by C. L. Bevill
“I did just fine until—” Bubba said and clamped his mouth shut again. He was tired, too tired to play games with these people. “Coffee, lawyer, dog. And call my wife.”
“There’s your coffee,” Peterson said. “How about a little quid pro quo? You tell us about the general.”
“The only generals I knew were in the military. There was this one brigadier general who liked to sneak smokes on the stairwell because he wasn’t supposed to smoke in the building. He used to set off the fire alarms and then blamed it on the civil service people. Man, those GS guys were mad at him. Do you know how to remember the different ranks of generals?” Bubba stopped to drink the rest of the coffee, which was about three gulps because the cup was small. He knew he sounded inane. He was getting punch drunk because he needed a little sleep and a little more food.
Bubba was starting to relax a bit because he didn’t think he was in danger of anything except getting cranky. These guys couldn’t hang onto him forever unless they trumped up charges. If they had moved John J. Johnson the Third’s body, then they couldn’t be serious about blaming him for his death.
“Be My Little General,” Bubba explained. “They teach that to you in basic training. Be for brigadier or one star. My for major general or two stars. Little for lieutenant general or three stars and then general for general or four stars. Every time I hear the word general I think of that. My drill sergeants would be so proud of me.”
Peterson was gaping at Bubba again. Finally he said to Kirk, “Do you think he’s mentally deficient?”
Kirk shook his head. “He’s just tired.”
Bubba sighed. He tapped the Styrofoam cup with one finger. “More coffee. I dint kill John J. Johnson the Third. I don’t know who did. I don’t know who the general is or the Book Man or what it is that you have planned at Bazooka Bob’s.”
Both Peterson and Kirk looked at Bubba.
Then Bubba had one of those lightbulb moments. He would have looked up to see if the fluorescent lights above him burst, but he was certain that it hadn’t really happened, only in his head. These people were wanting something to happen. Then John J. Johnson the Third had happened, except that he wasn’t supposed to happen. That’s why they moved the body so the something they wanted to happen could still happen.
“Do you know that Bam Bam and John J. Johnson the Third look alike?” Bubba asked slowly. He could see from Peterson and Kirk’s expressions that was news to them. Both men stood up and exited the room quickly. Kirk slammed the door behind them, and Bubba spent the next twenty minutes playing with the empty Styrofoam cup.
Peterson came back in and had two folders in one hand. “What else do you know, Snoddy?”
Bubba supposed that Snoddy was better than redneck or rube. “I know a great deal,” he said, stealing a line straight out of Miz Demetrice’s mouth, “although the depth of my knowledge depends on what subject you wish to discuss. In particular I favor history. Sometimes it’s Civil War history, although lately I’ve been delving into WWII.”
“The general,” Peterson said.
“Nope. Don’t know that guy. You said his name was Buchman, right? Oh, I get that now. Buchman is German for book man. Ain’t that a coincidence? What kind of books is he interested in?”
“Any kind of books with drugs, political bartering, or assassination,” Peterson said seriously. He put the two folders on the table. “We’ve been looking at photos of Bam Bam Jones and John J. Johnson the Third. So what’s that connection?”
Bubba rattled the handcuff again as he tried to scratch the side of his head with the attached hand. He frowned and switched hands. “Quid pro quo implies that you give me something, too,” he remarked.
“More coffee, Kirk,” Peterson called. Bubba supposed that made him easy, but Peterson couldn’t know that he wasn’t going to be easy.
“So who are you?” Bubba asked politely.
Peterson tilted his head and asked, “It would be better if you just told us what you know about the general’s operation.”
“I know that you think something’s goin’ to happen,” Bubba said conversationally. “Might even be happening now. Not certain of the timeline. This fella’s a bad hombre. Do you really think that I kilt John J. Johnson the Third or mebe you think the Bookman did it?”
Peterson paced a bit while he unmistakably digested that bit of information, although Bubba didn’t think there was any information there. Everything was obtained through what Peterson had said. Anyone could have listened and figured it out. These people probably needed to talk to John J. Johnson the Third, but as he was dead, that wasn’t an option.
