by Jason Miller
“I don’t understand it, either.”
“And you think these Cleaveses were working with Dennis Reach?”
“Working for him,” I said. “Reach and J.T. Black were in business together, but Black was the muscle and the protection. Being a former sheriff’s deputy gave him another layer of protection, too. But then Black wanted out. Reach was left in the wind, so he hired the Cleaveses to do the nasty work.”
“And then they betrayed him?”
“That’s sure what it looks like. Question is, who did they go to work for? They don’t seem quite like criminal-mastermind types. And I don’t think Leonard Black would trust those psychos with a piece of his coal mine, not the way he talked about them the other day, anyway. There’s somebody else at play here.”
“This Carol Ray, then?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. But I must have hesitated a little too much.
“You ain’t got a thing for her, have you?”
“No,” I said. “Honestly. She’s pretty, but you’re beautiful. Plus, I’m afraid she might actually be evil.”
“She comes sniffing around here,” Peggy said, “she’ll be evil in a body cast.”
“Quite a cast of characters, isn’t it?”
Peggy thought about the cast of characters for a moment. Then she said, “You know what I think, Slim?”
“Tell me.”
“You know I’m not religious. I ain’t been inside a church since I was a teenage prom queen, and even then it was only because my daddy died. I ain’t never read the Bible, either, and as far as belief . . . well, I just don’t know what I believe.”
“It changes some as you get older.”
She nodded.
“That and plenty of other stuff, too,” she said. “Sometimes, though, I think the world really is fallen. You see things like this going on, people hurting the innocent for their own pleasure, they’re more than a crime or wrong. They’re a sin. And all the things we do to police ourselves—work like yours, even—well, it ain’t for nothing. Fallen we are, and fallen we remain.”
“It ain’t a very nice thought, is it?”
“No,” she said. “No, it is not.”
EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, MY LAWYER AND I SET OUT looking for Agent Carter. On the way, the boy told me about a recent road trip on which he’d stuffed himself with ephedrine and driven down to Florida in search of his abusive wife.
“Didn’t know she’d taken off,” I said.
“A few days ago. Not the first time.”
“You find her?”
He nodded, slid lower into the Lincoln’s bottomless leather buckets, sucked a toothpick.
“Eventually. She’d holed up with a Bible salesman. I mean, you dig that? A fucking Bible salesman.” He looked at me through the widescreen panels of his sunglasses. I nodded my head to let him know that I dug it.
“I didn’t even know they still had those,” I said.
“Me, neither. They do, though. So they’re at this hotel, right? Not even a hotel, a motel, like this skeevy roadside thing. Gross. Anyway, the motherfucker has her tied to a bed. Handcuffed, actually . . .”
“Oh, hell.”
“But like she wants to be handcuffed, you know?”
“I follow you.”
“And I go in to get her.”
“Armed, I take it?”
“You heard me say he’s a Bible salesman, right?”
Armed.
“Any fatalities?”
He swerved through a patch of traffic so fast I thought I’d spill my coffee. The kid was a test pilot inhabiting the body of a mere mortal.
“No, but get this: I step in the room, and there’s that moment when everything freezes, right? I’m looking at them, they’re looking at me, that kind of thing. They’re naked. I’m in my suit. My finest suit. It’s embarrassing for all of us. Stressful. So I want to break the tension. There’s a book on the nightstand.”
“A Bible.”
“What I thought. So I lower the Python . . .”
Again, hell.
“And, you know, bang, and the book just blows up and there are bits of pages floating around like it’s a parade or something. The dude—he’s in his boxers, right?—the dude pisses himself and runs like hell. Truth, man, I almost did, too. I’ve never fired the Python in an enclosed space like that.”
“Loud?” I asked.
“So loud I almost shit myself.” He dug around in his right ear with his pinkie as though in memory of it all. “So anyway, assface stuffs himself out this little window in the shitter. Had to break ribs getting through it. Sherea starts screaming, and there I am, standing with this gun, like I’ve made this big gesture or whatever. And then I look down at what’s left of the book.”
