by James Swain
“The niggah with the casino commission?”
“Yeah. I hear he’s a mean one, that Lamar. I hear he’d kick a baby in the ass.”
Huck spit on the floor. Lamar Biggs was a college-educated colored boy. He couldn’t think of anything he hated more. “Know where this baby-kicker lives?”
Cur’s head bobbed up and down. “You gonna go get Valentine?”
“What the hell do you think?” Huck said.
“Gonna kill him?”
“What the hell do you think?”
“Biggs, too?” Cur looked up. “I hear he’s got a pretty, white wife.”
“Him, too,” Huck said.
Cur smiled crookedly and told him how to get to Lamar Biggs’s house.
Huck went out to his Chevy pickup, took his shotgun off the gun rack, made sure it was loaded, and with it sitting on his lap drove to Lamar Biggs’s place. The truck was brand-new, with cushy leather and all the fancy stuff, yet had cost no more than the Chevy truck he’d bought six years ago. The salesman had explained that everything was made in Mexico, then assembled here. Huck hadn’t liked that. Mexicans were as bad as blacks; he didn’t want his money going into their pockets. Then he’d driven the truck for a while and decided he could live with it.
Halfway to Lamar Biggs’s house a thunderbolt hit him. Any black man who lived with a white woman in Mississippi had serious firearms in his house. Huck didn’t want to be outgunned, and did a hasty U-turn in the middle of the road.
Huck’s own house was on the northern end of Gulfport near the industrial plants. He had no neighbors. The stench from the pollution kept the civilized folks away.
Ten minutes later, he drove down the single-lane dirt road and pulled up the driveway. The house was actually a double-wide with a facade tacked on to make it look like a real house. It wasn’t much to look at, but Huck liked it. The obscure location made surveillance by the police impossible, unless they decided to watch him by satellite.
His girlfriend’s lime-green Mustang was parked on the front lawn. Her name was Kitty, and she slung drinks at a honky-tonk called Junebugs. Parking beside her car, Huck saw a new dent in the driver’s door. Drunks propositioned Kitty all the time. Those that didn’t like being turned down took their frustration out on her car.
“Where you been?” she asked as he came in.
“None of your business,” he said.
Kitty lay on the couch beneath a blanket, the TV on so loud it made the room shake. “Well, excuse me. You having a bad day?”
“Lost my boys,” he said, heading toward the bedroom in back.
“Try looking in the bars,” she called after him. “They’re usually there.”
Huck shut the bedroom door behind him. Got on his knees and pulled the cardboard box out from beneath his bed. Pulled out the AK-47 and began stuffing his pockets with ammo. He’d drive up to Biggs’s house, jump out, and start shooting. The AK-47 would shoot right through the walls, probably go right through the damn house. Anything inside would die. He started to leave, when another thought struck him. If he killed Biggs or his wife, he’d have to leave town for a while. He’d need money, and began to search through the drawers of his dresser for any spare cash.
“Goddamn woman,” he swore angrily.
Kitty had cleaned him out. She claimed she’d been clean for five weeks, but Huck knew she was lying. Kitty would swallow or smoke or stick up her nose anything that would get her high. Then she’d lie on the couch and clean out the refrigerator. As a result, he’d started taking precautions. Picking the AK-47 up off the floor, he went into the front of the house.
“Hey,” she said, “where you going with that thing?”
“Squirrel hunting. Where’s the stash box?”
“On top of the TV. I smoked the last of the pot.” She silenced the TV with the remote, then rose from the couch with the blanket draped around her shoulders. “Say, you got any money? We need groceries.”
Huck stared at her and felt his anger boil up. Damn woman was a leech. She’d spend all his money until he was tapped out and then find herself another sugar daddy.
He grabbed the stash box off the TV, turned it upside down. A pack of rolling papers and a hash pipe hit the floor. Sticking his hand into the box, he pulled out the false bottom and removed a thick wad of hundred-dollar bills. Kitty shrieked.