“Do you think the Bookman took Johnson out?”
Bubba drank his two gulps of coffee and sighed. It was abysmal coffee, but it was better than none. He didn’t know how long he was going to be playing this game, and it was already getting old.
“Tole you,” Bubba said, “don’t know nothing about the general. Dint kill John J. Johnson the Third. Don’t know who did kill him. Fella was in the bathroom when I found him.” That was the truth. John had been in the bathroom when Bubba had found him. There was no secret about that. If these guys were truly with the government, then they would get around to asking all the dancers that, and then Diamond and Destiny would eventually say something about seeing the body on the bathroom floor. It was conceivable that they wouldn’t because they had been reluctant to be about when the police showed up. All of this was giving Bubba an altogether too-familiar headache.
“And why were you there?” Peterson asked as if he was a cat pouncing on an errant mouse. “Bubba Snoddy, newly married, at a strip club where suspicious events have been occurring.”
“He’ped one of the girls out,” Bubba said, slightly irritated at Bam Bam for his interference. “She had car trouble, and I done gave her a lift. Ask her. Ask all of them.”
“Oh, we’ll ask them,” Peterson vowed.
Bubba had another lightbulb moment. They weren’t going to ask any of the employees of Bazooka Bob’s anything until the thing they were hoping would happen happened. If they did ask the employees. then the thing they were hoping that would happen might not happen. The only reason Bubba was here being asked questions was because he had wandered away from the premises of Bazooka Bob’s and made himself accessible. (They followed me, his demented brain informed him in a paranoid fashion.)
“Mebe if you was just clear with me, we could git this whole thing straightened out,” Bubba suggested. “I always found that honesty was better in the long run.”
“Then you should stop lying to us,” Peterson said.
“Willodean done tole me about that,” Bubba remarked. “Po-lice have that tendency to think folks be lying to them all the time because they lie to the po-lice all the time. Mostly they lie to her about traffic tickets. They really weren’t going 75 mph in a 55 zone because their gauges ain’t working. They have to rush to the hospital and never mind that the hospital is in the opposite direction that they’re going. Some of them folks even say they’re sick. Willodean had one fella shove a finger down his throat to make himself throw up. You know that don’t really count as being sick. Anyway, it means that being in law enforcement makes you naturally suspicious. Prolly you should talk to a doctor. I know some at the Dogley Institute of Mental Well-Being ifin you’re interested.”
Peterson stared again. He was doing a lot of staring.
“Let me recap,” Bubba said. “Ain’t kilt no one. Don’t know no general or book man or about any event that’s about to happen. Cain’t he’p you unless you’re a mite more specific. Need more coffee, my dog, and for you to call my wife. You don’t want to piss off my wife. I don’t want to piss off my wife, and I think I might be tip-toeing my way to that point regardless.”
Peterson made a noise not dissimilar to an animal whose tail had just been shut in a revolving door. Bubba didn’t think that Peterson meant to make that noise. He motioned at the Kirk guy, and Kirk brought in another chair. This was a
folding card table chair. He sat in it heavily and regarded Bubba. “Do you think that Bam Bam might have killed John J. Johnson?” he finally asked.
“The Third,” Bubba finished and then added quickly, “No, I do not.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Bam Bam is a bush league criminal,” Bubba said. “He calls himself an entrepreneur. Mostly he was hooking people up with other people who were the criminals. Ifin someone wanted something in particular, then Bam Bam knew who it was that the person should talk to. I thought it was an interestin’ approach because it’s not like some of that stuff is listed in the Yellow Pages. When I met him in Dallas, he had an idea of who to talk to, and he did he’p a little, although not as much as he could have he’ped.”
“Is he associated with the woman known as Big Mama?”
“I don’t think they associate,” Bubba said, “although they might have met at my wedding.”
“Big Mama went to your wedding?”
“There were a lot of people there,” Bubba said wryly. “Ma invited just about everyone. Ifin she had known you, you would have bin invited, too. After all, the DEA and the FBI were there.”
