by Matthew Iden
“Yeah, we do. Stan says you’re not interested in helping out.”
He shrugs. “Y’all are fishing. Otherwise, you would’ve pulled Maurice in already.”
“Who’s Maurice? I didn’t say anything about a Maurice.”
J.D. sits for a second, quiet, then says, “Nobody talks, y’all don’t have shit.”
“That’s not the way it works, J.D.,” I say. “If someone talks, that’s nice, but if nobody talks, we just find another way to get it done. And if you had a chance to help but didn’t, then you go upstream with the rest of them. Even if you didn’t do anything.”
He looks at me for a long second. “I didn’t kill nobody.”
“J.D., you’re in way over your head. We got five bodies, including a little girl that was going to start first grade in about a month. You either pulled the trigger, know who pulled it, or work for the guy who did. Sooner or later, we’re going to round everyone up, and you’re going to be in with the rest of his crew. Help us out and maybe you wiggle free.”
He stares straight ahead and says, “I didn’t kill nobody and I ain’t going to jail for something I didn’t do.”
I try to wait him out, but an old lady in a Lincoln pulls up behind me and lays on her horn. “Don’t bet on it,” is the best I can come up with. I yell it through the window and pull away.
Chapter Fifteen
I went back to the Mosby, said hello to the night clerk who I think was alive, and headed to my room to take a cool shower. I made it “cool,” not cold, because chemotherapy had given me a sensitivity to cold bordering on the excruciating. My last treatment had been months ago and the doctors had said I should be over it by now but either they were wrong or I had one hell of a psychosomatic complex, because anything colder than tepid made me wince.
But it was August in south-central Virginia and I’d just sweated my tender parts off walking and talking to people for the previous eight hours. Daredevil that I am, I turned the “C” knob in the shower an inch further counterclockwise than I was used to, took a deep breath, and got in. I hissed as the spray bit into my skin, but in a minute I was groaning enough to make even me self-conscious as the day’s heat was washed away.
I stayed in there for fifteen long minutes, toweled off, and threw on a robe. I grabbed a glass of water and my cell phone, then dragged the single chair in the room over to the window so I could look outside while I talked. I sat and went through my cell’s contact list until I found the number I wanted.
It was answered after two rings. Before the voice on the other end could say anything, I whispered into the phone, “Bring zee money to zee train station at midnight.”
A pause. “Singer?”
“Goddamn it,” I said. “I can’t fool anybody anymore.”
“You don’t try hard enough,” Detective Sam Bloch said. “How’s it going, Marty?”
“Not bad. How’s life in HIDTA?” I asked, pronouncing the acronym like hide-uh. The High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program was the Washington, DC area’s premier interdepartmental drug task force, meant to bring federal, state, and local law enforcement together so they could share drug intel in what was a very fractured jurisdictional environment. In a relatively small area, DC came together in three states, one district, and a dozen federal pieces of turf. Without cooperation among law-enforcement entities, dealers would only have to drive a mile in any direction to set up shop in another jurisdiction, thereby complicating law enforcement immensely. HIDTA was supposed to provide the interagency cooperation that nullified that problem. Sam was a medium-level honcho with the organization. I’d helped him out with a tangled case earlier in the year which I hoped made him beholden to me, at least a little.
“It sucks. You back in DC?”
“Not exactly,” I said. “I’ve had a detour that’s proven…interesting.”
“And interesting is what’s got you calling me, I guess?”
“Afraid so,” I said and outlined the situation for him. He listened without interrupting, though over the phone I could hear him drumming on his desk, the victim of Sam’s wicked nicotine habit. Working in a smoke-free environment gave him world-class jitters.
“So, this murder. These Brower brothers are looking good for it except that’s not how they like to off people down in the heartland. You want me to sniff a bit and see if they’re everything everyone says they are.”
“Yep,” I said. “And was J.D. their link to something or someone in DC? If so, you might be doing yourself a favor as much as me.”
“What kind of favor is that? If it doesn’t start with ‘d’ and end in ‘rugs,’ then it’s not in my corner.”
