Way Past Dead

by Steven Womack

  If she only knew.

  “Don’t be concerned about that,” I said. “I’m delighted to pay you rent every month.” I stood up, hoping my nose hadn’t grown to Pinocchio-like dimensions.

  “I’ll probably be home late again tonight. Don’t you worry, okay?”

  “All right, I won’t,” she said, turning back to her flowers.

  I headed for the Mazda, which was parked about halfway down the driveway.

  “By the way,” she called. “Did you see that strange man this morning?”

  I turned. “What strange man?”

  “Well,” she said absentmindedly, “I guess you wouldn’t have. You weren’t here.”

  “What strange man?”

  “This morning. I slept late, until nearly seven. When I woke up and went into the kitchen to start my tea, there was a man walking down the driveway. He had a pickup truck out front.”

  “What did he look like?” I asked, trying to keep my face somewhere in the same universe as casual.

  “I didn’t get a good look. By the time I got my glasses on, he was in the truck. He sat there for a few minutes. I didn’t know what to do, so I got dressed and walked outside to get the paper. As soon as I stepped outside, he gunned the motor and took off. Made a lot of smoke.”

  “Did you see what kind of pickup it was?”

  “An old one was all I could tell. Faded gray, rust spots on the side. A Ford, maybe.”

  I stepped back over and squatted down next to her. “I’m sure it was nothing,” I said, feeling guilty for having lied to her twice in one conversation. “But just to be safe, you be sure and lock up well tonight.”

  She smiled at me slyly. “Harry, this is the city. I lock up well every night. And there’s a loaded shotgun in the closet.”

  I smiled back. “Good girl.”

  I walked down the driveway to the Mazda, feeling about as low as a vagrant on Belle Meade Boulevard. Sometime back, a case of mine had inadvertently—and indirectly—placed Mrs. Hawkins at risk. There was simply no way I was going to put her in that spot again. Something would have to be done.

  If the bastard wanted to stalk me, let him. I can handle that. But if he starts scaring my sweet little old landlady, something’s going to have to be done.

  But what?

  I got this terrible taste in my mouth as I pulled out into the noontime traffic on Gallatin Road and headed toward Inglewood, like the coffee I’d had at Mac Ford’s office wasn’t going to stay down. I knew it wasn’t the coffee, though; it was just another side effect of having the Ronco Stress-O-Matic going at full throttle. On the good side, the strain of the last few days had played hell with my appetite. It looked like I’d be saving lunch money today, at least for a while.

  A few minutes later I passed under the railroad trestle on Gallatin Road and approached the old Inglewood Theatre. Just for shits and grins I turned left, drove behind the theatre, and coasted past Lonnie’s place. His big truck wasn’t there and I saw no sign of Shadow, so I continued on until the street intersected with Ben Allen Road, then made a left.

  I’d gotten to know this end of Nashville pretty well over the past couple of years, and I knew exactly which motel Ray was talking about. Ben Allen Road dead-ended into Dickerson Pike near the motel, past the Ellington Parkway, and well into a part of Nashville known for its level of violent crime. There’s not much street crime there, really, since no one would dare walk the streets anyway. But the string of small businesses—pawnshops, X-rated video outlets, used-car lots, mom-and-pop groceries—was prime pickings for holdup artists. An elderly couple who owned a small convenience market had been the lead item in the local news a few weeks back when three guys busted in to rob them and the two started shooting back. Seems they’d been hit before and had taken to packing .38s on their respective, arthritic hips. This time, for once, the justice system was saved the trouble. Even though they outnumbered the old folks, the bad guys lost. Two went down for good, the other paralyzed for life.

  I was beginning to wish I didn’t work alone so much. If Lonnie had been home, I might have asked him to go with me. In almost a flash of insight, I realized I was afraid, and I thought of my father’s admonition to me as a young boy that the only way to fight fear was to face it.

  Yeah, I remember him saying it, and I also remember it not helping very much.

  I turned right onto Dickerson Pike, then immediately slid into the turning lane. I waited for a break in the traffic, then jetted across the oncoming two lanes and into the parking lot of the College Inn motel.

