by K. T. Tomb
Chapter Two
Roberta
Surely there had to be a better way of hauling bail jumpers back to court than hunting them down across Chatham, Effingham and Bryan counties in mid-summer.
Roberta had been doing the same damn thing nearly every day for five years. R3 Recovery stands as bail bondsman. The perpetrator inevitably jumped bail. Roberta hauled ass after him, or sometimes her, and brought them back. Usually. The problem for Roberta at least, and by extension her two sisters who also ran R3 Recovery, was that the guys who had the higher bails set seemed to be able to fund their own bonds; negating the need for a bail bond and bounty hunters except for the real low life jerks.
Roberta ran over the details in her head about the man she was in pursuit of; Mike Lewis, thirty-five, assault and battery. Bail set at five hundred dollars. Five hundred! Barely worth the time and energy; Ricki should have never even bothered with it, except for her ridiculous ideas that her reputation would be at stake. Her leather seat in the beaten, rusted dodge pickup that served as transport and occasional sleeping quarters sweated underneath her, the denim of her shorts moistened with her own fluids. Four hours parked, waiting on signs of life, hunched over and peering through binoculars through her steering wheel.
One of the great things about Savannah, that Roberta had discovered in her time chasing down jumpers, was that despite the high crime rate, insular attitude of the public toward outsiders and a penchant for drunk driving, these were balanced out by the great Baptist tradition of gossiping and tattle-telling. You couldn’t move in Savannah without a curtain twitching, especially during the summer months when the humidity was so high that mold grew on the inside of Roberta’s truck and required bleaching so often that the interior stank of cleaning supplies.
Meanwhile, the other good citizens of Savannah camped out inside their homes and offices and openly thanked whatever higher being they could for their air conditioning units. The upshot was the reason that Roberta was so successful; with so many people indoors watching the world go by, someone always saw something. Her sister, Riley, was still learning this lesson, catting around town like young girls do, scandalizing the neighbors in the same way Roberta had done before her.
It was a particular Vaughan family trait to follow the path of happiness and hang the public opinion out to dry. She bit her lip at a particular memory, momentarily taking her eyes away from her binoculars. When she returned her magnified gaze to the target, a flophouse three hundred yards away at the end of the housing projects, she saw the blue Camaro identified by her anonymous tipper as being used by the fugitive Mike Lewis. Time to get to work.
A heavy set man in his mid-thirties stepped casually out of the vehicle and brushed some debris from his vest. He turned on the spot once, and for a moment, it seemed as if he looked right at Roberta, right into her eyes even from that great distance. His face was poorly disguised by a thinly grown, graying beard that did little to change his face from the mug shot taken at the time of his arrest; a copy of which lay on Roberta’s dashboard. It was Lewis, alright. As she lowered the binoculars and stowed them in the glove compartment, her lips tightened. The introduction of the new cargo had caused her wallet to drop onto the floor of the truck; the worn leather flopping open unhindered by anything other than the twenty dollars she kept in there for gas. She sighed. It wasn’t much of a paying job, but R3 Recovery needed all the cash they could get right now. Her rifle lay on the rear seat, covered by a blanket. She had never fired it at a human being and didn’t plan on beginning that trend today, even if this man was the violent sort. It remained where it was laid as she coaxed the old engine to life and crawled down the street, the slight downhill incline taking most of the work out of it.
Curtains moved in windows high and low as spying residents kept a look out. It had occurred to Roberta, on more than one occasion, that if these good people would merely form some kind of neighborhood watch instead of running a gossip mill, there might be a bit less crime in Savannah. Sure, that’d probably just make the Vaughan sisters poorer than they already were, but a little social responsibility might not be such a bad thing.
She cursed herself for thinking like a politician, but unlike the rhetoric spouted on CBS, her thoughts were not directed toward the black community. In a town like Savannah, the population was almost exactly fifty-fifty, with a smattering of Asians and Hispanics. Racial divisions, sure not quite segregation, but not far from it still existed, and woe betide crossing that particular line, as her parents had. Three mixed-race children later, all girls to boot, and the Vaughan family were the minority of the minorities.
