Not for Nothing

by Stephen Graham Jones

  In reply, she opens her purse, pulls out a Polaroid.

  It’s a sister to the one Fin directed you to: the insurance form, blurry, matted against a bedspread, is supposed to prove her story—that the Polaroids were insurance for the insurance scam.

  “So,” you say, studying the Polaroid for longer than you need to—is there a way to tell one from another, by camera, by cartridge?—“so you’re here to—to assure me that Fin’s in the right place, is that it?”

  She shakes her head no.

  You lower the Polaroid.

  “What then?” you say, your face turned half away from whatever answer she’s got.

  “I want to hire you again,” she says.

  You have to smile, then can’t stop. Finally manage to shake your head no. Thanks, but no, no. You tap the yearbook in front of you. “Already got a hot case.”

  “Working for Fin?”

  “For Thomas Howard,” you say.

  She has to focus her eyes deep inside to place him. “Thomas?”

  “I’m supposed to find his dad.”

  Gwen stares at you like you’re not making any sense, takes the yearbook, doesn’t even spin it around, just flips through it upside down, to the senior portraits, the H’s: Howard, Tom.

  “Sherilita’s ex?” you say.

  “You don’t know him?”

  “Tom Howard?”

  “He’s from—I don’t know. Lamesa? Tahoka? Maybe it was after you left.”

  “Tom,” you say.

  “Sherilita’s dad’s land?”

  You nod, remember. The stock tank the Lawler kid drowned in was at the corner of one of Sherilita’s dad’s pastures. “He ran cattle, though.”

  “It’s cotton now,” Gwen says. “Tom started poisoning the mesquites before Mr. Jamison was even in the ground. It’s his now, I guess. I don’t know. You should go see him, though. Sure you two’d get along great. He’s never there when you need him either.”

  “That’s kind of what this is about.”

  “Case solved, then. Now you can take mine.”

  “I don’t—” you start, but then her purse is open again. The bank notes she had that first day in the storage unit are in the form of a cashier’s check now. One-hundred and twenty-five thousand. She turns it over, signs it, and pushes it at you with her palm, like she doesn’t want to leave fingerprints, doesn’t want to be associated with the blood money.

  You stare at it, stare at it, then say just what does she need here?

  She shakes her head, her eyes fixed on you. Disappointed, maybe. Shrug it off. One-hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. A cool eighth of a million.

  “Find Dan,” she says.

  “Dan?” you say.

  “My son?”

  “I know—”

  “He’s didn’t even come to the funeral. I haven’t seen him in—” and then she starts crying, has to put her sunglasses back on.

  “Dan,” you say again.

  Gwen has to look away, tighten her lips.

  One-hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars, you say inside and reach for it.

  Gwen’s hand beats you by little enough that your skin rubs hers.

  On the edge of the table, she rips the check in two, gives half to you.

  “It was made out to you anyway,” you say.

  “Just find him,” she says, “please. We’ll cash it together. He’s—he’s all I have left of Rory. I have to make it all up to him.”

  It chokes her up too much again and she hustles out, leaving you not with sixty-two thousand and five hundred dollars, but nothing, a worthless piece of paper.

  It’s the story of your life.

  17.

  IT DOESN’T TAKE an ex-homicide detective/unlicensed private investigator to guess that Thomas and Dan are together out at Rory’s mother’s old house with a few cases of beer, a growing pile of cans, maybe a .22 to plink them with. What you do have to be a professional to figure out is that maybe, just maybe, Jim Martindale was Rory Gates in his best Hank Jr. getup, playing you in some elaborate game that backfired, got him shot in the face with a shotgun. By Fin, who’s playing you now, trying to get you to set Gwen up?

  Maybe. Except you can’t trust Gwen, either.

  What you want to do is lock yourself into a storage unit with a cooler, let all this play itself out without you. But then Aardvark Custom Economy Storage is all the way across 137, on one of the streets Jimmy Bones is trolling up and down.

