Greasy Bend

by Kris Lackey

  “Wichita Falls—not a taxing drive from Marietta. And across the state line. A border is just a legal fiction, but it throws up mental ramparts. Texas is not here, but there. A fake vendor in Oklahoma would set off alarms when one in Texas might not. Like, ‘No wonder I don’t know that vendor. It’s in Texas.’”

  “James went there by his lonesome to get the check and banked it just far enough from home nobody would pay him any mind. So if there’s some big crook back of him, that guy’s not in Wichita Falls.”

  “Tulsa—well. We’re back to mind-forged boundaries. Marietta could be said to lie in Oklahoma City’s orbit. Art-deco old-oil Tulsa commands the Arkansas. It has a different area code.”

  “Yeah,” Bond said, “James might just as well have been in St. Louis. But he wasn’t—or isn’t. That’s another reason I think somebody’s pulling his wars.”

  For half a second, Barker frowned at “wars” before she translated it to “wires,” nodded and said, “From a place between Wichita Falls and Tulsa.”

  “I hope so.” Hannah carried her mug to the kitchen sink and rinsed it out. “And even that’s a considerable patch of ground—most of it over the Johnston County line.”

  CHAPTER 15

  “Nichole was asleep when I went over there. It wasn’t even seven o’clock. Her mother told me she had slept almost around the clock. The girls had just fallen asleep in their mom’s bed.” Jill Milton stood in the empty, unlit gym of the nation’s Ada wellness center. The gym was a foyer to her office in the back. A small sign behind her read, “Jill Milton, PhD.” Beneath that, “Nutritionist” and an arrow. She had not included the degree when she ordered the sign. Anemic winter light from the center’s bank of windows pooled behind her. “Nichole did ask her mother if there was any news.”

  “I haven’t talked to Fox about what the FBI knows,” Maytubby said. “On my end, just a little this side of wild surmise. I think I’ve found a person who hid the robbers’ truck and burned the fake casino guard uniforms they wore.”

  “An accomplice.”

  “That, too.”

  “The feds could question him, but that would alert the confederacy.”

  “Yeah. And speaking of, a couple of suspicious persons I tailed in my truck through the inky wilds of Johnston County ended up at the same gate. Which had a guard. Who stopped me while I was on a county road.”

  “How did that go?”

  “I deceived him with the camo hat and gag teeth, claimed I was pot-shooting deer.”

  “You wore your city-man running shoes, didn’t you?”

  “Well, it was dark.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And before that, I had to run really fast.”

  “Sure. Did you sleep?”

  “This morning.”

  “Doesn’t look like it.”

  “I did run really fast. What do you know about Choc-a-Bubbies?”

  “What?

  “Like, what are they? Where do they live?”

  “They’re chocolate-and-caramel candy bars. One by itself is a Bubby. Off-brand, made in Tulsa. The only place they live I care about is school vending machines. Sell like hotcakes, judging by the real estate they’re occupying in the machines—lately, especially.”

  “In your crosshairs.”

  “Most of the parents and administrators would prefer healthier choices. Soon, the feds will demand it. But the machines bring cash to poor schools, and junk food sells. Strange you should ask, though. The school districts where we put on the Eagle play have been talking about food choices. I’ve been to some of the meetings. Lately, this guy from Sentinel Vending in Ardmore has been showing up, raising a stink when anybody questions his product.”

  “Free country, free enterprise, gummint meddling.”

  “Yeah, the party line, but more personal.”

  “Small company, a lot at stake?”

  “No, not defensive or scared. He’s an alpha.”

  “You’re saying people are afraid of him?”

  Jill nodded slightly. “He’s kind of roosterish, with tiny cold eyes. Menacing eyes.”

  “You think he owns the company?”

  “He doesn’t strike me as someone who would inspire loyalty in his employees.”

  “Did you look for him on the company’s website?”

  “No photos of people on the website.”

  “He doesn’t load the machines.”

  “I’ve seen only two of those people: a man and a woman, and he’s not the man. I almost wish he were. At least, he’s clean. I wouldn’t touch anything I knew that service guy had handled.”