“Oh, there’s d-rugs, all right,” I said and explained what I’d pieced together after talking to Ginny Decker.
“Meth, huh?” he asked. “This favor is the kind where I pull overtime? Thanks a lot.”
“Hey, if J.D. was setting up a network between crystal-making rednecks and a bunch of gangbangers in Southeast, then the work’s coming your way whether I tell you or not,” I said. “Wouldn’t you rather be in front of it instead of playing catch-up?”
“I’d rather be on a beach in Cabo,” he said. “Anything else I can do for you?”
“Now that you ask, yeah.” I told him about the four suits I’d seen at the doughnut shop. “While you’re nosing around, mind seeing if any three-letter federal agency is doing some work here? It would be nice not to get pinched in a government investigation while I’m trying to do a nice lady a favor.”
“I can do that. Most of them don’t tell me shit if it isn’t happening in the Metro area, but I can make some calls, see who’s willing to talk. DEA’s got an office in Warrenton.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“Don’t mention it,” Sam said. Then, hesitating, “How are you feeling?”
There it was again. The “C” question. “Not bad. The surgery was successful. I’m in remission. I can jog a half mile without passing out. Even gained a few pounds back, so I can stop putting new holes in my belt.”
“I’m not going to pretend I know what I’m talking about,” he said, “but it’s better than the other thing.”
“True. I stopped feeling sorry for myself a while ago. I do what the doctors tell me to and let the rest run its course.”
“That’s all you can do,” he said.
. . .
I was feeling pretty good about the work I’d done so far. I should’ve called it a day and watched SportsCenter until I fell asleep, but the shower had given me a burst of energy that seemed a shame to waste, so I shucked the robe and put on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt I normally wore to mow the lawn that said Pobody’s Nerfect on the front. It hung on me more than it used to, but it worked out, since it was loose enough to cover my SIG that rested comfortably in a holster at the small of my back.
I didn’t know how to do half the things on my phone I knew I could, but one thing I could do is look up an address. I punched in a few words, fiddled a bit, then found the object of my search. I trundled downstairs past the night clerk, who was asleep with a Danielle Steel novel in her lap, and headed for my car.
Jackie’s was outside of town on a narrow lane named Ashland Road and was the first right after the town dump. It looked just like I thought it would, kind of a converted smoke shack with two or three generations of aluminum-siding additions tacked on, a few neon signs in the window, and a couple of tin pipes sticking out of the roof for ventilation. Every window had an AC unit and even from the gravel parking lot, the hum they made almost drowned out thought. An old Chevy pickup and a severely dented Jeep dripped oil onto the cinder lot. I expected that. Two brand-new, top-of-the-line Ram trucks with all the fixin's, on the other hand, were something special.
I parked and went inside. It was dim, no surprise, with most of the lighting coming from three TVs and a Budweiser sign on the wall. The main room had a horseshoe-shaped bar with taps on the far left side and a few bags of potato chips tacked to the wall n
ear the register. Faded pictures of race-car drivers and feed store signs were attached to the wall with whatever had been handy: a nail, duct tape, staples. It smelled like every bar I’d ever been in—smoke, spilled beer, and a rubber-mat stink that reminded me of breaking up fights. Cool, moist air from the AC units intensified the odors rather than dissipated them.
Some cowboy on the digital jukebox in the corner was warning people not to touch his pickup truck or else. The slide guitar and giddy-up percussion made me wince. Then again, I personally thought a good musical lineup consisted of the Ramones, Iggy Pop, and Patti Smith, so what did I know? A small room in the back—one of the additions I’d seen from the outside—was the game room, complete with pool tables, foosball, and a dart board that looked like a nest of termites had been hung from a wall. All were lit occasionally from the flash of a pinball machine. A few shadowy figures paced between the tables.
Four or five of Cain’s Crossing citizens sat at the bar, all of them drinking solo, staring straight ahead or watching the NASCAR action on one of the TVs, barely blinking. Two geezers played checkers in a corner. Unhurried, automatic moves suggested they’d been playing each other for years. Two girls, incongruously, were sipping wine at a table near a window overlooking the parking lot.
