When Nikki said that name, Manny knew who it was immediately, sketched in some background for us so as to save Nikki’s tongue too much of a workout.
Larry operated a garage outside of Tyler, near Bullard, but he used it as a chop shop as well. Fix a car by day, chop one by night. Legitimate when the sun was up, crooked when the sun went down.
Larry was the son of Wilson Keith. We had heard of him. He was big in the Dixie Mafia. Leonard and I had put our hands into that dirt a few times and happily toppled some of those assholes off their thrones, but it was like whack-a-mole—someone new popped right up. Wilson Keith was that someone new, a former second or third in command that took over things due to design and attrition. Always suspected of this or that, always written about in the papers, mentioned on TV, but never caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He was as smooth as owl shit and twice as stinky.
Wilson set his son Larry up in business, and business was good. Larry was fond of older muscle cars when he could get them. Couldn’t sell the whole car, he sold the parts. But no matter how hard the local law or the feds tried to nail him, they couldn’t do it. It wasn’t that Larry was all that smart, but his old man was. And as long as Larry followed the old man’s lead, he stayed in the clear. He and his crew could take a car apart in seconds, redo it, and have it on a truck going up north about the time you pulled your coat on. They sold them way under the cost of the original cars. Theft has a low overhead.
Nikki said Larry’s favorite car thief was a fellow named Pretty Boy Florence. He was a real pro, had been known to steal a car midday right off a car lot. He was quick, self-assured, and could talk a nun out of her underpants and convince her to buy them back. He had a girlfriend named Nicole Beckman. She knew all about what was going on. She was deeply in love with Pretty Boy, no matter that he was a thief.
That Nicole was our snow-white Nikki.
Nikki started talking again. Manny said, “If you’re going to tell your story, I want the nurse here. I want to make sure we don’t push you too hard or you don’t overdo.”
Manny got up and called the nurse in and I got up and went out and got another chair and brought it back. The nurse sat close to Nikki, but Nikki didn’t let go of Leonard’s hand.
Manny said to the nurse, “We want to make sure we aren’t pushing her too hard and that she’s not pushing herself too hard, but anything you hear tonight, it’s confidential. You understand?”
“I understand,” said the nurse. “And I appreciate being with my patient. I’m here for her health. You do what you got to do, and it’s safe with me.”
“Good,” Manny said.
Nikki began talking again.
“One night I was out with Pretty Boy, and we were coming back from dinner, and he was always fun, so funny, and maybe at the bottom of it all, he wasn’t that smart, but he dressed sharp and took me to nice places, and there was part of me that knew I was being shallow, that this guy was going nowhere fast and dragging me with him. But I loved him. I did. I dreaded the moments I was without him, but when I was with him I was, in the back of my mind, always wondering how I might shed myself of him. He was like having a dangerous wild animal for a pet, one that thinks you’re the pet, and you know in your bones that pet isn’t loyal, and one day it’s going to turn and bite you, but, man, is it fluffy and cute, and there are such fine moments when you’re with it.
“But this night, that was the night I had been dreading, that down-in-the-bones feel that something bad was coming. I can’t tell you how many times I told myself I was standing on a railroad track and the train was heading for me and I ought to step off because the engineer was my wild pet.
“We’re driving back from dinner, and we take the residential-area street, a shortcut off the main road, and Pretty Boy spies something fantastic, like a Christmas present just waiting for him to pick up. A nice juicy red Corvette.
“He had never done that before, what he was about the do, with me on board, though I have to be honest and tell you I knew what he did for a living, and he had told me all kinds of things about how the business works, how he went about what he did, so I want you to know I’m fessing up, that I’m not a babe in the woods by any means. I knew. I didn’t participate, until this night, but I knew he was a car thief and good at his job.
“May I have some water?”
The nurse gave her a bottle of water, said, “Anytime you need to stop, you stop. You’re my patient, and they can wait.”
I glanced at the nurse. Her eyes were soft and hooded. I liked that look, and I liked the way she protected Nikki, but I hoped like hell Nikki would keep talking, damaged tongue or not. We needed to know. Manny certainly needed to know.