“You been holding out on me!”
Huck pointed at the couch. “Shut up and sit down.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you had money?”
“You heard me.”
Kitty drew the blanket farther around herself and sat down. A little-girl pout appeared on her lips. “It’s not fair. You’re going to hit the bars with your sons and leave me here.”
“My boys are dead,” he said.
She looked up, startled. “What?”
“You heard me. I need to enact a little payback. I may have to disappear for a while. The police come looking for me, you don’t know nothing, understand?”
“Dead? All three of them? How can that be?”
Her eyes were glassy; she was high on something, and it wasn’t pot. Probably speed someone had given her at Junebugs. Long-distance truckers came in, plied the girls with pills. Huck peeled two hundred-dollar bills off his wad and tossed them at her. She tried to grab them out of the air and missed by a foot. She retrieved them from the floor.
“Thanks, Huck.”
“What are you going to say if the police come?”
“Nuthin’. I ain’t saying nuthin’.” She opened her blouse and stuffed the bills down between her breasts. It was another bad habit she’d picked up at Junebugs. “I washed your clothes. They’re in the dryer, case you need them.”
Huck looked at her. “I’ll call you when I can.”
She nodded woodenly.
“You gonna be okay?” he asked.
“I guess,” she said.
Huck got his clothes out of the dryer. Rolled them in a ball and heard Kitty raise the volume on the TV. She’d live here until her money ran out, he guessed.
“Hey,” she called out. “Come here and look at this.”
“No time,” he said, stuffing his clothes under his arm.
“We’re on TV!” she exclaimed.
“What you talking about, girl?”
“The house is on the TV,” she said. “I changed the channel, and we’re on TV.”
Huck went back into the living room. The TV was a big-screen he’d bought on sale at Sears. He’d had the worst time getting it through the front door. He stared at the picture of his house and the two cars parked on the lawn. The clothes under his arm hit the floor.
“What channel you on?”
“One of the satellite ones,” she said.
He threw open the front door and stuck his head out. Everything looked the same; then his eyes settled on the telephone pole sitting in his yard. A white transformer can was sitting on top of the pole. Kitty shouldered up next to him. Huck pointed at the can.
“When did they install that?”
“Yesterday. Telephone crew came by. They were here awhile. Is the camera in that?”
“Yeah. It’s a pole pig.”
She let out a cry. “Don’t go calling me names!”
“I ain’t calling you names. It’s a pole pig.”
“Stop that!”
Huck ignored her and raised the AK-47 to shoulder height. Pole pigs were law enforcement’s newest toy, the can hiding a high-resolution camera with a telephoto lens. A microwave video transmitter sent the video signal from the camera to a receiver up to a mile away. The can probably had a leak in it, and the leak was getting picked up by the antenna on top of his house. He got the can in his sights and pulled the trigger.
The can shot blue flames. He went back inside and stared at the blank screen on his TV. Then he looked at Kitty. She was crying her eyes out.
“You’re a piece of shit,” she said.
Huck threw her in the bathroom and propped a chair a
gainst the door. Outside he could hear sirens, and guessed the police had been waiting for him to come home. He ran outside through the back door. His sons’ four-wheelers were parked in back. He got one started and made its engine bark. Then he ran back inside.
Through the front window he saw four police cruisers burning down the road. He busted out the glass with the barrel of the AK-47 and started shooting. The front cruiser took the hit in its engine and spun crazily off the road. The other cruisers pulled off as well. Huck went to the bathroom door.
“Lie on the floor,” he said.
“Don’t leave me,” she wailed.
He went outside and jumped on the four-wheeler. Miles of dirt trails twisted through the woods behind his house. He drove down one for a minute, then pulled off. In the distance he could hear staccato bursts of gunfire, and imagined the police shooting his house up. The local cops were cowards. They usually hid behind their cruisers and shot blind. He put Kitty’s chances of surviving at fifty/fifty.
