The Nighttime is the Right Time

by Bill Crider

  "If I were lucky, you wouldn't be here," I said, thinking that it was really too bad. She was such a beautiful woman, and I'd been halfway in love with her. If she'd asked me nicely, I might have given her the money; after all, in a way, she'd helped me win it. Then again, maybe I wouldn't have.

  Andre didn't seem to care one way or the other. "Give me the bag," he said.

  "It won't do you any good," Cammie said. "There's no money. It's a check."

  "I'm afraid we don't believe that," Tony said. "You see, we've been waiting around for days for someone like you, Mike. Andre is a terrible gambler, and I am not much better, but I could tell this morning that you were different. Did I not say so, Andre?"

  Andre said nothing. He just stared at me with eyes like black glass.

  "I had to ask Andre to wait. He wanted to take you for a little ride this morning and relieve you of your stake, but I told him to wait. I told him I had faith in you. Is that not true, Andre?"

  Andre didn't answer the question. "Give me the bag," he told me, "or I will shoot your woman."

  Cammie was furious. With me, for having told Tony I had a system, and with Andre for calling her my woman.

  "He won't shoot," she said. "If he does, half the hotel will come running to this room."

  "That is true," Tony said.

  She got up, carrying the cat along with her, and walked to the bed. She picked up one of the pillows and took it to Andre.

  "Use this," she said.

  Andre muffled the pistol with the pillow. "Give me the bag."

  I tensed just a little.

  "And don't throw it," Andre said. "I'll shoot your woman."

  "Shoot me then, you son of a bitch," Cammie said, throwing her purse at him.

  When she did, I swung the bag as hard as I could at Tony. I hated to mess up her beautiful face, but I didn't hate it as much as I hated the thought of giving them any of my money.

  The bag hit Tony at just about the same time the pistol went off, and made just about as much noise.

  Even noisier than the pistol was the cat, which had jumped from Tony's arms and was yowling in the middle of the floor, its back arched, its tail puffed to three times its normal size. The air was filled with feathers from the pillow. I couldn't see Cammie. Maybe she had taken cover in the bathroom.

  Tony had fallen back across the bed. Her nose was bleeding, but I wasn't worried about her. I was worried about Andre, who had started toward me. He wouldn't need the pistol. He could break me in half with his bare hands if he wanted to.

  He might have done it, but he made one mistake. He didn't watch out for the cat. Maybe he didn't see her because of the feathers.

  Michelle didn't like him anyway, and when he ran into her, she fastened herself to his right leg, sinking her claws into his calf and trying to bite through his pants.

  He was hopping on his left leg and pointing the pistol at her when I let him have it with the bag. His face was one I didn't mind messing up.

  I connected solidly, and Andre staggered backward. Michelle released him and ran under the bed, which was just as well. When I hit Andre again, he wobbled against the French doors that led to a tiny balcony.

  The doors weren't locked, and they hardly slowed him down. Neither did the low railing outside. I have to give him credit. He didn't yell as he went over, or even on the way down. I heard him crash into some patio furniture.

  I went outside and looked down. Andre was sprawled atop the remains of a metal table. Our room was on the third floor, not so great a distance from the ground. Maybe he'd even survive.

  I heard a noise and turned back to the room. Tony was still on the bed, but now Cammie was sitting on top of her, straddling her waist. Tony was struggling to get up, but Cammie had pinned her arms and all she could do was thrash around.

  "Let her go," I said. "She won't bother us without Andre around."

  Cammie got off Tony, though I could tell she wanted to do a little more damage first. She stood beside the bed, disheveled and glowering. Her nose was no longer bleeding, however.

  "Are you all right?" I asked Tony.

  "You brogue my dose, you sud of a bitch."

  Cammie, either because she felt sorry for Tony or because she didn't like the sight blood, got her purse from the floor and dug around until she found a couple of tissues. She handed them to Tony.

  "Sorry about your nose," I said. "You were trying to rob me, after all. Is that what you and Andre do for a living? Rob innocent tourists?"

  She crumpled the tissues. "Iddocedt? Whod's iddocedt, you sud of a --"

  "Never mind," I said. "And you don't have to call us names. We're not going to turn you in."

