by Chuck Dixon
The steel toe of his Timberline driven behind their right knees dropped the two from the Escalade to the dust one after the other. He had the handguns out of their jeans and tossed them aside. Expensive models like their clothes: a Sig Sauer nine and a Kimber in .40. Straw hat tried to lever himself onto his side. Levon put his boot on the man's skinny ass and turned his leg sharp. Straw hat let out a sound like a puppy might make and laid his palms flat on the ground again. Levon continued his search turning up a pair of clasp knives and a hammerless .32 revolver tucked in the partner's boot. The keys to the pimped out SUV were on a ring with a mini-Maglite. Two packs of Kools. A wad of hard used fives, tens and twenties in a rubber band. Another, smaller, of clean fifties in a silver and turquoise clip. A fancy pill case of gold that rattled when he shook it. The Alabama driver licenses in their wallets told him that they were Daniel Eckenrode of Birmingham and Sean Tobey from Huntsville. Straw hat and his partner were pictured on the laminated cards. Levon put the wallets in the pocket of his windbreaker and stepped back.
“You can get up now,” he said returning to English.
Straw hat picked up his hat and brushed it off and took his sweet time adjusting it to the right angle on his head. The partner was fussing over a tear in the knee of his black jeans. Levon waited until he had their full attention.
“You boys get in your fancy ride and pull on out of here. I see you on this site again and it won’t end well for either of you.”
“You gonna call the police on us?” Straw hat smiled.
Levon didn't answer directly. He stood looking out over the torn up ground of the building lot. Some machines stood idle near deep footings dug for units Ten through Fifteen.
“Lot of holes around a place like this. Lot of ground to be leveled,” he said and drew down the bill of his ball cap to hide his eyes.
“What about our wallets?” The partner speaking for the first time.
“I didn’t see any wallets. Or guns,” Levon said and tossed the ring of keys into straw hat’s hands.
He stood watching the pair walk away. They were out of sight when he picked the handguns up from the dust using a bandana from his pocket.
Levon returned to his truck in time to see the Escalade pull off the site onto the through road in a cloud of yellow dust. The young laborer was already off to his job. The guy at the lunch wagon was lowering the awning, getting ready to head out.
On his way home Levon stopped at one of those mail service stores with the cute name. He dropped the handguns into a padded pouch along with the wallets minus the three hundred or so dollars he found inside and carried the package to the pert little peanut of a girl smiling at him from the counter.
Two days later a deputy at the Perry County Justice Center opened a package machine-addressed to the sheriff. She dumped out three loaded handguns and two wallets onto her desk. Further exploration found the drivers licenses of a Mr. Eckenrode and a Mr. Tobey with the grim faces of two gentlemen of Latino extraction glaring from under the lenticular plastic.
Gunny Leffertz said:
"There's more than one way to fuck someone over. Do it hard so they never forget or do it quietly so they never know you were there."
2
Finals were over.
She had no idea how she did. Truth was, she didn’t give a rip. They were over and she was free for the next week.
She joined some of her friends for a pub crawl. Girls she met in the first semester at USF and stayed friends with into her freshman year. They started at places near the school and moved south through the night closer to the city. They lost a few girls along the way. One passed out after too many Jell-O shots and was taken back to the dorm by another. Some other girls paired off with some guys they knew. She was down to two gal pals and feeling it, really feeling it, when they reached the place called Skip’s in North Tampa.
It was at the ass end of a strip mall anchored by a shuttered Winn-Dixie. The only places open were a coin laundry, a check cashing place and a dollar store. Though they were all dark at this hour. Skip’s was dark and cool and the crowd was maybe Hispanic or whatever but certainly foreign. It smelled of stale beer and a tinge of ganja coming from a back room. The music was Euro techno-pump and drowned out the sound from the big screens showing soccer games above the horseshoe bar.
The trio of college girls never had to pay for a drink. Cuervos were being shoved over the bar to them, paid for by persons unknown. She scanned the dark for their benefactors and saw a guy smiling back at her from an upholstered booth. He looked like a cute guy in some vampire show her little sister watched all the time. He was sitting with two other guys who were almost as cute. He nodded to her and she downed her shot before walking over to join him.
Soon it was all best friends forever as her girlfriends matched up with the other two, less cute, guys. They all had accents but dressed well and didn’t smell. And they paid for everything with a wave of a hand to the waitress and bartender who seemed to know them. She never saw any cash on the table. These guys were regulars. These guys were players.
It was all fun and adventurous, but free drinks and a few gypsy kisses were as far as she was going to take it tonight. She had a fiancé back in Huntsville and no plans to infringe on the understanding they had. But a little slap and tickle wasn't cheating, right? Just boys and girls, honey. Her panties were staying right where they were tonight. Tomorrow she'd wake up with a banging tequila hangover and a tongue made of gummy felt. Two Advil washed down with a glass of orange juice, a shower and maybe a nap and she'd be former Miss Sheffield Park High School again. For now, though, it was her night for the good life.
