by Rick Gavin
“Whose goddamn navy you in?” soul patch finally asked me. He shut his notebook. Wafted aftershave my way. Adjusted his nutsack and added, “Huh?”
We rode back over to the arboretum in a couple of Tuscaloosa PD prowlers. The boys and Barbara all piled in the Escalade with Desmond. Tula was still angry enough at me to make like she’d ride with them until she sat in that Cadillac for long enough to get a full dose of the stink. The thing reeked like a locker room on wheels. That was enough to send Tula over to my Ranchero.
“See you back home,” I told Desmond.
“Going to order my new Escalade in Greenwood.”
What could I tell him other than, “All right.”
We were well west of Tuscaloosa, on the far side of Reform, before Tula finally melted a little. I took it anyway for melting.
She punched me in the arm and said, “Gotta pee.”
As we approached Columbus, she grew both teary and irritated. I tried to apologize for taking so damn long to reach her, but it wasn’t about that anymore. With the Boudrot tension and the Boudrot danger finally overcome and lifted, Tula was letting her wall-to-wall anxiety go.
She came over the console to lay against me. Once we’d finally reached Columbus, she pointed out a Hampton Inn hard beside the four-lane.
“Let’s stop,” she said.
Me and Desmond, of course, had created a Columbus problem for ourselves.
“Sort of need to blast on through here,” I told Tula. “You don’t really want to know why.”
She could guess well enough. Tula laughed for the first time. I stopped in Starkville instead where we holed up for a day.
TWENTY-NINE
Kendell has the good sense to know precisely what he doesn’t want to hear and who he doesn’t want to hear it from. Usually that takes the form of explanations and excuses from cracker trash, but sometimes me and Desmond qualify for Kendell as well.
When we got back from Alabama and finally caught up with him, Kendell showed me and Desmond the palm of his open hand. Whatever we thought we had to tell him, he knew he didn’t want to know it.
Me and Desmond ended up paying Luther, Percy Dwayne, Eugene, and Dale a flat fee for what they decided to call “professional services.”
We reminded Eugene we’d rescued him from an Arkansas jailhouse in a derelict shopping plaza, and we refreshed Percy Dwayne on the trouble we’d spared him at the hands those Greer brothers, but that only served to get me and Desmond told by the two of them, “So?”
We paid them out of the cash we’d taken off that Boudrot back when he was a meth lord instead of a fuckstick on the run. They wanted twice as much as we gave them, so we negotiated.
Desmond snorted while I told them, “No.”
Tula got counseling. Kendell made her. It was in the Washington County P.D. regs or something. After a couple of sessions, she was madder at the shrink than me, so I guess it worked. I developed a new appreciation for therapy anyway.
Pearl came back from Memphis and cooked me a casserole first thing. Green beans and cheddar and mushroom soup, canned tuna and water chestnuts. All of it crusted over with crumbled Wise potato chips. How it came out of the oven stale already was one of Pearl’s culinary secrets I hope to never know.
That Boudrot got indicted all over. He stood trial in Alabama. Plead out in Mississippi. They brought him from Tuscaloosa in a jailhouse van so he could get properly scolded and sentenced in a Delta courtroom. We didn’t bother to go and hear any of it but decided instead to wait outside. They had the van parked in a side lot, and we just stood where we could see it. Me and Desmond. Tula and Kendell. Dale and Luther and Percy Dwayne. Eugene had come clear up from Yazoo, and he’d brought Barbara with him. She was going shirtless for the occasion and appeared to be well healed.
Two Alabama deputies brought the fuckstick out of the courthouse, and that Boudrot didn’t see us at first. Luther was about to shout at him. He had a hand raised and his mouth open, but Barbara beat him to it. She snarled and barked like hounds rarely do. There wasn’t any baying to it all. It sounded to me like the canine version of, “Hey, shithead. Over here.”
That Boudrot saw us. He saw her mostly and said more hard things to that dog than even the worst mongrel probably hears in the course of its natural life.
The deputies hustled that Boudrot into the back of the van as he struggled against them and informed Barbara of every vile thing he’d get up to with her if he ever caught her alone. She gave as much back, was dripping foam by the time that van pulled off.
We rode to the Sonic in Desmond’s new Escalade, all packed in together.
“What do you think?” Desmond asked me once we were going flat out on the truck route.
“Rides nice,” I told him and drew a deep breath. “Smells expensive,” I said.
ALSO BY RICK GAVIN
Beluga
Ranchero
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rick Gavin is the alter ego of writer T. R. Pearson. The author of several works of fiction and nonfiction, including the acclaimed novels A Short History of a Small Place, Polar, and Blue Ridge, he lives in Virginia. Nowhere Nice is his third Nick Reid novel, after Ranchero and Beluga.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
NOWHERE NICE. Copyright © 2013 by Rick Gavin. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.minotaurbooks.com
Cover design by David Baldeosingh Rotstein
Cover photo-illustration by Hugh Syme
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Gavin, Rick.
Nowhere Nice / Rick Gavin.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-312-58319-4 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-01600-3 (e-book)
1. Drug dealers—Fiction. 2. Theft—Fiction. 3. Revenge—Fiction. 4. Delta (Miss.: Region)—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3607.A9848N69 2013
813'.6—dc23
2013024713
e-ISBN 9781250016003
First Edition: November 2013
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Also by Rick Gavin
About the Author
Copyright
