Drive Like Hell: A Novel

by Dallas Hudgens

  I let Muskgrave sweat for a couple of days before stopping by the Justice and Administration Building to have a talk with him. He couldn’t have been more accommodating, tossing a prosecutor out of his office just so he could visit with me. I settled back into the chair that I’d occupied a few weeks earlier, feeling much more at ease and in control of things.

  Muskgrave shut the door and offered a weary gaze. He looked like one of those dumb-ass hunters who get lost in the woods for a few days and have to be rescued: scared, exhausted, dark circles under his eyes.

  “You look like shit,” I told him.

  He flipped me off, but only halfheartedly. Then he sighed, walked behind the desk, and flopped back into his chair.

  “What the the fuck do you want, Fulmer? Just go ahead and spill it. Get your fucking paybacks.”

  I found myself smiling. “Come on, Loyd. You know I’m not gonna rub your face in it.” I sat back and touched my hand to my mouth. “I’m sorry, that was a poor choice of words.”

  Muskgrave smirked. “That’s very funny, Fulmer. You oughta take that shit on the fucking Gong Show.”

  He pulled a bottle of Tylenol from his desk drawer and downed a couple of pills with a Tab. “So, where are the pictures?”

  “You mean the originals, or the copies? Because I went ahead and got two sets. It’s pretty easy these days. Did you know they’re developing film at Eckerd’s?”

  I was lying out of my ass. Not about Eckerd’s but about there being originals and duplicates. Somehow, I’d managed to load the film the wrong way. The entire roll had been ruined.

  Muskgrave rubbed his temples. “Just get to the fucking point.”

  I leaned forward and set my hands on his desk. “I’m not gonna blackmail you. All I want is for you to back off Nick and Rachel. And me, too, while you’re at it.”

  “Fine, it’s done. But let me tell you this. I’ve got nothing to do with how this shit goes down for Nick. That’s in the hands of the Feds.”

  “What are they gonna do?”

  Muskgrave turned his head and stared out the window. “Hell, I don’t know. They don’t tell me anything.”

  “Bullshit. Now tell me what’s going down, or I’ll send those fucking pictures to the Gazette.”

  He gave me a long, pained look. This was about as pleasant as having a pole shoved up his ass. He checked the door, then leaned forward.

  “Sosebee’s been talking to the Feds, giving up names left and right. That’s why he’s out on bail right now. He told them about a guy in Florida, a concert and wrestling promoter who owns some radio stations. His name’s Whitlaw, and they say he’s shipping in all this coke from Central America and parceling it out to four states. He’s been laundering the money through his other businesses. From what I hear, they’re gonna move on this guy in the next few days.”

  “You mean a bust?”

  “I mean a megabust. So if Nick’s down in Florida, then he better get the hell out.”

  That pretty much cemented my next move. I was done with Muskgrave, so I stood up and headed for the door. Before I could reach the hallway, he called out to me.

  “It was Briggs, wasn’t it?”

  I stopped and looked back. I told him I didn’t know what he was talking about.

  Muskgrave’s face had gone slack with resignation. “Don’t worry, I’m not gonna hold it against him. Any other asshole would have blackmailed me from the get-go.”

  “Like I said, I don’t know what you’re talking about. But now that you mention Wade, maybe you oughta consider backing him for sheriff when you leave office. I mean, that’s just my opinion.”

  Muskgrave swallowed hard. “Maybe I’ll do that.”

  I reached for the doorknob, but he called out one last time.

  “Say, Fulmer. You didn’t really take that film to Eckerd’s, did you?”

  34

  Cash, Dewey, and I knew exactly where to locate Chuck Sosebee on a sunny Friday afternoon. We piled into the Chevelle and took a ride over to the Green Lake Municipal Golf Course. Cash had bailed their starter out of jail once on a public urination charge, so the tall guy in the Crimson Tide cap was more than happy to loan us a cart and inform us that Chuck had, in fact, teed off about an hour earlier.

  “Is he on the loose for something?” the starter asked.

  Cash smiled. “Not for long, he ain’t.”

  “Well, just try to stay off my new greens,” he said. “I got some Bermuda number-six out there I’m trying to nurse along.”

