by C. L. Bevill
“Insurance on you?”
“No, no insurance on me. Insurance fella laughed at me when I tried to get some.”
“So your mama will get enough to prolly make her upset?”
“Something like that,” Bam Bam said.
“You get where I’m going?” Bubba asked. “You got a fella here in your club, on your land, who looks just like you, and who’s bin shot dead. My thinking is that someone shot him thinking it was you.”
Bam Bam looked at the dead body. “I reckon folks could come to that conclusion.”
“If that ain’t true, then we need to find out all about John J. Johnson the Third because someone followed him here to your place to kill him,” Bubba said.
“They followed him from Washington, D.C.?” Bam Bam asked. “That doesn’t seem likely.”
“We could just let the po-lice figure this all out,” Bubba suggested.
“No police!” Bam Bam nearly shouted. “I thought we had an agreement.”
“Thought you might change your mind,” Bubba murmured.
“48 hours, right?”
“Right, 48 hours,” Bubba agreed. He didn’t like it. Willodean would hate it. Sheriff John would think that it was suspicious. The city police chief, Big Joe, would probably put his two cents in, although it was well out of his jurisdiction. “Then you’ll have to report the body. I don’t think Sheriff John will be fooled.”
“The bathroom is broken,” Bam Bam said. “Wasn’t any need for anyone to be in here, right? That’s not too much of a stretch. I’ll use a lot of Febreze.”
Bubba bent to search the dead man’s jacket again. He didn’t know what he was looking for, but there had to be something. He checked all of the pockets inside and out. He pulled out John’s wallet again and searched in all the little compartments without finding so much as a lint ball.
“What ya looking for, B?”
“Something, anything,” Bubba said. “You need to think, Bam Bam. What exactly did this man say to you? It could be right critical to figuring this out.”
“Well, he asked for me on the phone. Asked for me by my adopted name, like I said. I think the only ones who know that are the DMV and my mama. Then he just appeared at my door.” Bam Bam rubbed his chin. “Another shot of scotch is sounding very good right now.”
“No scotch,” Bubba said.
“Would it be right for me to pee in here?”
“No peeing,” Bubba added. “Go in another bathroom. Remember, this is supposed to be broken. Go let my dog out of your office. She needs to go outside for a bit.”
Bam Bam let himself out, and Bubba heard the door lock behind him. He’d just been locked inside with a corpse. Was that something new?
“Okay,” Bubba said to John J. Johnson the Third, “tell me what’s goin’ on?”
Naturally, the late John J. Johnson the Third was not talkative. Bubba wondered if he was related to Foot Johnson, but that didn’t seem likely. Mebe distant cousins.
“Why would anyone follow you all the way to Texas to kill you?” Bubba persisted. It was possible a ghost would reply. Although it hadn’t happened before, he was ever hopeful. “Why would Bam Bam be so danged stubborn about dragging me into this?” Bubba could actually kind of understand the last part. The other man really didn’t care for the police, and he’d never had good experiences with them. If Bubba recalled, Bam Bam was deathly afraid of Janie Gray Redgrave, Willodean’s eight-year-old niece, and she was only related to law enforcement officers, albeit a lot of law enforcement officers.
Bubba’s empathy didn’t extend to feeling good about the trouble he was putting himself into. Willodean was going to be mad. Miz Demetrice was going to be mad. Some other people were going to be mad.
Thinking of Willodean, Bubba pulled out his phone again. His large fingers carefully dialed his wife’s number and then he put the phone to his ear, listening to it ring. After the fourth ring, she answered with, “Gray, er, Snoddy, here.”
If Bubba had been waiting for her to appear in person, the sun would have come out and shone down on her brilliantly black hair and emphasized her lovely figure. Her green eyes would have sparkled, and her ruby lips would have glistened. The thought of everything Willodean made him sigh heavily. “Hey Willodean,” he said.
“Are you headed home now?” she asked. “I got your message.”
