There was something about the way he spoke the words and held his mouth that was unsettling. My stomach fluttered. My mouth tasted metallic. My skin felt clammy.
I went to the front door. Opened it. Saw Tess locked in a passionate embrace with a dark-haired man. He had one hand on her neck, the other at her waist.
They broke apart. Tess stepped aside and looked at me, a blank expression on her face. The man she had been kissing looked at me, too. His goatee and hair were inky black, an obvious dye job.
He smiled. “Hey, Hank. How’s it going?”
I tried to speak but nothing came out.
What do you say to a ghost?
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Billy Barringer smiled again and stuck his hands in the pockets of his jeans.
Tess leaned against the Bentley.
I felt dizzy.
“It’s okay,” Billy said. “I’m not gonna hurt you.”
“What the hell?” I finally found my voice.
“Rundell got me out.”
“Alive?”
Tess rolled her eyes and snorted.
“Yep.”
Clayton Barringer stepped outside. He stuck a cigarette in his mouth and tossed the pack to Tess. She pulled one out and placed it between her lips.
I tried to process all that was happening but couldn’t. I looked at Tess. “What about your parents?”
“Shit, Billy.” Tess lit her cigarette and blew a cloud of smoke up toward the hot sky. “You didn’t tell me he was so damn stupid.”
“What about ’em?” Billy said.
“Somebody’s putting the squeeze on Vernon Black.”
Billy laughed. “It don’t take much to get a city boy like him scared.”
Tess shook her head and looked at me as if I were flunking out of the special ed class for private investigators.
“Tess here always has been the wild child.” Billy ran his fingers through the woman’s hair. “Mama and Daddy couldn’t understand how their oldest turned out the way she did. Isn’t that right, darlin’?”
Darlin’ pushed Billy’s hand away and continued to smoke.
“Rundell gets you out.” I frowned and thought it all the way through. “And in exchange, the Barringers help him move into North Texas?”
“More or less,” Billy said.
“So why am I here?” I looked at Tess.
“Because you owe me.”
“Hank acts like a tough guy,” Tess said, “but he doesn’t have what it takes.”
“What’s she talking about?” I looked at my friend.
“You’re gonna get that damn file back.” Billy smiled. “And kill Jesus Rundell.”
The farmer in the faded overalls fed quarters into the slot on the pool table. The balls dropped into the gutter on the side with a clatter.
I watched him rack the balls on the worn felt. We were in a roadside barbecue joint a few miles from the feed store. The place was called the Beef Barn and served beer and setups for hard liquor as well as smoked meat and bad-smelling potato salad. The building had low ceilings and wood-paneled walls decorated with beer signs and nothing else.
The bar last night had been the Ritz compared with this dive.
A steady stream of people disappearing into a back room told me something else was going on beside food and beverage service.
Billy and I were sitting at a table by the front door. The room was smoky and dark and heavily air-conditioned. Tess was at the bar, talking to a guy in a sleeveless Harley shirt and leather chaps.
Billy took a drink of iced tea. “It’s good to see you, Hank.”
“You, too.” I was still trying to get a grip on the fact that he was alive.
“Thanks for coming here.”
I shrugged.
“It means a lot.”
“Billy, I’m not killing anybody for you.”
“Life is good for me right now.” He leaned back in the chair and put his hands behind his head. He had on his most charming smile, the kind he used when we were kids and in trouble. “I sure don’t want it to end.”
“Then why take out Rundell?”
“Hank, you need to understand.” My friend leaned forward. His blue eyes gleamed in the dim light of the bar. “I’m not in the business anymore.”
I raised one eyebrow.
“You think I can live like this if I was?”
“He got you out, thinking you were gonna help him?”
“Right.” Billy smiled.
“And now you’re not. And he’s pissed off.”
“Right again.”
“A couple of days from now, there’s supposed to be a big meeting in Dallas.” I related the information given to me by the FBI agent.
Billy nodded. “I heard.”
“The Feds are worried somebody might try something stupid. Like a hit on the whole lot of them.”
“If he takes out a bunch of players, that’s bad for everybody. They’ll come this way . . .” Billy raised his hands.
“And mess up your life.” I finished the thought for him.
“Yeah.” He spoke softly.
I heard laughter from the bar and turned that way. Tess and the guy in the Harley outfit were yucking it up over another round of beers. Billy chuckled and shook his head. He said, “You tapped into that yet?”
I didn’t reply.
“She’s a pistol.” Billy rubbed his goatee with one hand.
Tess laughed again and pointed to the two of us sitting at the table.
The man in the Harley shirt frowned and gave us a tough-guy look.
“Must not be from around here,” Billy said.
Harley Guy downed a shot of something amber-colored followed by a long pull of beer. He spoke to Tess, who didn’t respond. He said another few words and grabbed her arm.
She twisted free and moved a few feet down the bar.
He looked back at us. I kept my expression blank. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Billy doing the same.
Harley Guy stood up.
I eased my chair back a few inches. Billy was closest, facing away from the table. He didn’t move.
The man approached. He was average-sized, but his biceps were thick and ropy like a gym rat’s. He stopped a few feet away, hands on his hips.