After swallowing some water and a pain pill, she took Leonard’s hand again and continued.
“He stopped the car, said to me, ‘Nikki, this will just take a minute, and then you follow me to the shop.’ Right then I knew that I was on the edge of crossing over, but I got in the driver’s seat, and Pretty Boy got a little bag of tools out of the trunk and crossed the street to the car.
“But things went wonky. I’m watching him, and I’ll never forget, he had a kind of strut in his step. Maybe that was for me or maybe it’s just how he was when he was doing something like that, because I know he loved it and had talked to me about how powerful it made him feel. He said to me, ‘They think those cars are theirs until I take them, then I like to imagine how hollow they feel when they come out and there’s an empty space where the car had been, and now it’s my car, at least for a moment, and I feel like someone made me the king of the world, and then when I get paid, it’s like money from heaven. Didn’t cost me nothing more than a lock pick and a hot-wire and fine drive to the chop shop.’
“So he’s standing by the driver’s-side window of the Corvette, glances back at me with a smile on his face, then turns to his work, and that’s when I know it’s gone wrong. I didn’t understand exactly what was happening at first, but then I saw a man’s head raise up, and then a woman’s, and I got the impression they had been parked in the drive so they could have sex. Why they parked there for that, I don’t know. Maybe just for fun. Maybe not. I don’t even know if that driveway was their driveway or just some random driveway they pulled into to do something naughty. But when I saw those heads raise up, Pretty Boy jumped back liked he’d come upon a snake. I saw the man jerk the door open and step out of the car, naked.
“Pretty Boy froze with that bag of tools in his hand, and I heard the man say, ‘Who the fuck are you?’
“That’s when Pretty Boy dropped the bag, pulled a pistol from under his sport coat and shot twice, killing both of them. If shooting them like that wasn’t cold enough, he pulled the woman’s body out of the car and left both of them lying naked on the driveway. There was blood all over the concrete.
“Pretty Boy came back to his car, the pistol shots still ringing in my ears. He put the bag of tools in the trunk, took a towel out of the back, came to the window where I was, said, ‘Don’t ask a question. Follow me.’
“Lights were coming on in a house next door and some dogs had started to bark. Pretty Boy went back to the Corvette, used the towel to wipe down what I figured was blood, then he got in the car, and, using the key the man had left in the ignition, he backed out and drove down the street. I went after him, did it with the car lights off too. At the corner he turned on the Corvette’s lights, and I turned on mine. He turned right and I followed him.
“Part of me was thinking, Peel off, go to the cops, you’re just digging yourself a grave. But, hell, I kept driving. Can I have some more water?”
The nurse helped her out, and Nikki drank long and hard from the bottle. She sighed when she handed it back.
“You need to stop and rest,” the nurse said.
“No,” Nikki said. “I’m fine. I want to get it all out, or as much of it as I can. I get tired, I’ll write it out.”
The nurse nodded. Nikki continued.
“I followed
him like he asked, but I was almost in a trance. I just didn’t know what else to do. We went out on the far edge of town where Larry Keith had his chop shop. All the way out there I’m thinking I’ve gone from being in love with a bad-boy car thief to being in love with a murderer. What do I do?
“I got to the shop and I parked out front. The shop doors were wide open. Inside it was bright. Pretty Boy drove the Corvette through the shop doors, parked, got out. I could see from where I sat that the seat of his pants was wet with blood. Then I see this guy walk up to him. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was Larry Keith. Later I saw photos on the Internet, but I’ll come to that. I saw Keith talking to Pretty Boy, who was explaining the blood, I guess.
“After a while, Keith, appearing none too happy, looked out the door at me in Pretty Boy’s car. His expression could have curdled milk, as my mother used to say. He was a handsome guy, but even from a distance, there was something unsettling about him, like his soul was dying or was already dead. I know how that sounds, but when he looked at me, I felt like I was melting into a puddle of blood.
“Larry Keith walked Pretty Boy out of view of the doors, and they were gone for some time, but eventually they come back into view, and Pretty Boy, I could tell that plenty was wrong, and at first I’m thinking it’s the murders he committed, as he looked like someone had let the air out of him. He was almost as white as I am, walked with a kind of shuffle, like his shoes were sticking to the ground.