  "We're not?" Cammie said.

  "We don't want to cause any trouble. We just want to go on our way and enjoy our money. And we have lots to enjoy."

  Tony sat up. She was wearing a white blouse, and there was a lot of blood on it. I wondered what the hotel staff would make of that, but I decided I didn't care.

  "I cad go?" she said.

  "Sure. Don't let us keep you. And you might want to check on your friend. I'm not sure, but I thought I saw him moving."

  She stalked across the room. When her hand touched the doorknob, Cammie said, "Don't forget your cat."

  "Andre has never liked Michelle," Tony said. "I do not think he will want to see her again."

  And then she was out the door and gone.

  Cammie took a deep breath. "You always talk too much to women," she said.

  "And you smoke too much. I'll try to quit talking too much to women if you'll try to stop smoking."

  I still had the bag in my hand. I walked over and put it on the chair. I thought it would be a good idea to put the money in the hotel safe now. I was no longer in the mood to play Scrooge McDuck.

  "Why all the sudden concern about my smoking?" Cammie asked.

  Michelle came halfway out from under the bed and stared at us. After a second or two she walked over and started rubbing against my leg and purring.

  "Second-hand smoke," I said, reaching down to stroke Michelle's head. She began to purr even louder. Cats liked me, all right. "It's bad for the cat."

  Raining Willie

  This story was published on my blog (http://billcrider.blogspot.com). It’s never appeared in any other form.

  Donna Jean Barlow wasn’t so sure she wanted to buy her engagement ring at a police auction. But Buddy Flick, her fiancé, insisted that it was the right thing to do.

  “They got all kinds of jewelry,” Buddy told her. “And we can get something I can afford.”

  “But isn’t it all stolen?”

  “Sure. That’s why it’ll be such a good deal.”

  “But shouldn’t the owners get it back.”

  “The cops’ve tried to find the owners. They never sell stuff before they try that. Don’t worry about it.”

  But Donna Jean did worry, right up until she saw the pink amethyst stone set in the white gold band. She couldn’t resist. So Buddy won the bidding, even though he had to go a little higher than the three hundred bucks he’d planned to spend. It looked so good on Donna Jean’s finger that he didn’t mind much about the extra expense, and it was a perfect fit, which meant he wouldn’t have to pay for getting it sized.

  Donna held her hand out and admired the ring. “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I wonder who owned it before me?”

  ~ * ~

  Seeing the amethyst ring on Karla Ercums’ finger, Ray Tabor was sure she’d stolen it, just like she’d stolen a few dozen other pieces of jewelry while working for the Kweens of Kleen Maid Service. But there was no record that it had been stolen, and Karla claimed that it had belonged to her grandmother.

  Maybe it had. Tabor didn’t really care. What mattered was that her arrest for the theft of the other stuff had given him a hold on Karla. She was willing to be a snitch if it would get her a lighter sentence.

  And Tabor needed snitches. He was the county’s one-man drug task
force, and he needed locals to feed him information and to make drug buys he could record. He was an outsider, and nobody would tell him anything, much less let him make a buy. Everybody in the county knew everybody else, and half of them were related. Even Tabor’s mullet, ripped jeans, and dirty t-shirt weren’t enough to get him inside a meth house.

  But Karla had lived in the county all her life. She could get in, and she would.

  “You know the drill,” Tabor said.

  Karla had faded blue eyes and mouth like a snapping turtle’s. She gave him a fractional nod. “I wear the wire, I make the buy. If he asks if I want a bump, I make an excuse.”

  They got in Tabor’s beat-up old Ford F-150 that had dried mud strung along the sides, and Karla tuned the radio to the local country station. She listened without saying a word as they drove to the house in the Angelina River bottoms, passing rutted red-dirt roads, dilapidated houses with chickens scratching in the front yards and an occasional pig rooting in what might once have been a garden, rusted-out cars up on concrete blocks, burned-out trailers, and pine trees so tall they blotted out the blue sky. Outside the truck, humidity hung in the early evening air like a wispy curtain.

