by Alan Lee
“Not today, Scott. Who’s your friend?”
Scott crouched next to the man and pressed the shirt into his wound. The man did not react to the pressure with grace and courage.
Scott said, “Aw shut up, Parks. It’s a scratch.”
“Fuck you, a scratch. I been shot.”
I collected Parks’s Glock from the corner. Put both it and the revolver onto my shelf.
I asked, “How many nights have you been waiting here?”
“Only three.”
“Wayne sent you?”
“Ain’t gotta tell you nothing.”
I eased the hammer down on my 1911. Ejected the clip. Examined it. Jacked it in again. Thumbed the hammer back with a heavy click. The cacophony of sound was mellifluous. And effective. They watched with white faces.
“You two are going home. And telling Wayne what?” I asked. “That I beat you up? Took your guns? What are you going to report?”
No response.
“I bet you a dollar it won’t be the truth,” I said.
The man with the wounded shoulder winced and sat up straighter.
“So I’ll call Wayne now and tell him what happened. And I’ll keep your guns,” I said. “Or. You tell me who sent you and why, and you can tell Wayne whatever falsehood you like and I’ll only keep your ammunition.”
“Wayne sent us,” Parks said.
Scott cursed. The really bad word.
“Why,” I said.
“To kill you,” he said. “Or ‘least shoot you.”
“Why.”
“Dunno. Don’t tell us nothing.”
“I think it’s because he’s hiding something. What do you think?”
“Maybe cause you’re a sonovabitch.”
“You guys take orders from Calvin Summers?” I asked.
“Sure,” Scott said.
“Who?” Parks asked. “Dunno Summers.”
Scott worked at Happy Hills so it made sense he’d know Calvin. Parks appeared authentically confused by the name, which interested me.
“Parks, you know Deputy Yopp?” I asked. “Fat mean bastard?”
“Yeah, I know Yopp.”
“Does Deputy Yopp work with Calvin Summers?”
“Dunno no Summers,” Parks said again. “Doubt it.”
“Yeah me too.” I scratched at my jaw with the sight of my pistol. “Wayne does a lot of business without consulting Calvin Summers, I’m beginning to realize. Is that right, Scott?”
Scott shrugged. “Dunno. I just work Happy Hills.”
“You just work Happy Hills.”
“Right.”
“You guys think Wayne could beat me up?” I asked.
No response.
“Keep in mind, I’m not even flexing,” I said.
“Wayne kick your ass.”
“Agree to disagree. Does Wayne ever bring cocaine to your trailer park?”
“Cocaine? Naw, ain’t got no cocaine.”
“Just moonshine and weed and prescription pills,” I said.
“Yep.”
“I think Wayne is hiding something. But I don’t know what,” I said. “There’s something he’s not telling me. Something he’s hiding from Calvin Summers. Why else would he want me dead?”
The two good ol' boys remained quiet.
“Aside from his overwhelming jealousy, I mean. Of all things Mackenzie.”
I emptied the revolver’s cylinder. Scott had only loaded four bullets, which hurt my feelings. Surely I looked like I required more than four. I emptied the Glock’s chamber and magazine and handed them their weapons.
“Go back. Tell Wayne you hit me in the head until I no longer moved. Tell him I bled and whimpered. And you two don’t come back. Whaddaya say?”
Instead of answering, they avoided my eye contact and made for the door. Gregarious couple. They limped out, holding various parts of their bodies.
I said, “When you recall this night to your children, and I know that you will, I’d like to be shirtless and have tattoos up and down my arms. Okay? Guys? Okay?”
* * *
I watched their old truck rattle to life and cough its way toward 581. Remove the rust, they’d be left with a steering wheel and four tires. On a sudden whim, I dashed to my car.
“Dash” might be too strong a word. I moved to my car as quickly as old football knees would allow and wondered again if I should join a CrossFit box.
I knew where Scott lived. I didn’t know much else at the moment, but the man had tried to kill me so this appeared to be a potential lead. I passed their truck five miles out of town and plunged into the dark country roads of Franklin County.