“I’m still he’ping out,” Bubba said honestly. “Then I’m goin’ to bring some food home. Fella here makes some dang good chow. I had a nibble, and it made my mouth water.”
“Oh, I’m hungry,” she said. “Wait, there’s a Ding Dong in the glove box. Don’t mind me.” He heard rattling and deduced that the package had been located and unwrapped. Then she said, “So good,” except it sounded like, “Mo goo.”
“I’ll get a double serving for you,” Bubba said. “It might take me a bit.”
He heard chewing and then Willodean swallowed enough to say, “No problem. That jerk Smithson just sped by in his Camaro. You remember him? He works for Big Joe and was probably the one who kicked you in the head with the steel-tipped boots. I imagine he’s got a broken taillight and several other vehicular issues as well as being a speeder. I might make up some new and unusual violations.”
“I remember,” Bubba said, but the truth was that he didn’t really remember the part about being kicked in the head. “Go get him, girl.”
“Love you,” she said just as he heard the siren in her official vehicle engage. Then the line beeped to indicate that she’d disconnected.
Bubba smiled at the phone. That had gone better than he’d hoped. He turned to bang on the bathroom door. His body movement made something on the floor move. His eyes settled on a little slip of paper near John J. Johnson’s hand. When he stepped forward, it he kicked something that rolled into the corner, but it was the paper that captured his attention. How’d I miss that?
Bubba studied it for a moment and then turned it over with his pinky finger. There was a series of numbers on the back that looked like a phone number. It only took him about five seconds to decide to call the number, which turned out to be a big mistake.
Chapter 7
Bubba and the Pursuit of
Justice, er, Escape, er,
Evasion from Miz Demetrice
Tuesday, August 22nd
“Hamilton Art Industries,” came an answer. The lady who answered didn’t have a discernible accent, and it sounded as if she could have been comfortable announcing the news. Bubba pursed his lips as he comprehended what he’d just done. He’d had an impulse, and now he wasn’t certain how to follow up on the problematic whim. Although it was possible that John J. Johnson worked for this company, it was more likely that he had business with this company. Why else would he have their number on a piece of paper? Wouldn’t it be on his cellphone or on a business card, instead?
“John J. Johnson?” Bubba asked, saying what popped out first. He added lamely, “The Third.”
“Who’s calling, please?”
Bubba cringed. One day he was going to have to think ahead in order to avoid putting himself into these kind of situations. “Uh, Pete Peterson…the First.” That was even lamer than asking for John J. Johnson the Third, but he needed to own it.
“What’s your business with Mr. Johnson, Mr. Peterson?”
“I’m interested in…” Bubba said before he couldn’t think of an appropriate ending. Finally, he said, “It’s personal.” It was personal. Death was always personal. How could death be anything but personal? It wasn’t exactly a lie.
“I’ll have to take a message as Mr. Johnson is currently unavailable,” the woman said.
Well, duh, Bubba thought looking at John J. Johnson the Third in his current state of being deceased on the floor of a bathroom in a gentlemen’s club. He isn’t available because he’s dee-eee-aaa-dee-dead right here.
“Your number, Mr. Peterson?” the woman asked politely, but Bubba thought he noted a certain hint of desperation. Hearing that little
note made him think of bad things because he’d called without thinking of consequences. Who knew to whom or what he’d just dialed a number?
“I’ll call back,” Bubba said, jerked the phone away from his face, and hit the end button, mashing it with his beefy fingers in his haste. He looked at the bathroom door again and then decided that he could actually use his smartphone. It had internet. His mother had showed him how to Google things on his phone. What would folks think of next? A fella might be able to walk on the moon and then make bacon in a microwave oven. He frowned because sarcasm in his own head sounded puny.
Slowly and methodically, he opened up the correct icon and typed in “Hamilton Art Industries” in the window. Then he followed that by tapping the blue button with a magnifying glass. Several moments later he was rewarded with a list of links. There was an Art Gallery of Hamilton in Hamilton, Ontario. There was a group that provided metal stampings with a man named Hamilton who was its CEO. There was also a link to Etsy, which Bubba had heard about because his mother bought handcrafted items from the website. Finally, there were quite a few links to various auctions that had Hamilton-type items in them, such as tables, chairs, and stools.
