D.B. said, “Jamey, can I see your resume a minute?”
The younger guy blinked. “My…?”
“Forget it, Jamey.” D.B. gave Paul another sad smile. “Through no fault of his own, Jamey hasn’t had a real job before getting hired to bag nuts and bolts for a hardware parts distributor in the parkway. No background check.”
“Two years at Burger King,” Jamey grumped, sensing he’d just been insulted, but not clear on the details.
“Lots of us worked fast food,” said a short Hispanic man with a bandanna that sopped only some of the sweat from his eyes. “Or we stand in line all morning for sub-minimum wage, off-the-books day labor. We chase one boomtown rumor after another, always a day late. That’s how things was till we pulled into Babylon. Anything suspicious about this town, sorry, we ain’t seen a thing.”
Having had his say, he tossed a cigarette and made a lap for one of the scraggly-haired kids who’d earlier been kicking a soccer ball in the patchy lawn.
D.B. leaned in closer to Paul and lowered his voice. “No document checks, either. Some bosses, they just pay in cash without even being asked.”
“Jamey.”
This time the voice making the wiry guy jump belonged to Dunbar.
“Yeah?”
“How you like your new job?”
Jamey played it like it was a trick question, taking his time before answering. “It’s okay.”
“You get lots of breaks and sitting-on-your-ass time when it’s not too busy?” Dunbar asked.
Jamey thought again and nodded. “I guess. Sure.”
Dunbar stared hard at the younger man, making him melt in the sun. “Don’t they make machines these days for bagging hardware?”
“I don’t know,” Jamey mumbled.
“They got lots of people on the floor with you, right?”
“Regan Santana works with me,” he answered brightly, pointing a beer can at the bandanna-wearing family man.
“What about local people? Lots of them?”
“What’re you getting at, man?” Duke demanded.
“Answer me,” Dunbar snapped, getting Jamey to shrug.
“Enough, I guess.”
“Enough that you find yourself with nothing to do a lot of the time?”
Jamey looked like he was trying to see the trap, but eventually gave up and just nodded.
“And how much are you making an hour?” Dunbar pressed on.
Jamey dropped his head. “Fourteen.”
“So what?” Denver barked. “Guy makes a halfway decent wage, first time in his life, and you wanna tell him he should run like hell?”
Todd set aside his latest beer can and rose, first wriggling free of his wife’s forearm hold. He nodded sharply at the black couple and said, “Jermaine here knows where I’m going with this, but he ain’t gonna say nothing. He’s gonna sit there with a blank look on his face ‘cuz he don’t wanna end up in the middle of another convenience store gun battle in Detroit. But what I’m saying is, there’s always a catch when you get something for nothing, and we all know it.”
He locked glances with several of the others, and was always the last to look away. “Sure, we’re sitting here with cash in our pockets like it’s Christmas, but we all know there ain’t no Santa Claus. Sooner we admit that, sooner we can get down to the business of working out what to do about this.”
Dunbar’s speech ended as abruptly as it had begun. He plopped back down in his lawn chair and let his wife’s arm flutter to his shoulders like a trainer working over her fighter.
Searching faces for reactions, Paul found mostly averted gazes. He’d kicked off his shoes and almost stirred one foot in the murky pool water to distract himself from what he was about to say, but stopped himself in time.
“My story’s the opposite of yours,” he told the crowd. He faced blank stares. “This town seems to be working overtime to get my family out. All while spending good money to keep you folks in. Frankly, it’s got me confused.”
He got a humorless chuckle from Dunbar. “Frankly, it’s got me confused, too,” he said.
His wife said something and he said something back and she handed him a cigarette from her purse. Something to calm his nerves. He lit up and dragged smoke into his lungs and stared at a sky now streaked with clouds. “Why in hell would this town choose us over someone classy like you?” he said.