  “The service guy—what’s he look like? Besides the crust.”

  “Pale. Greasy hair sticking out from under his stocking hat. Stringy beard. Needs suspenders.”

  “Did you notice if his socks matched?”

  “No, but if they didn’t, that would be the least of his problems.”

  “I think this guy’s name is Lon Crum. The chief of security at Golden Play thought he might have recognized him on the security video, as one of the impostor guards in the robbery. Crum had been fired from the travel stop next door for shoplifting.”

  “Somebody must be hard up for gang members. Can’t see him doing the runaway part.”

  “If he’s the guy on the tape, you wouldn’t. He lumbers. Just didn’t have far to go. His body-flop into a pickup bed …”

  “Now, that I can see.”

  “Last night, I tried to eavesdrop on Crum and an older, richer man at a bar in Stratford. The older guy was one of the suspicious persons I tailed. It was noisy. The only things I heard were ‘fucking eagle,’ ‘Choc-a-Bubbies,’ and the phrase ‘all of them.’ You just connected the first two.”

  “The third sounds kind of biblical.”

  “Unless he was talking about Choc-a-Bubbies. Oh, and after the Bible line, Lon Crum said, ‘I can do that.’”

  “Not an angel of destruction. Definitely the candy.”

  “He did, maybe, mace a security guard and steal bags of money.”

  “Candy.”

  “Probably.”

  “Does Crum live up the gated road?”

  “The gated road leads to some kind of compound. I stole into it unperceived.”

  “In other words, you don’t know.”

  “Right.”

  “You think he’s an unworthy antagonist.”

  “Hmm. He wasn’t the shooter and couldn’t be the boss.”

  “You’re rationalizing.”

  “Think? And yeah, Crum might be the low-hanging fruit.”

  “Thank you for bringing that dead metaphor to life so close to lunch.”

  “Sorry.”

  She nodded toward the window. Maytubby followed her nod and looked at the Ada Municipal Airport entrance across the street. It was marked by an old V-tail Beechcraft Bonanza mounted on a steel pole. “You going up to get a better look at that compound?”

  “No leaves now, but the bur oaks up there are pretty dense. Don’t know if it would tell me anything.” He held out his cell. “Google’s photo.”

  “Oh. Summer.”

  “Sentinel Vending, huh. I’m curious about the rooster. And also about why someone has to meet Lon Crum in a country bar to talk about product.”

  “The website has no people, but it does have a street address. South Commerce, by the Confederate cemetery.”

  “As soon as I talk to Fox, I’ll go poke around down there.”

  “Who will you be?”

  “Thinking bougie OU frat boy ten years down the road. Resigned but not hopeless. Flannel shirt. Khakis no pleats. Doc Martens.”

  She laid her hand on his chest and smiled sadly. “Boomer Sooner.”

  CHAPTER 16

  When the Lighthorse dispatcher buzzed Maytubby into he
adquarters, she motioned him to her desk. She was looking over his shoulder. “Just keep facing me, Bill,” she said.

  “Okay, Sheila.”

  She nodded and smiled at someone or some people behind him. When she buzzed the lock, he turned and saw Chief Fox holding the door for a young woman and a young man, both in navy blazers. The man was very short and muscular and had a shaved bullet head. The woman was also fit. She wore her thick black hair cut straight just below her collar. When all three were outside, Maytubby said, “How long they been with Fox?”

  “Half hour. Not very long.”

  “Young.”

  “I know. Even younger than you. I’ve been around since the chain-smoking guys in string ties.”

  “How were they?”

  She shrugged. “I had to take up smoking for a while so I could, you know …” She pantomimed one hand burning the other as it approached her breast.

  He nodded.

  “But most of them didn’t do that.” She buzzed Fox back in.

  In the chief’s office, Fox sat beneath the photo of the amiable and impassive governor. The reflected screen of his computer was blank. He said, “Agents Tillis and Sanchez told me to thank the Lighthorse officer for a lead from a guy on Whiskey Lane, south of the casino.”

