by Alan Lee
“Well.” I shrugged modestly. “Bigger than Wayne’s, anyway.”
Again, Clay and Big Will thought this was a riot. Fat Susie chuckled in the corner.
Duane adjusted in his seat and crossed his legs. “Stay alive, August. Don’t stick your fucking head into Marcus’s business, like with Silva and Sanders.”
“Ah, there’s the rub,” I said. “We’re on opposite sides of this thing. I’m a Do-Gooder. You guys are…Do-No-Gooders.”
“You don’t want to get on the wrong side of me, August,” Duane said.
“I am full of fright and dismay.”
He clucked his tongue a few times, softly of course, and shook his head. “And I got a feeling most guys don’t want to get the wrong side of you.”
Big Will said, “Worse than that. Sheriff Tits got the hots for him.” He was staring at his chips with disinterest, his cheek resting on his hand, elbow on the table. “And Manny the spic Robin Hood be a pain in the ass, too. Be better we all make nice. Else be a big damn mess.”
“Jesus, August.” Calvin Summers chuckled and he finished his drink. “I hired you to find my informant. Didn’t know I was stepping into a hornet’s nest.”
“Hornet’s nest comes free of charge,” I said.
But he was right. This had turned into a mess.
Ronnie was worth it.
Chapter Eleven
Against my better judgement I thought about Ronnie and her repugnant fiancé for an hour before falling asleep. The next morning I went jogging with Kix in his stroller and listened to loud music and afterwards I took a cold shower and got ready for my date.
At noon, I followed Kristin Payne’s texted directions to her classroom on Roanoke College’s campus. One of those small instructional auditoriums with stacked seating to the back. She was chatting with two underclassmen, boys clearly enamored with her tight button-up shirt and the black skirt which didn’t reach her knees. She stood barefoot, high heels tossed in the corner. On the professor scale of attraction, starting at Madeline Albright and going up to ten, she was probably an eleven. Which I would only notice if I objectified women, which I didn’t. I sat in her swivel chair near the board and spun in a circle.
As promised, she’d brought hamburgers and fries, still steaming in the bag. More likely she’d sent an undergrad to fetch them.
She ushered the two amorous boys out. Closed the door. Locked it.
“Is there a website or app to rate your professor?” I asked. “Like a hot-or-not for teachers?”
“Kinda,” she said. She closed the blinds on the door’s window, sealing us in. “I do very well on those sites.”
“I imagine. I looked in all the doors down the hall. You’re lapping the field. Want to eat?”
“Yes,” she said. “But first.”
It happened quickly. She tugged at my belt. I summoned willpower, any reason to resist, and came up empty. Never let yourself get too lonely, but I had. She had my pants down. Her skirt bunched up around her waist. She wore nothing underneath.
She faced me, straddled me, lowered onto my lap, and the swivel chair rocked backwards ten degrees. Her breath quickened.
“Sorry for sexually assaulting you,” she said, a deep husky sigh. “But I’ve been thinking about this for days.”
She unbuttoned her white shirt all the way down. Raised and crossed her wrists over her head. Closed her eyes.
I knew that later I would have mixed emotions.
At the moment, however, higher thought didn’t feel possible. Base reptilian instincts had taken over.
* * *
Half an hour later I ate lunch in a different chair, feeling a little off-kilter as though recovering from an out-of-body experience.
She sat next to me, her feet crossed and resting on my thigh. Her white shirt was held in place, only just, by a single button.
“Sex and burgers,” she said. “Like we’re prehistoric cave dwellers.”
“I’m going to put that in your reviews on the professor rating website,” I said.
“Going to mention my other skills?”
“I’ll include that you’re thoroughly groomed. And that your dead lift is impressive.”
“Damn right it is.” She grinned. “Haven’t you always wanted to bang a professor?”
“We went to college together. Do you not remember them? I am aghast at the thought.”
“None of them had my quads, though.”
“Dr. Williams might have. But he was irritable.”
She laughed.
I tried to shake off the drunken feeling.