I arrived at Happy Fields first. The four overhead lamps which should have bathed the entire park in an ambient glow were all broken. I parked inside a thicket of pine, turned off the lights, and crept closer to Scott’s trailer.
Should have brought pit bull repellant.
A woman was inside Scott’s trailer. She watched an Adam Sandler movie on Netflix with her bare feet propped on the coffee table. She looked jittery and exhausted and angry. I watched her through the torn screen of the storm door and I solved the case doing so.
I wished. In fact, I learned absolutely nothing except that she was most likely addicted to cigarettes. Her fingers kept going to her lips on habit.
Scott came home ten minutes later without Parks. His truck door squealed and squawked and he stumped inside without a glance at me hidden in the shadows.
“The hell you been,” the girl said.
“Out.”
“Yeah I know, out. Where?”
“Out. Doing stuff for Wayne.”
“Doing stuff for Wayne,” she mocked him. “Little boy, grow some balls. Stop being a bitch for Wayne.”
“He’s my friend. And my boss. You want me to lose my job?”
“What’d he want you for?”
Scott didn’t reply. He went into the kitchen, which was separated from the television room by a counter, and he put a cigarette into his mouth.
“You hear me?” she said. “Stop being a little bitch. God, you’re stupid. Hey gimme one them cigarettes.”
Scott tossed her one. She fumbled the catch but picked it off the floor and lit it. She said, “We’re outta shine.”
“Get some more tomorrow.”
“Get some more tomorrow,” she repeated in a high voice. “With what money?”
“I got a little bit.”
“Just go get some from the storage unit.”
“That ain’t ours,” Scott said.
“Fuck you, that ain’t ours. You’re the boss, dickhead. Go get some.”
“I ain’t.”
“Gimme the keys then.”
“No. That ain’t ours. Wayne would know.”
She rolled her eyes and bounced on the couch with an irritated huff. “Wayne Wayne Wayne. Maybe I should be Wayne’s girlfriend.”
“Good fucking luck. He’s got a girl twice as good as you.”
“I hate this place. I hate this shitty place,” she said.
“Can’t you shut up? I had a bad night.”
“Oh you had a bad night? Poor little bitch. We’re outta shine. Maybe you had a real job.”
“No one’s ever asked you to stay,” Scott mumbled.
“Maybe I’ll leave.”
“Uh-huh. Why do you watch this stupid shit?”
“Maybe I’ll leave, Scott.”
“Get on. You’ll be back in the morning. Lauren gets a’ sick of you as I do,” he said. He was staring at the floor, leaning forward with his hands on the counter, head between his elbows.
“Ain’t going to Lauren’s. I’ll go be the nigger’s girlfriend.”
Scott chuckled and emitted puffs of blue smoke around his ears. “Craig? Craig’s wrinkled ass is seventy.”
“He be glad to have me. Bet Craig’s got shine.”
“Get on then.”
The girl stood up and announced, “You’re a dickless sonovabitch, you know t
hat. And you can go to hell.”
Scott didn’t reply.
The screen door closed weakly after her. She stormed off into the dark, stomping on cold grass with thin legs.
Scott set the revolver onto the counter and moved in front of the television. He pinched the bridge of his nose between his eyes and took the cigarette out of his mouth.
I flung open the screen door and stepped into the room. It’s important to make a good entrance.
Scott said, “Holy shit.”
“Ta daaaa.”
“You followed me.”
“A magician never reveals his secrets,” I said.
“Man I’m about sick of you.”
“I get that a lot. Fortunately I don’t believe it. Wow this place reeks of ash. I think I just got lung cancer.”
“What do you want,” Scott said.
“You know why Summers hired me?”
“Yeah. Find the snitch.”
“Correct. And I’ve decided it’s not you.”
“No shit. I’m tired, man. Let me get to sleep,” he said.
“Scott. Educate me. I don’t get this part of Franklin County.”
