Chapter 16
Mrs. Boyle doted on Quinn Dobbs. Her only child, Clay, too self-reliant, eating what he hunted or fished and in between sustaining on prepackaged foods, survivalist fare, or takeout from The Outpost.
Anytime Quinn arrived, the woman would start baking. She’d make it sound matter of fact, that Quinn just had extraordinary timing. Today, banana bread. It felt too hot for the oven to be on, but Mrs. Boyle waved off any suggestion otherwise. 92 degrees the optimum temperature for the secret Boyle-clan maple-bacon-banana bread recipe.
The Boyle’s spread located outside of Little Creek proper, a ramshackle red farm house, right off of 244 headed towards Butcher’s Camp and further, La Grande. Two ancient poodles accompanied Mrs. Boyle, to check on the door ringer, any of her travels, even a pee. The worse off, Daisy, turned around by a series of incremental paw shuffles. The little dog’s tail fluttered back and forth at Mrs. Boyle’s handclaps, exultations at Daisy’s arthritic-driven efforts to remain mobile.
Quinn hadn’t bothered calling ahead of the drop in. He knew the two partners in crime would be chillaxed in the Boyle’s backyard.
Clay unloaded arrows towards a backdrop of hay bales. His head shaved bald, but for the ponytail slinking down between his shoulder blades. So blonde it was near white, threaded with miniature beads and charms like in its off-time a child dragged it through the nooks and crannies of a preschool play area.
The Boyle’s had bought the property from a farmer, a generous spread at a cheap price. Once the henhouse and pigpen had been knocked down, the backyard proved generous for fulfilling Clay’s interests. Beyond the yard, a long strip of clump grass rolled towards the forest line, the only break the thin burble of the town namesake, the creek bed shores far wider than the anemic vein of water. Spring the only outlier to the perpetual state of atrophy.
In between shots, Clay’s head bobbed. Earbuds snugly compacted in, cords trailing to the iPod slid between waistband and bare skin. Courtesy the unfettered summer sun, his bared torso pinkened to the color of a store bought ham. A hundred feet away, arrows stuck to a bull’s eye, closely grouped, and his next shot almost a carbon copy, the predecessors bobbing like tree limbs swaying in a breeze.
Bret Ruchert spotted Quinn coming out the back door. Bigger than Clay, Bret leaned against a totem pole, one of three standing in the backyard northeast corner. Bret so big, so solid, you’d figure the totem pole had thick, deep roots to endure keeping upright all that mass swaddled in classic Johnny Cash, man-in-black.
Before discovering he was a spiritual heir to Robin Hood, Clay tapped his 1/16th Native American heritage and unearthed eagles and mermen visages from tamarack. Beyond the backyard pieces, there was a totem pole performing double duty as a hat rack and magazine stand inside The Outpost, Little Creek’s premiere dining destination. The poles were also featured on the website, ‘Clay Boyle Adventures’, under the ‘Shopping’ drop down, just in case some browser was moved to look beyond Clay’s offering of ‘Archery Lessons’ and ‘True Life Wilderness Tours’. As a boy he’d burned through enthusiasms for Hot Wheels, the banjo, puppeteering, frog farming, chemistry, mime, arm wrestling, and finally, bodybuilding. The Boyles indulged their only son, the sole success of Mrs. Boyle’s multiple pregnancies.
“And I thought I was getting rusty.” Clay not even saying hi or howdy there Quinn. He blew sweat off his upper lip and swabbed slickness from his left pec into the wrist sheath he wore practicing, maintaining his pole position among eastern Oregon archers.
“Watch this.” Like a fast draw man pulling down on three bad guys, Clay shot three arrows in quick succession. Two hit high up on the bull’s eye, the third landed centrally, but banged off the butt end of an already sunk shaft. Clay laughed. Shook his head. Looked at the bow like it was some damned manufacturers error risen up yet again.
“You gotta want it.” Quinn took the cigarette from his lips. “Otherwise you’re just another pretender to the crown.”
Clay messed with his phone. Muted the music.