After ten minutes, Bubba decided that there wasn’t a link for Hamilton Art Industries. He took a few more minutes to look up the area code on the phone number that he had dialed. It was 202, and lo and behold, it was a District of Columbia area code. In fact, the District of Columbia only appeared to have the one area code.
“A fella from D.C. who has a driver’s license from there, has a phone number that’s to a bizness that’s from there,” he murmured. “Ain’t a surprise.” There was the possibility that the number wasn’t a phone number. However, since it had a D.C. area code, and the lady on the other end sounded like she knew John J. Johnson, it seemed unlikely.
Lastly, he did a directory search for Hamilton Art Industries in D.C. and came up with a big fat pile of nothing.
Bubba looked at his phone. He looked at the body. He looked at the phone again. Fella on the floor looks like a fed. He’d seen enough of them in his lifetime due to his mother’s various nefarious activities that he should be able to recognize one when one wandered about. (There had also been the case of all the feds at the time when Brownie was kidnapped, but it had seemed like the FBI had sent their B team to that one. One had been the former agent who had become a treasure hunter, Hornbuckle, Hornsmump, Hornwhistle, or whatever her name was, and another one had to be taken in an ambulance because he had a dire reaction to poison ivy. Bubba seemed to recall that one or the other had actually ridden in the same ambulance as Brownie’s mother, Virtna, as she had gone into labor.)
But this one didn’t have identification that indicated that he was, in fact, a federal agent. That implied something else.
Bubba had seen some other ones while he had been in the military. Certainly while in the pursuit of his job as a mechanic in the Army he didn’t have a great number of opportunities to see such individuals. But when he had been stationed in Germany, they had been all over the place. He’d been at Headquarters Company, Headquarters Battalion of a staff brigade in Frankfurt, and they were like flies on stink there. He and the other grunts made fun of them.
Spooks. If they weren’t investigating illegal contacts with countries, then they were looking into who was spying for whom. Most folks didn’t think that mechanics had brains and so they were often questioned about who was doing what and what was happening with their vehicles. “Where are you driving Colonel Dogsbody? Does he have other parties in the vehicle? Does he have long talks with anyone appearing to be from China, Russia, or North Korea?” “Has anything suspicious been left in the vehicles?” were all the kinds of inane questions these varied individuals would ask in a condescending manner.
However, Bubba had found suspicious devices attached to the frame on the bottoms of the official vehicles he was maintaining, and he’d had to report them on every occasion. Especially when the vehicle in question was the one being used by a four star general. It had been Bubba’s opinion that the foreign countries hadn’t put the little devices on the sedan, but that the CIA had in an effort to watch their own people, although he’d kept that estimation to himself.
John J. Johnson was something like a spook. And he’d lived in Spooksville Central. He probably lived right down the street and across the Potomac from Langley.
And…Bubba rolled his eyes heavenward…I just called them from my own phone like a supreme dumbass. He glanced around. Certainly there wasn’t a contingent of CIA operatives going about their business in Pegram County, but it was only a matter of time before they came knocking on a Snoddy Mansion’s front door or possibly its back door. Or even instead of knocking, they come in with a battering ram because they don’t feel the need to use a doorbell. Carp, carp, carp, he thought. No, I mean, crap, crap, crap. I really do.
* * *
Still waiting for Bam Bam to come back and unlock the door, Bubba looked at the small thing he’d kicked into a corner while he was reaching for the piece of paper with the phone number on it. It was a small tube, silver in color with rhinestones on it. He removed the lid with a twist and saw that it was lipstick. He frowned but remembered where he was standing. Even though it was a men’s bathroom, the place was chockablock with females. It wouldn’t be surprising to find an errant lipstick rolling around. He put it in his pocket along with the piece of paper just as Bam Bam came in and said, “Your dog can pee a dozen times in a row. I ain’t never seen a dog mark so many tires. I think she hit all of them and then a few that I didn’t realize she’d missed.”