“What’s the mean?”
“It means…I don’t know what it means. Help me understand. Why do you live like this?” I sat down on the wooden armrest of the heavy chair. The cushion looked like it’d swallow me.
“Like what?”
“You could work on a dairy farm and wait tables at night. Start making better money and get a nicer truck. Find a girl who won’t scream at you. Take classes at the community college. Move into an apartment.”
“The hell I want an apartment for?” he asked. “I was born here.”
“You grew up in Happy Fields?”
“Hey dumbass, I was born here. In this trailer.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No I ain’t,” he said. He lit a new cigarette off the final red ashes of his first. “When I say I was born here, I mean I was born here.”
“As in, you were delivered inside this trailer?”
“Still got a stain on the bedroom carpet. Probably die in the same room. Ain’t never been to a doctor.”
“Not once?”
“Not once, not even for a broken arm. Couldn’t afford it. Set it myself and wrapped it with boards. School nurse never said a thing.”
“Where’s your mom?” I asked and I had the curious feeling of becoming a more pronounced horse’s ass with each word.
“Jail. Rehab. Somewhere, I don’t know. Ain’t seen her in years. Been on my own since I was fifteen.”
“The social workers allowed that?” I asked.
“They don’t know nothing.”
“What about your father?”
“Never met the fucker,” Scott said. “Ran off. And I can’t take classes. Never graduated. Bus quit coming by and I had to work. Wasn’t passing anything, no ways. I’m a hard worker. Always been. But not so good at school.”
“Ah,” I said. Yep. I was a horse’s ass.
“And that girl? She ain’t my girlfriend. Used to be a hooker. She’s stayed here about a month and storms off once a week. She’ll be gone ‘fore you know it. I hope. Sick of supporting her.”
We were silent while Adam Sandler made stupid jokes on screen with the same group of buddies he always did. Scott quit watching. The cigarette smoldered in his fist and he stared at the ceiling.
“Scott, considering everything you’ve just told me, I owe you an apology.”
“Yeah?”
“Life dealt you a bad starting hand. About a rough as it gets. And yet you’ve got a job, a place to live, and a working car. You’re loyal to your boss and it looks like you don’t hit your girl and you don’t steal. I was looking at you all wrong and I’m sorry.”
“Man’s got to have some rules for hisself.”
“I’ll try to remember that. And I won’t pester you any longer.”
“Lock the door on your way out,” he said. “I’m tired of that girl’s mouth running.”
“I don’t blame you.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Early the following morning I rented a truck from the local Enterprise. I asked for an ’84 Chevy pickup with rust stains. The lady at the desk did not smile; she informed me that she had a brand-new Nissan Frontier. Would that do?
I supposed it would. Not perfect camouflage but better than my toy car. To complete the disguise I wore a baseball cap. Foolproof.
I wanted to examine Wayne’s house. To break and enter while he was without. But that required observing it until he left, which necessitated the risk of being discovered, and he knew what my car looked like. So I planned on sitting in my rented truck until he passed. This truck was like a hunting blind for guys like Wayne. His eyes would pass right over me. He’d see the truck and my ball cap and think, “Yup, that looks about right.”
An hour later, as I neared Wayne’s bend in the road, the man himself came roaring around the turn. His monster truck occupied most of the road and he was shouting into his phone. He charged by without giving my truck a second glance and disappeared over the hill.
“Eureka,” I said.
I moved briskly. I pulled into his driveway and hopped out. The house was small and brick, maybe an eight hundred square foot main level. The yard was scrub and gravel and vines. Hoses and metal parts and an old grill rotted in his backyard.
The side door was unlocked. It opened into a kitchen with a linoleum floor. Trash bags in the corners overflowed with beer cans, Styrofoam coffee cups, and Bojangles bags. An old table with one chair was loaded with boxes of Miller Lite. The barren pantry contained hot chocolate and a jar of cheap marinara sauce.
