Midnight Lullaby

by James D F Hannah

  "You're not the first person to tell me this, and I doubt you'll be the last, either."

  "Hell of a legacy you're leaving in your wake. You always take a 'scorched earth' policy in relationships?"

  "I don't leave memories; I only leave survivors."

  "Fuck you, Henry. I do not need your tired-ass cynicism. I have my life to deal with, with everything that goes with what the grown-ups do."

  The words were swift, and I’ll admit they hurt. I was sure that was the intent.

  "I'll let you go then," I said.

  "You already have," she said, and the line fell dead.

  I found Woody and Bobbi inside at the kitchen table, drinking tea, Bobbi reading a handgun magazine and Woody working a Sudoku puzzle from the newspaper. Three dogs were sleeping on the floor.

  Woody looked up from the puzzle. "How was your girlfriend?"

  "Tread lightly there," I said. To Bobbi, I said, "This bastard treating you okay?"

  "No complaints," she said. "The towels are a little scratchy, but he makes good crepes and—"

  "Crepes?" I said. "You make crepes?"

  Woody popped his neck. "Did she have anything useful to tell you, or she call to tell you to go to hell like a reasonable person would?"

  "A little of both," I said. "Can we talk outside?"

  Woody nodded, and we walked out on the front porch.

  I pulled up the collar on my coat as a sharp wind blew across the porch. The snow was picking up though it wouldn’t amount to much more than a dusting. The roads would remain safe, and children’s dreams of a day off from school would be dashed.

  I told him what Doria had told me. "I need to own up to being in over my head, Woody. When I started this, I thought it was about finding Bobbi, try to help her brother and her kids out—"

  Woody shook his head. "That's not the truth and you know it. What it was about was you satiating something in your ego. About feeling like you had a purpose in life again, instead of being a gimp stuck in a trailer in Bumfuck, West Virginia, drinking himself to death and lying about it.”

  "You have a remarkably soft touch with people, Woody. You’re not wrong, either. But it’s blown up well beyond that, and now all I want is to make sure Bobbi stays alive, and that her daughters stay out of harm's way. Past that, this is becoming too much."

  Woody cracked his knuckles. It was a huge noise, almost like fireworks, and it hurt me to hear it. "The Brotherhood's got the lab Teller told you about. I’ll promise you it’s not the only one. And obviously there’s a lot more going on if Walters is moving all of that money around under bullshit excuses. That makes the issue at hand that the Brotherhood has real cash. Based on what you know about white supremacists, what are they likely to spend money on?"

  "Guns and explosives?"

  Woody nodded. “We need to make ourselves known to the Brotherhood. Stir their pot up, and give them a reason to sweat.”

  “The cook house would be a nice pot to stir.”

  “It would. You ain’t had fun until you’ve blown up a meth lab.”

  “How many have you blown up?”

  Woody opened the door to go back in. “Everyone’s got to have a hobby, Henry.”

  28

  Calling what Woody and I had in mind a "plan" didn't quite do it justice. It was, at best, a scheme, some fragments of ideas we hoped would bond together and be enough to rile up the Brotherhood. Because it was, from the outset, unformed and half-assed, we decided using the cover of darkness that night might help it work, or at least keep us from getting killed.

  There wasn’t much left to do until then, though, and I was hungry, so I hit the Tudor's drive-through and drove home with the smell of a chili cheeseburger and fries filling my car with fumes of heart-clogging glory. That was when my cell phone rang.

  The number showed up as an extension from McGinley and Kurt. Might be Doria. I hoped it was Doria. I didn't answer it immediately. I wanted to sound cool, somewhat detached, not eager and excited. I took a deep breath and answered the phone.

  "Hello?" I said. My voice squeaked. I fucked up my attempt at being Steve McQueen in two syllables.

  "Henry Malone?" It was a man's voice. Richard Walters.

  "What the hell do you want, Walters?"

  "We need to talk. Now." He slurred his words. Lunch was coming in liquid form that day.

  "How much do you think we've got to say to one another?"

