Denton - 03 - Way Past Dead

by Steven Womack

  She giggled. “Oh, yeah, right. Say, Harry. I’m going to need a summer job, and I’d sure like it to be something else besides this. How’s about I come work for you? I’d like to be a private detective for a while.”

  Something in my chest lurched. I didn’t think my working with Mary Lee was a very good idea; the last thing in the world I needed was a gorgeous seventeen-year-old Amerasian girl sharing a one-room office with me.

  But I wasn’t going to tell her that. “I probably can’t afford you, Mary. Besides, it’s not what it’s cracked up to be in the movies. It’s pretty tedious most of the time.”

  She leaned in close to me. “Oh, like this isn’t?” she stage-whispered.

  “Where you going to school next year?” I asked, grabbing at anything possible to change the subject.

  “Well, let’s see,” she said, counting off on her fingers, “I’ve got applications in at Tufts, Brown, Columbia, Duke.…”

  I chuckled. “Party schools, huh?”

  “Yeah, why push myself?” She smiled back with a row of white teeth that lit up the room.

  Behind Mary, a tray of food appeared in the window. I suddenly realized I was starving. Mary saw my eyes flick to the window and turned.

  “Here we go,” she said. I pulled out the last ten-dollar bill from my wallet and handed it to her, then waited as she got my change.

  “Can you come sit with me?” I asked.

  She grimaced. “God, Harry, I’ve got to help Daddy get everything cleaned up before we shut down at ten. Then I’ve got a couple of hours of homework.”

  “It’s good to see you, dear,” I said. “Don’t work too hard.”

  She disappeared into the kitchen as I took a seat at the table across from the couple. I dug into the soup, a thick, hot broth with a mélange of sweet, sour, and hot-as-hell tastes all mixed into one. Instantly, I felt this sense of well-being that I knew was probably biologically induced, since there really wasn’t all that much reality to cause it. Things had gotten better, I had to admit.

  The worst of my problems were still out there, though. Marsha was still hunkered down at the morgue and Slim was still in the county jail awaiting trial, both in their own way prisoners of circumstances beyond their control. And both innocent …

  Of that point, I was sure. When I first heard of how Slim had discovered the body, and how Rebecca Gibson had been battered so completely, I thought it probable that—despite my personal feelings for him—the police had the right man. The more I delved into Rebecca Gibson’s world, though, the more I doubted that Slim was the only person out there with a motive to kill her. There had to be more, had to be something I wasn’t seeing. I wasn’t digging hard enough, wasn’t pushing hard enough.

  Wasn’t asking the tough questions …

  I ate my dinner in silence, and was mopping up the last few bites when I realized the couple across the room had left and I was alone in the dining room. From the kitchen I heard talking and the sound of water spraying, steam erupting. It was late, and I was beginning to feel the first bittersweet tinges of exhaustion creeping around the edge of my psyche. I’ve noticed that when I get this way, I become fuzzy-headed, loose thinking. Weird stuff starts to make sense, and perfectly sensible things become incomprehensible. It’s a strange combination of fatigue and what I’d always imagined might be a kind of stress-induced dyslexia. All I knew was that I was going to sleep well tonight.

  Well, not exactly. At least not yet. As I stuffed my throwaway dishes into a large waste bin near the front door of the restaurant, Mary stepped out with a brown paper sack with a grease spot on the bottom that was growing by the second.

  “You going to see Shadow soon?” she asked.

  It occurred to me that Lonnie might enjoy hearing about my adventure with Bubba Ray Evans and the insurance company. I could also write him a check for the money I owed him, as long as he’d hold it a day or two before depositing it.

  “Sure, I planned to stop by on the way home. This’ll give me a good excuse.”

  I gave Mary a hug like her uncle would give her, then waved goodbye to her father and stepped out the door into the parking lot. Gallatin Road this time of night is more than just a little creepy, with the eerie orange of the street lamps casting long, foreboding shadows. The Earl Scheib Body Shop across the street was empty and desolate, with shiny, jet-black windows and rust-red brick. I worried about Mary and her family being alone in the restaurant. Last year, the entire night shift of a Taco Bell in a little town just northeast of here was wiped out in a robbery that turned into a massacre. People are so damned crazy these days. I once interviewed an inmate at the Tennessee State Prison, a hard-core lifer, who told me he was afraid of the people coming up through the crime ranks these days.