“Good luck, baby,” he said, and drove away.
28
Valentine spent an hour on the phone talking to Gerry. He wasn’t sure it did any good. Killing the murderous Dubb brothers had ripped a hole in his son’s psyche.
Valentine knew the feeling too well. Television and the movies distorted how the act of killing another human being actually made you feel. There was nothing glorious or heroic about it, and there never would be.
“Pop, I need to go,” his son said. “Lamar just got a call from the local police. The Dubb brothers’ father is on the loose, and Lamar wants to take me to a more secure place.”
Valentine pushed himself out of the chair he was sitting in. He didn’t want his son to hang up. His boy’s situation had reminded him that there were more important things in life than figuring out how casinos got ripped off. “You keep yourself glued to Lamar Biggs’s side,” he said. “You don’t know who in that town Huck Dubb knows.”
“I will,” his son said.
“You tell Yolanda any of this?”
“Not yet. I wanted to do it in person. Like you used to with Mom after you had to shoot someone.”
Valentine had always wondered if his son had learned anything from him. It was nice to know something had sunk in.
“I’m going to leave my cell phone on,” Valentine said. “Call me anytime you want to.”
“You’re going to leave your cell phone on?” Gerry said, feigning astonishment. “That’s a first. I’m alerting the media.”
And a smart mouth. Gerry had learned that from his father as well.
Hanging up, Valentine went into the living room and browsed through the books left by the previous owners. An entire set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica lined one shelf, their spines brittle with age. He pulled out the edition with the word Atlas printed on its spine. In the very front was a four-color map of the United States. With his thumb, he measured the distance between where he was in North Carolina to where Gerry was in Mississippi. It was about five hundred miles. His paternal instinct told him he needed to go.
He’d left his cell phone on the kitchen table and now heard it beep. Someone had left a message. He guessed it had come in while he was talking to Gerry. He went into the kitchen and retrieved it, and heard Mabel’s cheerful voice.
“Yolanda and I just had the most marvelous time with two flatties in Gibsonton,” his neighbor said. “That’s slang for carnival people. And guess what? They taught us how the Ping-Pong trick works! I’m not surprised it fooled you. Call me at home when you get a chance, and I’ll be happy to explain how it’s done.”
Valentine erased the message and then dialed Mabel’s number. He realized he was smiling. He was always explaining scams and cons to her and could tell she enjoyed knowing something that he didn’t.
“Let me guess,” he said when she answered. “A four-year-old kid could figure it out.”
“Oh, not at all,” his neighbor said. “In fact, I don’t think I would have figured it out myself. The Ping-Pong ball hides the secret.”
He sat down at the kitchen table. “Okay, I give up. What secret?”
“Five of the Ping-Pong balls are frozen ahead of time. Those are the winning numbers. The audience can’t tell that the balls are frozen, because they’re white to begin with. The person who pulls the balls out of the bag simply grabs the cold ones.”
Which meant that the barker at the high school was part of the scam. The smile faded from his face. But what about Mary Alice Stoker? Was she involved, or just a patsy, chosen because she was blind and wouldn’t know that frozen balls were in the bag?
“But the balls weren’t cold when I examined them,” he said.
“That’s the other clever part of the scam,” she said.
He waited and heard her breathing on the line.
“Uncle,” he said.
“Uncle?”
“Yeah. I give up. What’s the other part?”
“The balls warm up in a person’s hand,” his neighbor replied, sounding delighted with herself. “It takes about ten seconds for the plastic in the ball to return to room temperature. It’s an old carnival trick.”
“I bet it is,” he said.
“Oh, I also got the skinny on the gypsies that ran the carnival Ricky Smith lived with. They were called the Schlitzies, and they were real crooks.”
Valentine felt his face grow warm. And so are a bunch of other people in this town. From the front of the house he heard a frantic banging and realized someone was at the front door. He went into the hallway and put his face to the glass cutout in the door. No one was there.