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
Dunbar cut Paul off with a wave of his cigarette. His eyes sought something in the parking lot on the other side of the weedy lawn. Paul could tell when he’d found it. “Silver Lexus. Wonder what one of them goes for new. And I’m sure you bought yours new, right?”
Paul bit back a response.
The plump blond leaned over her husband to say something, but he shook her off. He was a man on constant simmer, his wife taking on the full-time job of keeping the heat turned low. Must be a great life for both of them.
“Bet we could live on your monthly car payment,” Dunbar said with another unfelt chuckle. He took a drag from his cigarette, then flicked it, only half dead, into the pool, where it hissed sharply before the murky rainwater finished it off.
“It is a mystery,” Dunbar said so quietly that the words seemed to be for his own benefit or that of his placating wife. Tracking Paul with his dark eyes, he said, “Man with your car and shorts and country club tan, man packing enough punch to waltz us two out of jail like that…” He snapped his fingers, let the rest fade, unfinished.
A fresh smile touched his lips. “You and your little wife, you sip your dirty martinis with lawyers and judges and politicians. Belong to all the right clubs. Republicans, right?” Dunbar shook his head. “No, I can’t imagine why this town likes us better than you.”
Paul had never been accused of wealth and privilege before—had never even thought of it as something that should induce guilt—but now he saw quiet condemnation in every haggard, bloodshot eye. He looked to D.B. for support, but the most he got was a weak smile.
“Just a second,” said the black family man, Jermaine.
He rose to cross the weedy lawn to the parking lot. Paul watched him rummage through the trunk of a copper Ford with plastic for a rear window. He pulled out a duffel bag.
“Oh no,” said his wife.
The crowd watched him retrace his steps, their interest perked by her reaction. Jermaine reached into the canvas bag and pulled out a handgun. He aimed it at the sky and announced, “Smith & Wesson Model 15 Combat Masterpiece.” He grinned. “Don’t have no silver bullets, but I bet it could do some damage.”
“Awesome,” said the boy sitting on the lap of his father, Regan Santana.
“If you gotta have a .38 wheelgun,” sniffed a lank, middle-aged man with a long ponytail and bad teeth.
The revolver, dull and dark and long, sent shivers down Paul’s spine. Much like the jailhouse scene that morning, he realized that outside of a thousand movies and TV shows, he’d never seen a real gun in someone’s hand before. The nonchalance with which nearly everyone else treated the sight made him see what a sheltered life he’d led.
“You really want to cause some trouble,” Ponytail continued, “you get yourself what I got.”
Denver sighed heavily. “Go ahead and tell us, Pete. Being as you’re going to anyhow.”
“Ruger Blackhawk .357 mag with a retrofitted nine millimeter cylinder for Parabellum cartridges,” Ponytail snapped.
Sounding interested, D.B. said, “You got it on you?”
Pete’s face changed and his gaze drifted to the pool. “Had to sell it to pay my goddamn lawyer.”
“Well, the gun you used to have is certainly helpful to our situation here,” Duke said.
Pete said, “So what? Best weapon ‘round here’s in Judd’s room, and I don’t think he’d have any problem with us using it on them fucks.”
“What’re you talking about?” asked the black man with the creased forehead.
“Talking ‘bout that taped
baseball bat he used to run around with.”
“And you got the balls to criticize my .38,” Jermaine snorted, still aiming his revolver at the sky.
“Bet I could be in Judd’s room in under five seconds,” Jamey, the former fast food worker, said with a wink that suggested job skills beyond burger-flipping.
“I got me an itty-bitty five-shot .38 Charco with nickel finish,” D.B. said. “Kind of a girl’s gun, but it conceals well in my pancake holster.”
“Yeah? Well there’s no concealing my Savage .30-.30 deer rifle,” said Denver. “And yes, I got it with me.”
“Alright!” Duke shouted. “You got a scope?”
“Yeah, but just enough shells for my eight-round clip.”
“We’ll put you on the balcony,” said D.B. “You can be our official sniper.”