  In the far past, back before the government built the interstate highway system and put half the small motels in America out of business, the College Inn had been a stopping place for tourists and a home away from home for politicians when the legislature was in session. But that was maybe four decades ago. Now the place was plain old run-down, a couple of steps above a flophouse, but not much. It was U-shaped, the three sides of the motel angling around the parking lot, with a closed swimming pool in the center of the asphalt baking in the sun. A coating of green slime thick enough to support several discarded beer cans covered the pool, and in the shallow end, the handlebars of a child’s tricycle poked through the goo.

  The asphalt parking lot was potholed, laced with cracks, and dotted with puddles of oil. I parked next to a Dodge van with a broken windshield and a faded coat of pale green paint. I stepped up on the curb, then over to a concrete sidewalk that led down to a wooden door with the word OFFICE nailed on in fake bronze letters. I twisted the doorknob; it wouldn’t move.

  I tapped a couple of times on the door. A moment later a dusty blue curtain was pulled back and a pair of dark eyes set against brown skin stared out, then ran up and down me like a scanner. The lock rattled and then the door opened a crack.

  “Yes,” a warbling voice said. “What can I do for you, please?” Strange accent, like a stand-up comedian’s parody of an Indian accent.

  “I’m looking for someone who’s supposed to be staying here. I wonder if you could help me.”

  The door cracked open a bit further. I could see an entire human head in front of me now, skin dark brown, eyes nearly black, the whites a catchy shade of yellow. The head was also at a level with my sternum, leading me with my superior deductive powers to assume I was speaking to a very short person.

  “Are you the police, please?” he demanded.

  “No, just a friend of a friend.” I smiled at him as benignly as I knew how and kept my hands where he could see them. I also wanted, if at all possible, to keep from having to produce my investigator’s license. I don’t know why, but I had a feeling nosy official-looking people weren’t welcome here.

  “Who do you want to see, please?”

  “Mike Pinkleton. I understand he’s staying here.”

  “What is your name, please?”

  “Harry Denton,” I said. “If you’d tell him I’m a friend of Slim Gibson’s, I’d appreciate it.”

  “Stay right where you are, please,” he said, the Rs rolling off his tongue as thick as curried eggplant. I nodded as the door shut and the locks clicked back into place. Thirty seconds later the door opened again, this time wider.

  “Mr. Pinkleton says you can go to see him, please,” the man said. “He is in room number seventeen.”

  “Thanks,” I said, “Mr.—”

  “I am Mr. V. S. Naipur and it is my pleasure to serve you,” he said, then slammed the door and set the locks again.

  “Okay,” I said to the door. I turned and checked the room numbers. Seventeen was diagonally across the parking lot, past the concrete swamp, nestled in the ninety-degree angle the two converging sides of the motel created. A black motorcycle sat out in front, chained to a support post for the awning that ran around the perimeter in front of the rooms. I crossed the lot and couldn’t help but notice that I was being checked out—subtle signs like curtains being pulled back, doors cracking open a half inch for just a second, then closing again with a whoosh.
I wondered how many tenants had outstanding arrest warrants.

  I stepped over a broken concrete planter onto the walkway, stepped up to the door, and knocked. The door was painted a rust red, with the paint peeling in half-dollar-size chunks. I turned and looked at the bike, an old Harley. I don’t know much about bikes, so didn’t recognize the model or anything. But this one was stripped to the bones, just engine and frame, and chopped as well, its front end extended several feet, with high-rise handlebars and a single speedometer between the forks. Simple, basic, two-axled hell-on-wheels.

  No answer from inside. I knocked again. “Hello?” I called. “Mike?”

  “C’mon in,” I heard from inside. I opened the door. It made a swishing sound as it brushed across a stiff, thick shag carpet of red and green.

  The room was a typically cheap motel room that had been too long without maid service: dingy sheets turning gray and a thin pastel-blue blanket thrown haphazardly across an institutional bed; scarred, mismatched furniture; an old color TV flickering away soundlessly in the corner. Dirty laundry lay in several mounds throughout the room, and there was a general air of mold and decay, all mixed with the scent of institutional cleaner. I hadn’t smelled anything like it since my last visit to the men’s room at a bus station.