“Dobbs,” Clay notched an arrow then rested the bow against his left shoulder. “You park out front?”
“Maybe.”
“Gonna guess you parked along the fence line.”
“Maybe.”
Clay blew sweat off his upper lip.
“Bet you I can plant this in your trunk. From here. Right here.”
Bret snorted.
“Tell you what.” Quinn slid his wallet out. Pinched a $100 out. “You shoot it, it goes into the trunk, and somehow opens the trunk and the spare rolls on out and through the yard and back here…This goes right into your hot little hand.”
Bret snorted some more. The big bear liked it, these two giving each other crap. The slight disharmony continued to radiate from Quinn hitting on Bonnie before anyone – Bonnie even – had informed the recent Little Creek arrival that she’d a bun in the oven courtesy of Clay Boyle.
“Tennis ball,” said Clay.
It took a moment before Quinn got it, started studying the parched brown lawn, and picked up a bright green victim, one Daisy and Colin hadn’t slobbered up yet. He bounced the tennis ball in his palm.
“This in lieu of the car trunk?”
Clay gave him the patented Clay Boyle stare.
“Fine. Here you go.”
Quinn lobbed high, towards the creek. The arrow connected and the tennis ball bounced off the top of the hay bales. Bret gave the feat a little golf clap. Doing things like that, he seemed like a T. Rex. Nothing to his arms it seemed, at least compared to Clay.
For months, the trio in the backyard met up in Butcher’s Camp. That was when business was booming. Those wind towers being assembled. Quinn joking they ought to hire a monkey to ride some bright pinwheel colored beach ball up and down the whorehouse halls, bucket and squeegee in paws to slop up the expenditure of wind tower employee jism. Anymore, Quinn bet that poor unemployed chimp would be chained up in the Boyle’s backyard, plotting on Daisy or Colin snuffling close enough for a grab, and then an eat or a fuck, maybe both.
Bret’s older brother, Ty, he’d told them the business wouldn’t last forever. All good things end. He’d kept distance for a number of reasons. Ty put money into the enterprise, took care of all the financials, even traveled to Portland with Bret to work out financing with some Russians versed in the “entertainment industry”. Ty poked in during the grand opening week and got all red in the face the attentions lavished on him by the girls. A married man, a dad of 3, PTA vice president, a city accountant for gosh sake, he really shouldn’t, he couldn’t, but he had, two girls at the same time, the guilt trip keeping him away for near a month before he returned, starving for seconds.
Attended by Daisy and Colin, Mrs. Boyle came outside, told Quinn the bread had 10 more minutes tops, then puttered around the flowerbeds. Bent over, curves expanding her blue jeans, silver hair up in a loose bun, even for an old broad, she tickled Quinn’s interest. Should he ever gift her his technique, she’d shatter the ceiling. The oldest squim he’d penetrated just shy of 50. Clay’s mom easily 60-something. It wasn’t a problem. A hang-up. He looked, he considered, he didn’t necessarily act. Same as hanging out at the majestic casa de Dobbs, seeing his niece prance around in two-piece bikinis day after day. Quinn only Guy’s stepbrother, and he knew Brandi thought he was hot, so it wouldn’t take too much effort to reward the constant advertisement of the tanned goods, but his sister-in-law had some early warning system wired to Brandi’s cherry. Racine would hand him his balls, guaranteed. Watching the two aged poodles acting as sentries, Quinn wondered how much Mrs. Boyle admitted to herself, all the rumors about the ‘massage’ place her son worked, chief of security.
“Bread? Why do you get bread?” asked Clay.
“She thinks I’m underfed.”
“Bullshit.”
“Language,” called Mrs. Boyle.
“Sorry, ma
. Can’t be helped sometime. Someone’s got to remind Quinn he’s kind of a butthole.”
“Language!”
Quinn flipped Clay off. Clay grinned. Sent it right back to him.