  If he bailed Arnot King out, too, then he has the little shotgun that was probably used on Rory, is looking to make a trade that involves the cartridge of film you can only get back by springing Fin.

  You sit in the library of your old high school and think about it all until you can’t think anymore, then decide to take out some insurance yourself. Madelyn lets you use the phone in the nurse’s office. You call Stanton PD, ask for Toby Garrett’s baby brother.

  “You mean David?” the dispatcher says back.

  Four minutes later, his voice uneven through the static, Toby Garrett’s baby brother answers.

  “It’s me,” you tell him.

  “Still at the high school?”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Forgot, yeah. What can I do you for, Mr. Bruiseman?”

  “I’d like to report a reckless driver. Maybe he’s drunk. I just saw him bouncing off the yellow line on Main.”

  “From the high school you saw this?”

  “That’s how bad he’s driving.”

  “Jet-black Lincoln, just out of impound?”

  “I saw him coming back from the liquor store.”

  “You’d sign an affidavit about this.”

  “In blood.”

  “And this isn’t just to get me bogged down in paperwork?”

  “Think of the revenue for a DUI,” you tell him. “I know—this driver, he keeps his right hand on the neck of his beer at all times. Calls it safety first.”

  “So you saw an open container?”

  You stare at the wall. “It was like he was showing it off, officer.”

  Toby Garrett’s baby brother laughs about this. “No disrespect, but isn’t this like the pot calling the kettle drunk?”

  You close your eyes, give him that. “I’ll wash her car too, you want.”

  His mother-in-law. The one who’s now getting her lawn mowed for free.

  “She has two,” he says.

  “Lawns or cars?”

  “Cars.”

  “Both, then,” you say. “I just don’t want any—I’d feel bad if he hit some kid because I didn’t report him, y’know?”

  “Yeah,” Toby Garrett’s baby brother says. “Got to keep the streets clean, I suppose.”

  “I’ll meet you later,” you tell him. “Explain some stuff. Town & Country. Say, midnight?”

  “Midnight,” he says back, and breaks the connection.

  “That all?” Madelyn says from the door.

  You hang up, don’t look back to her. “Just doing my duty,” you say. “Responsible citizen, all that.”

  “Yes,” Madelyn says. “I remember that about you. So socially conscious. What was your government teacher’s name again?”

  “Coach Baker,” you say with a smile, like that explains everything. Head still down—only way you know to walk these halls—you ease through the door past her, lift your hand in thanks.

  “Be careful,” she says after you.

  Round your shoulders forward. Don’t look back.

  What you tell Sherilita through the drive-through, from the seat of the riding lawnmower, is that you need to borrow her car.

  She smiles through the screen, looks behind you to 137.

  You follow, sure that what she’s going to be looking at are the headlights of the Lincoln you’ve been watching for from the carwash all afternoon.

  It’s nothing, though. Just dusk falling again, pulling night down over Stanton.

  “Chopped or sliced?” she says.

  “J
ust for a few hours,” you tell her, nodding to her Sunfire parked in what was the shade.

  She passes a chopped beef sandwich through to you. You take it.

  “What?” she says. “That thing doesn’t have headlights?”

  Your lawnmower.

  You hook one leg over the steering wheel like it’s a saddle horn, bite into the sandwich. “Tea?”

  She passes a cup over. “Why?”

  “The car?”

  “Yes, Nick. My car.”

  “Because I think I know where Thomas is.”

  This tightens the muscles around her mouth. She gives you her keys, all of them, all at once.

  You chew, thank her with your eyes. “That gentlemen from earlier. Was he alone?”

  “Your friend from Monahans was with him,” she says. “Thought you knew.”

  You nod like that’s that. You have approximately until Jimmy Bones finds you to solve this case enough that it springs Fin. Whether he did it or not. Otherwise, no film. After that, it’s hazy, is either Jimmy Bones, you, and the silhouette of a pipe rising and falling, or Jimmy Bones, presenting the murder weapon with your prints on it to Judge Harkness. That way she’ll owe him one, at least.