“Not a Bible.”
“Fucking Dianetics, man. I almost wasted a brother.”
The idea of pursuing that line of thought made my head hurt, so instead I asked, “Cops?”
“Don’t know. I got the hell out of there. Fuck it. I came home.”
“When did all this take place?”
“Few hours ago.”
“You dumb motherfucker!”
“What?”
“Pull your goddamn ass over.”
I drove us the rest of the way. The kid huddled in the passenger seat and just shook with it all.
AGENT CARTER WE FOUND IN A COFFEE-AND-DONUTS PLACE in Marion, tucked into a corner booth, reading the local paper. He laughed when he saw us standing over him.
“I can’t figure out which of you homos is supposed to be the sidekick. That Mabry?”
“My lawyer,” I said.
He actually looked sorry for me. He blew his nose into a paper napkin.
“I didn’t really think it was Mabry. Sit down.” I sat. My lawyer started to slide in beside me. Carter raised a palm. “Not him. He can sit over there.”
“You don’t like lawyers?”
“I don’t like lawyers. And I sure as hell don’t like whatever he is. Did he really go to law school?”
Before I could answer, a kid in an apron came over. I ordered a coffee. My lawyer sat huddled in a booth opposite with his knees pulled against his chest and his face between his knees. Carter elected to ignore him.
“Talk,” he said. “You’re ruining my breakfast, boy.”
I nodded.
“Carol Ray Reach,” I said.
“We talked about her already.”
“I think I know where she is.”
Carter put down his coffee and stared at me.
I said, “You’ve already got her, right? I mean, that’s really the only thing that makes sense. At first, I thought Reach was your inside man, but he wasn’t, was he? It was her.”
“And how’d you come to that brilliant conclusion?”
“Dunno. Leap of faith, maybe. I just can’t believe that she’d be mixed up in something like this.”
“As opposed to, say, moving guns and powder?”
“Even bad people have limits,” I said.
“I think we’re done here.”
“Goddamn it, Carter.”
A couple of old ladies raised their heads to look daggers at me. Carter chuckled. “They’re going to throw you out of here one day, boy,” he said.
“Who gives a shit? I’ve never even been in here.”
“I mean the state.”
I let that pass.
“Where is she?”
He shook his great mass of gray hair. My lawyer was asleep. His snoring filled the little room.
“You goddamn redneck idiot. You never really have figured this shit out, have you?”
“Didn’t have to,” I replied. “Harold Tipton knew all about it.”
He didn’t look shocked. He didn’t spit out his coffee. He didn’t jump out of his seat and spin on his head.
“You talked to Tipton?”
“I talked to whatever it is lives in Harold Tipton’s brain, yeah.”
Carter heaved a sigh. For a moment, he
looked almost human.
“There’s not much left, is there? The kid fried himself early. Not for that mother of his, he’d probably be wandering the street.”
He’d probably be dead, but I didn’t say so. Instead, I nodded for a coffee refill and reached for the cream and sugar.
“This game, the dogfight, it’s big business?”
“Turns out. One of those weird things in the online world. Caught on somehow. Word of mouth. Dumb luck. Who can say? Something about it appealed.”
“But they didn’t expect it to?”
Carter replied, “Not big enough to attract our attention, no.”
But it did. It had. According to Pimples, it was a trickle at first, the Black Games, as they were called. Later the trickle turned into a stream, then a rapids. Reach had set it up through the Dragons, and Carol Ray had gotten dragged into it. But she didn’t know just how deep Black had gotten himself and Reach into the shit with Tibbs and his men. Without her knowledge, Reach subcontracted out to the Cleaveses. When the Cleaveses turned out to be batshit crazy and started freelancing, Dennis withheld payment, touching off a pissing match that ended with him snatching Shelby Ann. And then someone popped him.
“Meanwhile,” Carter said, finishing my thought, “Tibbs and the Dragons have taken over the games. They’re pissed that the whole thing has attracted the law.”