“What about the rest of us?” someone wanted to know, and that sparked a lively debate over the comparative stopping power of kitchen knives, gasoline bombs and homemade shivs. It was a game now, played by drinking men who’d seen too many movies. Paul wondered how cocky they’d be going after whoever had preyed on Judd Maxwell.
He caught Todd Dunbar’s troubled eyes and knew that there was at least one Sundowner who was taking the whole thing seriously. But then Dunbar flashed him a ghost of a smile.
“Thanks for the help, Mr. High Horse,” he said. “But I think we got this situation under control here. Don’t you?”
Chapter Twenty-Five
“You didn’t have to treat him that way.”
Todd looked up from the motel room desktop where he’d been playing a made-up game of field hockey with coins and beer can pull tabs, and cocked his eyebrows.
“He got you out of jail, hon. You can’t forget that.”
Moments before, she’d shut the room door despite the clackety room unit that barely moved any air, and left Little Todd and the girls watching television in their room next door. That meant Joy was ready for a Serious Discussion.
Jesus Lord.
He mumbled an insincere apology as a way of heading her off at the pass, but suspected he was too late.
She stood, hovered, sighed. Crossed to the window to peer at the patch of woods that separated them from the town. “Getting darker,” she said.
He knew what she was thinking. The same shadowy thoughts kept crawling through his own mind. He knocked askew two nickels with a quarter while listening to the tinny murmur of the TV in the adjoining room.
“We could leave,” she said.
“Yeah.” Hoping that might slow her down some.
He thought about what was in his wallet, and that reminded him that he didn’t really know how much he had, so he got up and pawed through the pockets of a pair of jeans on the floor and found it. He opened the bill compartment and swore.
“What?” she asked, alarmed.
He poked through more pockets of the same jeans, and then attacked more discarded clothing from the previous night. Turned out more pockets full of breath mints and used tissues and more coins, and brushed aside a bunch of crap on the desk.
“They took it,” he sputtered, and swore again.
“Took what? Who did?”
“My money. Most of it.”
He tore through desk drawers, tossing aside Joy’s underwear, inexplicably stored there. He grabbed her purse, scattering lipstick, more tissues, creased turnpike receipts, and found three crumpled singles and more coins, mostly pennies.
“Todd, what are you doing? Leave my things alone.” She snatched the purse from him, stuffed her shit back in and placed it behind her, on the mattress. Maybe thinking he couldn’t do further damage if he couldn’t see it.
He froze, half bent. “We aren’t going anywhere, Joy. They made sure of that by stealing our money.”
She gave him a crooked glance. “You mean they broke in—”
“I mean,” he said, “the cops musta took my cash when they booked me.” He slumped into the desk chair. “We couldn’t leave this shithole even if we had a working car. We wouldn’t get far with seven bucks and change.”
He was ready for any kind of response but the heavy silence he got. The room was collecting too many shadows for him to be able to gauge her expression in the mirror, so he turned.
“What did you mean when you said they’d taken most of your money?”
“I’ve got four bucks,” he said.
“Funny they’d take most of it, but not everything.”
He saw where she was going with that, and headed her off. “I didn’t spend it. I had two, maybe three beers all evening.”
They’d already had it out that morning about the missed babysitting duty of the night before, but now she was back at it. Hitting at him from a different angle.
To break her brooding silence, he said again, “I didn’t spend it all.”
“Okay, fine,” she said, but he could see that it wasn’t. “It’s just that when you drink…”
He placed both hands in his lap.
“I’m not saying…” she said.
“Yes, you are.”
“It’s just that, you go into a bar, and…two or three?”
His fist crashed to the desktop, sending their pathetic money pile fluttering, the coin stacks crumbling. She never knew when to walk away from an argument before it hit the red zone. He stood and began pacing, trying to burn through the energy fueling his anger. He could no longer hear the tinny TV in the next room. Melanie always knew when to turn it down.