Peterson took that in, looked at Kirk, and Bubba watched as Kirk shrugged.
“Say, your first name ain’t James, is it?” Bubba asked Kirk. Kirk glowered. Obviously he’d heard that one before. (Bubba had known three Captain Kirks while he’d been in the Army, although none of them had been a James Kirk. All three had been overwhelmingly grateful to achieve the rank of major.)
It was about that moment when Precious began to bay loudly. “You dint feed her grapes, did you?” Bubba asked. “She howls when her stomach starts to hurt. You don’t want to mess with an animal whats got diarrhea.”
Peterson gestured at Kirk who promptly vanished into the hallway. Approximately thirty seconds later there was a great pounding on the outside of the tractor-trailer.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! It hesitated and then repeated. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
“I think someone wants in,” Bubba remarked. “Sounds like they’re using a baseball bat to hit the side of the trailer.”
“Peterson,” Kirk said as he stuck his head back in, “I think you need to see the security feeds.”
Peterson and Kirk promptly vanished and ten seconds later Bubba understood why.
“IT’S THE SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT, AND I’M NOT LEAVING UNTIL YOU PRODUCE MY HUSBAND!” someone bellowed.
Bubba smiled. It was nice to be missed.
Chapter 19
Willodean and Miz Demetrice
Wednesday, August 23rd
Willodean Gray Snoddy stood outside the plain unmarked tractor-trailer. She presented as an inoffensive figure. She still wore the Boba Fett robe that didn’t quite reach around her middle and also the Bigfoot slippers. Even the Sam Browne belt that hung at a slightly awkward angle under the curve of her belly didn’t accurately reflect the outright professionalism and assertive nature of the local law enforcement. Conversely, her police baton was held in her right hand, and she used it to bang solidly on the double tractor doors.
Sheriff John stood nearby and watched wordlessly. Both of them had heard the dog howling, although it would have been difficult to say that it had definitively been a Basset hound making the noise. Willodean was definitive, however, and she was going to be even more definitive with her Billy club.
Willodean tracked the noise to a single tractor-trailer that sat in a row of others. These trailers weren’t attached to semi-trucks and were waiting for pick up or for their owners to move out to wherever it was that they were going.
The one making the Bassett howling noises was merely one of two dozen and blended in like a proverbial white snowman painting a white picture during a blizzard. However, it wasn’t white, there weren’t any snowmen or pictures about, and the last blizzard in Pegram County had happened in 1958 whereupon Mayor John Leroy Jr.’s father, the Honorable Mayor John Leroy Sr. had wandered off and gotten frostbitten on two of his toes. (He’d often said it was five toes, and one had been amputated, but most people knew it was only two and only a small section of dead skin had been removed.) She’d looked around and almost immediately located the Chevy Tahoe parked in the adjacent lot. It also blended in with several other various SUVs, as well as a dozen other types of cars.
It had taken Willodean all of twenty seconds to figure out which tractor-trailer was the correct one, and the baton had been extracted from the Sam Browne belt with alarming efficiency. It was true that a police baton wasn’t meant to be used as a weapon against steel, but Willodean hadn’t stopped to consider that aspect. When she was done introducing the baton to the side of the tractor- trailer, she’d started shouting at the back of the trailer as if the trailer should personally answer her.
Peripherally, Willodean was aware that several people had exited the truck stop/restaurant to see what was happening with the sheriff’s department. Even the two ladies of the evening had wandered closer to avail themselves of free entertainment. Evidently, heavily pregnant deputies did not typically cause scenes on early Wednesday mornings most of the time. (There were whispers about Willodean’s previous excessive use of mace. It was even said that she kept a case of it in her Bronco.)
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! Willodean whacked the back doors with the baton. A bit of the wood baton flew away. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! she went again, putting her shoulder into it. She thought she saw several dimples in the steel door.
“IT’S THE SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT, AND I’M NOT LEAVING UNTIL YOU PRODUCE MY HUSBAND!” Willodean bellowed gleefully. She only wished she’d thought to bring the bullhorn from the Bronco so that the next county over could have heard her demands.