Quinn’s phone rang. Duran Duran’s ‘Hungry Like the Wolf’. He blamed the heat for the extra seconds it took to process the name on the caller I.D. Maybe it was time to get a hat. Already walking out of the backyard and along the side of the house before answering, the others could take it as him being thoughtful or careful, Quinn always presenting himself as a renaissance man, all kinds of balls in the air, deals in play or suspended from Phoenix to Santa Barbara and beyond, any of which could suck him up out of Little Creek for good at the drop of a hat.
“Hello. This is Quinn Dobbs.”
“Where you at, Bush?”
“On the moon, where you think?”
Faye laughed.
“Oh. And you nice enough to take my call? You so sweet. Tell the moon men I said ‘hi’.”
“What do you want?”
There was a pause. Faye taking a hit. Phone conversations with her could easily be trimmed 33% if you killed her love affair with the green. He blamed the recreational brain damage for her inability to refer to him as anything other than Bush, Faye convinced his haircut left him looking like Gavin Rossdale, front man for the ‘90s era British alt rockers. Quinn rocked a goatee, Rossdale always smooth-skinned, but that didn’t alter Faye’s perceptions. Once she’d decided his name was Bush it stuck.
“Faye, my love, what do you need?”
“Had a visitor.”
“Ok.”
“He asked a lot of questions.”
“Ok.”
“Lot, lot, lot of questions about your girlfriend.”
“’Girlfriend’. And who would that be?”
“Little Miss Beepers.”
One of the dogs barked. Mrs. Boyle yelled. The dog stared down the side of the house at Quinn and then ducked back out of view.
Faye related the highlights of the little ugly man’s visit. Quinn half-listening, half-numb. It remained mystifying, his reasons for revealing too much to Faye. The pot part of the problem. It could center some users. They became masters of some particular portion of life. Faye more homely than hot, flat chested, spindly legs, but her puss, and how she could work it, hooked Quinn right from the first. The orgasms left his gums tingling. Still, like a dummy, just because spilling his load a semi-religious experience, spilling secrets at relatively the same spot not a wise decision.
“The guy,” said Quinn, “you don’t think he was from Portland?”
“Couldn’t tell you one way or another.”
“Is there someone you could call? Ask?”
“Not really.”
“Shit.”
“You’re sure you don’t know where she’s at?”
“No. If I knew…No. No idea.”
“This isn’t the city,” said Faye. “Little Miss Beepers doesn’t have friends by the pound. There’s only so many places she could go, right? So, maybe wherever you looked, you ought to look again?”
“Yeah. I know. I already did. And did again.”
“Thorough.”
“Oh, the very definition of.”
She sighed. In person she’d purse her lips, achieve this look that sent him careening back to elementary school, the name escaping him, but not the sensation he’d disappointed teacher.
Any idiot paying attention could have stolen the money. Bonnie took it to the bank in La Grande once a week. Same time, same day of the week. While Bonnie was away, one of the girls would fill in at the reception area.
A couple week’s ago, Hope’s turn, she sits down and instantly she’s confronted by some representative of the local moral majority, this guy shouting and hollering about Babylon and the fires of Hell, Hope produces tears, and screeches, Bonnie shoots out of the backroom and Hope reels away from the visitor, the guy grabbed her, hurt her, and she heads for the back room, leaving Bonnie to be yelled at and threatened for a good five minutes. Given the tumult, the one customer being serviced doesn’t even finish, Wendi ushers him from ‘Paul Bunyan’ and shows him the lodge back entrance, and the half-dressed, retired M.D. scoots through the pine trees back to his summer home.
There’s no writing on the deposit package. Just a thick business envelope slid into Bonnie’s purse. With the one-man circus throwing her off, wanting to get to La Grande and back – currently a hassle and a half given a highway repaving project – at best she double-checked and made sure an envelope was in the purse and hit the road. Hope settled in place, trembling, but eventually convincing everyone she can deal with the reception fill-in. Brave little Hope.
Roughly ninety minutes or so later a walk in customer faced with a vacant reception desk started calling out if anyone was actually in the massage place at all, and at the same time, Bonnie, at the La Grande Bank of America, shown the envelope contents by a bank teller confused by a deposit consisting of nothing but strips of dollar-sized newspaper.
