" I inquired with a squirt of post-mortem sibling jealousy.
"All the time. Like when he told us about his first robbery, or about that Crazy Charlie guy he shared a cell with." She flashed a fake eyelash at me in the rearview mirror. "You know, the guy who tried to stick his thing in the light socket."
"You call those fairytales?" I asked.
"Just because they're true doesn't mean they aren't fairytales," Barbara reasoned.
I instantly conceded. "It's like Doubletalk owning a Porsche. He obviously has one, but it seems like a fairytale." I stabbed the back of my brother's head with a visual dagger. There was no blood. A fairytale. I tried to make myself comfortable in the Sentra's back seat.
"How can you afford a Porsche?" Barbara asked. Even she could see this was one cultural icon that was out of place.
"That must cost over fifty grand," I added.
"Try ten more," said Jeremy, not quite boastfully, but close enough to annoy. "Alcantara seats, Bluetooth connectivity, dual-clutch transmission—Number 2 luxury car in America."
"Well yeah," Barbara said peevishly as she stopped at the Broad and Belvedere traffic light. This was going to be a long ride.
When Jeremy glanced at her, I glimpsed a profile as good as a map. Years ago, I had noticed how my brother's nose flexed whenever he was cooking up a lie, like a chef sniffing at his stew. The dorsum of his nose sank, then bulged out, a rare feat. He was brewing a particularly rancid pot.
"American Express Gold had a lottery," Jeremy said. "I won."
"How did you get an Amex Gold?" I asked.
"I have good credit," he answered.
"How did you get a good rating?" I persisted.
"I've been a good boy," he snapped, twisting around in his seat and giving me the Skunk glare. "What happened to 'mute'?
"
"When I see someone digging his self into a hole, I wonder why," I said.
"I paid cash for mine," said Barbara smugly.
"Well, you didn't have to slide up and down many poles for this heap," said Jeremy unkindly.
Barbara swore and turned abruptly into a Lowe's parking lot, stopping in front of the nursery and turning on Jeremy. "You want to reverse that remark, or you want to get out here and now?"
"You have to admit, the only cars worth having are the ones you take out a loan for." Jeremy wore a stubborn expression.
Barbara's was more stubborn. For an instant, her face looked like a club. "I mean that 'pole' remark. I'd like to see you try to dance one of them. Wouldn't you look like a...a..."
"Like an idiot," I said. Not very inventive, but my sister needed assistance and I had been taken by surprise.
"Yeah," said Barbara. "I found something I do good and you trash it. And what, by the way, do you do good besides buying cars you can't afford and getting credit you don't deserve and being a complete asshole about it?"
"Now you're trashing what I do well—" Jeremy began.
"And if you think I missed that other thing you were suggesting, think again. I earned this car with honest living."
Sure, and she flossed her teeth after every meal. But I wasn't about to side with Jeremy, who after all had left me with crippling psychic wounds. Of course, that was a right usually reserved for the eldest brother, but I still wasn't convinced he was older than me.
"So you want to hit the sidewalk?" Barbara continued. "Or are you going to apologize like a civilized human being and we get on with it?"
Again, Jeremy tricked me. Bowing his head to the dash, he moaned, "All right, forgive me! Forgive me! Forgive me!"
"That's not civilized," Barbara judged.
"Well, it isn't Cro-Magnon, either."
"No," said Barbara. "It wasn't crow."
"Okay." Jeremy sat up. "I'm sorry, Sweet Tooth. Sliding up and down poles is a good living. A great living. I know I couldn't make tips doing it. Can you find it in your heart to forgive me?"
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