Drag Strip

by Nancy Bartholomew

  But I couldn’t get him off my mind. I found myself looking for him for the rest of the night every time I walked out onto the runway. By the time I was ready to leave work, I was practically sweating. Why in the world did that man have such an effect on me?

  Vincent Gambuzzo stopped me as I was leaving. I could tell he’d been just waiting to get me alone. He could’ve come and found me any time during the night, but instead he positioned himself by the back door, knowing I’d be close to the last one to leave. I always am, on account of how I take time to put my costumes away neatly and prepare for the next night. I see that as the mark of a professional. Take care of your stuff and it’ll take care of you. My new costume was a case in point.

  “Sierra,” Vincent said, suddenly looming up on me in the darkened hallway, “what was that cop doing back in my club?” Vincent hated having the heat in the house. He figured it cut into his business. He particularly hated John Nailor, because Nailor saw right through Vincent, down to his small-time attitude and wanna-be posturing.

  “Vincent,” I said, “looked to me like the man was a paying customer. He had a drink in his hand, didn’t he?”

  “A Coke, Sierra,” he groused. “It was a lousy Coke!”

  “So? What do you care? You charge the same for a soda as a beer!”

  Vincent wasn’t satisfied, I could see it, but he let it go and leaned in closer. The man had a serious case of garlic breath.

  “What’re you doing about our situation?” he said softly.

  “What situation?” I was playing dumb and stalling while I manufactured something.

  “You know. Ruby.”

  “Ah, Ruby,” I said, acting like it had slipped my mind, just to make Vincent a little nuts. “Didn’t I tell you I had company?” I said. “Who do you think it is?”

  Vincent raised an eyebrow and nodded appreciatively.

  “They getting anywhere?”

  “Let me put it to you like this,” I said, leaning back from his face and making a show of not wanting to be overheard. “The big one’s on-line with his network, communicating. And the short guy’s going around cranking up the heat. Everything that was in the frying pan is in the fire now!” Vincent didn’t need to know I was talking about Al and Ma.

  He smiled. “That’s why you call in an out-of-towner for things like this,” he said. “We needed the large talent. Convey my gratitude to your uncle Moose.”

  “All’s I can say at this point, Vincent, is that things are really cooking around my house.”

  “That’s all I wanted to hear,” he said.

  I walked past him, out into the night, shaking my head. Vincent was never gonna get it. The lights could be on forever, but nobody was home at his house.

  I stepped down off the back steps and started toward my car. Just as I thought, a shape sat in the passenger seat, waiting. I smiled. Nailor could no more stay away from me than I could from him.

  I forced myself to saunter slowly toward my vehicles, as if I weren’t in the least bit interested. Nailor was slouched down, wearing a cowboy hat, probably thinking it was an adequate disguise in case Detective Wheeling was watching. I shook my head. The guy was pitiful.

  I flung open the driver’s side door, tossed my bag in the backseat, and sank down behind the wheel.

  “You know, that’s a stupid disguise,” I said, but my voice trailed off as soon as I realized the man in my front seat wasn’t John Nailor.

  “I know, ma’am,” Roy Dell Parks said, “but it was the best I could do given that the law is on my tail and I’m wanted for murder.”

  Twenty-three

  Roy Dell looked worse than usual. Stubble climbed up over top of his beard, running up his cheeks and giving his face a dirty, unkempt look. His clothes were filthy. His hair was about the same, standing straight on end, wiry and a grayish yellow. His breath smelled of liquor and his eyes were bloodshot. But that wasn’t what worried me about Roy Dell. It was the gun in his shaking left hand that had me concerned.

  “What’s the gun for, Roy Dell?”

  “Insurance, sugar,” Roy Dell answered. He didn’t look any too happy. In fact, he looked about half in the bag and totally crazy. “Start your engine,” he said. “I think better when I’m moving.” He hefted the gun up a few inches for emphasis, his finger sliding around the trigger.

  “Roy Dell, put that gun down!” I was trembling. How could Raydean’s nephew be a killer?

  “I give the orders now,” he said, his voice rising above my Camaro’s engine, “and if I want to stick the barrel of this gun down yer purty little throat, I’ll do it!”

