The song was even shorter than Dewey’s, maybe two minutes, tops. When it was over, Rachel turned down the volume a little and gave me an expectant look.
“So, what do you think?”
“Are they on crank or something?”
“Seriously,” she said. “What do you think?”
“Seriously, I think that might have been the stupidest song I’ve ever heard.”
“Yeah, I know,” she said. “They suck, but in a good way.”
She finally told me it was the Ramones. I’d seen their picture in one of Nick’s Rolling Stone magazines but had never heard their music. All I knew was that they didn’t sound like anything I’d ever heard before. And like that car of Rachel’s, their music just seemed to go with her.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “It’ll grow on you.”
I nodded. If she liked it, then I was willing to give it a chance.
“My brother has a band,” I told her.
“Really? What kind of stuff do they play?”
“Nothing like this.”
She stretched out her legs and crossed her feet at the ankles. “So what’s the deal with your brother, anyway?”
“What do you mean?”
“Come on.” She smiled like we were in on some sort of conspiracy together. “Don’t act stupid. You know what I mean. What does he do?”
“For a paycheck?”
“Yeah, for a paycheck.”
“He’s an English professor,” I said.
“Seriously, what does he do?”
I thought about those photos again, mine and Nick’s tacked up on the bulletin board in Muskgrave’s office. I could see Muskgrave sitting there, staring up at them, pondering his options. It felt like he was in the room with us, like he and his deputies had bugged the place or something.
“He’s in the landscaping business,” I told her. “Commercial stuff. You know, like golf courses and office parks.”
Joey Ramone was touting the benefits of shock treatment. Rachel smiled and shook her head. “You are such a fucking liar,” she said.
She reached onto the bed and unzipped her backpack. She slipped her hand inside and fished out a pack of Juicy Fruit. I could smell it before I saw it. Since I’d met her, Juicy Fruit did something to me. It had this mysterious power, like radio waves loaded with pheromones, or whatever it was that Marlin Perkins talked about antelope being attracted to just before they rutted.
I couldn’t help looking at the frog drawings again. There must have been fifteen of them tacked up there. Their eyes were huge. It felt like they were staring me down. I found myself wanting to ask more questions about her father, about their trips to the pond. But I knew that she wouldn’t really want to talk about those things.
Rachel slid closer to me and Brute. She snapped her finger, as if to break me from a trance. When I looked down, she was petting Brute and chewing a stick of gum.
“What’s the matter?” she asked. “Do those pictures make you wanna go frog giggin’?”
“No, I was just thinking it seems kind of cruel to snatch up those frogs when they were about to screw for the first time.”
She was sitting cross-legged, facing me and Brute. She laughed and threw a wadded gum wrapper at me. I bobbed my head, and the little ball of foil whizzed past my ear.
The Ramones were already into another song. Rachel was right. I didn’t know why, exactly, but I was already starting to like those guys.
“You must have liked giggin’, yourself,” I said, “to save all of these pictures.”
She smiled. “I bet I know what kind of peeper you’d be.”
“What kind is that?”
“A quiet one,” she said. “Quiet and brave. A real Southern gentleman of a frog.”
I felt some of the air seeping out of my tires. “I thought you said the loud ones had the easiest time getting laid.”
“Yeah, but the quiet ones never got caught.”
I took my hand off the bald spot on Brute’s head and reached for Rachel’s hair. I twirled the fine, curly strands right behind her ear, and she shuddered a little.
“I start off quiet, but I get louder as I go along.”
We kissed. The inside of her cheek tasted like Juicy Fruit. It was like she manufactured the stuff in there. I felt myself come to life immediately, the blood rushing to all the right places.
“What are you talking about?” she asked.
I told her to lie back. When she did, I lifted her T-shirt a little and kissed her belly and then her hips just above the top of her shorts. Her skin smelled like bread, warm and moist and sweet. I worked on the button and the zipper of her shorts while I kissed all around down there.