  I pulled onto Gallatin Road with the sack full of leftovers on the floorboard next to me. Traffic had thinned and I had one of my few rare times of hitting the lights correctly. I made it up to the Inglewood Theatre in a couple of minutes, then turned left, curved around, and pulled up to Lonnie’s chain-link fence gate. I braked the car and tooted the horn a couple of times, then got out and stood by the fence. I’d learned my lesson the hard way about surprising Shadow, so stood politely back until I was sure she recognized me.

  Her huge paws barely fit through the spaces in the chain link as she stood on her hind legs and nuzzled me through the wire. I held the bag up to the fence; she got a whiff of it and her long, bushy tail went into overdrive.

  “Yes, baby,” I cooed at her. Damn dog always did that to me, makes me sound like an idiot. “Look what I got.…”

  I opened the gate and eased through, then secured it back. Shadow was on my shoulders, her great wet snout rubbing streaks across my face. Usually, I’d have thought something like that was gross, but with her it never bothered me. I’m just glad she wasn’t trying to rip my throat out.

  From behind the trailer, maybe thirty feet away, Lonnie stepped out and cleared his throat.

  “Well,” he called, “you gonna give it to her or what?”

  I motioned for her to sit. She settled back on her haunches, jaws already dripping at the thought. I pulled the greasy meat out of the bag, wadded it into a ball, and held it out in front of her.

  “Speak,” I said. This low, throaty growl came out of her. I shook my head back and forth, needling her. “Speak, Shadow.”

  “You keep teasing her like that, she’s liable to tear your arm off at the shoulder.”

  “C’mon, baby, speak to me!”

  She let loose with a rumbling that came from way down inside her, then erupted in a fearful bark that would’ve sent lesser men than me under the bed if I hadn’t known her. I flicked my wrist, and this wad the size of a tennis ball sailed through the air in a slow arc. Shadow became airborne and I had to jump out of the way.

  The meat disappeared before all four paws were back on the ground. I leaned down and rubbed my hands in her fur, smearing the juice all over her in what I hoped she’d think was an extra treat.

  Lonnie wiped his hands on a pink shop rag. “I’m about finished back here. Let’s go get a beer.”

  In the dim light, I could see grease streaks across his face and up his arms. “What’ve you been working on?”

  “I got an engine I’m rebuilding now, trying to make a few extra bucks. Six-cylinder out of a ’68 Mustang. You remember Jack Stevens?”

  We stepped onto the deck. Lonnie opened the front door of the trailer, sending a glaze of yellow light over the front of the junkyard.

  “Stevens?” I asked as we walked inside. “Can’t say I do.”

  “Used to work part-time for me skip-tracing, back when I was still doing a lot of that. Started working the same time you did, more or less.”

  “Okay.”

  “Anyway,” Lonnie said, opening the refrigerator door and pulling out a couple of cold brews, “guy gets the hots for an old Mustang, so he finds a ’68 coupe for sale down in Spring Hill. Goes down, takes a look at it, gets crazy, writ
es a check. Doesn’t take it to a mechanic or anything.”

  He popped the tops on the cans, handed one to me, then chuckled. “Dumb ass. Freaking car’s burning a quart of oil every three days. Throw-out bearing squeals like a baby rolling around in a box of broken glass. Jesus …”

  “What he’d do that for?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Shit for brains, I guess. I made him a deal, said I’d do the rebuild for parts plus two hundred.”

  “Some people got more money than brains,” I said, raising the can. The beer tingled all the way down. Delicious.

  “Yeah, well, this dude ain’t got much o’ either.”

  “Speaking of shit for brains,” I said, plopping down on the couch and spreading my feet out across the coffee table, “have I got a story to tell you.”

  By the time I finished the chronicle of Bubba Ray’s assault and my subsequent visit to Phil Anderson’s house, we’d polished off most of the beer. Lonnie shook his head in amazement, sniggering at the thought of the incompetent attacker.

  “Guy can’t even sit in a wheelchair without screwing it up,” he said.

  “Yeah. Says he’s going to whip my ass. Like he’s some kind of mean mother.”

  “Well,” Lonnie said, popping up out of his torn, grease-covered easy chair, “this guy must be a pussy if he couldn’t whip your sorry ass.”