  “Midnight,” you say to Sherilita, rattling the keys at face-level.

  The last thing she says is to bring him back, Nicholas.

  You swallow, ease the lawnmower back to Aardvark Custom Economy Storage unit, chain it up, plug it in. Don’t notice Betsy Simms’ horse trailer is gone until you have your back to the space it had been in.

  It’s definitely gone, though.

  The reason you’re sure is that something else is there now, crunching the gravel.

  “Reach for the sky,” a voice says.

  Arnot King. He steps forward, pulls the toothpick from his mouth, the shadows around him dancing.

  “You smell like pesticide,” you tell him.

  “Yeah, well,” he says, throwing the toothpick down, stepping on it like a cigarette, “company I’ve been keeping, I guess.”

  The toxic man asleep on the cot in the drunk tank.

  “He’s still there?” you say.

  “Man-shaped roach trap,” Arnot King says. “All the rage at your better detainment facilities.”

  “And the distinguished Mr. Brazos?”

  “His second distinguished DUI. An anonymous tip, I think. CrimeWatchers, the officer said.”

  “The Town Car?”

  “At your father’s house.”

  “You?”

  He shrugs. “I’m your lawyer, man. Where you go, I go.”

  “Until you make bail for Jimmy.”

  “Seven in the a.m.”

  “It’s a one-seater,” you say, about the lawnmower.

  Arnot King smiles. “I’ll run behind.”

  “I’m on a different case now.”

  He hooks his head to the side, asks what this town did before you showed up?

  You’d kind of been wondering that yourself.

  Sherilita’s Sunfire is turquoise with faded pink pinstripes, the exact opposite of Gwen’s car. Because the plan had been to go out to Tom Howard’s place—where Sherilita grew up, north and west of town, if you’re remembering right—you head east instead, towards the dump. When Arnot King asks why, you say you were lying about that different case. That you’re still trying to get that film back for Jimmy Bones.

  “It’s out here?” Arnot King asks, peering into the darkness, already not believing you.

  “The truck,” you say. “Guy tailing us the other night? I know where he was going, I think.”

  “Scene of the crime,” Arnot King says.

  You nod what you hope is a cop-nod of sorts, start practicing the surprise it’s going to be to just find a couple of underage drinkers at the old house instead. Maybe confiscate their beer in the name of law-and-order then back the rear tire of Sherilita’s car over a sharp brown bottle.

  It should keep you busy until midnight, maybe. Keep Arnot King from your discussion with Tom Howard, which needs to be private. That still leaves seven hours, though.

  “Where’s the shotgun?” you say, when it’s the only thing left to say.

  “Safe,” Arnot King says. Just that.

  You pull onto the first caliche road after the dump-sign and turn the Sunfire’s headlights off, like this is a stealth mission. Like there’s really a killer out there in the darkness ahead of you.

  Arnot King places both hands on the cracked dashboard. “You can see?”

  “Shh,” you say, and drive slower than you need to.

  The story Arnot King tells you for the next few minutes is the chicken and the egg one. How it’s funny to throw eggs from a moving car, let them splat against a speed limit sign or whatever. From this more than anything, you can tell he’s really from Monahans, where the sand hills stretch for miles and miles.

  “Fun if you’re not hungry,” you say.

  “No,” he says, using both his hands to talk, “listen,” and then pushes through to what he was really saying: that, while maybe it’s funny to throw eggs at signs on the side of the road, let those eggs incubate a few days instead, hatch, then sling a handful of baby chicks at a yield sign at sixty miles per hour, and bam, you’re a stone cold killer, an outlaw, a bad man, living in a world of hurt.

  “If anybody sees,” you add.

  “They do,” Arnot King says, and smiles, narrows his eyes out to as far as the Sunfire’s headlights are reaching. “They always see, man. That’s what I’m saying.”

  “That you—you threw those baby chickens?”

  “Timing,” Arnot King says. “Aren’t you listening? Five days earlier, and it’s just eggs, just nothing.”