  "Don't make this more of a goddamn chore than it is already. I'll be at O'Dell's Bar and Grill. Be there in twenty minutes."

  O'Dell's was a sports bar down the street from the Parker County courthouse, a place where attorneys would clear a bucket of beer while bitching about WVU's football team or the Pirates or the NBA finals blaring the background. The restaurant's half-dozen TVs were all tuned to different stations, most of them showing guys behind desks analyzing the activities of millionaires playing the games we used to play for free. Post-lunch, the crowd has thinned down to random customers trying to avoid the various inevitabilities of their lives.

  Walters sat at the bar, hunched over a whiskey and soda. He had the haggard expression of a man living on little sleep. His hair was shaggier than when we'd met, flecked with more gray. From a distance you could tell he needed a shave and stronger deodorant. Closer, I saw his face was a patchwork of bruises fading from purple to blue. His eyes were puffy and swollen, and small cuts criss-crossed his cheeks and jawline. It all looked like work I was familiar with.

  "Look rough around the edges, counselor," I said.

  He stared across the counter and into the mirror on the wall. I waved at his reflection. He sipped his whiskey with a dearth of amusement.

  "Buy you a drink?" he said.

  "A Coke would be great."

  "A Coke?"

  "Pepsi if they don't have that."

  He threw back the last of his drink in one swallow and motioned for the bartender. The bartender was chatting up a waitress who wanted to be anywhere other than where she was.

  "Another one, Richie?" the bartender said. Richie. They must have shared a bond.

  "Sure thing, and this wild man over here wants a Coke. Put it on my tab."

  The bartender made Walters' drink, poured me a Coke, set them each on napkins in front of us, and returned to talking to the waitress. I bet they were dissecting pertinent social and political issues. Probably involving a Kardashian.

  “You look like you got worked over there, counselor,” I said. “You got problems?”

  Walters took a drink of his whiskey and soda. His movements felt small and deliberate, and he winced in pain as he made them. "This is nothing. I’ll deal with it. I got other fucking issues. I got shit-canned today. The rest of the partners decided I wasn't carrying my weight."

  "Can't believe they let someone like you go without throwing you out a window first." I drank soda. "It’s that easy to fire a partner in a law office?"

  "There's always escape clauses in partner contracts. When there's a majority vote, they can dropkick you right out the door. It's a great big giant ass fucking without lube. They throw you out after 22 years. Fuck. Decent thing would be a reach around, but they bend you over and lay it to you."

  “That's so much anal sex imagery, counselor.” I finished my soda. “Freud would have a field day with that. Goddamn shame when a man figures out he's runs out of options, isn't it?”

  “I get where you're going with that, so forgive me if I'm not about to let your shitty philosophy ruin my buzz.”

  “Then let's cut to the chase and you can explain what I've done to deserve the pleasure of your company. You may recall I'm the guy you sent goons after to knock around.”

  The bartender looked our way. Walters nodded, and the bartender refilled his drink and went back to the waitress. His moves on her so obvious Ray Charles would have noticed, and she smiled and swatted them down like King Kong with biplanes.

  "That beating you took, I had nothing to do with that," he said. His head had dropp
ed so low it threatened to be swallowed by his shoulders. “I can’t say I blame ‘em, and you deserve a good smackdown on the regular, but I didn't set anyone out on you."

  I motioned for another Coke. I rattled the ice around the inside of the glass. A moment passed through my head where I thought how great it would be with whiskey in it. That moment passed.

  “There wasn’t any reason for them to come after me,” I said. “They made sure to say for me to stay out of other people’s business, and the timing made sense since yours was the only business I was getting into.”

  “Don’t know what to tell you, Malone. Maybe they heard what an asshole you are, and this was like a ‘welcome wagon,’ except it was a ‘stay the fuck away wagon.’” He laughed at that, then turned serious again. He had emotional shifts going on like tectonic plates. Alcohol wasn't the other thing in his system. “That bullshit at the motel, with you and the photos, that did me no favors. It was bad enough, the cops came calling right before Christmas, asking about Bobbi. My wife, she was asking me why the cops were asking me questions, and I had to tell her they were talking to everyone.”