  Cash gave the man our assurances, which weren’t exactly worth a handful of wooden tees, and then we headed off to find Chuck.

  I drove the cart, Cash rode shotgun, and Dewey stood on the back like a fireman. The two of them kept an eye out for Chuck while I negotiated the cart path.

  The course was practically empty, despite the nice weather. We were on the third hole before we even came across a group of players. It was a foursome, all of them scattered along the edges of the fairway. They were older men, dressed in bright sweaters and sun visors, taking turns flailing away at their Titleists, spraying the air with faded, brittle blades of grass.

  Dewey finally spotted Chuck on the seventh fairway. It was a par-four with a slight dogleg to the right. From the looks of things, Chuck had sliced his tee shot into the rough. He was sitting about 180 from the pin, and he was playing all alone.

  “Rat, ho!” Dewey hollered.

  I veered off the cart path and onto the bumpy fairway.

  “Look at that asshole,” I said. “Strutting around out here like he’s Tom fuckin’ Weiskopf.”

  Cash grunted. “Somebody oughta put a five-iron up his ass.”

  Chuck was standing in front of his cart, three-iron in hand, eyeing the green as though he had a shot at it. He was wearing his red V-neck with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows. The sweater made for an awfully inviting target.

  Chuck had just begun his backswing when he noticed us bearing down on him. He jerked his head around like a startled deer, freezing for a second before making a dash for his own buggy. He dropped his iron on the turf and laid the pedal to the floor.

  We raced him up the seventh fairway, across the green and back onto the path at the eighth tee box. He had us by about two cart lengths at the start, but I closed it to nothing with some nifty driving around the hairpin at the tee box. I gave his rear bumper a love tap coming out of the turn, but I couldn’t keep the pace when the cart path straightened.

  Cash jerked his thumb back over his shoulder. “We’ve got too damn much weight on the back. Dewey’s slowing us down.”

  “So, tell him to hop off. We’ll come back for him.”

  Cash leaned out the side of the cart. “Jump the hell off,” he hollered. “We’ll come back and get you.”

  “Hell, no,” Dewey said. “I ain’t gonna break my fucking leg.”

  Cash leaned out farther and tried to push Dewey off the back. Failing at this, he ducked back inside. “Motherfucker’s got a kung fu grip on the back of this thing.”

  “Well, I can’t stop and let him off. Hell, we’ll never catch him as it is.”

  Chuck had opened up a comfortable lead. He was nearing the eighth green and another hairpin around the ninth box.

  “Fuck this,” I said. “Y’all better hold on.”

  I swerved across the tee box. The foursome on deck, all of them white-haired gents in double-knits and wool sweaters, scampered for cover like a pack of arthritic dogs. The move also got rid of Dewey. When I glanced back, he was rolling across the turf like Mannix.

  We T-boned Chuck as he was coming out of the turn. He never even saw us coming. I nailed him on the driver’s side of the cart. Chuck let out a gasp and fell sideways across the seat. His cart veered off the path and pitched over onto its side. If it had been gas-powered, it probably would have burst into flames.

  The foursome at the tee started hollering like they’d just witnessed a train wreck. I even heard one of them cussing me. “That goddamn
, cowboyin’ sonuvabitch!”

  I clamped down the emergency brake, then Cash and I hopped out to have our talk with Chuck. His cart lay in the grass with a new set of MacGregor wing-backs scattered around the perimeter. The clubs looked like a spilled box of matchsticks. Cash grabbed a seven-iron and waggled it in front of him.

  “Sweet, sweet balance,” he said. “I gotta get me some of these motherfuckers.”

  Chuck’s head popped out of the wreckage. He looked like a jack-in-the-box who’d just suffered an ass beating. There was a cut over his right eye and blood trickling down the side of his face. When he saw me step toward him he raised a white FootJoy over his head like it was a mace.

  “Drop the shoe, Chuck. We just wanna have a little talk.”

  Of course he flung the shoe at me as soon as I’d gotten the words out of my mouth. The spikes hit me in the forearm just as I raised it to guard my face.