In the adjacent room, a woman slept on a ratty brown couch. She was dressed in a T-shirt and G-string. She was so thin and pallid I could see blue veins in her cheeks and forehead. Her mouth hung open and she snored. Her hair had been bleached to the point of straw. On the coffee table was an entire apothecary of pill bottles.
Her phone buzzed.
I moved deeper into the house. Wayne’s bedroom was thoroughly uninteresting. A twin bed. Stained sheets on the floor. A television. That was it. The bathroom produced such a stench that I examined it from the hall, shirt collar pulled over my nose.
I found the basement stairs and descended. I yanked on a cord and the overhead light buzzed on. The walls were painted cinder block. His hot water heater clanked noisily.
Two safes sat on either side of an old metal desk. On the left was a gun safe, the kind with a glass window. It wasn’t locked. Wayne had an impressive arsenal of illegal assault rifles. He appeared ready to fight off a zombie invasion. Or Hillary Clinton, should she rise again. There was a small built-in box at the bottom and a set of keys rested inside.
The second safe was smaller and it was locked. On a whim, I took the keys from the gun safe and inserted them into the locked safe. Click. The door swung open.
Stacks of money spilled out. Tens and twenties bound by rubber bands. Fifty thousand dollars? A hundred? Maybe more.
This proved nothing. Calvin might know about it. But still, the plot thickened. I didn’t know if Wayne was the informant but he was clearly a person of interest.
With all this money he should be paying Scott more. The kid had grown on me.
I rifled through papers on his desk. Water and electric bills from Happy Fields and Glade Hill Acres and Ferrum’s Fields. Printed emails. Handwritten notes. Receipts.
I found a list of nine names and corresponding phone numbers. All of the names were girls.
Rose Long
Robyn Elliot
Alicia Gordon
Michelle Doyle
Pamela Stevens
Etc.
I took a photograph of the names. And of the bills. And of a few other notes.
On my way out, I passed the sleeping girl. Her phone buzzed again with incoming text messages. I glanced at the message because I was a professional investigator. Not because I was
creepy.
The message was from Michelle.
Could it be Michelle Doyle, from the list in the basement? Michelle was asking (with significant urgency and vulgarity) where she was supposed to go. I scrolled through recent messages. Michelle often asked the question, “Where do I go?” and she was given various destinations I didn’t recognize.
Hmmm, I thought. What would FBI Jamie do at this point? Probably something fancy with the phone.
I searched through the phone’s contacts. I found a Rose and a Robyn and an Alicia and all the rest. Alicia had texted yesterday and she’d been told to go to Ferrum’s Fields tomorrow morning. Ferrum's Fields, the upscale trailer park.
The girl asleep on the couch (I deduced her name was either Vickie or Bitch) was weekly giving these girls instructions on where to go.
Go here. Go there. Get back to me. Where are you?
And I thought, “Huh.”
Another befuddling clue.
Or a ploy to throw me off track. That Wayne was a sly one.
And I easy to befuddle.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I kept the truck for an additional day and I parked it outside Ferrum’s Fields, near the entrance so I could observe the shenanigans. My cap was on. My tires had gotten a little muddy. I tuned to a country radio station to further imbed myself in character.
Mackenzie August. Southern gentleman.
After an hour of watching the lazy comings and goings of the residents I spotted who I thought was Alicia Gordon. A thin girl, maybe twenty, who spent fifteen minutes in a trailer, came outside, smoked a cigarette, trudged to a different trailer and repeated the process.
She was a prostitute. Providing her services to approximately ten of the fifty trailers within the park. She wore old jeans and a white tank top. A heavy handbag was slung around her shoulders and her hair was up.
She finished at one, an hour after my normal lunch and I was hungry. She marched up the gentle slope leading out of the trailer park and turned east toward Rocky Mount. I eased the truck next to her, window down, and said, “Hi Alicia Gordon.”
She was busily typing on her phone with both thumbs and she barely spared me a frown. “What? Who the hell you.”
“Yikes. You fit a discouraging amount of disdain into that word,” I said.