“How’s your burger?” she asked.
“You’re right. Sex and burgers go hand in hand somehow.”
“You can grill for me next time, afterwards. I like bacon mixed in with my beef,” she said. She had a habit of talking around bites of food, as though her aggression spilled into her dining.
“All our sexual encounters seem to happen inside college facilities. No grills here.”
“Shame. Are you working on anything interesting now?”
“Yeah. A big family mess which gets messier the further I go,” I said.
“Tell me about it. I have a degree in psychology, you know.”
“The girl hired me, she’s verbally abused by her father. Maybe in other ways too. She’s an adult. Smart. Strong. But allows herself to be bullied by her old man. I’m caught in the middle.”
“Oof. That’s tough. You should probably keep your yap shut about it while you’re in her employ. The last thing she needs is a doofus like you judging her.”
“Doing my best. And you need your tuition back, if years of clinical training taught you I’m a doofus.”
“Your client probably feels as though she has no right to resist. Kids bestow upon parents the essence of ‘rightness.’ Parents are right and good, and so what they do therefore is right and good. It carries over into adulthood. Plus, how many grown-ups do you know who have completely cast aside their parents? It’s hard. The guilt would be brutal.”
“But possibly worth it.”
“That’s easy for us to say, as outside observers. Girls are weird, Mack. I had functional and affectionate parents and I still have issues. Keep your professional and personal life separate, my advice,” she said.
“Speaking of professional life, I need to go spy on people.”
“I’ll give you a tour of the campus before you go. We can hold hands and listen to the birds, like a real couple.”
“Sounds great.”
She stood and smoothed her skirt and buttoned the rest of her shirt.
“No,” she said. “No. That’s not fair. I molested you, not the other way round, and I was feeling sentimental about it. But I can separate the physical from the emotional. I shouldn’t have asked for more. You don’t need to walk with me.”
“Not like it’d be a chore, walking with a pretty girl.”
“No. Just go. But make sure you ask me out again.”
“For dinner. I’ll cook for you.”
“Bingo, buster. And make it snappy.”
Chapter Twelve
I was in luck. Wayne was still at home at one in the afternoon. Lazy bastard.
He lived in a one-story brick ranch set awkwardly on the side of a hill and overhung with towering trees and dangling dormant kudzu. His personal bend in the road afforded no view of neighbors, limiting my stakeout location potential, so I parked a quarter mile down the road. If he went to the dairy farm or into town, I’d see it.
I’d recently run into Adam Moseley, a local attorney and guardian ad litem and Navy JAG, and he’d recommended a book called Hillbilly Elegy for understanding the parts of Franklin County which baffled me — the parts which were poor and proud of it. A significant chunk of the population defiantly refused progress and spat in the face of success. Poverty was the family tradition. To paraphrase the author, they encouraged social decay instead of fighting against it.
And I didn’t get it.
So I read. And read.
And grew despondent, thinking about the kids growing up in houses with decomposed floors and the parents who were pleased with the rot. Generational brokenness. Most of Franklin County wasn’t this way; most folk were hard-working and prosperous and a credit to the county. But “Redneck Appalachia” had a strong presence here, a stone around society’s neck, and it wasn’t getting better.
As was usually the way, the problems went deeper than sheer stupidity and had a lot to do with the decline of working-class jobs. Being an outsider, the book informed me, meant that my pious and self-righteous opinions would fall on deaf ears was I stupid enough to expresse my “enlightened” point of view.
After two hours of reading I decided I should keep my mouth shut about their backwards ways.
And also about Ronnie’s familial trauma. I couldn’t stop thinking about her and Calvin’s verbal abuse. But. I was an outsider, not family, and it wasn’t my place to intervene. That was Kristin’s counsel and it was solid advice.
Maybe.
Or maybe not. Kristin struck me as the kind of girl who was more contrived than levelheaded. She ran on instinct and impulse and aggression.
I’d already forgotten about our pre-lunch tryst — my first such encounter in over two years. It’d been hot. It made for a titillating memory. Yet, I felt no grand satisfaction, no slaking of corporeal desire. I was unassuaged.