Willodean impatiently tapped her foot on the pavement, drumming the end of the baton in the palm of her free hand. Inside the trailer, the dog had abruptly stopped baying, and Willodean knew the reason that Precious had ceased her caterwauling was because she’d heard Willodean. Precious, as most people knew, was an exceptionally clever hound and was well aware that rescue was looming or food scraps were imminent, either one.
“I KNOW you think I’ll go away but you’re wrong!” Willodean yelled after a few moments. “I’ll sit right here until you open up and talk to me! You’re on county property, and I have reasonable cause to suspect you’ve illegally detained a local citizen, namely my husband! You might think you can still call my boss’s boss’s boss, but I think that bleeping ship has sailed! Also bleep your bleep to the bleeping bleep if you continue to bleeping ignore me!” She didn’t really use the word “bleep” or “bleeping” because she was that mad at that point.
Willodean wasn’t certain if she could get Judge Arimithia Perez to sign a warrant because Willodean didn’t want to explain exactly how she had gleaned from Ralph Cedarbloom’s men in black and alien comments that the government men in the unmarked SUV had taken Bubba into custody. (It was a reach, but then, a lot of things in Pegram County were reaches. Judges didn’t always take “reaches” into account when justifying a search warrant.)
Willodean glanced at Sheriff John and he shrugged eloquently.
“Maybe you think that as a pregnant woman I’ll get tired and go to the bathroom, but I’m pretty sure that someone will bring me a bucket because I’M…NOT…MOVING!”
“I’ll get you a coffee,” one of the prostitutes offered when Willodean paused for breath. “Cream and sugar?”
“Thanks,” Willodean said. “Nice of you, Charlotte. How are the kids?” Then she hit the door again with the baton. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! It wasn’t doing the door any damage, but she was pretty sure she was going to have to replace the baton because it had splintered down the middle. The only thing it was going to be good for was kindling.
“You know, I’ve seen several men in suits coming and going from that trailer,” the other prostitute said. “See, they’ve got stairs right there.”
Willodean looked at the makeshift set of stairs that someone had hobbled together from discarded pallet
s.
“Don’t worry,” Sheriff John rumbled as he moved a step closer to Willodean, “you kin go to the bathroom when you need to. I’ll keep watch.” He keyed his shoulder mike and asked for reinforcements from both the county and from the city of Pegramville. “This will be fun. We’ll park here until they have to come out. I have a hankering for Mrs. Peabody’s fried chicken. I’ll wager she’ll bring some out to us, ifin we ask nicely.”
“Fried chicken sounds good,” Willodean agreed. She pounded on the tractor-trailer’s doors again. The baton splintered into two sections and one fell to the asphalt. She used the handle to continue beating on the door. “I’M STILL HERE! YOU MIGHT WANT TO COME OUTSIDE AND TALK TO ME! BRING MY HUSBAND AND HIS DOG, YOU BLEEPING BLEEPITY BLEEPS!”
“Willodean,” Sheriff John protested, “I know you’re upset, but we don’t need to use that kind of language.”
“Bleep,” Willodean said. “Can I borrow your baton? I seem to have broken mine.”
Sheriff John covered the end of his police baton protectively. “No, you cain’t. I’ve had this one since the 80s. It’s my good luck baton. It stopped a bullet once.”
“You could use this 2X4,” one of the growing audience members said, helpfully holding a section out.
“Are you shore someone’s in there?” Sheriff John whispered.
“You heard the dog,” Willodean snapped. “Precious goes where Bubba goes unless she’s locked in a room.”
Sheriff John had to acknowledge that. “She’s a good hound.”
Willodean was reaching for the 2X4 when the door clicked. Tractor-trailer doors didn’t typically lock from the inside but this one did. Even Sheriff John had to admit this was a step up from the typical model. Instantly everyone silenced, and Willodean put her hand on the butt of her service weapon. So did Sheriff John.
The door clicked and then slowly opened. A man said, “Deputy Snoddy, you’re ruining the whole op. I can have you arrested for obstruction of justice.”