I walked to the bar, put my elbows up on the counter, then took them off again when I felt how sticky it was. A tough-looking, thirty-something bartendress came over. With the cutoff jeans and permanent cynicism etched into her face, she could’ve been Ginny Decker’s younger sister. She raised her eyebrows.
“Sam Adams?” I asked.
“Bud, Bud Light, Coors, Coors Light. Some kind of lemonade thing in a bottle.”
“Will I get my ass kicked if I order the lemonade?”
A tiny smile came and went. “Probably. Maybe by me.”
“I’ll take it,” I said.
That got me a full laugh and she went to grab my drink. I smiled and nodded to anyone who would make eye contact, but the most I got in return was a half nod before sleepy eyes went back to a point on the wall or the flickering blue screens.
“Here you go,” the bartender said as she came back and put my drink on a paper napkin. “Do you want your ass-kicking now or later?”
“Later, maybe,” I said. “Can I enjoy my clear malt beverage first?”
“I’ll let it go this time. Where’re you from?”
I took a pull from the bottle and sighed. Citrusy, light, cold. “I’m down from DC to visit some folks.”
“Who’s that?”
“Mary Beth Hope. You know her?”
The woman’s eyes grew guarded. “Not really. I know the name. But I don’t know her directly, you know what I mean.”
“I tried to find her,” I said. “But ran into her mother in that mansion.”
The guarded look faded a smidge. “Old Dorothea. We used to skip her house on Halloween.”
“No candy? Or afraid you wouldn’t make it out alive?”
“Both,” she said and then moved to the end of the bar to fill a mug. She came back. “Did you find her?”
“Well, you know,” I said, hunching my shoulders, trying to keep a secret. “I wasn’t really looking for Mary Beth, I was trying to find her brother, J.D. I thought maybe one of them would know where he was. But I got the cold shoulder from the mother and can’t find the sister. You know anything about him?”
The mildly suspicious, guarded expression was replaced by a steel wall. But her head turned, involuntarily, towards the pool tables before she stopped herself. I could’ve guessed as much, but I wanted to test the waters, see if anyone was interested in talking. I put a twenty on the bar, thanked her, and sidled towards the game room.
The room was empty except for three guys at the farthest pool table. The lighting was more generous than in the main room, turning the shadowy figures into distinct people. The guy currently taking the shot was thick, with chunky, sunburnt arms that could’ve been mostly muscle or mostly pork rinds. His green t-shirt had dark spots under the arms and a silver-dollar-sized blot of sweat at the sternum. Pink skin showed through his crew cut. His eyes, flicking back and forth from the cue ball to the six, were an antifreeze blue.
Watching him were two skinny guys. One sat on a bar stool, his elbows on his knees, not playing. He had on a tank top and long, shiny soccer-style shorts that nearly met tall white tube socks pulled almost all the way up his shins. His head was shaved, the hair shorter even than that of the guy at the table, and he wore giant sunglasses that swallowed half his face. Veins stood out under the ghost-white skin of his arms and near his collarbones like blue snakes.
The other toothpick I recognized. It was Jay, the stoner who’d braced me at the doughnut shop. He was leaning on a cue stick, but had his back half turned to the doorway, so didn’t see me. He was still wearing the grimy Camel t-shirt and ripped jeans.
I took a spot against the near wall and watched the farm boy. He was a nervous shot, the kind who pumps the cue stick back and forth two dozen times before trying to smash the cue ball into outer space. Sure enough, he slammed the stick into the cue ball off-center and barely clipped the six, which went careening off in the exact opposite direction he’d hoped for. By some miracle, it dropped into a corner pocket.
“Shit shot,” the gangster on the stool said.
“Mother fucker,” the farm boy said, straightening from his shooter’s crouch and slamming the butt end of his cue stick into the floor. When he stood, I saw his neck was as thick around as my thigh and shoulder muscles that bunched up and down. So, he was at least fifty-fifty muscle and pork rinds.
“Leave it in, Tank,” Jay said. “You’re going to need it.”