  “Hello?” I called.

  “Yeah, gimme a minute,” came a gruff voice from the bathroom. Then there was the rattling gurgle of a toilet flushing, followed by running water. I stood there awkwardly, wondering whether or not to sit down.

  In a few more seconds, all six and a half feet of Mike Pinkleton plodded out of the bathroom. His hair was either soaking wet or incredibly greasy, and hung down in a jet-black, shiny mop below his shoulders. He was shirtless and barefoot, his right arm laced from shoulder to wrist with tattoos. When he turned toward me, his enormous belly shook and I saw that tattoos covered his chest and other arm as well. He wore a long, straight, salt-and-pepper beard and his bulbous nose was huge. I sensed that he was biker to the core, and had lived every second of his life full throttle, front wheel off the ground.

  I instinctively took a step backward at the sight of him, something not exactly calculated to give me the upper hand in the body-language department. Couldn’t help it, though.

  “Whaddid you say yer name was?” he asked. “I can’t understand that fucking Paki on the front desk.”

  “Harry Denton,” I said. “I’m a friend of Slim Gibson’s.”

  “Yeah, okay.” He stepped over to a round table in the corner, pulled a chair back, and shook it hard enough to scatter the dirty clothes on it all over the floor. He shoved it in my direction.

  “Sit down.”

  I moved around the piles of laundry and garbage, scooted the chair against the wall, and sat down. Pinkleton bent over, the seams on his greasy jeans straining, and opened a small refrigerator.

  “Beer?” he asked, holding a can of Colt .45 malt liquor in my direction.

  “No thanks.” Interesting definition of beer, I thought. He’d probably call a real Colt .45 a peashooter.

  “Suit yourself.” He popped the top on the can, then strode past me to the bed. He settled down onto it with his head against the wall and the can balanced on his hairy gut.

  “I don’t want to take up too much of your time,” I said. “I’ll get right to the point. Slim’s a friend of mine, but I’m also working for him. I’m a private investigator.”

  He stared at me through a crack in his thick eyelids. I paused for a second, waiting for some reaction from him. All I got was an earthshaking belch.

  “Slim’s in jail now, and it’s not likely we’ll get him out anytime soon without some evidence that he didn’t kill Rebecca Gibson. That’s what I’m looking for.”

  He drained the rest of the beer can in one long gulp, then crushed it and tossed it in the corner. Real casual, this guy. He sat up and plunked his feet to the floor.

  “So you thought you’d drop in on me here and get a confession, then go tell the cops and they’d let Slim go.” His voice was barely audible.

  “That’d make my job simpler, but that’s not what I was expecting.”

  He pulled open a drawer and fished around inside it, then pulled out a pack of smokes. He fumbled with the pack until a single cigarette extended outward. He grabbed it with his lips, then fired up a disposable butane and sucked in deeply.

  “Goddamn cops grilled my ass for six hours,” he said. “Reamed me inside out. I didn’t have fucking nothing to do with killing Rebecca Gibson.”

  “I understand she fired you a few weeks ago,” I said. Jeez, I hope this guy doesn’t go ballistic on me or anything.

  “People get fired all the time.”

  “Why’d she do it?”

  He turned to me and I saw something in his eyes that made me think if he didn’t kill Rebecca Gibson, he could have. His lips were bared, revealing a set of yellow, rotten teeth with intermittent black gaps.

  “She said I was stealing equipment.”

  “Were you?”

  Pinkleton got up and took two steps toward me, then stopped. His right hand clenched the cigarette so hard it twisted into a curve, then broke in two. The lit end fell on the floor and disappeared into the shag carpet. A surge of gunk came up into the back of my throat again, as bitter and vile as the last time.

  “No,” he growled. I wasn’t going to ask him that again.

  A thin wisp of smoke rose from the carpet. I pointed nervously toward it.

  “Ugh,” I stammered, “that’s going to—”

  He looked down, then placed the heel of his bare foot over the smoke and mashed down. He ground the cigarette completely out.

  “How long had you worked for her?” I had to ask him something, keep him talking. Otherwise, I was afraid I’d find myself sailing through the plate-glass window that looked out onto his Harley.