  “What a minute!” I said to his back.

  “Wait nothing,” he said from the kitchen. I heard the sound of a beer can being opened. “Want another?”

  “No, I got to go home. The upshot of this whole business with Bubba Ray is that Phil Anderson says he’s messengering over a check tomorrow morning, which means I can pay you back.”

  I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out my checkbook. I filled in $500.00 on the amount line, signed it, then handed it to him as he came back in with a fresh beer.

  “Check with me tomorrow afternoon before you deposit it, okay? On the off chance that Phil Anderson doesn’t come through.”

  Lonnie grinned and shook his head. “Why don’t you just postdate the damn thing and mail it to me?”

  “Just take the check. I gotta go. I need some shut-eye.”

  Lonnie sat up quickly. “Hey, before you go.” He set his beer down on the coffee table, then disappeared down the dark hallway that led to the two bedrooms. Lonnie used one for an office, I knew, and one for the occasional times when he spent the night here.

  He returned in a few seconds with a clipboard in his hand. “Listen, I know you’re temporarily flush. Or at least you will be if your check comes tomorrow. How’d you like to make a few extra bucks, anyway?”

  “I don’t know. What’ve you got?”

  He held out the clipboard. “You know I lost the bank and my repo work has gone down the toilet. Well, I got a new client today.”

  I handed the clipboard back to him without looking at it. “Aw, no, Lonnie. I’ll have to take a pass on that one. I’m too frazzled to repo cars right now.”

  “C’mon, Harry, it’ll be fun! Take your mind off your other problems. Besides, these ain’t just regular cars. Take a look.”

  I took back the clipboard and tried to focus in the dim light. Several low-quality faxes were attached to the clipboard, with a logo and heading at the top of the first sheet that read LUXURY LEASING OF NASHVILLE.

  “Whoa, what’ve we got here?” I asked.

  “Yeah, cool, huh? These ain’t no Ford Fiestas we gotta pick up here, bud. These are government-inspected, USDA prime.”

  There were several pages of listings: Mercedes, Jags, Saabs, Alfas. “C’mon,” I said. “Who buys a car like this and then skips out on the payments?”

  Lonnie grimaced. “What planet are you from, bozo? Any fool can lease a car. It’s making those five-hundred-a-month lease payments that’s a bear.”

  “I don’t know, Lonnie. It sounds like fun, but I just—”

  “I’ll even save the best for you. Check the last page.”

  I flipped through the pages until I came to the last one, which only had three cars listed. My jaw dropped, and I looked back up at him.

  “Lonnie, I’ve never even driven a—”

  Suddenly my heart jumped in my chest. I squinted hard and looked back down at the page.

  “Rolls-Royce …” I whispered.

  There, among the cars that Lonnie had contracted to repossess because their owners had failed to meet their just and legal obligations in terms of repaying a contractually binding financial agreement and instrument of debt, was a 1990 Rolls-Royce Corniche III, Tennessee vanity-license-plate number TRUSNOI.

  And below that, the owner’s name: F. M. Ford.

  “What’s the matter?” Lonnie asked.

  I stared up at him, trying to figure out just how much I should be shocked. “You had a chance to look at these?”

  He shook his head. “Fax just came in this afternoon. I had time to glance over it, that’s all.”

  I held the clipboard up to him and pointed. “That one. That guy’s Rebecca Gibson’s manager.”

  He took it from me, then stared at the listing for a second. “No shit?”

  “He’s a big-time music manager. Real hotshot.”

  “I don’t care how hot his shot is,” Lonnie said, letting the clipboard drop to his side. “He’s three months behind on his lease payments, and I got to repossess his car.”

  I scratched the side of my head, a habit that I’d been indulging in a lot lately. “How’d you get this gig?”

  “Scotty Boles put in a good word for me. He knows I’ve got the equipment to snatch those kinds of cars without damaging them. You don’t just set a hook on a damn Mercedes and tug it off.”

  “Yeah, obviously,” I said, distracted. “Of course.”

  “What’s eating you?” he asked.

  I shook my head and sat back down on the couch. “This is too weird. Just too weird. How does a guy who’s one of the most powerful artist managers on the Row wind up having his Rolls picked up?”