“They put out a hit on Carol Ray?”
“How’d you know?”
“Something made you pull her out.”
“Yeah, on her. And on J.T. Black, who was more or less an innocent bystander.”
“First time for everything.”
Carter sipped his coffee. “Reach used Carol Ray to get the keys to the mine from Leonard Black. He had a thing for her from way back, and he’s half nuts these days anyway. So J.T. just happened to have the wrong last name. And of course, the sad sack of shit owned the gun used to kill Reach. The funny thing is, Reach himself owned the weapon. It was right there in his house the whole time. The killer just happened upon it. Imagine, he comes in, and his target is handcuffed and helpless, and there’s even a gun handy so he doesn’t have to burn his own piece. He must have thought he’d forgotten his own birthday.”
“Reach got the gun from Carol Ray?”
“Right. Carol Ray knew J.T. hocked it, probably to pay off his bar tab, and she collected it, maybe to piss him off, maybe hoping one day to pay back whatever bullshit he’d pulled on her by connecting him to something like this.”
“A little extreme,” I said.
“A little? Son, you’re tougher than you look,” Carter said. “Meanwhile, Tibbs put two and two together and came up with five. From his perspective, though, it’s no great loss. Black is in on it, Tibbs gets rid of a major pain in his ass. He’s not in on it, well, too bad, but . . .”
“Civilization will endure.”
“Yes.”
“Any idea where J.T.’s gone?”
Carter shook his head but answered with certainty, “Indianapolis.”
“Terrible,” I said. “So what now?”
Carter shrugged. “Nothing. We sit on Carol Ray while she still has some value as an intelligence asset. She’s not virgin-clean, but she did us a good turn. She’ll walk. The Black fight will be taken down. Maybe it’ll be moved somewhere else, maybe not. Whichever it is, it won’t resurface for a while.”
“You’ll arrest Tibbs?”
That took him a while. I already knew the answer, but for some reason making him say it seemed important. He sucked a tooth and frowned. He said, “We won’t. Not yet.”
“He didn’t get his fingerprints on anything?”
“He did not. There are a few minor players who might drop, but . . .”
Yeah. But . . .
“You’ll pick up Harold Tipton?”
“Him. One or two others. And the Cleaveses, if we can find them.”
“And whoever killed Reach walks away clean.”
It wasn’t a question, but he answered it with his eyes anyway.
“Frankly, he’s not worth burning the resources on.”
“That sucks.”
“These are the workings of the universe, Slim.”
“So it’s over?”
“All but the screaming of a thousand attorneys.”
“And the bad guys win.”
“No, but they abide. So do we.”
“I’m leaving,” I said.
“So soon?”
“Because I’m starting to like you.”
“You ruined my coffee,” he said simply.
“And you’re a sonofabitch.”
We shook hands on it. I woke my lawyer.
“I wasn’t sleeping,” he said. He rubbed a hand through his greasy hair.
“You were snoring,” I replied.
He laughed in relief. “Thank God, man. I thought reality had gone to fucking shit.”
It had. But pointing it out seemed uncharitable. The kid had enough problems.
IT WAS NEARLY NOON BY THE TIME WE CRUISED PAST DEVIL’S Kitchen and the wildlife preserve. We took the back way, the Lincoln screaming over the gravel roads, crunching the limestone chunks to powder. My lawyer insisted on driving, and I was too worn out from my talk with Carter to object. At least he kept it under eighty. Near Watertown, I called Jeep Mabry.
“Sheldon,” I said. “Kick him.”
“Done and done, boy.”
“Kick him loose.”
There was a long and disappointed silence. At last, Jeep growled, “Make a deal.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll tie him up in a sack, drop him at police headquarters.”
“Wince?”
Jeep grunted no.
“Lindley?”
Jeep grunted yes.
“Okay. Slow down some before you drop him?”
“No promises.”