“What can I do for you?” Billy spoke to him in a low voice, his eyes barely visible beneath the slits in his lids.
I pushed my chair back a little more but stayed seated.
Harley Guy stuck his chest out. “You got a problem with me?”
Billy didn’t say anything. I saw him wiggle the fingers of each hand. Not a sign of pleasant things to come, as I recalled.
The man standing in front of the table cocked his head to one side and squinted, as if he were really giving us the once-over before he commenced to kicking butt. I wondered how Billy would let this play, being out of the life and all.
“Is that your old lady?” Harley Guy jerked his finger toward where Tess sat at the bar.
“A word of advice.” Billy’s voice was low but forceful. “You are in the wrong place to start anything.”
“This joint used to be owned by that family from a couple of counties over, didn’t it?” The man made a big show of looking around the place. “I hear they ain’t such a big deal anymore.”
Two more guys in similar garb were on the far side of the room, drifting our way like sharks slicing through the water.
Harley Guy stepped a foot closer, swaying a little. The booze had made his eyes filmy.
“Bitch offers it up, then shoots me down. Says she’s with you now.”
Billy shrugged.
“Hey.” The man kicked Billy’s foot. “Stand up when I’m talking to you.”
Billy flicked his wrist and the contents of his plastic tumbler hit the man in the face. Harley Guy sputtered, wiped sweetened iced tea out of his eyes. Billy moved so fast it was hard to tell what was happening, the action nothing but a blur of hands and feet. The man was on the floor blee
ding and moaning a few milliseconds later.
I looked to the left as his two friends approached. One swung the heavy end of a pool cue at my head. I timed the movement, letting the stick hit the meaty part of my left forearm and grabbing it with my fingers.
The man pulled back as I pushed, an unexpected move on my part. With the momentum going my way, I directed the tapered end of the cue toward his face, connecting with a solid crunch to the nose.
The third person in the mini-motorcycle gang was a wannabe tough guy. He stood with his hands up like a boxer ready for the bell. Billy grabbed his right fist before he could react and twisted. The man screamed and fell over, moving in the direction of his breaking arm.
Two large men appeared from the back. They looked at Billy. He waved them away. The rest of the lunchtime crowd stared for a few moments and then went back to their pool, beer, and barbecue.
Tess wandered up, a beer in hand, cigarette dangling from her lips. “Fucker’s got an attitude, doesn’t he?”
I stared at her but didn’t say anything.
“What?” She frowned at me. “I got something between my teeth?”
Billy grabbed the first biker by the back of his neck and pulled him up. The man’s eyes were unfocused. He shoved him toward a bouncer. “Take out the trash, will ya?”
The man shuffled the biker away.
“What about helping me?” Billy turned my way. “With Rundell.”
“I’m not a hit man.”
“You always did like to dangle your foot on the other side of the line.” Billy smiled. “You’re lucky you get to pick and choose.”
Tess drained her beer, stubbed out the cigarette.
“Didn’t know you smoked,” I said.
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me.” She walked back to the bar.
Billy put one hand on my shoulder. “Let’s go outside for a minute, okay?”
I followed him out into the early afternoon sun. The light reflected off the white gravel of the parking lot. He walked down the side of the building to the back. Nobody was there. A Camaro sat under the shade of a post oak tree.
“How about you and me take a ride?” Billy opened the driver’s door.
I didn’t move.
“Shit, Hank. You’d be dead by now, if that was the way it was gonna be.”
I got in the passenger seat. The interior had that peculiar musty smell of an old car. The dash was cracked. The seatbelts didn’t work. Billy cranked the ignition, put the car in drive, and drove past the vehicles in the parking lot. He turned left on the highway and kept the speed at a sedate fifty miles per hour.
Neither of us spoke.
Ten minutes later he turned down a narrow dirt road. Cane pole grew thick on either side. We passed a shack on the left, a tiny wooden home where chickens scratched in the dirt and the front yard was ringed by plastic jugs full of colored liquid.
Billy saw me looking at the containers. “Keep the evil spirits away.”
I nodded but didn’t say anything.
“Funny what people will do if they believe in something.”
I nodded. “Yeah. It is.”
A few minutes later he maneuvered the Buick through a break in the bamboo and down an even narrower path. I could hear the river. He stopped in a cleared spot on top of the bank. We both got out. The water was below us, a twenty-foot drop down a red dirt slope.
“You know where we are, Hank?”
“Near where we went fishing and I got caught in the trotline.”
Billy nodded and smiled.
“Why’d you bring me out here?”
He moved to the rear of the Buick and opened the trunk. I looked inside and saw biker guy number one, hands and feet tied, a piece of duct tape across his mouth. His eyes were wide and unblinking and he was drenched in sweat.
“What the hell?” I looked at Billy.
My friend grabbed the bound man by his belt and dragged him out of the trunk, letting him drop to the dirt with a plop.
“Guy disrespected me.”
“I thought you were out of the life.”
“I am.” Billy dragged him to the edge of the bank.
Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion. The air was hot and still like a greenhouse. Billy’s smile seemed crooked, his eyes loopy. The tied-up man tried to wiggle his way to freedom until he turned over and saw how close he was to the edge of the bank.