  Fifty or sixty years ago, little clearings in the piney woods would have been full of moonshine stills. Thirty years ago, there’d have been bigger clearings for the marijuana plants.

  Now the clearings had grown up in brush. Meth was the thing now, and it was cooked just about anywhere, in houses, car trunks, motel rooms. It was profitable, addictive, and responsible for most of those burned-out trailers, not to mention a hell of a lot of burned-out lives. Tabor had seen whole families addicted, from the grandparents to the grade-schoolers.

  Ten years ago, even five, it had been different. Meth had been harder to make then, if no less dangerous. Now anybody could cook up a batch with ingredients bought or stolen at the local Wal-Mart and a formula from the Internet or a friend.

  Tabor stopped the truck about a hundred yards from the house. It was old, probably built during the Depression by somebody who’d hoped to make a fortune on ‘shine.

  “You be careful now,” Tabor said as Karla got out of the truck.

  He’d once gone into a meth house and been met by a guy with an AK-47. Most guards just carried shotguns.

  “Yeah,” Karla said. “Whatever.”

  The wire was working fine. Tabor watched Karla walk away. She didn’t seem concerned. He hoped she didn’t screw up.

  ~ * ~

  Karla didn’t give a shit if she screwed up. She hadn’t asked to be a snitch, and if they hadn’t caught her with the jewelry, she’d never have agreed. Hell, she hadn’t even stolen the stuff herself. Her boyfriend Royce was the thief. OK, she’d let him in the houses when she was working for Merry Maids, but he’d taken the jewelry. She hadn’t told the cops that. She didn’t mind narcing on the meth dealers, but she wasn’t going to rat out Royce, not even to stay out of jail.

  Royce wouldn’t have had to steal if he hadn’t been hooked on meth. He stashed the goods at her place, which turned out to be a mistake, but Karla couldn’t complain too much. When Royce was cranked up, he was like a stud horse on Viagra. Sometimes he’d want to go at it for five or six hours at a time, which Karla didn’t mind at all.

  Lately, though, Royce had been acting weird. He kept talking about people watching him. And not just people. He thought that raccoons and possums were watching him, too. You had to be pretty well fucked up if you thought possums were watching you. Maybe, Karla thought, it was time she went to Arkansas and spent a few months with her aunt who had the beauty parlor in Paragould. She was for damn sure not going to do any more snitching.

  Royce had told her about those meth houses and how they were guarded, so Karla had taken precautions. If anybody tried to start anything, she’d be ready for them. She had a little .22 automatic tucked in her purse. The dumb drug czar fucker hadn’t even thought to check to see if she was armed.

  Karla walked up on the front porch of the old house. The place smelled like it had been pissed on by a giant cat. Everybody in East Texas knew that smell. It meant that somebody was cooking meth inside right now.

  Karla didn’t care about that, either. She just wanted to go in, make her buy, and get out.

  Before she could knock, the front door opened. Not much, just a crack. Karla could see an eyeball, but that was all.

  “What the fuck do you want?”

  Right about then Karla knew that wearing the wire had been a mistake. She recognized the voice. It was her cousin Ervin. She’d thought Ervin was doing some logging, but maybe he’d been laid off.

  “It’s me,” Karla said. She wasn’t going to say Ervin’s name. “Karla.”

  “Karla? What the hell you doin’ here? You done started usin’?”

  Karla used the same excuse she’d planned to use if she’d been offered a free sample.

  “I’m picking up a little something for Royce. It’s his birthday tomorrow. We’re gonna party.”

  “Hell, gal, come on in, then.”

  The door swung open and Karla went inside. She found herself in a dimly lit parlor with black garbage bags duct-taped over the windows. The stink was a lot worse than it had been on the outside.

  “Hey, man,” Karla said to Ervin, who was holding a Glock nine in his right hand. Before he’d started using, Ervin had been blessed with a head of thick mousy hair, but now it was so thin that his scalp showed through. There was a bald patch on one side.

  Karla looked around the room. There was no furniture, and the floor was covered with fast-food sacks, junk mail, and old clothes. A big bald man in overalls a couple of sizes too small and no shirt stood beside the door, cradling a sawed-off shotgun. His arms and back were covered with black hair, and his dark eyes were blank as marbles.