  “Did the guy give them my name?”

  “No. He called you an ‘Indian policeman.’ They didn’t ask for a name. Why did you tip your hand?”

  “To show my goodwill and generosity.”

  “And to make them think you weren’t even playing cards.”

  “Tillis and Sanchez have anything?”

  “Another security camera caught the pickup going west on Seventy. And you know it went south and then back east on Whiskey. The agents are interviewing citizens along that road. They’ve interviewed the guards at the casino and the guards from the armored car. Someone called the US attorney and claimed he saw a man with a pirate mask driving a white pickup in Krebs.”

  “Two hours east.”

  “Reckon that mask might have come off a little this side of Krebs?”

  “That’s all they have?”

  “All they told me. Any leads on the rustlers?”

  “I’m combing the range, Chief.”

  Fox frowned and nodded. He stood and reached to shake Maytubby’s hand. For a split second, Maytubby didn’t understand what his boss was doing, it had been so long since they last shook hands. He quickly recovered and grasped Fox’s hand. Fox let go and turned toward his dark computer screen.

  * * *

  After delivering a summons in Ravia, Hannah Bond drove to the middle of a long straightaway on Oklahoma 1, pulled over, and backed her cruiser into a gravel patch beside a red cedar. Southbound drivers couldn’t see her. She could usually bag a day’s nonquota of speeders in a few hours.

  While she was writing her third citation—a lucrative twenty-over—a white Crown Vic with dash strobes pulled onto the shoulder behind her cruiser. She looked up from her pad of tickets and recognized Scrooby. He got out of his OSBI cruiser, walked away from the highway, and leaned against a jutting rock. When Bond finished with the speeder, she tossed her citation holder in her cruiser, walked over to the far edge of the right-of-way, and stood next to Scrooby. She looked down at him. Her head and hat threw his face into shadow. He tugged at his collar.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about Alice Lang’s involvement in the Richard James case?”

  “Because when we was eating hamburgers, I never had heard of it.”

  “You were one of her best friends. You could have saved me a day.”

  Bond took out her cell, brought it near her face, and squinted as she typed with her large thumbs.

  “What are you doing?” Scrooby said.

  The agent’s phone began playing “Sweet Home Alabama.” He took it out and swiped it.

  “I sent you Cathy Barker’s number. She’s a retired Supreme Court justice for the Chickasaw Nation. She knew Alice before I did, and she knows about the case. Alice never said anything to me about it. I guess it wasn’t none of my business.”

  He put his phone away and looked up. The sun was full in his eyes.

  She had walked back to her cruiser and left him leaning against his rock.

  CHAPTER 17

  An hour after leaving Lighthorse headquarters, Maytubby was sitting in his ’65 Ford pickup at a stoplight on Commerce Street in Ardmore, watching the flags over the Oklahoma Veterans Center crack in a stiff north wind. The center was built early in the past century as a Confederate veterans’ home, owing much to the Chickasaw Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. A little farther down Commerce, he passed the Confederate cemetery where his great-great-great-grandfather Maytubby, who rode with Nail’s Company in Shecoe’s Chickasaw Battalion, was buried.

  Sentinel Vending occupied a small concrete-block warehouse with a blue metal mansard roof in the front. Its red, white, and blue acrylic sign featured the company’s logo, a generic nineteenth-century soldier in a plumed shako, standing at attention with a bayonet-fixed rifle on his shoulder. Maytubby drove a few blocks past the business, then came back down the alley and parked behind an adjacent business. He took out his cell phone and pretended to stare at its dark screen. A white box truck with the Sentinel logo was backed into the company’s warehouse. Maytubby was close enough to see a man loading boxes into the truck. The man was too short and too thin to be Crum.

  From thirty yards away, the familiar candy and chip logos on most of the sealed boxes were clear enough. Other logos were unfamiliar, though they were clearly logos. But when the loader moved to the other side of the warehouse, obscured by the freight truck, the boxes he brought to the truck were old and stained and had numbers printed on them in black marker. After those mostly square boxes, he began to load odd-shaped boxes, some of them long and thin. About the size of hard-shell rifle or shotgun cases, Maytubby thought. He powered on his cell camera and slid it to video, held its lens against the driver’s window with his shoulder as he drove slowly on down the alley, both hands on the wheel.

