by Deforest Day
Morning became afternoon, and the radio signal faded in and out as he drove through the Great Smokeys. The sergeant had been a man of simple musical tastes; all the buttons were set for country, and before today Justice had seldom turned it on.
He set the cruise control just under seventy; fast enough to put miles behind him, but not enough to draw the attention of state troopers. He touched seek, looking for a 24/7 news station, wanting some idea of the weather facing him in eastern Kentucky, West Virginia.
At dusk he crossed into Pennsylvania. The wipers were smearing fog on the windshield and Patsy Cline was falling to pieces on the radio. The late-night DJ was a man steeped in lore, liner notes, and the love of his own deep voice.
The year was 1960, and the girl born Virginia Patterson Hensley had spent the past five, trying to make it in Nashville. Her producer got hold of the song after three country legends passed on it, but she said no, she wasn’t going to be anyone’s fourth choice. He dragged her into the recording studio anyway; angry, eight months pregnant, and impatient to get it over with. Forty five minutes later, with no rehearsal, “I Fall to Pieces” was ready to skyrocket up the charts. The song made her a major star.
Two years later Patsy died in a plane crash.
Success often comes at unexpected moments; disaster always does. Justice and Davy had shared moments of joy and laughter, moments of gut wrenching fear, and neither had expected to die of old age, but this was off the wall. Suicide? Not no way.
That’s when Patsy quit singin’ and a commercial for a funeral home came on. Soft organ music and a deep-voiced man goin’ on about loved ones and dignity and moments of loss. How bronze and some kind of patented concrete ‘withstood the vicissitudes of time.’
He wasn’t too sure what they meant by that, but suspected it was aimed at the song he and most every other boy in fifth grade had sung. The one that has the refrain ‘the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out. . .’
Back of beyond, middle of nowhere, he and Davy had got into it about the afterlife. Davy’s momma had just passed, so you had to cut him some slack. Still. His closest friend in the whole world sayin’ that the body is the temple of the soul.
And to enter Heaven, the remains got to be buried in consecrated ground. Davy admitted it seemed strange, bones rising from the grave, but it was what he grew up with, and childhood things were hard to set aside.
Take suicide, he said. You couldn’t be buried in that consecrated ground if you took your own life, because it was a mortal sin. As opposed to a venal sin. It made sense to Davy, which was all that mattered.
Justice said when I go, part me out, and burn the rest. What happens to my body when I’m done with it don’t matter. But that was just his medical training talking, because he’d never given it a thought, one way or the other, before hanging around real doctors, seeing their need for kidneys, livers, corneas. From then on he made sure he had a donor card in his wallet.
And Davy said the masses and funerals aren’t for you, dummy, they’re for the ones you leave behind.
Justice guessed that was true, but the whole religion thing had him sour. After seeing what these people are doing to each other in the name of God, Allah, whatever, Justice said I think all religions are crazy.
And Davy had come back with nah, it’s not the religions, it’s the people who are crazy.
Justice had no argument for that.
The green Interstate sign said Harrisburg 105, and sat atop pictures of a knife and fork, a gas pump, and a stick figure in a bed. Justice checked his gauges; the gas tank was near empty and his bladder was near full. He slowed.
The gas and diesel pumps shared a big macadam lot with a chrome and glass diner, its lights a warm glow in the misty night. He parked in front, the only vehicle on the cusp of evening. “Coffee,” he said, and went into the can, where he relieved himself, then scrubbed his face awake with cold water and rough brown towels.
The coffee was fresh, hot, and strong, and the cook topped it off without asking. Guess I look like I need it. No surprise, seein’ how I been up since five, on the road since six.
The cook, an old timer with blotchy, wrinkled skin that spoke of too much sun and a face that hinted at too much darkness, studied him. “You look like you could use some food to go along with the Joe,” he said, pointing to a sign above his head. Breakfast Special 24/7 $2.99. Without asking, he broke two eggs on the grill. “Sausage is Jimmy Dean, the bacon’s local, my nephew’s smokehouse.”