  “You scared of the DEA?” Karla said, looking back at Ervin.

  Ervin hoisted the nine. He was tweaked, Karla could tell. “I ain’t scared of nobody, but we got to be careful. Never know when some Law will try to get in, or somebody’ll come in here with a wire on. You don’t have a wire on, do you, Karla?”

  “Bite me,” Karla said.

  Erwin grinned, revealing that he still had several teeth. They were so gray that they were almost black, but they were teeth.

  “I guess we better check you out,” he said. “ I always did wonder what you’d look like nekkid.”

  “Well, you ain’t about to find out,” a woman said as she came through the door from another room. “If anybody checks out this bitch’s tits, it’s gonna be me.”

  It was Sue Lynn Abbott. Karla had gone to high school with her. Sue Lynn had been voted most likely to bump uglies with some big TV lesbian whose name Karla couldn’t remember.

  Nobody’s gonna lay a hand on me,” Karla said. “I just want a little product and then I’m outta here.”

  Sue Lynn gave her the old up-and-down. Karla was looking good in her cut-off jeans and a little midriff top that showed off her belly-button ring. While she wouldn’t have had any objections to giving Sue Lynn a tumble back in the old days, she’d have to think twice now. Sue Lynn looked about sixty. Her eyes were sunk in dark sockets. She hadn’t washed her hair in about a month, and Karla figured she wasn’t too clean anywhere else, either.

  “That’s a nice ring,” Sue Lynn said, giving the amethyst the eye. “Where’d you get it?”

  “It was a present from a friend.”

  Sue Lynn stuck out her hand and wiggled her fingers in a gimme motion.

  Karla thought about it only a second before slipping off the ring and handing it over to Sue Lynn. Maybe she’d forget about the wire while she was trying on the ring.

  Ervin wasn’t going to forget, though.

  “You’re acting mighty damn’ funny, Karla. I know you don’t use, and you never bought anything for Royce before. I think you’re narcin’ us. Let’s check her out, Boo.”

  Sue Lynn didn’t say anything. She slipped the ring on her finger and smiled a
t the way it looked. Her teeth were as bad as Ervin’s.

  The big man pointed his shotgun at Karla. “Strip down, honey. Show us what you got.”

  ~ * ~

  Things were going sour. Tabor checked his own Glock and then called the sheriff’s office for some back-up. The dispatcher told him that a car was on the way but that it would take at least five minutes for it to get there. Tabor said he’d wait as long as he could and started listening in on Karla again. He wondered if she could stall them long enough for the deputy to get there.

  ~ * ~

  Karla had been naked in front of men before, and women too. It didn’t bother her. On the contrary, she liked showing off. But not when she was wearing a wire. She should never have let that son of a bitch Tabor talk her into wearing it and being a snitch. Hell, jail was better than getting killed by a goober like Ervin.

  Not that he was likely to kill her. It would be the big bastard with the shotgun who did that.

  So Karla pulled out her .22 and shot him.

  It surprised him, but it didn’t appear to hurt him much more than a mosquito would have. Karla didn’t stick around to check. She started running as soon as she pulled the trigger.

  She got through the doorway into the next room just before the shotgun roared and blew a hole in the wall. She heard the Glock pop-pop-popping, but she didn’t think Ervin could hit anything except maybe his own foot. She hoped he’d shoot his dick off.

  She banged through another door and found herself in the kitchen, where the cat-piss smell was almost overpowering. The table was covered with opened Sudafed packages, Drano cans, paint thinner, and other stuff Karla didn’t recognize. A couple of car batteries sat in the rust-stained sink.

  The room was hot. Some Pyrex bowls sat on the stovetop, and the oven was on.

  Sue Lynn came into the room, followed closely by Boo, whose shoulder was bleeding. He didn’t seem to care. Maybe he didn't even know.

  There was a door in the back wall, but Karla knew it would be locked. The big window by the table was covered with black plastic.

  Ervin stood in the door behind the shotgunner. He stuck his head around the big guy and said, “Shoot the bitch!”