“Go fuck yourself,” Tank said.
Jay moved to the table and settled smoothly into a hustler’s stance, hips low and feet wide. In three quick, economical movements, he sank the seven, the five, and the eleven. The table, crowded with balls when I’d walked in, was thinning, but somehow the remaining solids were all crowded around the eight ball.
Jay lined up on the one ball, but his posture was a little crooked. “Eight ball, off the three, corner pocket.”
Tank laughed huh, huh, huh and my eyebrows jumped. I could feel the skinny gangster’s eyes on me as I watched. Jay’s eyes flicked up, down, up…then he shot. The cue ball caught the eight perfectly, sinking it dead in the corner, but made a bad split on the three and it went straight in the side pocket. Unless they played a different version of eight ball here, Jay had just lost the game.
They didn’t. Tank whooped and Jay hissed his disappointment. The gangster said, “Jay, you do that every time. Why don’t you try winning the old-fashioned way?”
Jay shook his head. “Can’t help it. Always got to take the trick shot.”
“Pay up,” Tank said, snapping his fingers.
Jay pulled a meager wad of bills held together by a rubber band from his pocket and made a big show of slapping two bills in Tank’s hand. “I shouldn’t even pay you, Tank. I’d win every time if we played straight pool.”
“Do it then, asshole,” Tank said.
“What do you think, mister?” the gangster—who had to be Buck, the youngest Brower—suddenly said to me. “Think my brother could ever beat good ol’ Jay-bone?”
The heads of the other two snapped around, surprised, like I’d just fallen from the ceiling. I saw Jay straighten up as recognition kicked in.
I shrugged. “I think Jay-bone could beat Tank in eight ball or trick shots or tiddlywinks if he weren’t trying to throw the game.”
No one likes to be accused of sandbagging, so I expected Jay to come zooming around the pool table and into my grill, but he just stood there. Tank, on the other hand, was ready to bite. An ugly look spread across his face—not easy on a face like his—and I could see him swell, gearing himself for a brawl. Buck smirked. He’d waved a red cape and Tank had gone for it. I tensed, getting ready for the fireworks, when all three heads swiveled towards the doorway.
“Fuck is going on?” a voice from behind me said.
I turned and backed away from the door while trying to keep an eye on Tank at the same time. Standing in the doorway was a guy my height, in his forties, with broad shoulders and black hair slicked straight back. I could still see the lines his comb had made. His face was pockmarked and craggy, with a deep brow that hung over brown eyes like a shelf. A blue, short-sleeved work shirt revealed thick forearms covered in blurry tattoos the color of his veins. He smelled fake clean, like motel soap and drugstore aftershave. Everything about him screamed hard-time con.
“Hey, Will,” Tank said. The other two were dead silent, as if they expected him to bite all the pool cues in half. The con ignored them and walked over to a stool next to Buck. He sat, then reached into the breast pocket of his shirt, pulling out a pack of cigarettes and a steel lighter. He fished a cigarette from the pack, lit it with a plinking noise, and took a deep drag. The smoke poured out of both nostrils.
“Jay,” he said, but kept his eyes on me. “Dwayne told me some asshole who talked like a cop beat the living shit out of him this morning. Said you were with them when it happened.”
“Yeah?” Jay said.
“Yeah?” Will mocked in a falsetto. “Well, we got an asshole standing right here who looks like a cop. This him?”
“Yeah,” Jay said, uncomfortable.
Will continued to stare at me, squinting as smoke curled around his face. “So. You a cop?”
I shrugged.
“No answer, huh?”
I stared back at him.
“What if I beat the living shit out of you? You got an answer to that?”
“I guess you could try,” I said. “You that eager to head back to the can?”
Buck, emboldened, piped up. “Maybe he was a mall cop.”
Will smiled, but said, “Buck, shut your fucking mouth. Well, mister? You here in some official capacity?”
I smiled back. We’re all friends, right? “Just doing a buddy a favor. Somebody killed an old acquaintance of mine. J.D. Hope. Maybe you heard of him?”