“It’s sort of like ‘Stairway to Heaven,’” I said. “You know how it starts slow and quiet and then gets louder and faster.”
“I hate that fucking song,” she said.
“Well, what about Teddy Pendergrass?”
“Who?”
“Just relax,” I said. “It’ll grow on you.”
I slid her shorts and her panties below her knees and over her feet. She never resisted. She pointed her toes like a diver to make the job easier.
The Ramones hadn’t slowed down a lick. It was hard to think about doing anything acoustic with those guys going at it full throttle. And I had a feeling there weren’t any slow songs on the album.
Rachel grabbed the neck of my T-shirt to pull me back up to eye level. But I stopped halfway. I kissed her hips again, and then I slowly worked my way down to her music room. It was damp, and it smelled like ivy after a rain shower. Lyndell and Nick had been right. It felt like a perfectly natural place to be.
Rachel giggled a little. “What are you doing?”
I stopped and looked up at her. “The acoustic part. Why? Do you want me to stop?”
She shook her head. She had this curious expression on her face, a little reluctant but a little impatient as well. Her cheeks were flushed, her lips full. She reached down with her hand and pulled my face against her.
“That’s okay. You don’t have to stop, if you don’t want.”
There was no use fighting it. I gave in to the music on the turntable. I listened to my drummer, to the hell-bent tempo. Rachel was playing right in time. Hanging out on a night like this/I’m gonna give her a great big kiss.
17
SHWOOOK! Nick smacked the range ball with his driver. We both stood there watching the grungy, dinked-up sphere shrink in the pale sky.
“Get legs!”
Nick grunted and performed a pelvic thrust, like a stripper.
“Now fade, goddammit! Fade!”
The ball picked up a nice little tail as it eclipsed the two-hundred-yard marker and zeroed in on its target like a heat-seeking stone.
CLANK.
The guy collecting balls atop the Massey Ferguson flinched a little as the ball ricocheted off the chicken-wire enclosure that protected him. He shook his head as though he’d just heard the same joke for the thousandth time.
Nick grinned and pumped his fist into the air. He couldn’t have been any happier if he’d dropped in a sixty-footer at Pebble Beach. “Did you see that? That was head high. Not a bit of fucking hook to it.”
“Right between the eyes.” I laughed.
“Now that’s what they need in golf,” Nick said. “Moving targets.”
“Yeah, and a shot clock. Give the players some fast carts and twenty seconds to get to their balls. Cut out all of that wagglin’ shit.”
“Fuckin’ A,” Nick said.
I was parked on the bench behind Nick’s stall, sipping a Coke and listening to the Braves–Phillies game on Nick’s transistor radio. I’d returned my one-iron to the trash bin earlier in the summer, right after I’d sworn off the royal and ancient game for good. Not even Cash’s Iron Tiger brand of golf had been enough to win me over.
It wasn’t long before Chuck Sosebee pulled up in his white BMW. He was one of Nick’s regular customers, as well as his trave
ling companion on the recent trip to Pensacola. Chuck flew the commuter birds for Delta Airlines and also owned a Piper Cub. That’s how he and Nick had gotten down to Pensacola.
Chuck walked over to where I was sitting, still wearing part of his Delta pilot’s uniform: the black pants and the white shirt with the gold wings over the heart. I’d met him twice before, though only briefly on each occasion, so I didn’t know all that much about him, except that he was married and had a young daughter. I wasn’t too sure of his age, though he appeared to be at least a few years older than Nick. He owned a shaggy blond head of hair that looked like it belonged on the PGA tour.
“So, how’ve you been hitting ‘em?” Chuck grinned and stood over me with his hands on his hips. A sweat bead trickled down the side of his face.
“I’m not.”
“What do you mean, you’re not?”
“I mean, I quit—retired—hung up the spikes—vaya con Dios, my one-iron.”
I hoped a string of simple explanations might help to satisfy his curiosity, though I doubted it would be that easy to get rid of him. During our other encounters, he’d tried to engage me in some sort of half-assed conversation before taking up his true business with Nick. I could never tell if he was trying to convince me, or himself, that he was an interesting guy.