Roberta stepped on the brake as she coasted to a halt behind the Camaro, riding up on the curb slightly with her huge, front left wheel. She checked her appearance in the rearview mirror. A bit sweat-smeared, but coffee skinned and reasonably made up for the task ahead. She flicked a couple of rogue ringlets from her bangs, then thought better of it and let her hair loose from the clip that held it behind her ears in a rough bun. Her brown locks cascaded to her shoulders, and Roberta worked out some of the worst of the tangles that remained.
Lewis had, allegedly of course, beaten a local call girl within an inch of her life. If Roberta’s hunch was true, based solely on the race of the poor streetwalker, this pig had a penchant for women of color. She might as well accentuate the mixed genes that she possessed. With a final look of almost approval at herself, she opened the pickup’s door, and stepped into the sweltering summer air of Savannah.
The house that Lewis had entered was like many others in that part of town, which was to say, run down, uniformly beige and in need of condemning or thousands of dollars’ worth of renovations. The door was conspicuous by its peeling blue paint, a poor job from the start as it had been layered thinly over white, and which was very much still present. Father would have shaken his head to see such shoddy workmanship.
Roberta crossed the communal yard the building shared with its neighbors in a few long-legged strides, accentuating the swing of her hips in her denim shorts for the benefit of anyone watching—hopefully Lewis, but it never hurt to give the townspeople something to gossip a little more about. The door sounded wood wormed, the hollow thunk of the rap of her knuckles suggesting some damp wood at the core; not surprising for this area of the world. No one answered, so Roberta made a show of leaning back, peering in the windows and around the street. The windows were hung with long net curtains, good for keeping out mosquitoes and prying eyes, but she had already seen them on her advance to the doorway. She was about to knock again, when the door opened an inch or two, with the sound of two clicking bolts. Mike Lewis appeared.
“Yup? Whatcha wan’, girl?”
By his accent, Roberta figured him for a Savannah native. Up close she could see his mouth was filled with nicotine and whiskey stained teeth, some of which were missing. The smell of bourbon was on him, which might make the coming events a little easier, or much, much harder depending on his temperament under the devil’s drink. Judging from the crime he was accused of, Roberta suspected the latter. She cleared her throat and took half a step back, and put on a nervous tinge to her voice that did not require as much acting skill as she would have liked to admit.
“Hey mister, boy am I glad to see you! See, I was just drivin’, to my momma’s house and my engine just straight stopped. Lucky for me, I saw you pull up, and I figure a strong man like you just might know his way around an engine, right?”
She flashed her most seductive smile, and was relieved to see the suspicion in Mike Lewis’ flint gray eyes soften; not much, but it was enough to know there was a chance of getting him out of his house. She imagined what the thought processes must be like in his mind. He’d been on the run for six weeks, in fear for his freedom and yet unable to get out of town without money, and certainly his chances of getting any female action was limited by having to steer clear of bars. Then, Roberta crops up on his doorstep, five foot five, mid-twenties and with a body toned by chasi
ng scumbags like him down for half a decade. He must have thought that he was about to have all of his dreams come true.
“Well,” Lewis said, scratching his grizzled chin and clearly wishing he had not adopted the scruffy beard, “I guess ah could take a look see. What’s it worth to you, darlin’?”
Roberta was well practiced at hiding revulsion, and had certainly encountered more vile examples of humanity than Mark Lewis, but nevertheless his brazen, almost seamless maneuver from suspicion to predatory advances in mere moments almost put her on the back foot, almost put fear in her eyes, which would have ruined everything. Almost. She had to play dumb. She couldn’t overpower this man, despite being a capable fighter. Sheer size differences made that unlikely, if not flat-out impossible.
“I dunno, sugar, we’ll work something out later I’m sure.” Roberta batted her eyelashes and turned to her pickup. “This is the piece o’crap right here, think it’s something under the hood, but I don’t know much about cars.”
She walked, replicating the hip-swinging strut she had used before. Thankfully, she took after her mother in the caboose department. Despite the confidence she put out, it was impossible to fail to recognize her skin crawling as she heard Lewis exit his bolt hole and follow her, knowing where his eyes were. She reached the driver’s side of her vehicle, opened the door and leaned in to pop the hood.