  “Oww! Goddammit, Chuck! Those things are sharp. Now cut it out.”

  I reached out to help pull him from the wreckage. But when I got close enough, he whacked me across the back of the hand with the other shoe.

  I grabbed my hand. “Fuck! What is your problem, dickhead?”

  Before I could even ask for it, Cash handed me the seven-iron. It really was a nice club, chamois grip and everything. Cash was holding the sand wedge. We drew back our sticks to let Chuck know that we hadn’t come to fuck around.

  Chuck studied us for a moment. Finally, realizing he was outgunned, he pitched the shoe onto the path and held his hands up in the air.

  “Go ahead and kill me,” he said. “I deserve it. I just can’t live like this anymore. It’s too much. I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I can’t even get a hard-on anymore.”

  Cash laughed. “From the looks of that lie you were playing back there, you still can’t hit your driver worth a damn, either.”

  Chuck buried his face in his hands and started sobbing.

  “Is he fucking crying?” Cash asked. He stepped back as though someone were puking in the vicinity of his Converse Pros.

  “We don’t want to kill you,” I told Chuck. “We just want to talk. Now quit crying. People are starting to stare.”

  In fact, the four guys we’d almost bumper-stunned were standing around us like a viewing gallery. One of the geezers was even threatening to find the course marshal and call an ambulance for Dewey and Chuck.

  About that time, Dewey hobbled up to the wreckage. He assured the foursome that he was all right. “We’re with the Green Lake Police investigative unit,” he explained. “Undercover division.”

  The group appeared skeptical until Cash whipped out a phony badge and explained that we really were there on police business and that Chuck was a mentally disturbed fugitive. Seeing how he was crying and throwing shoes all over the place, it was a pretty easy sell.

  “You gentlemen just go on back to your golf,” Cash said. “Save your energy for the back nine. You’re gonna need it on that par-five seventeen.”

  The old guys got a chuckle out of that. A couple of them pondered Chuck one last time, and then headed back to the tee box. The straggler of the bunch, a bandy-legged fellow with wisps of white hair sticking out the sides of his baseball cap, went so far as to give me the thumbs-up.

  “Helluva crash,” he said. “Looked like a Joey Chitwood move.”

  We helped Chuck out of the cart and set him in the grass beside the cart path. He was gashed up pretty bad, his elbows bleeding and his khaki pants ripped at the knees. Cash gave him a handkerchief for the cut on his forehead.

  “I didn’t want to do it,” he said. “I’m not a snitch. But I’ve got a family to look after. I’ve got a wife and a little girl. I already put them through too much shit: the cocaine and the screwing around and all the money I pissed away. I didn’t want my little Helena growing up and seeing her pop-pop in jail.”

  “Well, did you ever think that maybe Nick might wanna have kids someday?” I was standing over him with the seven-iron still very firmly in hand.

  “Yeah, that’s a bullshit excuse,” Dewey said. “You got sloppy and got your ass caught, and now everybody else is gonna pay for it.”

  “Oh, God. I’m so sorry.” Chuck buried his face in the handkerchief. He’d worked himself into a full-fledged sob.

  “Where’s Nick?” Cash asked. He was obviously growing impatient with the bawling.

  Chuck blew his nose. “I honestly don’t know. I haven’t heard from him since those GBI goons hauled me in.”

  Cash took a short backswing and whacked Chuck across the ankle. Chuck yelped and fell over onto his side. “I deserved that,” he sobbed. “I deserve it all, everything I’ve got coming to me. Just hit me again. Go ahead and put me out of my misery. Do the world a favor.”

  Cash dropped the club and threw his hands in the air. “That motherfucker’s crazy. It ain’t gonna do any good to beat on him.”

  Dewey frowned. “The guilt’s eating him up. He knows he’s done wrong.”

  I squatted beside Chuck. By the look in his eyes, he was somewhere else, somewhere sad and dark. He was holding his hands up against his chest, wringing them to no end.

  “Listen,” I told him, “you could go a long way toward making things right by telling us how to find Nick. Wouldn’t that make you feel better?”

  I wasn’t sure he’d even heard me. But then he started mumbling. “I wish I could feel better. Oh, God, I wish I could feel better.”