“The two of them walked to where I was waiting in Pretty Boy’s car, and I felt sick suddenly, because Keith glanced at Pretty Boy, said so I heard it, ‘We got to clean things up a little, right?’
“I wanted to think they meant the stolen car, but in that moment, I felt it meant a lot more than that. And then Keith comes over and looks in the car at me. Puts his hands on the open car window and ducks his head and looks in. I’ve never seen eyes that cold before, like a dead animal lying on the side of the road, its eyes open and flat and looking at nothing. He stares at me a long time, says, ‘Might want to eat some red meat, honey, you look kind of pale.’ I knew then I would never get the chance to eat any meat or anything else if I sat there for very long, but I was glued to the car seat, looking out the window.
“Pretty Boy walked over to the car, told me they wanted us to come inside. I was surprised they wanted me. Why? I wasn’t in a stolen car. Fact was, that was the closest I’d ever come to the shop. There was something odd about the way Pretty Boy looked at me, like he was about to shovel dirt in my face. I knew then for sure that I wasn’t being melodramatic, that Keith wasn’t talking about ‘clean up’ in the sense of wiping blood off the seat of a stolen car. I was a witness to the murders, and I was connected to Pretty Boy, and he was connected to Larry Keith. I loved Pretty Boy, but I knew right then he didn’t love me. I knew what was coming. Pretty Boy would have a new girl on his arm in a week, if it took that long. I’d be buried somewhere, thrown in a lake, maybe turned into a sausage or mashed up in a car crusher along with some automobile. I threw the car in gear, gunned it backward, turned it quick, and started out of there. I could hear Pretty Boy yelling for me to come back. I glanced in the rearview mirror, saw Larry Keith and a big man come out of the garage, the big man with a wrench in his hand, Pretty Boy still looking down the road at me, growing small in the rearview mirror.
“There was a flash. A bright pop of light in the mirror, and I saw Pretty Boy fold up in the middle and fall to the ground, and then I saw the big man with the wrench go to work on him. I don’t know if Pretty Boy was still alive or if they were just making sure, but in a moment, I didn’t see them anymore. I was driving too fast. I knew then what Pretty Boy didn’t know. They hadn’t planned to kill just me, they were taking him out as well. He had crossed the line from car thief to stupid. They didn’t care about the murder. They cared there would be too much heat brought to bear, and they were trying to throw cold water on things before they turned into a fire. I mean, I don’t know if I was thinking about it that carefully then, but that seemed like the deal to me, and I had plenty of time to think about it later. Maybe they killed him because I got away, thought he was part of that, but I think he was going to die no matter what.
“I drove wild for a while, and then I slowed down and drove on, not knowing where I was going. I only stopped to buy gas and eat a burger. Later I had to pull over and throw that burger up beside the road. It fit in my stomach like an acidic boulder. I drove through the night without plans, just reviewing what Pretty Boy had done, then what had been planned for me, and finally I kept seeing what I saw in the rearview mirror play over and over in my head. The flash of light. Pretty Boy bending in half and falling to the ground, and then that big man with the wrench.
“In the end, I drove right out of East Texas, across North Texas, crossed the Red River into eastern Oklahoma. I found a town that had its bus station beside a liquor store and parked Pretty Boy’s car, a ’68 Ford Mustang, out back of that store with the keys in it. I caught a bus and got off at the first stop and ended up at an out-of-the-way town about the size of a postage stamp called Hootie Hoot.”
“We know it,” Leonard said. “We had a little adventure there once. It makes a stretched dead rat’s asshole seem like a nicer place to live.”
“That proves you’ve been there. About half the downtown is closed and boarded off. There’s a theater still there, a restaurant where they burn a bad steak and grease up worse home fries. You can gain five pounds walking by that place. It’s got a few service stations and a bank and some of this and some of that, and one of the thats they had was a flower shop.