“Believe I’ll risk the bacon. Whar’s local?”
“Third rock, North America, Yew-nited States, Greencastle, P-A. Where you coming from?”
“Tennessee. Clarksville.”
“Fort Campbell. They call it Fort Campbell, Kentucky, but most of it’s in Tennessee. But you know that. Home of the 101st, Screamin’ Eagles; I’m bettin’ you know that, too. I put in my thirty, six of ‘em at Campbell, between some war or another.
“Master Sergeant Dooley, Retired, at your service. Killed my share of gooks in Korea, slopes in ‘nam, towelheads in Gulf One. Go back in a minute, they’d have me, kill some more. You want your eggs up, or over?”
God help me, Justice thought, but is this what comes after thirty and out? “Over.” He turned on his stool at the sound of slamming car doors and loud voices. The diner’s door banged open as a florid rooster and a scrawny hen made their entrance. The man lurched sideways, banging into the newspaper machine, then overcorrected and knocked the woman to the floor.
“Don’t you push me, you prick!” she said, struggling upright, her leather soles scrabbling on the waxed linoleum.
Justice looked at the short order cook, said, “Looks like Happy Hour done took a turn toward misery.”
The man stood in the center of the space inside the door, legs spread, up on his toes, trying to keep his balance. He tucked his chin on his chest, said, “I din’ push you, you drunken bitch.”
“Who you callin’ drunk? Who, huh, who?”
“Hoo hoo, what’re you, a hooty owl?” This struck the man as hilarious, and he laughed, wiped his nose on his hand, swung around, stiff legged, looking for an audience to appreciate his wit. Found Justice. “What’re you lookin’ at, asshole?”
Davy would have said, “Let’s go, Tonto,” and been past the drunk and out the door before the man caught his breath.
Justice drawled, “What you said. I’m lookin’ at an asshole.”
“Hell’re you? Mind yer own damn business, before I come over there and hit you upside the head!”
Justice took a sip of coffee. Davy would have cuffed his ear, said, “He’s not the only asshole here. Let’s go!” Instead, he recalled a couple of Davy’s favorite movie lines, and couldn’t resist using them.
“You big tub of guts, you couldn’t hit water if you fell out of a fucking boat.”
The man lurched toward him, starting a roundhouse swing behind his ear, a punch that accelerated with the speed of a Peterbilt pulling forty tons of steel up a three mile grade.
Justice slid off the stool, side stepped, felt the wind whistle past his ear as the fist flew by. Which threw the fool off balance. Again. Justice swept his right leg, kicking the big man’s feet out, helping him along, and the drunk fell face first against the hard edge of the counter top.
The skin across the skull is filled with blood vessels, and a minor cut bleeds like a severed artery.
The cook had the cops on speed dial, and he used it.
The drunk fell to the floor, taking several stools with him, and rolled over on his back. His face was a sheet of blood, unnaturally bright under the fluorescent lights.
Justice bent to help the man to his feet. “Got to watch these floors, mister; they can be slippery.”
The woman jumped on his back, screamed, ”You goddamn stinkin’ bitch bastard, I’ll kill you!”
Justice shrugged her off, grabbed her wrist as the talons headed for his eyes, and dislocated her thumb. She wailed, lost her balance, sat hard on the
floor.
The first cop came through the door, adjusting his Smokey hat with one hand and pulling a long black truncheon from its belt ring with the other.
He took in the situation, turned to the cook. “Trouble?”
”Not anymore.”
Wide awake now, Justice got back on the Interstate. Another two hours would put him past the state capitol, and from there it was a downhill run to Shaleville, Pennsylvania, where he could finally catch some shut eye.
Chapter 24
Chief of Police Schmidt slid open the center drawer just enough to re-read the fax from his old Air Force buddy, now chasing Columbian cartel cash at the Treasury Department.