“That’s right,” he rasped. “I’m the grade-A fuck-up who can’t drink, can’t hold on to his own money, can’t even remember to come home at night.”
“Honey, calm down,” she said, but it only made him pace faster.
There was still too much fuel to burn up, so he had to throw something. But everything in the goddamn room was bolted down. He picked up his jeans from the floor and whipped them against a wall. A totally unsatisfying whish of a reaction.
“Honey,” Joy said. “It’s alright. I got the job anyway.”
Coming at him from yet another angle. “What?” Stopping him cold.
“I should have told you earlier, but I was saving it.”
Meaning she’d withheld the news as punishment for his lost Friday, but he tried to brush it off.
“A woman from the Water Department came and got me at about seven last night, after I called and told them why I couldn’t make it. She took the girls, too. They sat and read while I was interviewed.
He stood over her, one foot propped on the bed. He was wearing shoes, and just waiting for her to complain about dirt on the spread even though it wasn’t their spread. He’d never heard of an employer who’d do something like that for a job candidate. And the Water Department was open on a Friday evening?
He was going to congratulate her anyway and worry about it later. But he never got the chance. Not before the gunshot rang out and cries filled the air.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Full night had somehow sneaked up on them while he and Joy had been fighting. Now, as he shouted through the thin wall for the girls to stay where they were, Todd slipped out and followed the voices to the ravine that demarcated the rear of the motel complex, cutting it off from the woods that separated them from the town.
“Hey, get a light,” Denver Dugan was shouting. “What happened here?”
Several people lit cigarette lighters, and Todd could just make out that about half of the bleary, stumbling shadows carried guns, knives or homemade weapons of some kind.
“Someone’s gonna get shot out here,” Joy said.
“Someone did get shot.”
Todd aimed his own lighter at the voice. Kathy Lee was firing up a cigarette, her lighter hand shaking so that the flame left swirling tracers in the night. A dull, black automatic hung by her side, at the end of her other scrawny arm.
“What happened?” This from D.B., coming up behind them with a flashlight and his gentle take-charge manner.
Kathy Lee, now center
ed in D.B.’s beam, said, “Over there.” She pointed her shaky gun at a stand of greenery just before the ravine fell away to the creek bed below.
“Who’d you get?” Duke Gates demanded, slipping his fire-breathing dragon arm around her. He stood bare-chested, his shorts unbuttoned to a wiry patch of hair below his belly button. He took the gun from her and notched it in his waistband, gangsta style.
“Heard something after you fell to sleep, so I went to see,” she said.
More than Todd cared to know.
“It came at me.”
“What? A rat?” Carl asked.
“If it was,” she said, “it was as big as you. And on two legs.”
Explaining nothing.
D.B.’s eyes and flashlight beam swept the crowd before landing on two side-by-side armed men: Denver with his scoped deer rifle and Jermaine with the .38 the others had already met. “Will you two take a look? Here. Take the flashlight.”
They went.
There might be fucking vampires out there, Todd thought, but all D.B. had to do was ask them nicely.
The Sundowners waited silently topside while Denver and Jermaine thrashed around below. Jermaine aimed D.B.’s weak flashlight beam at tangled brush that looked black as the night, the light sometimes picking up Denver’s big, scared face.
Meanwhile, Kathy Lee was going on in that steady twang of hers. “It was climbing out of the ravine, right up at me, its eyes shining in the moonlight.”
It, she’d said this time. Man or creature? Todd wondered.
“When it saw I had Duke’s nine millimeter with me, it—he scrambled back behind that bush, but not before I nailed it once, point blank in the chest.”
Flip-flopping pronouns like even she didn’t have a clue.
“Duke didn’t mention having no nine,” Todd said.
“Why should I?” the kid replied.
“We’re all in this together, you little prick.”
“Hold it, you two, I wanna hear this,” said D.B. He motioned for Kathy Lee to continue.
Bloodthirst in Babylon Page 17