$4200 not a fortune. Some large-scale operation would shrug it off, write it off. Portland needed payback. A check to the Portland front company already cut, already mailed. No deposit, the check would bounce.
The steady drum roll, from the very start, do not anger Portland.
You will not like Portland when Portland is angry.
Hints that body parts might soon prove in peril had Ty shitting his pants. His new normal, keeping his wife blind to his 401k plundering, and when that went dry, next up, the kids’ college funds. Ty already withdrawing fistfuls just to pad out the monthly nut. The $4200 would only compound his pain. Bonnie and Bret had kept it from him.
Far as everyone knew, Hope didn’t have wheels. She also didn’t have the backwoods skills to lope from Butcher’s Camp back to Little Creek. Definition of lazy, girl could barely be bothered to flush a toilet. Someone picked her up, drove her away. In other words, she had help. A co-conspirator.
Any trace of the Bible thumper vanished. His timing a little too spot on for it to have been the universe lending Hope a helpful distracting hand. Quinn Dobbs the most likely suspect in helping Hope, but he had at least one witness, his niece, confirming his presence at the Dobbs’ poolside the entire timeline of events. Bonnie had asked her about that, Brandi’s potent brand of can’t-be-bothered-teenage-insolence coupled with her Little Creek power ranking enough to keep Bonnie from circling the Auntie’s front counter and threatening to forcibly dip the sophomore’s face into the deep-frier.
Quinn’s problem: post-crime, Hope had told him she’d done it for them.
Them. Her and him.
Fucked up little girl taking his post-coitus talk too seriously. Like he wanted to run away with some 16-year old, start a new life. He hid her. No choice. Tried to think up a way to get the money back to Butcher’s Camp Massage, then spent a little too much time considering how far he could stretch $4200 with or without Little Miss Beepers. By the time he’d decided to throw her to the wolves she’d deciphered the warning signs, beat a retreat. Vanished from the cabin Racine and Guy were building south of Little Creek.
Faye swore she hadn’t gone into Mr. Questions’ interest in Hope with Bonnie. Played it like the customer just some guy with a hard on for a young girl, this ‘Serenity’ in particular, but she’d satisfied all the same. Feign innocence, call him ‘daddy’, act like it hurt at the same time it felt so good, a near-rape orgasm still an orgasm, you know, the usual.
“You know who he looked like?” Faye paused, her voice came back, the pot smoker’s dreamy-high pitch. “Years ago I had a client, some coach from some Midwest college. Not the ugliest guy ever, but you know, he told me he was a coach, showed me his picture on ESPN.com and all, but really what he looked like some guy owns a diner out in the middle of nowhere. Guy that doesn’t talk that much. Doesn’t really care if you talk or if you
just sit and eat your shit and leave.”
“That’s not helpful.”
“It’s what I got, Bush,” said Faye. “He got a big old black eye. Tell you that. Can’t miss that. You gonna let your girlfriend know someone looking for her?”
“Hey. Like I said, I don’t know where she is.”
“Sure you don’t.” Way she chuckled, he wanted to hit her. Not enough. Wanted to see an arrow go through her head, other parts of her, too. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it is Portland. Part of it. You know sometimes, one head doesn’t know what the other is doing. Could be they sent someone out to rattle people until the money magically shows up.”
“And which is it?” asked Quinn. “I forget. Personally, I mean, are you better off if that money gets found or not?”
Quinn in the front yard now. He’d kept inching further and further from any ears that might overhear.
“Mmmmmmm, you know. Whichever,” said Faye. “This place is going back to being a museum. Way the three R’s run it. They know it. Portland knows it. Three R’s, they want to walk away with their hides still intact. End of the day that’s about the best they can hope for.”
“Maybe you need to up your sweet talking. I thought your sugar daddy was all set to go all in with you. Buy the place.”
“He’s not a sugar daddy. He’s an investor.”
“Uh-huh.”
“See, I know you’re trying to rile me up, Bush. I don’t rile. I ride the seas of calm. I got patience. Options. Miles and miles of sweet options.”
