Drag Strip

by Nancy Bartholomew

  “Freeze!” Detective Wheeling screamed.

  “Baby! Don’t do it!” Frank cautioned. “He’ll shoot you! Drop the gun!”

  Lulu looked out into the driveway and saw the barrel of the Glock 9mm, appeared to think for a bare second, and then dropped the gun, a smile quickly replacing the homicidal look on her face.

  “Hey, Officer, what’s doin’?”

  Wheeling wasn’t having any of it. He remained hunkered down behind the roof of the car, a radio mike in his hand, barking into it. Then he put it down and started issuing orders. In the distance, sirens began to wail as Wewahitchka’s only police car came to the rescue.

  “Put your hands in the air! Now!” Lulu raised her hands like a placid schoolchild. “You!” Wheeling yelled to Frank. “Cut the engine and get out of the car!”

  Frank shut down the car immediately, but didn’t move to leave it.

  “Get out of the car, now!” Wheeling yelled, the adrenaline rush evident in his red face.

  “Aw, man,” Frank said, and sighed. “Do I have to?”

  “Get out of that damned car right now!”

  Slowly the door swung open, and as I saw it from my position lying on the ground alongside Lulu’s porch, one bare foot hit the ground, then another. There was still-as-death silence for about thirty seconds, and then the sound of Detective Wheeling laughing.

  “You think that’s something,” Raydean called out, “you oughta see what we got on videotape!”

  Wheeling shook his head slowly and raised up a little from behind his car.

  “Where’s Roy Dell?” he called out to Lulu.

  “He ain’t here,” she answered.

  “No, duh!” said Raydean, cackling. “That boy don’t know what he’s missing!”

  “But he will,” said Ma, patting the camcorder.

  I crossed myself as an extra precaution. I knew Ma was thinking back to the Sons of Italy–Mostavindaduchi fiasco. Poor Pa, I bet he never speaks to another woman again in his life, let alone smiles at one.

  Wewa’s finest arrived at that moment, and a young deputy sprang from the car, his gun drawn and a wild-eyed look of pure terror in his eyes. Here he was, at his first gunfight. He looked at Wheeling, then saw naked Frank.

  “Damn!” he swore. “What you got here?”

  Wheeling looked over at him. “What, boy, you never seen a naked man? Go up on that porch and retrieve that shotgun, would you?”

  The young man cut past Wheeling and cautiously approached Lulu, slipping up onto the porch and grabbing the shotgun tenderly.

  “Now,” said Wheeling, stepping out from behind the car and walking a few feet up the drive. “Would somebody care to explain what’s going on here?”

  Raydean took a step forward and looked like she was about to tell all, but then she stopped suddenly. “Hey,” she said, “ain’t you that boy from over to the drugstore?”

  “The very same one,” I answered, stepping out from the side of the house.

  “Uh-huh!” Raydean snapped. “I thought as much. Alien!”

  I smiled at Wheeling. “There’s really not much to this at all,” I said smoothly.

  “Now, there’s a damn lie!” Lulu spit, but just as quickly remembered that she’d been caught in flagrante delicto, and shut her mouth.

  “Does anybody here want to press charges against anybody else here?” Wheeling asked, slowly running his eyes over all of us one at a time.

  No one spoke. I hesitated, then decided to tell him the details about Lulu and Frank later, when Ma wasn’t around to get any more involved than she already was.

  “Well, fine then,” he said. “I’m just interested in catching up with Roy Dell, Ms. Parks. Where might I find him?”

  “Why do you want him?”

  Wheeling stared at her hard for a moment. “I have a warrant for his arrest,” he said finally.

  Lulu stepped to the edge of the porch. “On what charge?”

  “The murder of Ruby Diamond,” he answered, his eyes never wavering from hers.

  Lulu seemed to teeter for a moment, then grabbed on to the porch rail for support and leaned forward. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I ever heard in my life! Roy Dell never laid a hand on that slut!”

  “I got evidence to the contrary, ma’am. I’d appreciate you letting us know if you hear from him, on account of I’m sure you wouldn’t want to be an accessory after the fact.”

  Lulu opened her mouth to say something, then just as quickly closed it.