  “You the man,” I answered, and peeled off out of the parking lot onto Thomas Drive. There was a clinking noise as we jumped the curb. Roy Dell was carrying more than a gun. A fifth of Jim Beam rolled across the floor on the passenger side. Roy Dell was drunk, and that made him a loose cannon. I didn’t know what he’d do.

  “Head for the bridge,” he commanded. “I wanna go to the Oyster Bar.”

  “No, you don’t,” I said, before I could stop myself. “You’re a wanted man. That’d be piss-poor planning on your part.”

  Roy Dell seemed to be thinking. “Just drive,” he said, sighing. “I got the world on my mind! And don’t try anything smart. I get to feeling mean when I drink. A girl like you don’t need to make me angry.”

  I cut across the back edge of Panama City Beach, the cool night air blowing through the open windows. It was a lovely night for a drive, but I could’ve done better for company. Roy Dell’s thoughts must’ve run along the same lines, because he wedged the gun under one thigh and reached for the bottle. There was only a few inches left, so I figured Roy Dell was well on his way to passing out drunk.

  “You think you got problems,” he said finally.

  “Did I say I had problems?” I answered, swinging onto the Hathaway Bridge. I was eyeing a car in the distance behind us. A car that had somehow followed me no matter what turn I took to get to the bridge. A car that kept a careful distance, just like its driver had been taught in surveillance school. My stomach flipped over and my temperature started to rise. He was back there, all right.

  “Sierra, you’re driving in your car, held at gunpoint by a drunk wanted for murder. I’d say you were thinking you had problems.” Roy Dell swiped at his eyes. He’d either caught a June bug slap in the face or he was beginning to cry. My money was on the latter.

  “But I got it worse’n you,” he said. “They think I killed that precious angel. Ripped her head half off with my own naked hands.”

  “Hey!” I cried. “That’s enough!”

  “Then my old lady gets caught screwing my best crew man! Damn, I wish that hadn’t a happened.” Roy Dell pulled on the bottle. “He was the best backup driver I ever had, and now I’m gonna have to kill him. And top it all off, she’s got him lying about me. Saying I was places I wasn’t. Sayin’ I coulda killed that precious girl.”

  “Roy Dell, you are a slob and a drunk, but I do not buy that you are a homicidal maniac.” For one thing, I thought, you are too stupid to be a homicidal maniac.

  “Watch me,” he growled. “I’ll kill his ass! She weren’t much to look at, but she’s all I got. Hell, I know she don’t love me like a good woman oughta.” Roy Dell was crying. I snuck a look sideways, and there they were, huge fat tears cutting streaks down his grimy cheeks.

  “Roy Dell, if you cared so much about your wife, how come you were chasing up after Ruby?”

  “You wouldn’t understand,” he said slowly, his words slurred around the edges. “It’s a man thing. Ain’t you read none of that Mars and Venus shit?”

  I snuck a peak in my rearview mirror. He was a half a block back, following carefully as I wound my way toward Bayou Drive, down along Saint Andrews Bay, in and among the most beautiful houses in Panama City. My body was suffused with moist heat, and my heart rate was approaching the danger zone.

  “Roy Dell, why are you in my car?” I had business to transact with a ce
rtain cop and this low-life was delaying my future.

  “My aunt Raydean said you’d help me. She said, ‘Take it on the lam and find Sierra. She’ll know what to do.’”

  “And you took her advice?”

  “Well, where in the hell else do I have to turn?” he yelled. “You think I like being in this position?”

  “All right, all right! Calm down. She’s right, I’ll help you, but you need to help me, too. You can’t go waving a gun at me and think I’m going to be falling all over myself to help you.”

  Roy Dell seemed to think on that for a minute. “All right,” he said finally, “we’ll do it your way.”

  I needed time to think and it was going to be hard to do that with a cop on my tail and crazy, drunk Roy Dell Parks in my car. “Why do the cops think you killed Ruby?” I asked suddenly.

  “Beats me!” Roy Dell finished the bottle and heaved it out the window. Behind me, John Nailor swerved to avoid the shattering glass.