Quinn near certain the local old fart under Faye’s spell Lester Scoggins, one of those retired farmers that spent half their life parked inside Auntie’s, kvetching at the coffee counter on politics, race, sports, what have you. A miser dressed in denim overalls, driving a beat up truck, but sitting on piles of gold, looking (maybe) for something to spend it on. Lester might orate on the splendors inherent in the master race, but the way some racial mutt like Faye got his withered member to stiffen and spit, he was the slave in the relationship. Faye sweet-talking Lester into ponying up the dough, so when the Rucherts looked to sell, she could slide on in, take it over, at the same time offer the digs up to Portland, keep the whoring going, a smaller operation, but more important, the former lodge a new in-land way station for pharmaceutical distribution. Lester kept out of those fine details. He’d just be making his dark-skinned angel happy.
“He didn’t leave a number?”
“Who?” asked Faye.
“The ugly little guy.”
“You know, no, he didn’t.”
“If you see him, call me.”
“Oh, now, Bush, he isn’t coming back here.” Tone in her voice like Quinn a little kid, overly hopeful about Christmas or a grandparent recovering from a stroke. Oh, now, how sweet Bush could be, that strain of ignorant innocent optimism.
Bret looked at Quinn, striding back into view, smiling like he’d arrived for a job interview, and then returned to meditating on some choice spot on the lawn. Clay at the back fence, collecting his arrows, one by one slid into the quiver. The dogs and their mistress vanished. Probably checking on that banana bread.
“I got to stop taking calls from Santa Barbara.”
No one looked at Quinn. No one asked for details.
“You know, some people, you tell them you’re out of something, they don’t hear it. They keep you in the loop and you could give a crap for their loop.” Sigh. Head shake. “I just don’t know, man. I just don’t know. Long as the money keeps on keeping on into my bank account I guess I can put up with their shit.”
“Life’s a bitch.” Clay cleared his throat. He didn’t spit. Some people swallowed their gooey ones. Quinn pictured the little one, once it slid out of Bonnie, mimicking its pops in all those manly mannerisms.
“What are you guys doing today? This? Just this?”
Clay sat down on a stump and pulled the towel draped over his shoulder into his hand. He took an arrow out of the quiver and started polishing the point, breathing onto the metal like some people blew eye boogers off their glasses.
“Wherever the day takes us,” said Clay. “Ain’t that right, bro?”
So focused on his one patch of lawn, Bret not even responding. Guy had Asperger’s or something.
“Let me know, right, something good shapes up,” said Quinn. “Otherwise I might just be poolside. Goddamnedest thing, Brandi’s started asking me to work the suntan lotion in her shoulders and back, doing this thing where she sits up and holds the top against her boobs? I’m all, ok, you do understand I’m your uncle, right? She’s in heat. Something. Kids. Hormones. The sun. Something. Man. I’m gonna am-scray on you guys then.”
Am-scray. Kind of thing he hadn’t said since high school. Junior high.
Passing Little Creek city park, moving at already twice the speed limit, then casa de Dobbs a blur on his right and then the railcars a blur on his right, the cement bridge a brief humming noise, the abandonment of Mrs. Boyle and all her culinary effort burbled into mind. A sweet smell in the kitchen. Bent over the oven then bent over wearing nothing but an apron, he pictured the old woman sweat dampened, loose curls from her bun sweat plastered to the back of her neck, buried between drooping buttcheeks her opening so slick in anticipation of Quinn’s touch a thick fishy blob broke and splooshed on the kitchen tile. His dick didn’t get hard. Not even a little. The asphalt gave way to the gravel road and the imminent task withered all fancy, fuck- and otherwise. Hope wasn’t at the cabin anymore. Neither was the money. Still, he had to look. There had to be a clue. He could picture Faye giving him up, Bonnie and Bret and Clay deciding to deal with him. Next thing he knew, he was target practice. The bull’s eye. Poor Bush. Dead Bush. Jesus. Things in Little Creek got much hotter, Quinn told himself, he’d am-scray for real.
The Lipless Gods Page 17