  “Now,” said Wheeling, turning to face the rest of us, “I’m thinking y’all ought to disperse.”

  Raydean and Ma started to walk off toward Raydean’s cop-mobile, obviously anxious to put as much space between themselves and Frank as possible.

  “Hey!” Frank said. “They got something of mine! I want that film!”

  Lulu tossed Frank his pants and he started struggling to pull them on while Raydean and Ma quickened their pace to a dead run.

  “You’ll have to take care of that later,” Wheeling said to him. “I need to talk to you.”

  “Can’t it wait?” Frank was looking over Wheeling’s shoulder and seeing his recent past getting away from him, forever preserved in Ma’s camcorder.

  “’Fraid it can’t,” Wheeling answered calmly. “I need you to sign that statement you gave us yesterday.” I was starting to walk away after Raydean and Ma, but I was also trying to overhear. “And I need to talk to you, too, Ms. Lavotini.”

  I spun around and looked back at Wheeling, who hadn’t even turned away from Frank as he spoke.

  “I figure you got your hands full, right now, Detective. Catch up with me later.” After all, he couldn’t actually detain me, not unless he was going to arrest me.

  “Don’t leave your trailer,” he said, his command voice returning.

  “How about this, Detective. I won’t leave the country.”

  I could tell he was mad. The dull red flush was moving across the back of his neck. There’d be hell to pay later, but for now, I had a videotape to watch.

  Twenty-one

  Raydean must’ve flown back to Panama City. Her car was securely parked on her parking pad, the canvas cover concealing it from alien invaders, when I pulled onto my own parking pad across the one-lane street. No sign of life came from either trailer, but I knew Al had just come back because Ma’s car was still making ticking noises like it does when you shut it off.

  Fluffy was all too glad to be home. She bailed out of the car, flew up the steps, and was through the doggie door before I could cut the engine. So much for companionship. I guessed she’d had enough for one day. But somehow I knew my day was only beginning. It might’ve had something to do with the look on Al’s face when I walked into the kitchen. He was sitting at the table, scowling, a laptop computer open in front of him.

  “Hey,” I said cautiously.

  “Did you see Ma?” he barked. “Did you see her just now? Cause I’m thinkin’, you know, somehow Sierra’s behind this. Ma is looking like a freaking escapee from World War II!”

  “Yeah?” I leaned against the counter and tried to look calm, like it was no big deal at all for our saintly mother to turn to blackface and camouflage.

  “She was running, Sierra. Running like someone was after her. And she stonewalled me. Wouldn’t tell me bupkiss. Just said she had to take a shower. She’s been in there ever since.” Al was plainly exasperated.

  “Well, what’s it been, Al? Five minutes? It takes time to get that shit off your face, and she’s all sweaty—”

  “Sierra, can it. What happened?”

  I figured there was no easy way around it, so I told him. Of course, certain, shall we say, nonessential details were left by the wayside. I didn’t think Al would approve of Lulu shooting at Ma, or Ma videotaping Frank at the golden moment with Lulu. I merely intimated that Ma and Raydean had encountered Frank and his honey in a compromising position.

  “I don’t believe you, Sierra.”

  “Be t
hat as it may, Al, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.” I laughed, like there wasn’t a care in my world, but I stepped over to the window and peered out through the gauze curtains. It wouldn’t take Frank any time at all to find out where I lived and come barreling down the road. Raydean was Roy Dell’s aunt, after all. Frank would at least come looking for her.

  “What you looking at?” Al barked.

  “Nothin’! Jeeze, will you take a pill!” I looked over at my brother and realized he’d hooked his laptop to my phone jack. “Hey, is that long distance?”

  “No!” he grumped.

  “Al,” I said, sliding into the seat next to him, “what’s really bothering you?”

  He looked up for a brief second, then away. “You know that the guy you sent me to find out about, Albert a.k.a. Meatloaf, has a record?”

  “No, how could I know that?”

  “I just thought maybe with your connection at the police department, you might know.”

  “How’d you find out?”

  Al spun the computer around so I could see the screen. E-mail from a buddy in the department back in Philly.

  “So what’s he done?” I asked, because Al quickly spun the computer back to face him and started tapping.