  “You’d be amazed at some of the cars I’ve repossessed,” Lonnie said. “People live in mansions, then get their wheels yanked out from under ’em. Who knows?”

  “It doesn’t make any sense. Just doesn’t make any sense.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you, Harry. You want me to call the office tomorrow and make sure they didn’t make a mistake?”

  I turned back to him. “No,” I said with a little more force than I intended. “Don’t do that. But you can do one thing for me.”

  “What?”

  “Hold off on this one, will you?”

  He shrugged. “Well, sure, I can do that. There’s three other pages full I can grab first. But you know, I’ve got to get it eventually.”

  “Just give me a couple of days, that’s all. Something stinks here. I’d like to see if I can find out what it is without Ford knowing I’m out there digging in his garbage.”

  “You know,” Lonnie said, “if this guy Ford stuck to driving Fords instead of Rolls-Royces, he might not be in this shape now.”

  I stood back up. “Lonnie, you’re a good ol’ boy. I don’t care what anybody else says about you.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” he sputtered.

  I opened the door of the trailer and stepped through. “Nothing pal, I didn’t pay any attention to those rumors about you and that goat.”

  I shut the door just as his empty beer can sailed through the air and slammed metallically into the glass. Something told me that sleep tonight wasn’t going to come as easily as I’d hoped.

  The squeaking and swaying of the metal staircase up to my attic apartment almost woke me up enough to realize I was home. I unlocked my door, staggered in, and barely recognized the place. Not that anything had happened; it just felt like a year since I’d been there.

  First things first: no messages on the answering machine, no interesting mail. I stripped off my clothes and got into the shower, letting the hot water rip over me so hard it
left red streaks. I dried off, a little more alert now.

  Why, I asked myself, hasn’t Marsha called? Even though I didn’t have any notion of what to say to her, I wanted to hear her voice. If it was just for five seconds, that was fine. I only wanted to know she was okay.

  Then it occurred to me that the phone works both ways. I made a cup of Sleepytime tea, threw in a slug of brandy for good measure, and settled back into bed. It was almost eleven-thirty when I took a chance and punched in her number.

  The number chirped six times before she came on the line.

  “Yes,” she said abruptly. Her voice was sharp, tight.

  “Hey,” I said. “How are you?”

  “Have you seen the news?” she demanded.

  “No, I’ve been working all eve—”

  “Turn on Nightline,” she snapped. Then the click of a cellular phone being disconnected.

  I sat there dumbfounded for a second before panic set in. What in heaven’s name could have happened that would—No matter, put the phone up and turn the damn television on.

  The TV took a few seconds to warm up, but the sound came through quickly. A rerun of The Cosby Show was just ending, which meant there’d be at least three minutes of commercials before anything important happened.

  As the color sharpened and the picture came into focus, a middle-aged white lady with a pained expression on her face began speaking earnestly into the camera.

  “Painful bloating. Stomach upset. It got so bad I finally went to my doctor.” Then she smiled. “Thank God, it was only gas. My doctor recommended Mylanta.…”

  “Christ Almighty, lady!” I yelled. “You go to the doctor to find out you need to fart?”

  I forced myself to shut up, then remembered that Mrs. Hawkins couldn’t hear me anyway. To hell with it; I hit the mute button.

  Finally the pitches were over and the Nightline logo appeared. I hit the mute button just as the theme music started, then slugged down the last of the tea and brandy as they went through the preliminaries.

  “Siege in Music City,” the narrator said. Then Ted Koppel’s face appeared.

  “What began as a bizarre, almost comical situation in Nashville, Tennessee, took a darker turn today as the founder of a fundamentalist religious sect that calls itself the Pentecostal Evangelical Enochians demanded that the body of his wife be turned over to cult members within forty-eight hours. If the corpse—which is now being held for a legally required autopsy in the Nashville morgue—is not released, cult founder Woodrow Tyberious Hogg has sworn that he will invoke what he calls the Enochian Apocalypse. Local officials interpret the Enochian Apocalypse this way: Heavily armed cult followers—who at present are surrounding the Nashville morgue—will begin their assault to retrieve the body of Evangeline Lee Hogg on Sunday morning, one full week after the siege began. In a moment we’ll speak with the mayor and chief of police in Nashville and a Vanderbilt University professor who’s an expert on cult behavior. But first, a little background from Nightline correspondent Dave Maresh.”