  “Hey! That’s littering!” I yelled into the wind. “I’d appreciate it if you’d dispose of your trash in the proper receptacles.”

  Roy Dell must’ve taken offense because he reached between his legs and pulled out the gun again. “I will not blow off my testicles!” he said.

  “You’re hopeless,” I said. “Here’s what we’re gonna do. You’re gonna stay hidden for the time being until I can figure out what’s going on and get you hooked up with my attorney. I’m gonna slow down when we get close to the park, and I want you to jump out and start running. Call me tomorrow at noon and I’ll tell you what to do next.”

  Roy Dell laughed. “That is the dumb-assedest plan I ever heard of!”

  I looked over at him. “Look in your rearview mirror,” I said. “You see them cute little headlights? That’s my boyfriend, the cop.” Roy Dell’s face paled and he right away craned his neck to look.

  “Jesus!”

  “Jesus ain’t gonna help him what doesn’t help himself,” I answered. “Now, you see why I gotta get rid of you in a fast but hopefully inconspicuous way? I’m trying to help you, Roy Dell.” I held my breath, hoping he’d go for it and not decide I was somehow an enemy.

  “If you put me out, he’ll be after me in a car and I’ll be on foot!”

  I took another curve and began to double back toward Eat at Joe’s restaurant.

  “Roy Dell, let me handle him. Please? Can you lose yourself if I drop you? ’Cause I’m gonna drop you right … now!” I swung into the tiny park, spun around and slowed to a crawl. Roy Dell, used to flinging his body out of race cars that were in the process of self-destructing, opened the door and half jumped, half fell out onto the hard ground, slamming the door shut behind him.

  The Camaro had done a one-eighty and now sat directly in the path of John Nailor’s unmarked sedan, our headlights lighting up the thirty feet that separated us.

  Nailor jumped out of his car, his hand reaching behind his back. He moved quickly to my passenger side door and yanked it open, still staring out into the darkness of the park.

  “You think you’re just slicker than owl shit, don’t you?” he yelled. His jaw was twitching and his face was red with anger.

  “What’re you talking about?”

  Nailor leaned down and plucked Roy Dell’s gun off the seat. “You care to explain this?” he said. “You got a license to carry?”

  “Hey, that isn’t concealed. And besides, it isn’t mine!”

  “Damn straight, it ain’t yours!” He was livid. I don’t think I’d ever seen him that angry and I knew why. He didn’t have control of the situation and I did. Pure and simple. It was a man thing, I guessed.

  He slid into the passenger seat, almost levitating with rage. “You know you were just aiding and abetting a probable felon? You know you’re now an accessory after the fact?”

  “Before, after, what’s the difference? The man hid in my car and held me at gunpoint, what choice did I have? Besides, the poor fella needed help. Who could he turn to?”

  “You?” Nailor laughed bitterly. “That’s desperate, all right.”

  “Well, go get him if you’re so freakin’ fired up! He couldn’t have gone too far. He’s on foot and unarmed and drunk. We’re around the corner from the jail. Go get him, big man!”

  Nailor glowered at me. I fully expected him to hop out and run, but instead he just sat there.

  “What makes you so sure Roy Dell killed Ruby?” I asked.

  “Because Frank said he couldn’t find Roy Dell just before race time. Said he was missing for ten whole minutes. Frank says Roy Dell wasn’t himself before that race, that he was acting strange.”

  I shook my head in disgust. “And you believed him? If you’re looking for suspects, well, Frank’s looking just as good to me. You know he was screwing Lulu? Maybe him and Lulu decided to off Ruby and make it look like Roy Dell did it.”

  Nailor was watching me like I had suddenly suggested he fly to Mars. “How would you know that?” he asked. “You know, you shouldn’t be nosing around in a police investigation. It’s dangerous, Sierra. This is a murder investigation.”

  “Maybe you need to hang out with them tiny, petite, brunette types. The kind that aren’t in danger of ever taking care of another human being or putting themselves at risk. Maybe what you’re looking for is a trophy.”

  I was pushing him way further than I knew I should, but I couldn’t help myself. I’d had enough.

  “You don’t know a thing about her,” he said.