“I had a little money, and I managed to get an apartment, was quick to get a job at the flower shop. It was walking distance from where I was staying. The shop paid in cash, because even though I had some credit cards, I thought it best not to use them. I feared those men finding out who I was and tracking me. Maybe they already knew—good chance Pretty Boy told them that night before Keith came out and looked at me. I started going by the name Nikki Smith. The old man and his wife that owned the place, I think they liked the idea of someone like me, an albino, working there. It was unique in that little town, brought in a little business. You know, ‘They got that albino girl over at the flower shop. Let’s go over and look at her.’ All I had to do to stay hidden was let the old man in the shop rub his fat hand across my ass now and again. When his wife wasn’t looking, of course.
“One time, when the old lady wasn’t there, he asked if the hair on my vagina was as white as the hair on my head or if I shaved it. I told him I didn’t shave it because I had a disease that might get spread by shaving. I thought that might make him leave me alone. He didn’t believe me, or didn’t care. He kept up with the touching.
“Compared to being discovered and killed, being groped by him seemed like a small trade-off. Most of the day I made deliveries, and though I had a license, it was the one with my correct name on it, so I was extra careful. I don’t know if it would have mattered had I got a ticket. I don’t know if Larry Keith could track me somehow because of that. I didn’t think so, but I wasn’t chancing it. He had money, so he had a lot of connections. Maybe had someone looking at arrest records, checking credit card use. I know Pretty Boy once told me Larry had people in high places, moles, and he got a lot of information that way, though Pretty Boy told me it was really Larry’s father that had the connections. Larry’s real connection was his father, Wilson Keith. Words Pretty Boy used was ‘He’s the real swinging dick. Larry, he’s just the underpants.’
“Anyhow, I learned how to dodge around the old man, stashed some bucks for a long jaunt to somewhere else.
“Day I left there, I was going to punch that old man as hard as I could. And I did. Hard enough to knock him down. I had to stand on a stool to do it. But before that, when I was still delivering flowers, one day I was curious, peeked at the news with the flower shop’s computer. Up to then, I had managed not to bother. Didn’t want to know. I knew Pr
etty Boy was dead, and I still loved him a little, even if he had planned to let them kill me, maybe even do it himself. I assumed he was ground up in a hot dog somewhere.
“But that day my curiosity got the better of me. Couldn’t help myself. Really wasn’t anything there. Nobody knew Pretty Boy was dead, didn’t even know he was missing. No unknown bodies found, no one came up with a finger in a taco or some such. Then I saw another piece of news about the murder of a Nicole Beckman in Tyler. Then I knew. Someone had been hired to hunt me down and kill me, make sure I didn’t talk about the chop shop, tell anything I might have learned from Pretty Boy. Thing was, someone had killed the wrong Nicole Beckman. My first thought was I was safe. They thought I was dead. My second thought was that poor girl. I felt I had to do something.
“I called the cops in Tyler, told my story. They needed to see me, of course, said they’d protect me. Wanted my testimony. On the same day I punched the old man at the flower shop as a way of delivering my resignation, the cops picked me up and hauled me to Tyler, Texas.”
Nikki leaned back and shut her eyes. We all sat silent, waiting. Finally, she sat up, took the water bottle from the nurse, took another pain pill. When she started talking again, her words came slower and were tripping over each other a little, but she was determined.
“Reporters got wind of what I told the cop, about it being the wrong Nicole. Someone at the police station leaked it. News trumped common sense. They wrote how the wrong Nicole had been killed, which of course put me in even greater jeopardy. It was widely known then that I was going to be a witness for the prosecution against Larry.
“I was under protection, but I was nervous. If it had been leaked I was alive that quick and easy, I didn’t know I was safe where they had put me up, a hotel downtown. Cops watching me, most of them were all right. Talked to me, played Monopoly with me, brought me books and movies, food. One night, one of those cops, he spilled some stuff to me. Not that he was supposed to, but he did, which goes to prove there are no real tight lips when it comes to rumor, gossip, or righteous news. Hell, for all I know, he was the one that let it loose to a reporter that I was alive. He liked to talk, and the thing he talked about frightened me.
The Elephant of Surprise Page 7