  "You could have told her the truth. Been a nice change for you."

  “You don't know my wife. Rachel got the purest heart of any person I’ve ever met. She might not have believed me even if I told her everything.”

  “That why you married her? The idea she could redeem that crusted scab of a soul you got?”

  He held up two fingers. “One: You’re getting philosophical again, and I’m getting drunk, so fuck you.” He pulled back the forefinger, leaving the middle riding high. “And second: Fuck you again.”

  I stood up. “Well, as pleasant as this has been, and trust me, it hasn’t, I’m gonna go—”

  He grabbed my wrist. His eyes filled with a mixture of fear and anger, mingled with desperation. Someone could have mistaken him for a human being if they hadn't known any better.

  “Sit down,” he said.

  I pried his hand loose from me. He didn’t give much resistance. “Why did you fucking call me, Walters?”

  “I need you to find Bobbi for me. I’ve got cash; I can pay you.”

  “When I came calling earlier, you made it clear you didn’t give two shits about her. What’s changed?”

  “The Brotherhood's convinced she’s got something of theirs, and they want it back.”

  “What could Bobbi have that the Brotherhood would want?”

  He shook his head. “That’s doesn’t matter. Not even the motherfucking point. This thing ... it’s Bobbi. If you don't find her, they'll kill me, Malone.”

  "I'm waiting to hear the bad part of this."

  "Jesus Christ, Malone. Have some goddamn humanity about you, at least."

  "This thing you keep dancing around, is it why they beat you like a piñata?"

  "Yeah. I kept telling 'em I didn’t know what they were talking about, and they didn’t believe me."

  “They kept hitting you until they realized the story wouldn't change. You’re lucky they stopped when they did.”

  “I’m well fucking aware, trust me. Had to tell Rachel that I got robbed leaving work. She bought that bullshit story, too. Wanted to call that sanctimonious prick of an ex-husband, the sheriff, and file a report.”

  “You told her you’re part of the jobless rabble yet?”

  “No, and I'm not going to. Not yet. Not until I figure this out.” He looked at me again. “I need to find Bobbi, Malone.”

  “Then you'll tell me what’s going on with you and the Brotherhood. That's what this will cost you, is you telling me the goddamn truth.”

  He sighed. “Fine.” He finished his drink. “You fucking prick.”

  29

  "I was in Wheeling a year ago, working this insurance case for a construction company. There were liability issues—" Walters waved his hands around. "None of that's important. No, here's what's important. I'm in the hotel bar. I'm drinking and this blonde—" He smiled the smile of a man remembering something he shouldn't share but planned to, anyway. "She was hot as hell. Big tits. She sits down next to me, and starts drinking, and I'm a gentleman. I buy her a drink. We start talking. She's funny. She's smart. Her hand ends up on my knee, working its way up north. I do what any man would have done; I took her up to my room, and I fucked the living hell out of her. And she was something else, man. She should have had a height requirement to be that kind of ride."

  "Ever the gentleman, Walters."

  "The next morning, she's gone. Fine, because I'm hungover, and that's not when I like having to deal with crazy bitches. I call downstairs and have 'em bring me breakfast and a bloody Mary, to steady my stomach. When room service shows up, the guy brings in the newspaper and there's the blonde's picture on the front page, talking at a fucking neo-Nazi rally. Only they're not calling it 'neo-Nazi' or 'KKK,' anything like that. They're calling it 'European heritage.' But the blonde, the blonde is Monica Mayhew. You know who that is, right?"

  "I'm aware you knocked boots with the queen of the neo-Nazi movement, which makes you a fresh form of stupid, Walters."

  He drank more of his whiskey and soda. "A week later, I got an email with a video file attached titled something like 'You Should Open Me.' It's video of me laying it to Mayhew. I'm plowing her like the back forty, man. And there's no disguising it's me. My face is there, big as life. It looks like cell phone video, where she set the goddamn thing up and let it roll, and I was drunk, and I didn't notice or care. I freak out. I'm a married man, a partner at a huge law firm. What do you think happens if shit like that got out?"