  “Assault and battery, on a female,” he answered.

  “How much time did he do?”

  Al looked up at me. “None. For some reason, the charges got dropped just before it went to trial. Technically, it’s not supposed to still be in the system, but my buddy’s got a connection with NCIC.” Al was looking puffed up, like he knew things none of us regular citizens would ever know.

  Ma picked that moment to reappear, traces of shoe polish stuck in her ears.

  “What’s all the yelling?” she asked, as if she hadn’t heard every word through my paper-thin walls. “Youse two got low blood sugar. That’s your problem. You need to eat!” Ma was on a tear, whipping out pots and pans, and running water for noodles.

  “Don’t you got work, Sierra?” she asked. “It’s going on five o’clock. You gotta get out of here soon. Go on and take your shower. I’ll call you when supper’s ready.”

  There I was, in my own house, taking orders from my mom the espionage queen! What was wrong with this picture?

  “Ma, we gotta talk,” I said.

  She gave me an anxious look from her spot behind Al, making a chopping motion at her neck, like I should slit my throat. Don’t talk. Okay. I understood.

  “Yeah, you’re right, Ma,” I said. “I need a shower.”

  By the time I returned, transformed into Sierra, Wonder Queen of Desire, Al and Ma had settled into an uncomfortable silence.

  We struggled through dinner, with each one wanting to say stuff but not wanting the other to know. Al followed me out to the car as I was leaving for work, frowning.

  “Don’t go near that Meatloaf guy,” he said. “He’s dangerous.”

  “I can handle Meatloaf.”

  “Sierra, no you can’t. That woman he assaulted?”

  “Yeah?”

  “She was a dancer.”

  A cool breeze blew across the parking pad, making me shiver. “All right, Al, I’ll watch my back extra special. But Al, you gotta do one thing for me, all right?” It was my turn.

  “What?” Al was plenty suspicious.

  “Ma and Raydean kinda pissed off Lulu and her boyfriend, Frank. Just on the off chance that he takes a mind to pay back, would you watch Raydean’s place?”

  “I knew it. I just knew it. There’s always more, isn’t there, Sierra? You just never tell me the whole story.”

  But I was gone by then, gunning the car into reverse and laying a patch down the road just like we used to do up in Kensington when Bridge Street was quiet. I looked at Al in the rearview mirror. He wasn’t laughing.

  Twenty-two

  The night called for something special. The Tiffany was jumping. Vincent Gambuzzo, smelling a big take on the door, was walking around like a stuffed panda bear, puffing out his chest and trying not to stumble on account of the RayBans he wore even in the darkest parts of the club. Roy Dell and the racetrack crew were conspicuously absent. But I’d given Bruno, the steroid-impaired bouncer, a heads-up on Meatloaf and Frankenstein. He’d be ready to bounce their sorry tails off the sidewalk should they show.

  There was a surprise waiting for me when I got to the club, a surprise I’d been working for months to score. My source, Dickie the Deal, had come through on procuring tonight’s costume. I didn’t know how he’d done it, and I didn’t want to appear even curious, but I was grateful to the tune of one hundred large. I counted out five twenties and handed them to Dickie on the back fire escape. He shoved the brown-paper package into my hands and fled, anxious not to be recognized.

  “It’ll fit,” he called over his shoulder, “even with them vavooms of yours, it’ll fit!”

  I laughed and ran inside. It fit all right. Right down to the silver cuffs, it fit.

  When I stepped to the edge of the stage and signaled Ralph to cut on the smoke machine, he looked up and for a moment was frozen in admiration.

  “Where in the hell…” he started.

  “You don’t even want to know,” I answered. Then I adjusted my hat, gave my belt a little twitch, and wandered out onstage as the opening strains of Fiona Apple’s “Criminal” started pumping up the audience. Officer Sierra was reporting for duty, fully decked from the hat to the black polyester shirt to the gear belt. The only things nonregulation: the micro-miniskirt, the five-inch stilettos, and of course my black lace G-string.

  The crowd went wild. Especially when I pulled my fake pistol and blew them all a kiss over the end of the barrel. Oh, yes, I was in complete control.