  “You just fucked up,” I said. “And nobody’s gonna blame you for trying to stay out of jail for your kid’s sake. But you can still help Nick. They’re getting ready to move on this ring. Now, all I need to know is where I can find Nick in Pensacola. We need to get him out of there.”

  I helped Chuck sit up again. He sniffed and wiped at his nose, trying his best to get himself under control.

  “The Sandbar Deluxe,” he said. “That’s where we always stay down there. It’s a motel across from the beach. If Nick’s in town, you’ll find him there.”

  Cash had already whipped out his pen. He was writing the name of the motel on the back of a scorecard.

  “But listen,” Chuck said. “This guy Whitlaw is nobody you wanna fuck with. He’s a bad dude.”

  Cash chuckled. “Well, I guess he won’t be too happy when he hears you’ve been running your mouth to the Feds.”

  Chuck swallowed hard then pulled out his wallet and showed us a photo of his six-year-old daughter. It was a school shot of her, dark pigtails and a gap-toothed smile, dressed in a little plaid jumper from the Four Loaves Christian Academy.

  “She never asked to be a part of this,” Chuck said. “She’s just a little girl. She’s the only innocent one involved in all of this. That’s why I had to do it. For her.”

  Cash laughed. “She’ll find out soon enough. She’ll find out what kind of man you are. Kids always do. And you know why?”

  We all waited for him to answer his own question.

  “Because you ain’t ever gonna change, that’s why.”

  Chuck shook his head. “That’s not true. If this hasn’t changed me, nothing ever will. I want to be a good father and a good husband. I realized that’s all that matters. It’s the only thing that matters in this whole world. When I was sitting in that cell, all I wanted was to hold my little girl. All the other shit, the cars and planes and drugs, that didn’t mean a thing.”

  Cash smirked. “People like you always say that shit when they got their ass in a sling. But you just wait until things get better. You’ll start getting that itch again. You’ll start wondering, Who the fuck is Chuck Sosebee? And pretty soon you’ll be putting that shit up your nose again, partying around, spending money you ain’t got. Man, I hear this shit every time I bail somebody’s ass out of jail. And it’s a tired motherfucking song and dance. If you really want to do your little girl a favor, you oughta leave right now. Leave fucking town and give her mama a chance to find a decent man.”

  Chuck cut his eyes my way. I think he
was hoping that I’d shoot down everything Cash had just told him. But it all rang too true.

  “She’s a cute kid,” Dewey said. “You oughta be ashamed of yourself.”

  I stood up. I wasn’t really in the mood to help Chuck to his feet. That’s not to say the sight of him didn’t make me sad. I hoped his daughter never had to see her father in such a sorry state.

  We climbed back in the cart to leave. As I pulled away, Chuck called out to us. I tapped the brakes and waited to hear what he had to say.

  “If you guys find Nick, will you tell him I’m sorry?”

  I couldn’t bring myself to say anything. Finally, Cash stepped on my foot, clamping the accelerator to the floor and vaulting us back across the empty tee box.

  “Man, let’s just get the fuck out of here,” he said.

  35

  We decided to wait until morning to get a start on Florida. I hated wasting any more time than was necessary, but Cash had a bond hearing, Dewey a court-mandated defensive-driving class, and Hillin had been paging me all afternoon.

  After making a drugstore run for T-Bone Rex, I asked if I could keep the Chevelle for a brief excursion. I lied and told him I’d been planning a beach getaway with a girl I’d met. I knew that he’d never stand in the way of a man’s opportunity to get laid. “Screwing,” he once said, “is about as sacred an act as God ever contemplated.” This was during the same conversation in which I’d asked him to recount the number-one highlight of his football career. His response, after careful deliberation: “Fucking half the Sigma Nu sorority in 1945.”

  “Don’t buy any cheap rubbers,” he warned as I turned around in the driveway, ready to leave him there with his Percocet and mangled knees. I could still see him in the rearview mirror, watching me crunch my way down the long gravel driveway, unsmiling, his reflection so small, just like the TV characters who would keep him company after I disappeared.