  "You were all but bragging about you and Bobbi, so it's not like your modest in your indiscretions."

  "Not even the same fucking same. Bobbi was a white trash skank, and at a place like McGinley and Kurt, people expect you to bone the help. It’s almost a perk of the job: good dental, vision, and blow jobs. Mayhew's completely different. She's on TV talking about white nationalism. You know the client base you get when you get associated with people like her? Toothless goons in flip flops and T-shirts about pro wrestling."

  "Remind me when I'm supposed to feel sympathy for your situation."

  "Let me finish my story, okay? So I get this phone call and it's Mayhew, and she says 'Tell me what you think about our little movie.' She had this sick little laugh, real satisfied with herself, and it was because she had me right by the balls, and all she needed to do was squeeze."

  He finished his drink, and the bartender was there before Walters could say anything, replaced it, and disappeared again. He emptied half of the glass and looked at me. "What was I saying?"

  "That Monica Mayhew said you had a little dick."

  He snarled. "The goddamn cunt. She did. She fucking did." A confused look crossed his face. "Wait a minute. I didn’t say that."

  “The gist is that you got blackmailed into helping the Brotherhood.”

  He jabbed toward me with a wavering finger. "What you said. That. They told me I’d have to help them set up an LLC—"

  "Rockwell, LLC."

  "Right. How d'you know?"

  “Magic 8 Ball. Keep talking.”

  "What they have me do is making these wire transfers and payments to companies."

  “And you, the pathetic dipshit you are, aren't ever the least bit curious why they picked your narrow ass out of every legal rat and ambulance chaser in this state.”

  Walters shook his head, and drops of slobber shook loose from the corners of his mouth. He had more shimmy than a bowl of Jell-O on a waterbed during an earthquake. "I don’t like your fucking attitude, Malone," he said. At least, that's what it sounded like. It also sounded like a string of consonants and vowels racked around the inside of his mouth like bingo numbers. "I called you ‘cause I need your help. You don’t get the shit I’m dealing with right now."

  “So tell me. Educate me about your woes.”

  He held a finger up and swayed like he was battling a strong wind. "I will." He pushed himself upright and sl
id off the barstool to his feet. "But first, I'm gonna go piss."

  As soon as the soles of his shoe touched the floor, Walters passed out and face-planted on the floor. Watching it was the best part of my day so far.

  The bartender said this was Walters' norm, that he called a cab to get him home when it happened. I told him to not bother, and I walked Walters to my car and loaded him into the passenger seat.

  His driver's license gave his address as a subdivision just outside of town, one of those sets of McMansions built during the real estate boom of Bush 2.0, when a pulse got you a mortgage.

  Walters mumbled throughout the drive to his house, and sometimes I understood a word or two he said. Once it sounded like "I love you, honey." I hoped it wasn't meant for me. I assumed it wasn't meant for his wife, either.

  I pulled into the driveway and automatic exterior lights lit up the front like a prison yard. A fit woman in a Victoria's Secret T-shirt and yoga pants came out. She may have been five frenemies away from her own reality show, with big blonde hair and makeup layered like an onion. Underneath it all I bet there was an attractive woman, but it would have taken Indiana Jones to find her, and instead of trusting that, she had turned herself into the expectation of attractiveness. I guessed she was Rachel, Walters' wife, and Sheriff Simms' ex.

  I negotiated Walters out of the car, threw one of his arms around my shoulder, and walked him to the front door. He was nothing but dead weight, slumped at the knees, dragging his feet along.

  She smiled as we got closer. "Thank you so much for helping him get home. She took hold of him and steered him toward the front door.

  I started to help her get him inside when she said she had him. This wasn't undiscovered country for her.

  I was halfway back to the Aztek when she said, "Sir? Sir?"

  Rachel Walters used one of her shoulder to pin her husband against the door and keep him upright. "Do I owe you anything?"

  "Not a thing. Just glad he got home safe."