“Don’t tell me we lost you to tennis,” he said. “That’s what all the kids are into these days. They want to be like that crybaby, Jimmy Connors.”
“I’m not playing tennis, either.”
“Man, that guy Connors is a jerk. You know, I had him on one of my flights.” Chuck shook his head sadly. “What an asshole.”
I gave him a Rachel stare, blank and disinterested. I knew that he was full of shit. Nick had already told me that Chuck only flew between Greenville and Mobile. And the last I’d heard, neither of those metropolises were hosting a big-time tennis tournament.
Nick rescued me. He walked over, driver in hand, and draped his arm around Chuck’s shoulder. I went back to listening to the baseball game. Phil Niekro had his knuckler dancing, and the Braves were up 2–1 heading into the ninth. Ernie Johnson was making his plea: “Time to hold ‘em, Braves.”
Chuck turned his attention to Nick. “So,” he said, “you got those golf shoes for me?”
I looked at Nick and rolled my eyes. That was another thing about Chuck that got on my nerves: the way he talked in code around me, as though I weren’t aware of Nick’s pot business.
Nick flashed me a grin. He scratched his head and tried to appear confused. “Well, I don’t remember you saying anything about golf shoes, Chuck. But I do have that Moroccan yum-yum you were asking about.”
Chuck tried to shush Nick. He gazed back in my direction, obviously hoping that I hadn’t caught the drift of things.
But I’d already placed my thumb to my lips, miming a long toke on a hash pipe. Chuck just stared at the tops of his wingtips and frowned.
With Nick hustling around like a blue-ass fly, and me bussing tables and spending as many hours as I could with Rachel, he and I hadn’t exactly spent a lot of time together. That’s why he’d asked me to come to the range with him. He’d said that we should have us a visit for old times’ sake. It sounded good to me. I didn’t expect that there’d be any more to it.
Nick finished off his bucket after Chuck had left. When he was done, he slipped his hand into a pocket of his golf bag and pulled out a can of Budweiser. He popped the top, clattered across the cement walkway in his spikes, and sat down beside me on the bench.
“I lost my tempo, all of the sudden. It just up and left me.” He swiped an Atlanta Athletic Club towel across his face.
“Listen to your drummer,” I told him.
He considered what I’d said and broke into an approving smile. “Oh, yeah. How’d that go, anyway?”
“It went fine.” I didn’t want to sound too cocky. But then I couldn’t help myself. “Let’s just say we’ve added that one to the set list.”
Nick jerked the Budweiser can away from his mouth. He had his lips puckered, trying not to spew the mouthful of beer onto the sidewalk. After he’d finally managed to swallow the brew, he allowed himself to laugh.
“That’s the Fulmer touch,” he said.
“Well, I followed your directions. But she didn’t linger on the acoustic part for very long.”
Nick raised his eyebrows. “Oh, really?”
“Yeah, she’s definitely more of an up-tempo kind of girl. She likes the Ramones.”
“It’s all rock and roll,” Nick said.
We sat there staring out at the broad spread of ground, trampled and brown and dotted with golf balls. The sun was pale as a stone, perched high in the ashy blue sky. On the radio, the Braves were making a pitching change, bringing in the sidewinder, Gene Garber, to finish up for Knucksie.
I asked Nick if he and Chuck were planning any more trips to Florida. I’d heard Chuck mention something about Pensacola during their conversation.
Nick clucked his tongue. “Yep. Next weekend, in fact. So, I guess you’ll have driving privileges again.”
“What are y’all doing down there, anyway? What’s the business part of the trip?” I took a casual swig of my Coke so as not to appear like I was grilling him.
Nick didn’t answer right away. He took out a Winston and lit it.
“Chuck knows a guy down there who’s in the entertainment business. He promotes concerts, wrestling events, stuff like that. Even owns a couple of radio stations.”
He grinned and raised an eyebrow when he said the part about the radio stations.