He broke the line. Sheldon Cleaves was in for a rough ride. I rang Anci.
“I think it’s pretty much over,” I said.
“Pretty much?”
“Least ways, we can go home again. Most of the bad men have gone to ground.”
“That’s good news, anyway. Still . . .”
“Yeah, I know. Still.”
There was a burst of garble. Our connection broke up for a moment.
“Where are you?” she asked through it. “I can barely hear you.”
“Near the preserve. The signal’s bad out here, so if I lose you, that’s why.”
Another break in the connection, this time longer.
When it came back, I heard Anci’s voice say, “. . . Miss Shotguns & Shakes?”
“Carol Ray? Well, it turns out she’s one of the good guys. Pretty good, anyway.”
“Wonders never cease. Maybe I’m not cut out for mystery solving, after all.”
“What? Why not?”
“Why not? I talked you into taking the case in the first place. I thought the dog was a car. I thought Miss Shotguns & Shakes was the culprit. And the only clue I thought I’d found led me to Lew and Eun Hee Mandamus.”
“What was that last thing?”
Another interruption in the connection.
“. . . Wichelle. I knew I’d seen the name somewhere before.”
“Bran-Wichelle?”
“. . . can barely hear . . . I said Bran-Wichelle . . . metal fabricators. It was the name stamped on Lew’s new security fence. I reckon I . . .”
The call dropped. I punched some buttons, hoping to bring it back up, but the signal was gone. I looked at my lawyer.
I said, “We have to get back to civilization. Fast.”
“We can do fast.”
He flattened the pedal. The Lincoln jumped like a gazelle. We’d just rounded onto a long and lonely gravel road when we blew a flat. It was 11:45 A.M.
“Hell,” the boy said. He roared to a dusty stop, flattened his hands against the steering wheel in little slaps. “No spare, either.”
Shit.
“Call a tow,�
�� I suggested.
“No phone signal, remember?”
Double shit.
He stepped out of the car, intent on inspecting the damage, I guess. I climbed out on my side, saw him walk with a crooked head toward the rear driver’s side tire. A puzzled look crossed his face. He uncocked his head, opened his mouth to say something to me.
The first shot spun him around in a full circle as a little blur of blood blossomed from his left shoulder. The second shot knocked him over backward, leaving his big sunglasses floating an instant in the air. I hit the deck just as a spray of bullets spattered the Lincoln, pocking the trunk and blasting out the rear windshield. Someone was screaming. It took a moment to realize it was me.
There wasn’t a shooter in sight, but the shadows of the tall growth and trees by the lake could hide a small army of snipers. I might never have seen the motherfucker if he hadn’t set his dogs on me.
But he did, two of them, great burly pit bulls with necks of furiously knotted muscle and eyes ablaze with the full force of a carefully instructed hate. Right then, I knew I was going to die. And then I wanted to. Trailing the dogs was A. Evan Cleaves. And walking calmly round the bend in the road behind A. Evan, rifle in hand, was my old friend Lew Mandamus.
20.
LITTLE EGYPT. THE SHAWNEE. A PLACE NEAR THE SIMPSON Barrens.
I rehearsed my location, trying to bring myself to my senses. I needn’t have bothered. The first dog jolted me back into the real world. It hit me so hard with its cinder-block skull that I doubled over and went back-of-the-head-first into the Lincoln’s side-view mirror, knocking it off its post. The beast snarled from somewhere deep inside its bony chest, latched onto my right arm, and tore away a chunk of cotton and flesh. The second dog leapt atop the first and made for my throat. Lew called them off. If he hadn’t, I’d have died right then on the roadside. The dogs broke away and trotted back to their master. Lew patted them on the blocky skull before returning his attention to me.
“Slim.” We might have been passing each other in the grocery store.
I tried to say “Lew” back, but all that came up was a gob of blood and snot. I rolled onto my elbows and pried myself free of the road. Bits of limestone dug deeply into my palms. A. Evan chuckled and shook his funny-looking head.