The cute guy was charming and funny. Not as handsy as she expected considering the bar tab he was running up since the girls slid into the booth. Everything was a joke. Even when she asked his name he’d make a joke of it.
"I'm Brad Pitt; you did not recognize me?"
That made her snort. He smiled and told her if he knew she was so unladylike he’d never have asked her over. That sent her into a series of snorts. She slapped a hand over her mouth and roared into the palm of her hand. He was so funny. Everything was funny. Everything made her laugh now until she could hear her own pulse in her ears. It was louder than the drumming beat of the music. It was getting harder and harder to keep her head upright on her neck. She was still fully conscious, maybe a little furry around the edges, but fully aware. A weakness crept over her. She went to stand but her legs wouldn’t respond. She braced her palms on the table to raise herself up and they bent under her weight like rubber. She collapsed onto the tabletop.
She felt his breath on her ear. That funny, sexy accent with words meant just for her.
“I know a place. Another place. A better place.”
She wanted to laugh but she was too weak now even for that.
3
“I like Wendy’s best,” said Merry, her mouth full of a double with cheese.
“You do?” said Levon.
“You know why?”
“I don’t, honey.”
“It’s run by a girl. It’s the only place run by a girl. McDonald’s. Burger King. Carl’s. Arby’s. All boys.”
“Arby is a boy?”
“Sure he is. Who’d name a girl Arby?”
“What about Dairy Queen?”
"Their burgers suck," Merry said. Case closed — no arguing with the logic of a nine-year-old.
“Well, okay then,” Levon said and stabbed some fries into their shared puddle of ketchup.
“Know what we had for dinner last night, Daddy?” Merry said.
“Well, I know it wasn’t Dairy Queen burgers.”
“Lobster.” Merry pulled a face that crinkled her freckled features.
“Maybe I should come and live at your Granpa’s.”
“They’re like bugs! Big bugs!” she announced.
“Not bad with drawn butter though.”
She nodded agreement and took another bite of her cheeseburger.
He drove her home in his ten-year-old Avalanche. She was seated closed by him, his arm around her and her head pressed to his side.
“Why doesn’t Granpa like you?” she said, not looking up.
“Oh, he’s a daddy like I am and your mommy was his little girl and he didn’t think I was good enough for your mommy,” Levon said.
She thought about that for a while.
“Is that how you feel, Daddy?” she said. She shifted to look up at him.
“About what, honey?”
“Will you not like the boy I marry someday?”
“I’ll hate him.”
“You don’t know him.” She was smiling broadly now.
“Doesn’t matter, honey. I hate him already.”
“Even if it’s Kristoff?”
Kristoff was a hunky character from a Disney cartoon that Merry was currently obsessed with.
“Especially him. You bring Kristoff around and I’ll carve a canoe out of him,” Levon said.
He could feel her shivering against him with suppressed giggles.
The Doctor had his BMW parked at the foot of the drive so Levon couldn’t pull in. Just like every weekend. Levon pulled up to the curb. The doctor, Merry’s grandfather and his father-in-law, stood on the porch, eyeballing the truck with distaste. He waited there at the head of the long walk, peering over the top of his glasses, a section of the Sunday paper in his hand.
“You’ll come for me next weekend?” Merry said breaking her embrace.
“You know I will,” he said. His rough hand gently brushed her hair back in place.
“Can we buy flowers and take them to Mommy?”
“We sure can. Any kind you like.”
She rose to her knees and he leaned from the wheel to accept her kiss to his cheek.
“Bye,” she said and let herself out of the truck.
He watched her run up the walk to her grandfather. He saw the doctor’s last withering glance before they stepped up to the porch and entered the house.
Levon pulled away then and, on his way back to his apartment, stopped by the cemetery at Holy Christ to visit with Merry’s mommy.
Gunny Leffertz said:
“Give it time. Losing someone takes its own time. Grief’s a stone cold bitch. You can’t win a fight with her. You can’t walk away from her. All you can do is move on and get a lead on her, leave her far behind. Only she’s always there, following. Over time the bitch mellows and you can let her walk alongside. Give yourself time to get used to the idea that you and those you lose are on the same path and that path only ends when you do.”
4
“Joe Bob left a message for you to see him when you come in,” Candy said from behind her desk in the office shack. That’s what they called it though it was a tidy double-wide decorated like an uptown real estate office.
Levon was clocking in for second shift.
“At the main office?”
“Naw. He’s on site today. I’ll buzz him.” She touched something on her desk and Joe Bob’s voice squawked from a speaker.
“Yeah?”
“Levon Cade just showed up, Mr. Wiley,” she answered too loud.
“I’ll pull around. Tell him to step outside.” The speaker went dead.
Levon stood on the roughhewn deck constructed in front of the double-wide. The sun was low in the winter sky and there was a sense that work was winding down all over the site. Joe Bob Wiley's jacked-up Dodge truck pulled around from behind the nearly completed Unit Eight. It came to a stop on the gravel before the office shack. Joe Bob waved Levon over and leaned across the seat to shove the passenger side door open. Levon climbed aboard and Joe Bob drove across the site to the through road and toward the highway.