  Before he entered the Sentinel storefront, he slipped on some tortoise-shell reading glasses, checked his flannel shirt and khakis, his old Doc Martens. He settled a twill OU baseball cap over his thick black hair. In this part of the state, the cap was a cloak of invisibility. The one he left at home, with the letters in Cherokee, not so much.

  The plate glass of what was once a showroom had been covered from the inside with reflective window film. Maytubby watched himself walk toward the front door. He recognized none of the vehicles in the reflected parking lot as he walked behind them, memorizing their Oklahoma plates. A small sign under an intercom box said, push to talk. The door was buzzed open before he lifted his hand.

  A short, thin pokerfaced man, middle-aged, smelling of cigarettes, stood behind the counter. “Can I help you?” he said. He didn’t seem to want to. Maytubby heard the pipe-clink of a hand truck in the garage.

  A male voice behind a closed office door raged in Hitlerian cadences. Behind the counter were three other office doors, all closed but one, which stood slightly ajar.

  Maytubby adjusted his low-power glasses and looked at the counterman. “Folks in my office ’bout to come to blows over their coffee. Everybody drinks it; nobody wants to make it. The helpful people feel put-upon—”

  “How many employees?”

  “Eleven.”

  The man stared straight past Maytubby’s shoulder as he reached under the counter, pulled out a ring binder, flipped the binder open, and spun it around. When the man bent and set his index finger on a glossy page, the ranter’s door swung open. The man at the counter explained something, but Maytubby was watching the screaming man. His crimson face and neck, undeniably roosterish, bobbed ghoulishly. He wiped his mouth with his forearm as he glared at Maytubby. Then he stalked down the hall toward the
warehouse.

  “I’m sorry,” Maytubby said, shaking his head. He looked down at a photo of a small coin-operated coffee machine. “Could you repeat that?”

  “This is the forty-two-eighty. We can install the machine and connect it to a water source. Somebody still has to replace the coffee bags. We deliver fresh bags when we empty the coin bin.”

  Maytubby saw no copy machine along the counter. “Could I have a copy of this page?”

  The counterman didn’t answer but clicked open the binder rings and took the page into one of the offices with closed doors. Though Rooster had closed the warehouse door, that didn’t muffle his rant. Maytubby, who had his hands in his pocket and was staring at the ceiling as he edged down the counter, distinctly heard him rage-yodel, “Drop that fucking alley door, you shit-ass.”

  Maytubby sidled along the counter until he could see, through the one gapped door, a man’s hand holding a cell phone. Then the counterman brought the closed binder and the photocopied page and stood between Maytubby and the door. He took a pen from his pocket and wrote something on the copy, then slid the binder under the counter. Still looking over Maytubby’s shoulder, he said flatly, “That’s the installation price and the monthly payment.”

  Because the counterman did not make eye contact, Maytubby tried to look away from his face toward the door. But the instant he did, the counterman looked at his eyes, and Maytubby flicked his eyes back in time to see the counterman look away. Though the pokerfaced man was not familiar to Maytubby, something about his eyes—not their heavy lids, but a lurking smugness—stirred a ripple. “Thank you,” Maytubby said as he held up the copy and shook it a little. This bought him a split second to look through the door gap. He saw a face that meant nothing to him. The counterman compressed his lips and nodded slightly before turning away. Rooster had fallen silent and did not return. Maytubby folded the page noisily—and slowly, so he could record every detail of the vendor’s office as he turned toward the door. The wall bore dark rectangles where frames had once hung. Not a lamp or a piece of furniture—the inverse of Sentinel’s line of food-vending machines, with their big inviting windows, bright lights, and ranks of gaudy packages. Either someone had taken great pains to make the place look uninhabited, or it wasn’t ever really inhabited.