That’s right, get a good look, you pig.
Lewis wolf whistled, and Roberta managed a look of false modesty as she span around. Lewis was nearly on top of her, grasping. She slipped away.
“Hold on, sugar, we just met. You gotta do me a favor before I do you any, deal?” she said.
Lewis grunted unhappily and peered into the engine of the truck. Roberta used the moment to reach back into the footwell and over to the passenger’s side to pull her steel handcuffs out. Her breath tightened in her chest, as for the briefest moment through the gap left at the bottom of the hood in its raised position, she met Mike Lewis’ eyes.
“Couldya turn on the engine, huh?”
“Right, on it!” she sang, sweetly. She got into the vehicle. This was not in the plan; in a few moments he would realize there was no fault with the engine at all. She fired up the engine, and left it idling.
“Okay, rev it!” he said, raising his voice over the engine. She did so, and then quickly slipped out of the passenger side door while Lewis was examining the perfectly functional engine block. She slid round to the front of the pickup, handcuffs in her right hand. Lewis had both hands fiddling with parts of the vehicle. In a moment, it was done. Lewis tried to spring back at the sensation of cold steel closing on his wrist, but only succeeded in falling to the ground, cursing. Roberta had deftly slid the handcuffs around one wrist, and slammed the other cuff to hold onto the hole in the metal frame of the truck where the hood usually latched on. Lewis bellowed his anger when he realized, running through an impressive, unforetold breadth of vocabulary of obscenities. Roberta just smiled at him, backing away from his flailing hand as he tried to grasp his captor.
“Calm down, Mike. The police will be right along to pick your stupid cracker ass up. If you were wondering who to thank for your free transportation to jail, you can send flowers to R3 Recovery.”
Another one bites the dust, as the song goes.
Chapter Three
Riley
It was mid-morning, going by the wet heat and the sunlight bombarding the window of the bedroom Riley had, until very recently, been asleep in.
The bed sheets were a stinking pool of sweat—hers and his—and other fluids of a more carnal nature. The sleeping man next to her in the double bed looked familiar, but Riley was damned if she could remember his name. She rubbed her eyes and felt the swelling in her brain tissue pound against the roof of her skull, tinnitus buzzing in her ears like a host of hornets. She ran her tongue over her dry lips and across the roof of her mouth as she scanned the untidy floor of the bedroom for some water. Underneath her denim jeans and leather jacket, there was a half can of beer. After taking a swig from it, she realized it had evidently been used as an ashtray at least once.
Gagging, Riley lept from the bed, dodged the detritus of what had clearly been a reasonable-scale party or the lifetime habits of an unrepentant slob. Pizza boxes, ashtrays filled to overflowing, empty beer cans and wine bottles littered every available surface. As Riley emptied her stomach into the incongruously clean toilet, she resolved to firstly never drink again and secondly; improve her taste in men with immediate effect. There was a clear correlation that overindulgence in the former had a severe impact on the latter.
She flushed the toilet, and rinsed her mouth out under the sputtering flow of cold water from the bathroom faucet, using her finger to massage a small amount of toothpaste into her teeth and gums. The minty taste was unsurprisingly nauseating, but anything was better than the flavor of stale beer and ashtray, especially since she was more of a Jack Daniels girl and a non-smoking one at that. She spat out the toothpaste and water, and cradled her head on her arms, balancing her elbows on the edge of the sink, still too weak it seemed to stand unassisted. What in hell had happened last night?
There had been a bike race, of that she knew. The pungent, homely smell of gasoline, dust and sweat was still caked on the inside of her nostrils. Something told her she had not won, this time. Riley hoped she had at least come in second, but knowing her own history, it was a rare hangover, especially one with the ferocity this one had, that accompanied second place. This hangover felt like a fifth placer, or even worse.
She knew she could beat the local riders anytime, anywhere, so why did this keep happening? Then it was like a Polaroid camera was printing out the memory in her mind’s eye. The bar. Of course, there was a bar. She scolded herself for remembering irrelevant information. She really wanted to know where the hell she was, who the sleeping man was in that pit of a bedroom, and where she had left her motorbike. She gingerly stepped to the tub in the mildew encrusted bathroom and turned on the shower, leaving the hot water off. A cold shock was probably what she needed to shake the hangover; the stink and the grime that coated her skin could wait until she could find some soap as there was none to be found in this stranger’s bathroom.