  You give him that for whatever it’s worth and click the headlights up for the next landfill sign. For just a second, before the caliche you’ve raised drifts in and becomes a nimbus in the Sunfire’s brights, it’s there, pointing you on.

  “Sure it’s out here?” Arnot King says.

  “Gotta be somewhere,” you say back, and lower the lights back down, go with just the parking lights now.

  Arnot King shrugs, looks out his window. “You don’t get it, man.”

  “About your chickens?”

  “About timing,” Arnot King says. “When you called that day, when you were locked up. I was already outside the door, yeah? I mean, if I would have left ten seconds earlier, or if you’d have waited one minute to call—”

  “Then none of this would be happening.”

  Arnot King shakes his head no. “It still would be, I think. I just wouldn’t be involved, man.”

  “But you work for Jimmy. And Jimmy wants those pictures.”

  “I didn’t even know who you were until I went by to borrow a car. Honest. I was just coming over—”

  “For the tape I didn’t have.”

  He nods, and you drive, think about it all. “Apology accepted.”

  Arnot King turns to you in wonder but you just smile, lift your chin to the darkness ahead of you, a second-story window glowing down to black.

  “He saw us,” you say.

  “What?” Arnot King says again, turning forward just as you accelerate, and you don’t tell him what just happened: with the Sunfire’s parking lights on, Thomas would recognize his mother’s car.

  Less than half a minute later, twin brake lights flare in the front yard of the old Gates house—a truck with an automatic transmission, dropping down into gear—and then the truck starts to move steadily away.

  You pull the Sunfire’s headlights all the way on and lean forward over the small, plastic wheel. When you cross by the old house after the truck, driving straight into its dust plume, you try to hit as many bottles as you can. The second way you know Arnot King is from Monahans is that, after Sherilita’s front tire pops, skidding the Sunfire towards the living room of the old house, he already has his arms locked against the dashboard, his teeth set, both eyes wide open.

  18.

  WHAT YOU
WANT TO BE the tip of an angel’s finger coming down to touch you on the back of the head turns out to be the runny yellow dome light that you thought was broke. It flickers on moments after the Sunfire’s front bumper plinks into the railing of the porch, a layer of moths drifting up from the contact. Not the afterlife, you tell yourself, watching them rise into the night sky. Even if it should be. But at least the front of the house hasn’t fallen down on top of you. Yet.

  Arnot King massages his knee. He’s grinning thin, happy just to be alive.

  The moment he opens his door, the dome light fades out, doesn’t come back.

  Yes, this too was stupid. You pop the trunk, rummage through Sherilita’s junk for the spare.

  Soon enough Arnot King is there with you, leaning down so that his fingers, if the trunk were to fall, would be gone.

  “Learn that at the academy?” he says, moving back and forth with his shoulders to show he’s talking about the stunt-driving.

  “Glad you enjoyed it,” you tell him, your arm suddenly slipping down below the floor of the trunk, to the factory tools.

  “What if that had really been him, though?” Arnot King says, same tone, same voice, everything.

  You pull the toy jack out, make no eye contact with him. “What do you mean?”

  He laughs, looks up to the old house the Sunfire’s front bumper is resting against. “The truck that followed us the other night,” he says. “It was a Ford. I used to have one like it.”

  You roll the spare out, aim it for a beer bottle by your foot. It hits the bottle, just pushes it deeper into the ground.

  “Oh well.” Arnot King rolls another bottle over with the toe of his leather shoe. “Try again?”

  What he’s saying about the Ford is what you didn’t expect him to catch: the tail lights of the truck that just pulled away were too low, too square. From the right decade maybe, but still, Chevrolet. Thomas’s truck.

  “If it had been it,” you say, picking your words, “then we’d still be here, I guess. Rocket science.”

  Arnot King just watches you, disappointed, then tears himself away, looks up to the second floor window. “Scene of the crime,” he says. The next time you look up, he’s gone. Either peeing or in the house. Maybe both.

  You stare out across the pastures, down the dirt road Thomas took out of here.