Shouldn’t I be more…something? Content? Gratified? But I wasn’t. Which meant what?
That the encounter didn’t mean anything.
That it was misguided.
That it was with the wrong girl.
And, per usual, that it was going to end badly.
Or maybe, August, maybe you should just enjoy having sex with the hot girl. What kinda lousy private detective are you? Marlowe would be ashamed.
No. It was going to end badly. Professional hunch.
Also, what kind of ostentatious prick thinks in terms like “ersatz succor”? I needed to read less and watch Netflix more, less I grow sick of my own pretentiousness.
Wayne drove past at three. Had I not seen his truck I’d have detected him via his ludicrous muffler. Clearly overcompensating for a slight by mother nature and father Cross. I gave him a lead and pursued. He drove deep into Callaway, where my shiny Honda Accord looked as natural and as native as a purple unicorn. Ridden by Katy Perry. I hung back but if he was looking for a tail then he’d spot me easily. Nothing to be done.
He pulled onto an unmarked dirt road off Route 752. Again I parked at a distance and lay in wait. I located the plot of land on my phone’s map and with my considerable skills of detection I was able to discern exactly nothing. Whatever it was back there, it’d been hidden effectively within a canopy of foliage.
Thirty minutes later he emerged. His truck bed brimmed with haystacks tied down.
Haystacks?
I was perplexed.
But I gave chase, following the devious farmer on his clandestine mission to feed wicked cows. Good thing I was wasting my afternoon, following him instead of playing with my son.
Our path ran north and east toward Rocky Mount and he pulled into Happy Hills, the trailer park from hell. I parked on the highway half a mile past and jogged back in time to witness Wayne and Scott unloading supplies (they’d been hidden in the haystacks, obviously) and carrying them into a trailer, which was most likely used for storage.
“Ah hah,” I said. I was concealed in the tree line and didn’t have binoculars so I couldn’t be sure but I assumed the supplies hidden in the hay were jugs of moonshine. I’d already known Wayne was providing Happy Hills with “shine,” which meant I’d learnt nothing of note, but saying “Ah hah” made me feel better.
However! I’d located another of Calvin Summer’s moonshine stills. Ah hah.
I returned to my Accord and waited. Soon Wayne howled past and we motored out of Rocky Mount.
I turned on the radio to drown out his muffler. Didn’t work.
He pulled into another trailer park. This was Calvin Summer’s third, the one I hadn’t visited yet, called Glade Hill Acres. A grassy plot dotted with pine trees and single-wides. The intersecting roads were broken pavement. No dogs. No rusted-out cars. Glade Hill Acres fell somewhere between the upper-middle class Ferrum’s Fields and the decrepit Happy Hills. Wayne parked at a unit near the back and began to unload. He was joined by a man who half-jogged and half-limped from a nearby unit. They finished and Wayne left, roaring away in his Tonka. He never glanced my way, the adenoidal chunk of flannel.
I eased my Accord into Glade Hill Acres and parked at the storage trailer. A handful of tenants stood at their screen doors and watched. I consulted the list of names Ronnie had provided and I got out.
The storage trailer was accessed by a wooden ramp instead of stairs. The windows were shut and boarded. The door had two locks and an alarm system. Wayne wasn’t taking chances.
I walked around the unit and saw no simple way in.
“‘Scuse me!”
The man was returning, limping and wincing. Upon a closer inspection he looked sixty, mostly bald. He wore a bathing suit and flip-flops and his left foot was purple. His face was plain and not un-friendly.
“‘Scuse me,” he called again. “This’s private property. Help you?”
“Yeah, I’m supposed to meet Wayne.” I walked to him, fists on my hips. “But I’m running a little late. My fault, not his. I got lost.”
“Wayne? Wayne just left.”
“How long ago?”
“Five minutes, maybe.”
“Damn. I’ll give him a call. Maybe he’ll come back,” I said.
“Are you police?”
I grinned.