  I took that as an admission and zoomed in for the kill.

  “What’da I gotta know about a Junior League bimbo?” I said. “Girls like that are a dime a dozen.”

  “Right,” he said.

  “Right? You tellin’ me I’m right?” I couldn’t believe my ears. John Nailor was copping a plea.

  “Have you wondered why I’m spending so much time with her?” he asked.

  “’Cause you’re tired of tall blond women with brains and looks?”

  He threw his head back and laughed, a deep, strong, genuine laugh that warmed me all the way through.

  “Yeah,” he said, “something like that. I’m tired of beauty and brains and heat.” He said that last word while his eyes were practically looking straight through me. Suddenly it was way too warm for comfort in my little car.

  “So? What’re you doing chasing her?”

  Nailor sighed. “It’s business, Sierra. I’m into something I can’t talk about. She’s part of it and that’s all I can say, and you can’t repeat that, you hear?” He looked serious and for the first time I noticed something else. Pain?

  “What’s so wrong you gotta lie to your partner?” I asked softly. That was it. That was the source of the pain. Nailor’s eyes darkened and he looked down at his lap. He couldn’t face me with whatever it was.

  “I’m over a barrel here, Sierra,” he said. “I had to do what I was told…” He broke off and looked out the window.

  “Who’s giving the orders?”

  He didn’t answer for a few moments. Then, “It’s the wrong way to go about doing the right thing, Sierra. But I don’t get a say in how this goes down. I’m the puppet and if she says ‘dance,’ then I gotta dance.”

  “Who’s ‘she’?” I asked.

  There was almost a chill in the night air. The sky was filled with stars. And this wasn’t the man I knew. John Nailor never danced to anyone else’s tune.

  He shook his head and wouldn’t answer me.

  “It’s Carla, isn’t it? This is a DEA investigation.”

  His eyes flickered, an admission. “What are you talking about? Now you’re making stuff up,” he said, but his voice had changed, suddenly anxious.

  “Carla, your ex. I saw her at the racetrack. You can’t tell me she’s not back in town. I bet she’s got you by the short hairs, big guy. You’re working for her, aren’t you?”

  I knew he wanted to talk, but instead he stayed silent. He wouldn’t look at me.

  “This ain’t y
ou,” I said. “You’re in trouble, aren’t you?”

  “I wish it was that easy,” he said.

  I reached over and touched the side of his face, letting my hand slide around the back of his neck as he slowly looked up at me, and then moved closer. I turned my face to his and felt his lips melt into mine. He reached over and pulled me to him, hungry and insistent. It was as if we’d been starving. There was an urgency to our movements. His lips moved across my face, down the side of my neck. His hands slipped under my shirt while mine fumbled with the buttons of his starched, oxford-cloth shirt. I wanted him. I had never wanted anyone or anything the way I wanted him at this moment.

  “Wait,” he said suddenly, looking around as if coming up for air.

  I moaned. “Not now! What?”

  “Sierra, we’re in the middle of a public park with our headlights on!”

  I didn’t care. I would’ve taken him right there, if only he hadn’t forced me back to reality. He turned to me, running his thumb along my bottom lip, just like he had the other night. I moaned again involuntarily.

  “Come on,” he whispered. “I’ll follow you back to your place.” His eyes were dark wells of energy. Oh God, I couldn’t wait.

  “Your place,” I said. “We have to go to your place!”

  “We can’t,” he said. “Come on, let’s go to your place. I’ll be careful. No one’ll see us.”

  “John, I can’t. I have company.”

  The temperature dropped a good ten degrees instantly. “What do you mean, company?”

  I laughed. “My brother Al and Ma are staying with me for a little while.”

  “Damn!”

  I pulled my shirt back into place and straightened up. The mood was quickly evaporating.

  “What’s wrong with your place?”

  “It’s too dangerous,” he said suddenly. “In fact, I don’t know what I was thinking. This is too dangerous.” He’d buttoned his shirt and now he picked up Roy Dell’s gun. “Do you know how to use this?”

  “No, I don’t believe in guns.”

  He sighed and shook his head, then shoved Roy Dell’s gun into his waistband.