“Well, why the hell does Chuck need extra work? Doesn’t he make enough flying for Delta?”
“He should,” Nick said. “Of course he’s got that BMW, the airplane, a wife, a kid, plus several expensive habits on the side. That guy could teach a college course on liquidation.”
“So what, exactly, are y’all doing for this guy in Pensacola?”
“Just legwork right now. I’m trying to show the man I’ve got some ambition.”
Naturally, I had a strong suspicion the legwork involved the movement and/or sale of cocaine. I’d walked into Nick’s bedroom right after he’d returned from the first trip, just as he was slipping several stacks of hundred-dollar bills out of his golf bag. They were crisp, clean bills, not the kind you earn making nickel-and-dime pot sales.
“I saw all of that money, you know.”
Nick didn’t even flinch. I suppose he’d trained himself to take an accusation the way a wrestler takes a chair to the back of the head.
“Listen,” he said, “I’ve got a good reason for not telling you everything. You’re just gonna have to trust me, okay?”
He waited for a reassuring gesture, but I wasn’t offering.
“I saw Wade Briggs a couple of weeks ago. He was asking about you. He mentioned the cocaine, just like Muskgrave.”
Nick’s expression remained calm, but his Adam’s apple took a slow dip.
“When was this?”
“The night after we bagged Speedy. I didn’t tell him anything, but he said that Muskgrave had our pictures stuck to his bulletin board.”
Nick’s eyes widened. “For what?”
“What do you mean, for what? You heard him that night as plain as me. He thinks we’re the fucking Dalton boys or something, running cocaine into Green Lake County.”
Nick took a drag off the cigarette, held it in front of his face, then flicked it out over the range stall. It carried a good ten yards, even faded a little. There were some balls scattered in the grass that hadn’t traveled that far.
“I haven’t even heard from Muskgrave lately, not since that night you smarted off to him.”
“Well, you will,” I told him. “If you’re doing what he says, you’ll be hearing from him. Wade said he’s trying to get the GBI and the FBI involved in a little crusade.”
Nick gave me this long, disbelieving look. I expected him to say something, or to ask me something, but he ju
st kept quiet.
We listened to the final out of the ball game. Geno got Larry Bowa swinging. Pretty soon, Ernie was interviewing Phil Niekro, awarding him a pair of Coosa slacks as player of the game.
Nick pointed to the radio. “So what’s Knucksie’s record now?”
“That makes him ten and eleven.”
Nick shook his head. “That poor, pitiful bastard. He’ll probably win twenty and lose twenty, the way the Braves are playing.”
“That’s better than not winning twenty at all.”
“Yeah, but who wants to finish at the bottom of the heap every damn year?”
Nick lit another cigarette and sat there with his elbows on his knees, gazing out at the range. There were only a few golfers hitting, all of them parked at the other end of the stalls. One guy kept pounding drive after drive out past the two-hundred-yard marker. He was like a fucking machine.
“I’ve been wanting to talk to you,” Nick said. “In fact, it’s sort of the reason I asked you to come out here with me.”
“So, what is it?”
He sat up straight and sighed. “It’s about this Florida business.”
I couldn’t help myself. “Are you guys running cocaine, or what?”
Nick smiled and held up his hand. “Ease up, there, Barnaby Jones. That’s not the kind of business I meant. What I wanted to tell you is that I’ve been talking to this entertainment big shot down in Florida—Whitlaw’s his name—about working at one of his radio stations. We’ve got this deal where he pays me off for the other work I’m doing by making me program manager of a station. It’ll be sort of a promotion.”
“So, what’s the other work?”
Nick laid his head back and sighed in an irritated sort of way. “You don’t need to know about that part.”
“Why not? You tell me everything.”
“I know I do. But not this. What you don’t know won’t get you thrown in jail.”
“If Muskgrave nabs your ass, it’s gonna be lights out. You’ve got two priors, don’t forget that.”
Drive Like Hell: A Novel Page 18