Hey Russ;
So now you’re involved with international finance? The C note in question, and its ten point two million brothers and sisters, traveled a sort distance from the New York Federal Reserve to the United Nations, and from there to a French consortium. No way to tell where the money went after that. I do recall the Frenchies and the Krauts spent approximately a billion dollars in Iraq around that time. Oil for Food, missile technology, something along those lines, so that may be your answer.
My Q’s are: where did you get your hands on one? And, are there any whitetails left up there? I have a couple of weeks coming this fall, and I’d love to see you.
Hobie.
The chief added a pair of zeros and came up with one point two billion dollars. The day Tomczak's crew returned home one of the kids drops a pile of cash on a shiny red pickup. The fat one has a new motorcycle. Baer is spreading cash around the community. The only one not spending like an Airman Second on payday is the other half of the Dumb and Dumber duet. But he always was a bit strange.
He'd heard stories of ex-military non-coms making a grand a day as bodyguards, so it stands to reason contractors are knocking back similar money. Except these three were't over there all that long. Plenty long enough for Tomczak. Chief Schmidt paused his ruminations long enough to put in a call to the Johnson Funeral Home.
Junior Johnson told Chief Schmidt there was no autopsy, just the Graves Registration paperwork. “Military fatalities are sent to Dover, and go to Walter Reed. If there's an autopsy, it's done there. Civilian deaths, unless there's a police report, get shipped home to the NOK. Mabel Tomczak would need to ask for an autopsy, and I know she hasn't got the money to pay for one, so I didn't even ask.”
“That's all well and good, but do you have any idea how he died?”
“He was a crispy critter when we opened the DOD container, and his clothing was melted on him, charred.”
“So he was killed in a fire?”
“No, he was killed by three nine millimeter bullets in the head. But don't hold me to that, Chief. That's just an assumption. But a good one.”
“Why is that?”
“Why shoot a dead man?”
And another why: why bring the truck back from Iraq? Not all than many weeks ago, over a chicken salad sandwich and iced tea at the coffee shop, Conover had told him, in more detail than he wanted at the time, about Tomczak’s loan, the seventy thousand dollars he needed for a chance to spray bugs. The chief guessed they didn't sell Raid in the PX. The largest part of the loan was for a campaign donation.
The next biggest was to fly the truck over. But why bring it back; the damn thing could be replaced for about four grand. He needed a look at the truck.
Easy enough to accomplish; he had a set of keys to Dad’s shop. His mother owned the damn building, and if Baer didn’t like it, he could call the cops.
The shop was empty except for a few drums of bug killer in the corner and the truck, now sitting in the space once filled with turret lathes and milling machines. Long gone, but the smell of cutting oil still permeated the building, reminding him of summer afternoons, watching the men turn steel and brass into gears and cams and mysterious parts that kept the coal mines working.
Wads of shrink wrap lay on the floor next to a bucket of solvent. A trash can stood six inches away. Tough to miss, at that distance. He picked up the plastic, dropped it in the waste can. Or tried to; the film, soft and gooey from the solvent, stuck to his fingers, like chewing gum on a sunny sidewalk.
The Chief dipped his fingers in the bucket of solvent, and headed for the bathroom. It was clean, because that was the kind of man Tomczak was. Cleaner than when his dad and half a dozen machinists worked here. He could remember his mother coming in on a Saturday afternoon, do the toilet, the sink, mop the piss stains off the floor.
Dad’s employees kept the shop neat; the shiny curls of steel and brass went into barrels for proper disposal, and the floor was swept with a pine scented compound. Bathrooms were either beyond or beneath them. He washed his hands with green soap from the dispenser, dried them on a paper towel.
A broom handle, with a bent coat hanger taped to the end, lay on the floor next to the rear axle of the truck. He put his foot on a wheel, hoisted himself up level with the top of the tank.
Lord God! A Claymore was lying not six inches in front of his face. Secured to the filling hatch, and connected to some sort of digital device, with wires running into the detonator well.
He slid back to the ground. He knew Claymores only in the abstract; the USAF police routinely placed them around airfields in less than friendly places. But they had always been handled by enlisted personnel. He gave the orders, and his noncoms carried them out.
