Scrambled Hard-Boiled

by E.R. White, Jr.

  * * * * *

  I was up before dawn the next morning. It was early November and there was a decided chill in the air. After a couple of hot cups of coffee and toast at the local diner, I hopped in my car and made my way to the Slatterson textile mill that Sonny was employed at. I drove around the plant a couple of times, getting the overall lay of the land. By 6:45, I’d picked out a spot where I could keep an eye on the parking lot without attracting attention and had settled into a waiting game. It wasn’t until a little past eight that Sonny Slatterson showed up for work.

  I watched the black Trans-Am pull into the parking lot. Sonny drove into a parking space, got out of his car and slowly sauntered to the employee entrance of the factory.

  After he entered the building, I got out and walked by his car, glancing in. Other than the large amount of trash on the floorboards, nothing really struck me as important. Knowing that I probably had a few hours before Sonny got off from work for the day, I got back into my car, broke out a local map, located where Sonny’s apartment was at and took off for it. I figured I might as well have a look there.

  I was driving by his apartment within fifteen minutes of leaving the textile plant. The apartment complex was a couple of two-story buildings with one and two bedroom apartments distributed on both floors. Sonny’s place was the corner apartment on the bottom floor of the building located furthest from the road. I pulled into the parking lot, grabbed a clipboard I always kept in the car just for these situations and got out.

  If anyone saw me, they would assume I was a meter reader or salesman. I didn’t plan to stay there long anyway. I walked towards Sonny’s apartment, quickly trying the front door to see if by chance it was unlocked—it wasn’t. The shades were down on the front window, so I slipped around to the back of the apartment to see if I’d have luck with the rear window. The shades were up and while the window was locked, I could make out an empty looking bedroom on the inside and an unmade bed. Nothing more was to be gained, so I made my way back to my car and left.

  I decided to explore Warhill a bit. There wasn’t much to see. I parked my car and took a short stroll up the main street.

  It was a nondescript little southern town, and the natives seemed normal. I did notice after a few minutes that a large percentage of the population was attired in double-knit polyester. There were men in polyester suits, women in polyester skirts, babies in polyester jumpsuits, kids with jeans and polyester shirts. The colors were generally bright and primary in nature, and after a while I was beginning to get a mild headache from having to look at some of the color combinations I’d encountered.

  I took the time to place a call to Ernie and to get him up to speed as to my current situation, and I happened to mention to him about the local populace being afflicted with an apparent double-knit fetish. He immediately informed me he was an aficionado of the aforementioned “wonder fiber” and would I pick him up a leisure suit at one the outlet stores in town. I cheerfully agreed to the request and within an hour I had in my possession a genuine double-knit polyester lime green leisure suit—size XXL—with a complementary polyester Carolina blue shirt and pink tie.

  Ernie wore it for years.

  I strolled around town a few more hours, grabbed a quick BBQ sandwich at the drugstore lunch counter and was back at the textile factory parking lot by around half past two. I made sure that Sonny’s car was still in the parking lot and settled in for the short time left until Sonny finished his shift. Sure enough at few minutes after three I saw Sonny stroll out of the building and get into his car. I followed him as he drove directly to his apartment and went inside.

  Rather than pull into the small and sparsely filled complex parking lot, I contented myself with parking down the street a bit and near an empty lot where I had a good view of the Sonny’s apartment. I settled in for the wait. It was dark within a couple of hours.

  By seven o’clock I was beginning to give up hope of Sonny going anywhere for the night, when I spied his apartment front door open and Sonny coming out and getting into his car. He pulled out of the lot and drove north, out of town. I followed him.

  Sonny went down some of the back roads and after a short five-mile drive, he turned down a narrow, dead-end road. I pulled off to the shoulder of the main highway before the turn-off to the road and killed my lights. I didn’t want to chance going down the road in my car. It’d be too easy to spot me. I was going to have to hoof it until I figured out what my options were.

  The general area was hilly and sparsely populated. Various dirt roads crisscrossed the area, and you could see the lights of homes and trailers occasionally dotting the countryside. The road Sonny had turned down was straight, lightly graveled and had three small wood-frame houses on the left side. A road sign said it was named “Trundle Rd."

  All three houses had lights on. Through the wooded area behind the houses, I could make out a few more lights coming from a trailer park on another dirt road nearby.

  I slowly walked down the road, looking for Sonny’s car. I found it at the end of the road, parked in the front yard of the last house, next to an old Chevy Impala. There was a light on inside, and you could hear rock music being played from a stereo. It was around a half past seven.

  I went back to my car, got in and parked it off the main road on a nearby deserted dirt road and walked back to the house. I wrote down the license plate number of the Chevy so I could pass it off to Ernie, so he could run down the owner’s name. I then settled down in the woods across from the house just see how things went. After a couple of hours, all the lights went off. Apparently, Sonny had decided to stay there for the night. It had been a long day for me too so I called it quits, made it back to my car and went to my motel for some sleep.