“Billy. Whatever you’re gonna do, don’t.”
“Quit acting like you’ve never done the deed.” He pulled a Ruger .22 semiautomatic pistol from his waistband.
“Oh, crap.” I took a step forward.
Billy yanked the biker’s shirt up and stuck the muzzle in his belly button. The man grunted and his eyes went wider than I thought possible. Billy jerked the gun away and fired into the ground a few centimeters away from the guy’s stomach.
The biker’s flesh mottled with powder burns, a dark gray, speckled stain.
Billy turned around and faced me. “Back in the day, I’da gone ahead and popped this motherfucker one in the gut.”
I didn’t say anything.
“But I’m clean now.”
The biker looked at me, his eyes pleading.
“What do you want?” I tried to control my breathing.
“Jesus Rundell.” Billy turned to the river, gun dangling by his side.
The biker grunted.
Billy leaned over the man. “Don’t come back to this part of the world, you hear me?”
The man nodded.
Billy pulled a lock-back knife out of his pocket and cut the cords on the biker’s wrists. He gave him a little shove and watched as he rolled down the red dirt bank into the Brazos River.
“You owe me.” He turned around. The muzzle of the gun moved up a few degrees, not aimed at me, but not pointing straight down anymore either.
I stared at the pistol in his hand.
“If you can get me close to him, I’ll pull the trigger.”
“Billy . . .” I couldn’t find the right words.
“Don’t make me do something I don’t want to, okay?” The muzzle of the gun rose another couple of inches.
I ignored the weapon and walked to the edge of the bank. The far side was about three or four hundred yards away. A little upstream a row of milk jugs bobbed in the current, another trotline aiming for some of the big river catfish. A pair of cattle egrets flew overhead, gliding in the thermal caused by the warm water. I thought about choices already made and the utterly futile notion of free will.
I turned to my friend. “How do you want to play this?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
We were on Interstate 35 headed north. Tess was asleep in the backseat of the Bentley. Billy sat in the front, next to me. Just north of Waco I said, “What’s in the file?”
Billy closed his eyes and ran his hand over the leather-trimmed dash but didn’t say anything. The terrain on either side of the highway was flat and open, dotted every few miles with farmhouses surrounded by plowed fields.
After a few miles he said, “Wonder what it would be like to get off on one of these roads and head west.”
“You’ve never been the running kind.”
“I’ve never been to California, either.” He opened his eyes and stared straight ahead. “I’d like to see the Pacific Ocean, maybe take a tour of where the stars live.”
“Want me to drop you at the airport when we get to Dallas?”
He shook his head. “There was this guy in the cell next to me. The cat thought Willie Nelson was Jesus returned to earth. Used to sing “Whiskey River” over and over again like it was a hymn or something.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?” I entered the passing lane to go around an eighteen-wheeler.
“Nothing much. He welshed on a bet and got shived one day.” Billy shook his head. “It’s a whole ’nuther world on the inside.”
“I can imagine.”
“No, you really can’t.” Bil
ly’s voice was low.
I didn’t reply, and we were silent for a number of miles, a current of awkwardness filtering through the car. A few miles north of Hillsboro I swung into the passing lane again to get around another lumbering truck. I pressed the gas on the Bentley and felt the transmission shift into overdrive as the motor purred beneath the hood. The speedometer was nudging eighty when I topped a small rise. I pulled back into the right-hand lane and saw a black speck on the side of the road, maybe a thousand yards away.
More highway peeled by. The black-and-white markings on the vehicle were visible now, as was the distinctive silhouette of the light bar on top: a Texas Department of Public Safety cruiser.
“Dammit.” I tapped the brakes and brought the car down to a legal sixty-five.
Billy pulled the Ruger out of his waistband and slipped it under the seat.
A couple of hundred yards in front of us the cruiser began to move along the shoulder of the highway. As we went by the blue and red strobes turned on. The siren sounded.
Tess stuck her head up from the backseat. “What’s going on?”
“Hank was speeding,” Billy said. “Everything’s gonna be all right.”
“Uh-huh. Except for the fact that you’re a wanted felon.”
“Not to worry. I’m a ghost.” He looked in the rearview mirror. “Give the nice officer a little skin, okay, honey?” His voice was tight.
“What the hell do you think I am?” Tess said. “A piece of meat?”
“No, you’re a woman for the new millennium, in touch with herself and her goals and desires.” Billy turned and faced the backseat. A thin layer of sweat beaded on his forehead. “Your one flaw, however, is that you like to screw guys like me, which means you are, in fact, a piece of fucking meat. So show the officer some fucking skin so that maybe we can get the fuck out of here without me getting busted.”
“Thought you were a ghost.” I eased the Bentley over to the shoulder.
“Rundell’s loose and gunning for me,” he said. “There’s no telling what my status is at the moment.”
When the speedometer read twenty, I pressed on the brakes and brought us to a stop. Through the rearview mirror I could see two things: Tess knotting the bottom of her shirt to show off a very trim and tanned midriff, and a DPS patrol car about a foot behind the Bentley.
The Next Time You Die Page 18