With this situation he knew enough to know that he did not know enough. He might be able to deactivate the thing, but then again, he might not. An image of Pops Talbot in his wheelchair, bitching in his saloon, came to mind.
Trading your limbs, even your life, for the possibility that there was still money in the truck . . . Huh. No way. There were other avenues to access the inside of that tanker.
Chapter 25
A few minutes after eleven Justice rolled under the blinking amber traffic signal at the intersection of Main and Maple. Number 309 would be a few blocks right or left, but he considered it a mite late for company to come calling, so he continued slowly down the towns’ wide, empty central artery.
The brick storefronts not obviously shuttered forever were dark. Two story, flat roofs, a mixture of different windows from different centuries. Bigger panes of clearer glass between the mullions.
Davy said old-timey glass was hand blown, was why there were wavy lines and bubbles. His sister wasn't the only one with access to an encyclopedia. The flat roofs with low parapets were good locations for sniper teams. Different encyclopedia.
A stone marker and a canon, surrounded by a plot of sparse brown grass, occupied the town square. A shortcut, worn to bare dirt by busy feet, crossed from one side to the other.
Every southern town had one, only theirs was a commemoration, and an unspoken celebration, of the War of Secession. War Between the States. War of Northern Aggression. The bloodiest war in the nation’s history went by many names.
After Tennessee left the Union there was some talk in the eastern part of the state—a land of small farms and few slaves—of leaving the secession. Ornery. Pure cussedness. Epithets that Justice accepted without offense.
He followed the one-way sign to the right, passing larger, newer buildings. A bank, a furniture store, a coffee shop. City Hall, asolid stone Victorian structure with a new annex stuck on the side like a limpet, housing the police. Cold fluorescent light spilled from a wide window and crossed the sidewalk, illuminating a cruiser idling at the curb.
Left, past another bank, left again, heading back the way he'd come. A hardware store, the old fashioned kind, where you could buy loose nuts and bolts and nails by the pound and rope and chain by the foot. It shared a wall with a narrow three story, its pink brick face freshly sandblasted and its window trim gleaming with dark green enamel. Two lawyers, an accountant, a surveyor; all announced their professions in gold leaf on their windows. And, on the Southeast corner, a massive and once ornate, but now shabby and forlorn building with a jittery and somewhat anachronis
tic neon sign proclaiming Shaleville Hotel.
Angled parking spaces surrounded the square, and he pulled into a slot beside another pickup; a big one, F-150, 4x4 club cab, its shiny red paint reflecting the yellow glow of a street lamp. The dealer’s sticker was still on the glass. Thirty-five thousand bucks! The forty-two hundred dollars he’d paid for his own truck suddenly seemed a bargain.
From outside the hotel offered a fifty-fifty chance it was open for business. The brass handle was smooth and brown from use, but its untouched parts were green from inattention.
He pulled one of a pair of heavy oak and frosted glass doors, relieved it was unlocked. He had not seen a motel on the outskirts of town, and sleeping in a truck was something he hoped he had left behind, with his rifle and his uniform.
Once inside, he was still unsure. What had been a luxurious lobby was now a dim cavern. Twelve feet above a stamped tin ceiling reflected what little light could find its way in from the street. On his left clouded glass doors led into a dining room that had stopped service when Saigon, not Kandahar, was the lead story on the nightly news.
A wide staircase, carpeted in a threadbare runner, rose into the gloom, and a hallway, lit with a plastic sign advertising a beer that hadn’t been brewed since the sixties, was the only promise of habitation.
The front desk, fifteen feet of dark marble showing hairline cracks, was bare save a thin coating of dust, and a small chrome bell, the kind you tapped for service.
Loathe to break the soft silence that permeated the nighttime lobby, Justice stood for a moment, taking in the bygone ambiance that still hovered in the atmosphere.
Well before the U.S. military claimed the darkness through technology Justice had been at home in the night, moving silently through the forest with his great grandmother, learning the habits of its nocturnal denizens.