“No. I’m a consultant working with Calvin Summers. You know him?”
“Sure.” He nodded and scratched his scalp. “Sure, yeah, sure. He’s the owner. Who’re you?”
“Mackenzie. Mr. Summers hired me to upgrade Glade Hill Acres and a few of his other properties. I was supposed to help Wayne unload. You know, learn how the distribution works.”
“Oh, okay,” he said. His mouth naturally hung open and his expression bordered on bewilderment. “Okay, yeah. What distribution?”
“Wayne said he was bringing supplies. Moonshine, things like that. Told me to meet him at the unit in the back so I could see for myself. He already unloaded?”
“Yes sir. Yes sir he did and I helped him.”
“You helped? You’re not Keith Bradley, are you?”
The man’s face changed from confusion to pleasure. “Sure am. I’m Keith.”
“Then you’re the superintendent.” I stuck out my hand and he shook it.
“Yep, that’s me, I’m the super.”
“He told me you were a handy guy.”
“He did? Wayne said that?”
“You’re the expert, maybe you can help me,” I said. Keith enjoyed being referred to as an expert. “I’ll be making recommendations to Mr. Summers soon about the nature of Glade Hill Acres. What improvements should we focus on first?”
“Huh. Not sure I follow.”
“What needs fixing? Based on first inspection, I’d guess the roads.”
“Oh okay, sure, I see. Naw, roads are fine. It’s the tree roots, what digs them up.”
“Water is good? Sewers work?”
“Sure, yeah, sure. Everything works. This place is nicer than any of us is used to,” Keith said.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you know, hard for us to find nice places to live. Everyone gets so antsy.”
“When you say ‘us,’ who are you referring to?”
“Huh?” he said.
“Who lives here? Who has a hard time finding a nice place to stay?”
“The sex offenders. Wayne ain’t tell you?”
“No he didn’t,” I said. “Neither did Mr. Summers.”
“Everyone lives here, we’re sex offenders. I’m not ashamed. Leastways I married her, soon as I
could. People here are good folks.”
“Why…how…I guess I’m confused. Every resident of Glade Hill Acres is a registered sex offender?”
He nodded and eased the weight off his purple foot. “Yes sir, pretty sure.”
“What’s the purpose of catering solely to sex offenders?”
“We make great tenants. You know? Already got a strike against us so we play it safe. Gotta live somewhere. Besides, who else would live here? People believe us monsters. So we stick together.”
“How many of the residents here sign government checks over to Wayne?”
“‘Bout half.”
“And that’s the half who get the moonshine,” I said. “The moonshine he keeps stored in the supply unit.”
“Well, the rest of ‘em, they just buy it from me. Cheaper than a ABC store. Same with the pot. Same with the pills.”
“How about cable?” I said. “Does everyone get cable television?”
“Most do.”
“And internet?”
“Yeah, sure, through the cable. We set up a couple hot spots, you know? For cell phones.”
I said, “You’re the boss here. Is it okay with you if I take a few laps before I go? Drive around and make notes?”
“Sure, sure, anyone working for Wayne and Mr. Summers can do what they want, I reckon. Ain’t you gonna call Wayne?”
I looked at my watch. “He’s at least ten minutes gone by now. I hate to call him all the way back, waste half an hour of his time.”
“Yeah. Yeah, okay.”
“I’ll return as soon as I can. Poke my head in and see his supply unit.”
“You know,” he said, and he scratched at his thigh. “You want, I can let you in now. I got the key.”
“Keith, that would be great. You’d save me a couple hours. Like I said, Wayne told me you were handy.”
Keith’s face broke into an eager-to-please smile. He dug into his pocket and limped to the unit. He used separate keys for the two locks. Opened the door and punched in a three-number sequence to disarm the system. Flipped a switch.
“Here you go,” he said.
The unit had been stripped of all interior framework. It was a small warehouse, essentially, which smelled of mold. One corner was piled with necessaries like toilet paper and cleaner. Another corner with jugs of moonshine. A third with cellophane packages. Marijuana.