  I didn’t get up until mid-morning. After a quick shower and shave, I called up Ernie with the license plate number for him to track down. After a large cup of coffee and a couple of sweet rolls from the local convenience store, I made my way back to the textile plant to check on Sonny. His car was nowhere to be seen. I made a quick jaunt to his apartment and confirmed that his car wasn’t there either. I decided to check out the trailer he’d gone to the previous evening, but as I was on my way there I met Sonny driving in the opposite direction, hurriedly making his way back to town.

  It looked like I wasn’t the only one who got a late start that morning.

  I decided to keep on heading towards the house on Trundle Road. I figured Sonny was making his way back to town to get to work, so I had some time to snoop around awhile before he got off for the day. Anyway, Old Man Slatterson wanted the names of the people who his son was hanging around with, and I wasn’t going to get that information by sitting in a parking lot.

  I drove to Trundle Road and turned down it. I immediately saw that the dark-blue Impala was still parked in front of the house. I turned around, went back to the main road and pulled off into the same dirt road that I had parked my car the night before. I settled in for another wait, hoping the owner of the Chevy would venture out. In an hour, I was rewarded for my efforts. A woman driving the Impala pulled out onto the road and turned towards town. I was right behind her.

  I kept my distance from her and followed her as she made her way to the local A&P supermarket. She hopped out of the car and went inside. I parked my car and after a minute went inside also. I grabbed a shopping basket, and as I walked around the store pretending to look for something, I got my first good look at the lady.

  She was no lady.

  As soon as I laid eyes on her, my brain screamed whore!

  She looked like she was in her late thirties at best. Her hair was dyed Elvis black. It was shoulder length and fluffed out to frame her face. She had big bedroom eyes coated with slivery eye gloss and mascara. She wore her make up on the heavy side and her lips were “bee stung” thick and painted ruby red. There was still beauty on that face, but it was rapidly fading. It was being replaced with a look of wanton, sexual depravity. Not a bad trade off if you ask
me.

  It was her body, or, to be more exact, how she packaged that body, that stole the show. She was of average height, but voluptuous. She had an hourglass figure, accentuated with large hips and breasts. The kicker was she had managed to squeeze this magnificent, slowly going to seed figure into clothes a couple of sizes too small for her.

  The effect was stunning.

  She had on low cut, red body shirt and had packed her large breasts into a bra that pushed her boobs in and up. The too tight straps were clearly cutting into her shoulders, and her bra cups were obviously soft because you could see her nipples poking out. Over this she wore a light jean jacket that was open and gave the general effect of framing her cleavage for the world to admire.

  She wore a pair of jeans that she’d poured her body into. Her large derriere flared out in the back, and you could see her panty lines on her butt. The front of her jeans were also skin tight, creating in what is known to connoisseurs of sluts like myself as the “camel toe” effect at her crotch. The jeans tapered down to her ankles. To cap this all off, she wore a pair of black, three-inch spike heeled shoes.

  This was a woman who knew what she was and made no excuses. When she would walk by, men would stare and women would fume. She was a slatternly piece of ass and reveled in it. My god, I’d have nailed her right there in the aisle of the A&P if she’d asked me. She had that kind of effect on men.

  She bought a few grocery items, paid for them and went back out to her car. She drove over to the local drugstore and went in. She bought a few items there, had a sandwich at the lunch counter, then left. As she came out of the store, she stopped, looked at her watch, and walked over to a payphone located just outside the main entrance. It was around one in the afternoon.

  I watched her from my car in an adjacent parking lot as she made the call. She dialed a number and after a few seconds began to talk to the party that answered on the other end. A few minutes into the conversation, I could tell things were heating up because she was starting to yell over the phone. She got increasingly animated as the conversation wore on and finally hung up the phone in an apparent huff. She got into her car and drove to the post office, where she apparently had a box rented in her name. She went in, opened her box, and retrieved a small, plain wrapped package that had been sent to her. She got back in the car and drove directly back to her home. I followed her there, then went back to Warhill and waited for Sonny to get off work.

  His actions were a repeat of the night before. He went back to his apartment right after work and at around seven o’clock he made his way back to his girlfriend’s house. I figured he’d be there for a while, if not overnight, so I quickly slipped back into town for a bite to eat and to call Ernie at home, to see if he got any info on Sonny’s lady friend.

  Ernie told me the car was registered to one Susan Ethel Bowman, P.O. Box 1301, Warhill, NC. She’d bought the car from a local dealer in Warhill some 10 months ago. I brought him up to speed on what I’d done that day, then decided to make my way back to the house to see if I could snoop around and maybe eavesdrop or get a picture or two without them knowing.

  I parked my car on the dirt road again and made my way back down the house through the woods, this time with camera in hand. I really didn’t know what I was going to do, maybe I was just hoping to get a picture of this Susan Bowman nude or something—she had that kind of effect on me.

  The bottom line was that I was winging it.

  In hindsight, I should have never left for dinner. It would have saved me a lot of trouble and time if I’d just stuck around there and watched how the evening began and unfolded. As it was, I joined things in mid-play and as a result, nearly got myself killed figuring out what the hell really happened in that small house that night and why.