  “You’re all under house arrest,” I cooed, whipping out my handcuffs. “Any troublemakers in the house?”

  Bruno barely beat the crowd down to the edge of the runway, positioning himself between me and them.

  “I like you!” I said, to an innocent-looking young businessman. “Show me your wrists, lover boy!”

  He didn’t think, he just offered his wrists, his hands clutching dollar bills, and let me cuff him to the pole at the end of runway. “What’re you gonna do to me?” he squeaked.

  As little as possible, I thought, but to his face I just smiled. “Relax, sweetie,” I said, running my hands down the length of his body. “I’m gonna frisk you, and then Officer Sierra is gonna turn you loose. Ain’t nobody gonna hurt you.” The crowd at the foot of the stage laughed, and my victim turned bright red.

  “Hurt me, baby!” a man’s voice cried. “Oh, hurt me bad!”

  I uncuffed my prisoner, stepped back, and pulled the baton out of my gear belt. The music rose. I caressed the baton, stuck it slowly back into my belt, and ripped my skirt off with one quick move. There was a collective sigh from the audience.

  I pulled my hat off, and my hair tumbled down around my shoulders. Slowly, very slowly, I started to undo the buttons of my uniform, all the while leaning my back against the pole and sliding up and down. I licked my lips and looked hungry. Even Bruno was watching.

  “You’ve been bad, bad boys,” I said, and lost my bra.

  The men were going wild, and I was collecting a G-string full of bills. If things kept up like this, my costume would earn its price many times over. I squatted down and swiveled my thighs out toward the runway so my admirers could stuff in whatever money they had left, and then, as I straightened, I saw him.

  My body feels John Nailor’s presence and there ain’t squat I can do about it. When our eyes locked across the room, I felt my temperature rise by a good two degrees. He was watching me the same way he always did, like a hungry animal. But this time, he was an angry, hungry animal. I guess he takes police work seriously. Maybe he didn’t take to my salute to his boys in black. Whatever. I tipped my hat and winked. The boy needed to learn how to take a joke, develop a sense of humor.

  I stood up and walked slowly down the runway, ever closer to my f
ans and John Nailor. As I walked, I began unbuckling my gear belt, taking my time, and lingering just a little too long on the buckle. The belt broke free and I tossed it to Bruno, who grinned like he’d captured a prize. Then I slipped my thumbs under the thin straps of my G-string, looked out at the boys, and made like I was going to yank it off.

  They were screaming and throwing money. I smiled this little impish grin like “Hey, ain’t this fun? Now I’m gonna do something special for you and only you.” Each man was just sure I was looking at him. At that exact moment, Ralph put on the smoke machine full blast, and I disappeared back up the runway in a puff of smoke.

  “Damn, Sierra!” Ralph said as he helped me shrug into my purple silk kimono. “Damn!” I peeked back around the curtain. The smoke had cleared and, true to form, John Nailor had disappeared.

  “Damn!” I said.

  Marla chose this moment to make her appearance, strutting up like an alley cat with hemorrhoids.

  “I see you warmed them up for me, honey,” she said, preening in her silver B-52 bomber outfit.

  I scowled over at her. She was about to have Ralph hook her up to an elaborate set of guy wires so she could fly out over the crowd and pretend she was a plane. I failed to see the appeal. She called it her salute to our flying men in uniform on account of how half our trade some nights is men from Tyndall Air Force Base. But I don’t see why she bothers, since them boys don’t tip worth your time and effort.

  “Marla, learn to walk in them shoes and you might have half a shot at an act,” I said.

  She sniffed and walked on by, trying to balance on seven-inch platform stilettos while counterbalancing her silver wings. Some act!

  I took another look back out into the house as Marla flew out over the runway. No sign of Nailor. Well, that wasn’t a surprise. He’d turn up again, and from the way his jaw was twitching, I figured it would be sooner rather than later. Wonder why he’d come to the club? Was he trying to reach me? Did he need to tell me something? I flashed on the image of him in my trailer, in the darkness of my kitchen, his arms on either side of me, pinning me to the wall, his lips connecting with mine.

  “Whew! Don’t go there, girl,” I whispered. “You don’t wanna be the victim of a spontaneous combustion!”