  He walked past me to the refrigerator and pulled out another can of Colt .45. “Too fucking long. Put up with her shit till I just couldn’t take it anymore.”

  “You managed her road show, right?”

  He looked over at me, disgust on his face. “I drove the semi and helped tote the heavy shit. Whipped the boys into line when they smoked too much reefer. Anybody messed with Becca, I took care of ’em.”

  I leaned over, interested now. “You were her bodyguard?”

  “Nothing that fancy. I was just her big dumb fucking biker nobody wanted to mess with.”

  He turned the tall can up and downed about half of it. “Cut the crap. What do you want?”

  “I’m just confused here, that’s all. If you weren’t stealing equipment and you were her bodyguard, why did she fire you after all these years? I’m just trying to understand this.”

  Suddenly he slammed the Colt .45 can down on the washbasin counter next to the refrigerator hard enough to make dust come off the wall. I jumped, startled, and fought the urge to dive for the door.

  “She fired me ’cause I wasn’t fucking good enough for her anymore!” he bellowed. “I started out working for her for free, goddamn it, back when she didn’t have gas money to put in the truck. Now she’s a big star, and Mike Pinkleton Biker Man ain’t good enough for the high-and-mighty Rebecca Gibson!”

  His head shook and his hair bounced around off his shoulders.

  “Why you?” I asked.

  “I just told you why!”

  “No, that’s not what I mean. I mean, why you in particular? Why now? She’d known about the new album, the touring, for months. She knew things were about to take off. Why did she cut you loose when she did?”

  His shoulders stooped and his jaw lowered to his chest, as if he were about to doze off on his feet. I could see when he turned back to me, though, that it wasn’t fatigue or the effects of some drug kicking in that was causing this change. It was anger, anger to the point of hatred. I could see it in his eyes when he looked at me. Make that glared at me.

  “I don’t want to fucking talk to you no more,” he said, his voice
low now, and mean.

  “But wait, Mike, don’t you see? Something about this stinks. I don’t know what it means, but I’ve got this feeling—”

  He was on me in a split second, his hands on my shoulders like clamps, jerking me up out of that chair like I was a rag doll that got in his way.

  “Wait a min—” I tried to talk him down from wherever he’d gone, but it was too late. I felt the drywall crack as my back slammed into it, followed a heartbeat later by the back of my head. My ears rang for a second, and my skull felt like somebody whacked me with a nine iron. That was good, I thought. When you really get hammered, you don’t feel it for a few seconds. I felt this from the get-go, so I was probably okay.

  I slid my hand toward the pocket of my field jacket, fumbling for the Mace or the stun gun, whichever I got to first. It was too late, though. He had me pinned against the wall, the stench of unwashed body, partially digested Colt .45, and cigarette smoke in my face like garbage.

  “I said I don’t fucking want to talk to you anymore.” I nodded. He doesn’t want to talk, I’m not saying a word. It’s that simple. “Get the fuck out.”

  I nodded again. His grip relaxed, and I slid back down to the carpet. The back of my head stung like hell and my shoulders ached from where he’d slammed me into the wall. I felt the lump in my right pocket that was the Mace can, and briefly considered spraying him down with it just to see the look on his face. But then I remembered what a security consultant had told me back when I was doing a story on self-protection, something that the Mace companies didn’t particularly relish having everyone know. Mace, he said, is better than nothing. But for some guys, especially guys with a lot of bulk who aren’t wired right, Mace didn’t do anything but make them more pissed off than they were to begin with.

  Mike Pinkleton looked like one of those guys. So when he backed off two steps and motioned toward the door, I took him up on the offer. I’d gotten nothing from Mike Pinkleton but a fierce headache, and the feeling that something still stank.

  Nothing speeds up the onset of an impending blood-sugar crash like a rush of fear-induced adrenaline. By the time I got the Mazda started and peeled a little rubber out of the parking lot onto Dickerson Pike, I was shaking and sweating like Morris the Cat in a room full of pit bulls. I’d met some mean people in my life, but never had I felt myself in the presence of such complete and unpredictable danger caused by a man who could still technically be called sane.