“That’s funny,” he said.
“That the Schlitzies were crooks?” his neighbor said.
“Sorry. I was just talking out loud.”
“Well, I need to run. I’ve got lasagna baking in the oven, and Yolanda is coming over later for dinner. You take care of yourself.”
“You, too,” he said.
The phone went dead in his hand. He killed the connection when the frantic banging started again. It was so loud it nearly made him jump. He jerked open the door to find a young girl with a ponytail standing on the stoop. Out in the driveway lay a bicycle.
“Mr. Valentine,” she said breathlessly. “Please help.”
Valentine crouched down so they were eye to eye. It was a trick he’d learned when he was a street cop and had to talk to a kid. It immediately set them at ease. The girl was about twelve, tall and blond, and wore a navy sweatshirt that said ASPIRING SHOPAHOLIC. It was funny; only, there was nothing but fear in her eyes.
“What’s your name?”
“Elizabeth Ford. Everyone calls me Liz.”
“Who do you want me to help, Liz?”
“Ms. Stoker.”
He gently placed his hand on her shoulder. “Has she been hurt?”
She was breathing hard and nodded her head.
“Did she send you?”
“She doesn’t know,” she said.
“Take a deep breath and tell me what happened.”
“I went to her house. She was going to help me with a book report for school. I usually let myself in through the back door. There’s a key under the mat. I went into the kitchen and heard voices in the living room. I pushed the door open and looked inside.”
Tears raced down her cheeks. Valentine held her steady. “You’re a very brave girl. Now tell me what you saw.”
“There were four men in the living room with Ms. Stoker. They had accents. They were threatening her. She was sitting in a chair, and they were standing around her. One of the men was breaking things—”
“What kind of things?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I was scared.”
“I know you were. What were the men saying?”
“One of them was threatening Ms. Stoker. He kept telling her she had a big mouth and that he’d hurt her if she said anything else. Ms. Stoker tried to talk back, but the man kept poking her in the shoulder with his hand. F
inally she tried to say something, and…”
“And what?”
“He hit her in the face with his hand.”
Liz was really crying now. Valentine drew her into his chest and held her until the sobs subsided. He could remember it like it was yesterday: His old man getting drunk and slapping his mother around. The memory had only grown more vivid as he’d gotten older. “What did you do then?” he asked.
“I hid in the pantry. I heard the men leave and ran into the living room. Ms. Stoker was sitting in her chair crying. I asked her what she wanted me to do. She told me to go home and forget what I’d seen.”
“But you came here instead.”
She swiped at her eyes. “I heard you liked her.”
Valentine pushed himself up so he was standing. “You’re a smart kid, you know that?”
“Are you going to help Ms. Stoker?”
“You bet I am,” he said.
29
Liz gave him instructions to Mary Alice Stoker’s house, then pedaled away on her bike. The blind librarian lived near the high school. Valentine had wondered how she got to work every day, and now he knew. She walked.
From the kitchen he got his Glock and ankle strap and put them both on. He planned on retiring the gun once he got home. But not a minute before.
He made the tires squeal backing down the driveway. If Mary Alice was being threatened for opening her mouth, then he was in danger as well. Braking the car, he reached down and drew the Glock from his ankle and laid it on his lap. Then he drove to Mary Alice’s house with one eye on his mirror.
As the high school came into view, he weighed calling Sergeant Gaylord and giving him a heads-up. Gaylord had made it clear he wouldn’t tolerate any more nonsense. Mary Alice’s street was directly behind the school, and Valentine pulled down it with the phone clutched in his hand.
But he didn’t make the call. Mary Alice had told Liz not to call the police, and he had no right to ignore her request. He laid the phone on the seat and searched for her address. He found her house at the street’s end—a simple two-story with peeling paint and a wraparound porch with a swing—and pulled into her driveway. Slipping the Glock into his pocket, he climbed out of the car.