Riley lost herself in the cold water, for how long she couldn’t be sure, but long enough for her previous night’s lover to wake up and inadvertently scare the seven hells out of her by leaving the bed at last and joining her in the shower. She didn’t hear him enter, but certainly felt his hands and one other part of his body as he climbed in with her.
“Damn, why you got it on so cold, Riley?” he said. His voice was hoarse, betraying that it was him that had filled at least some of the ashtrays in the room. Riley spun on the spot as quickly as she was able to, given the wet surface beneath her feet, and attempted to cover her naked body reflexively with her hands, and then felt a little foolish for it. Why did people do that? When really, they had already seen each other more than naked the night previously; the only difference being that alcohol had inebriated the senses and dulled the memories. Then Riley got a decent look at her partner from the night previous.
Goddamn it, Riley. Her elder sister Ricki’s voice always personified her most self-critical thoughts. It was the bartender from O’Malley’s Bar; a fake Irish pub with a bartender who had a reputation among the clientele for being a notorious womanizer. This bartender, whose name still escaped her, put his hands on her shoulders and moved in for a kiss. Riley blocked his lips with her right hand and pushed him away with her left, rotating their positions so he was pressed against the shower wall, and she could simply step out onto the bathroom floor.
“Listen… err... buddy, about last night, I guess it was… fun? Anyway, I have to go. Right now. So, thanks? I’ll see you around, I guess.”
She backed further away, still naked, until she felt a slice of pizza under her foot, and stopped as it squelched. Fantastic.
“It’s Steven, by the way,” the bartender... Steven
said. He didn’t appear overly hurt by Riley’s words or her clear failure to remember his name. Instead, he propped one arm on the shower’s filthy clear plastic screen, which wobbled under his weight. Another part of him wobbled as well, and Riley found herself actually blushing. He raised an eyebrow at her. Damn it again. She gathered her clothes together as rapidly as she could, pulling on her panties and jeans first. Her vest was a more difficult item to locate until the bartender—no, she reminded herself, Steven—whistled, still naked in the adjoining bathroom and pointed to the wall mounted lamp above the bed.
Her vest was hanging from the lampshade; clearly, she had flung it off in some display of bravado. She recovered it as gracefully as the conditions would allow, balancing on the broken springs of the mattress as she was. Her brassiere turned up in the bed itself, and fortunately she already knew where her jacket was stained with cigarette ash and beer, on the floor next to her boots. At least not naked anymore, she could meet the eye of Steven, who had mercifully gotten out of the shower and wrapped a towel around himself. He wasn’t actually too bad on the eyes now that Riley’s hangover had faded under the assault of cold water, embarrassment and the activity of getting dressed. Even so, the context of the situation, the events that led up to the night before were still a blur, and therefore had to be considered to have only have been one of the most embarrassing displays of slatternly behavior and immodesty that Savannah had ever borne witness to; no doubt her sisters would know the full details before she did, and then she would never hear the end of it.
Riley left the apartment, Steven calling after her in half-amused disappointment. The bartender’s rooms turned out to be right on top of O’Malley’s bar, accessible by a steel fire escape which was roughly painted a deep green in accordance with the faux-Irish theme of the bar. At least they were consistent in their commitment to the cause even this far south. Riley and her biker friends would often frequent O’Malley’s after a race meet, whether she raced or not, and there was without fail a never ending rotation of old Irish men, or old Irish men with bad accents, collecting coins for the ‘cause’ back home. The joke that Boston was roughly that-a-way never got tired, especially after the fourth round of drinks. The heels of her leather biker boots were reinforced with steel and clanged as she made her way down from the rooftop apartment. A passer-by spotted her and gave a curt nod. Great. No doubt a local who knew all about Steven’s night time proclivities and predilections. It was an elderly woman, which was unusual for Savannah at midday. Usually, the geriatric sorts stayed in and caught up on their shows, waiting for the summer temperature to drop so that they might sit on the veranda instead come evening time.