“She’s got a special reserve,” Bubba admitted. “We think she’s part alien.” He slipped out of the door and watched as Bam Bam surreptitiously locked the door again. Bubba bent to pet his hound. Precious leaned away for a moment before she capitulated. Yes, pet me there, human slave, she thought. Scratch under that jowl. Do you have chicken? I will eat more chicken, but no shrimp because shrimp gives me the volcanic whoopsies.
Bubba did not have more chicken, so she took another minute of petting and then trotted off to find a human that would be more accommodating with bite distribution. She happened to know where a slew of them were grouped in a room. All of them liked her except the one with the largest mammary glands and that was only because Precious made that one sneeze.
“That girl’s fickle,” Bam Bam noted, obviously meaning Precious and not the human with the large mammary glands...
“Yep, Bam Bam, we must talk.”
They went back to Bam Bam’s office where the door locking was repeated. Bubba waited until it was closed before he closed his large hand around Bam Bam’s neck and shoved him against the door. He also lifted him about two inches off the floor so that his booted feet kicked helplessly. “You involved in somethin’ illegal, Bam Bam?”
Bam Bam choked, and Bubba loosened his grip incrementally. Bam Bam’s feet touched the floor, and he was able to gasp, “No, I tole you. Don’t do none of that no more. I made good money on that movie and then I bought this place. This place had good credentials, but I think Bob bamboozled me on the income in the last three quarters.”
Bubba frowned. “That fella in there is something like a federal agent,” he said slowly. “You telling me that his showing up here is coincidental. He was just looking for his long-lost relative or such?”
“He didn’t say!” Bam Bam wailed. “I swear, I wouldn’t have sicced Cayenne on you if I’d known it was going to be trouble.” He briefly considered, then added, “This much trouble, anyway.”
Bubba let Bam Bam go. The other man fingered his neck and goggled at Bubba.
“There was a phone number on a piece of paper by the fella’s hand,” Bubba told Bam Bam. “I called it and got some place that don’t rightly exist. He’s wearing a gun holster that looks like Uncle Sam issued it. He’s wearing an expensive suit, and he doesn’t have enough ID to be a regular fella. It don’t add up. Ifin someone dint want to murder you and i
t was no mistake getting him, then they wanted to murder him, and it was pure-D bad luck that they caught up to him in your place.”
Bam Bam said, “Uh, not sure if I follow you, Bubba. If he’s a fed, then why would anyone want to shoot him here? Why not where he lives or where he works, which I assume is in the District of Columbia? Ain’t no murderer about who would follow a man all the way to Texas to do his business.”
“Here’s what we have to do,” Bubba said. “You have to call your mama and ask her about this fella and ask her about what she knows about your birth people.”
Bam Bam cringed. “I will, but it won’t be pretty.” He glanced at the clock. “This is prime time for Mega Bingo at her church. She doesn’t like to be distracted. Then she’s downtown at the Golden Nugget or the Fremont. She turns her cellphone off on account that she can’t hear it anyway. Don’t mess with a retired lady while she’s gambling.”
“I think we have a good reason,” Bubba said slowly. “Then we need to find out about this fella, and there’s only one way I kin think of doing that without calling the po-lice.”
“No,” Bam Bam breathed. “Anything but that. I’d rather die.”
“Yes,” Bubba said. “It has to be that. We don’t have no other options.”
They both heard the commotion from the club at the same time.
“I don’t think this room is as soundproof as you think it is,” Bubba said.
“I think you’re correct,” Bam Bam agreed. “Sounds like God’s tater wagon turned over out there.”
“Speak of the devil,” Bubba said and sighed heavily. He’d known there was a chance of being caught. The chance was getting more likely every minute he was here. It had likely become even money the moment he’d set eyes on the corpse of one John J. Johnson the Third, but he had been ever hopeful. “Unlock the door, Bam Bam, my mother’s here.”