He'd clocked in and was earning, so it didn't matter what the boss was up to. And Joe Bob wasn't talking as he drove. The big man's face was pinched. His eyes were red and tired behind his tinted Ray Bans. The muscles in his neck were tense. Joe Bob Wiley was a local football hero. A high school phenom who went on to more fame at Wake Forest until a wicked hit in his second season ruined his right knee joint beyond any repair that even modern surgery could affect. No limp and only a little pain but no more broken field running for this good old boy. So he came on board Manners Contract Builders as a glad-handing hometown celebrity and found out he liked construction and had a talent for planning. In twenty years he had his name on the company and was calling all the shots while Winston Manners retired to Florida to fish, golf and collect a monthly dividend from the growing business.
“You’re making what these days?” Joe Bob spoke up as he cruised the center lane south away from the city traffic.
“You pay me fifteen an hour,” Levon said.
“I pay you a hell of a lot more than that,” Joe Bob snorted.
“Well, there’s overtime, sir.”
"Overtime, shit! You're on site more than I am. You clock seventy hours a week sometimes. You earned a four-figure check over Labor Day, son."
"Guys call out. Sometimes we're short, so I come in."
“You got no place else to be?”
“I’m widowed and my little girl lives with my wife’s father.”
“So, nothing but time on your hands, huh?”
“If I’m at work I’m not getting in trouble,” Levon said and watched the endless lights gliding past in the opposite lane.
“You’re ex-military, right?” Joe Bob said and flipped the lever to shift into a right exit lane.
“That’s right.”
“Which branch?”
“I was one of the good guys, sir.”
Joe Bob barked a laugh at that. There was no spirit in it. It was more a reaction of surprise than humor.
They pulled into a place called Andy’s Bunker, nestled in a grove of evergreens between a Home Depot and a Walmart. It looked like it had been there since Prohibition ended. Flat roof and asbestos siding painted in a riot of blue and orange. The sign promised BBQ and ice cold beer. There were a few pickups on the lot already.
“I need help and I think you’re the man to help me. I’m willing to pay a shitload more than fifteen an hour,” Joe Bob said, turning in his seat. His voice was low. The bullshit and bluster gone now.
“I’m not doing anything illegal, sir,” Levon said meeting the big man’s gaze.
“And I wouldn’t ask you to. Nothing strictly immoral or illegal.”
Levon waited.
“I need you to find my daughter,” Joe Bob said opening his door and turning to hide from his passenger the sudden well of tears.
Gunny Leffertz said:
“A mission is honorable so long as your heart and your mind are in the same place and the outcome is just.”
5
Joe Bob and Levon took a booth at the rear of Andy's Bunker. The place was quiet. The country-pop on the jukebox was turned way down so the four guys at the end of the bar could hear two women arguing on some political panel show.
The bartender brought them a pair of glasses and a pitcher of Coors. Levon didn’t touch his glass.
“Go on. Have a beer,” Joe Bob said.
“I’m on the clock, sir.”
“I’m the damned boss and I say it’s okay. And call me Joe Bob.”
Levon poured a short beer and took a sip.
“Do you know we’ve had zero losses at Evergreen Estates? We’re close to finishing the first phase and there’s not so much as a nail missing from inventory,” Joe Bob said.
“That’s a good thing, right?”
“And no vandalism. No fights. Nobody showing up high or drunk. Just everything running smooth and easy.”
“This is about your daughter?”
"I've never been on a job where there's been zero shrinkage. These Mexes walk off with anything they can carry. Tools. Lumber. Plumbing. Hell, I build it into my estimates. They'll take concrete if they can — wet concrete right out of the truck. And don't get me started on vendors, son. Pirates is what they are."
Levon took another sip, watching Joe Bob drain his second glass.
"The only difference between this job and all those others is you, Cade. I brought you on this summer and thefts stopped like someone turned off a tap. The only variable is you being there near all the time. And even when you're not there, the rest of the security I hired is more on the ball than they used to be and the laborers keep their hands to themselves. You either scare them all shitless, or maybe you've been a good influence."
Levon nodded.
“I looked into you, Cade. I mean, past your bullshit résumé when you applied. I Googled you and you know what I found.”
Levon looked at him level across the table.
“I found jack shit. Oh, I found out you were born in Raleigh and when. You graduated high school. You live in a one-bedroom in a complex I built. Your wife passed two years ago and you have a little girl that doesn’t live with you and you’re in a custody fight with your father-in-law. You have no criminal record and, until a year ago, you were in the service. That sound right to you?”
“That’s the public record, sir.”
The argument on the television spread to the four men at the bar. They were in a three to one deadlock and telling each other how full of shit the other was. Joe Bob waited until the outnumbered party stormed off to the men’s room before continuing.
“Only it’s not real clear which branch you were in. Your record has more redactions than Obama’s college transcripts. You trained with the Navy, the Marines, the Rangers and a few outfits that only had letters and numbers. There’s some dates and places but the rest just isn’t there. What isn’t there tells a story. It tells me you’ve been places and done things.”
Levon let the beer warm in his hand.