Beluga (24 page)

“Where's your greenery?” she asked him.

He leaned toward the table and corralled his plate with his arms the way inmates tend to do. He mumbled something back at Pearl, the low-grade inarticulate version of “Why don't you mind your own damn business, lady?”

You couldn't shunt Pearl with mumbling or even a crisp, corrosive insult. There was greenery in that Hoyt's future whether he wanted it or not. It turned out to be broccoli that Pearl forced on him. She was diligent that way. If she had a thing you didn't want but she wanted you to have it, you were sure to end up with it no matter what.

So that Hoyt got broccoli, and we all got invited to join hands and hear Pearl say grace. She gave encyclopedic thanks and closed off with a spot of ecclesiastic mumbling before we all got to join her in a rousing “Amen.”

“So,” Tula said to all of us at the table, “does everybody know what's going on but me?”

Pearl certainly didn't, but she had her fried rice to distract her and what looked to me like mashed potatoes with some kind of ginger gravy. “Yesterday's fritters,” she told me and pointed to the half-eaten one on her plate.

With a mouthful of rib meat and a few too many teeth, our Hoyt spoke up and informed Tula, “They done opened a sack of snakes.”

“Who?” she asked him.

He pointed with his knife at me and then at Larry.

“What about him?” I asked of Desmond.

Our Hoyt shrugged and told me, “Don't know. The way I heard it, it was you and that one.” He pointed at me and Larry again.

“Heard from who?” Tula asked him.

That Hoyt fairly stoppered himself with ribs. He made a noise, but he might have just been choking. It didn't sound responsive.

“Did Shambrough order you up?” I asked him. “Send you after me and him?”

That Hoyt swallowed and reached for something to sop with. Desmond grabbed him by the sleeve. “Talk to the man,” he instructed that Hoyt.

“Ain't got nothing to say about him.”

“Shambrough?” Tula asked that Hoyt.

“Nothing,” that Hoyt told her.

“Any way I can fix that?” I asked him. I even smiled a little.

“I'm eating,” that Hoyt told me like that would be enough to spare him. He grinned as if he'd just informed me he was radioactive.

“It's not like you're using all those teeth.”

That Hoyt grinned. It wasn't pretty.

Tula reached around and pulled out her Taser. She laid it on the table next to me as an offering. “In case he won't hold still,” she said.

That prompted Desmond to reach in his pocket and pull out the Taser I'd taken off the ninja schoolgirl assassin. He reached it across the table and laid it next to Tula's model. “Don't want him squirmy,” Desmond allowed.

That Hoyt caught on and went slack a little. He told us all, “All right now.”

“Isn't that cute,” Tula said. She picked up Isis/Mako's Taser and pointed it directly across the table from her, where our Hoyt sat.

“You ain't supposed to be caught up in this,” he told her. “You the law and all.”

“Went off at three,” Tula informed him. “I'm not the law again until tomorrow.”

I pushed back from the table. “Come on,” I told that Hoyt. “Let's get this over with.”

“You going to tell us about Shambrough?” Tula asked that Hoyt.

“Naw,” he assured her. “Beat or not won't make no difference.”

“All right.” I stood up. “Come on.”

“I told you. Won't do no good.”

I was going to tell Desmond to give our Hoyt a slap, but it turned out I didn't need to. He was busy cleaning a rib bone but had a hand free for a pop and gave our Hoyt one right on the back of the head.

“Shit! Ow!”

“Let's go,” I told him.

He looked from his plate to me. He clearly wasn't afraid of a beating. That sort of thing seemed to be bred into Hoyts. It apparently came with the teeth. For that Hoyt, the trouble with a beating at the moment was the inconvenience of it. He had what they call in the Delta a rising appetite. Eating a mess of Chinese ribs had only made him hungry for a mess or two more.

So that Hoyt did some calculating and his version of deep philosophical thinking. He sat there for a moment with his face all pinched. I suspected he looked just the same way on the toilet.

“Can we go back?” he finally asked me.

“It's all you can eat,” Tula told him.

“And she's paying,” I said.

“
You
come on then,” that Hoyt said to me, and I followed him to the steam table.

“My people,” he told me as he reached into the rib pan with his bare nasty hands, “been working for Shambroughs since way back.”

“That's what I hear.”

“Used to be planters. A few of them still are, but past a couple of tractor drivers, they don't need us anymore. Mr. Lucas is something different. Not the sort to plant a crop.”

“What do you do for him?”

That Hoyt licked his fingers in a hygienic way before reaching into the fritter pan for a fistful of stale fritters.

“Nothing strictly proper,” that Hoyt informed me, “but me and mine stay away from the worst of it. We'll do a little collecting or maybe—”

I held up my hand to stop him. “Save it,” I said and pointed at the table. “She'll need to hear it, too.”

“Friend of yours?”

I nodded.

“She going to run me in?”

“Tell us what we need to know and she won't.”

He loosed a breath and nodded. “Get a plate.”

“Not hungry.”

“Don't need to be. Pile it up.” He pointed at the hotel pan, just a quarter full now of ribs. “Before that fat boy gets here.”

I grabbed a plate. I piled it up. I followed that Hoyt back to the table.

He was one of those guys who, once he'd decided to do a thing, did it full out. He told us everything he could possibly dredge up and think of about the Shambroughs. It took him a quarter hour to even arrive at Mr. Lucas. There were other Shambroughs he chose to set the table with instead. Uncles mostly and a cousin or two who'd put Hoyts to honest use back before the laser-guided tractors and the mechanical picking machines.

“Dirt farmers. That was us,” our Hoyt said. “Times changed. Shambroughs changed. Some of them, anyway.”

“What's he into mostly?” Tula asked him.

“Mr. Lucas?”

We all nodded. Even Pearl. She found delving into other people's bone-filled closets about as fascinating as anything on earth could be.

“Hard to say.” That Hoyt reached for the hot sauce and doused his ribs with it. “People pay him. I know that. For one thing and another. He only usually calls us out when somebody won't or can't.”

“Pay him for what?” I asked.

“No trouble, I guess. Because when they don't pay, they get a mountain of it.”

“Who pays him?” Tula asked.

“Slew of folks. Clean up to Memphis. Clear down to Baton Rouge.”

“Sounds like standard-issue protection,” I said. “They pay or get beat up, burned out.”

“Hardly ever gets that far,” our Hoyt said. “We just jostle them a little and point a gun or two their way. That's usually enough to shake something loose.”

“What do you know about Larry's tires?” I asked him.

That Hoyt shook his head. “Don't know about no tires, but Mr. Lucas is a bad one for making off with all grades of shit.” Then even that Hoyt turned toward Pearl and was quick to tell her, “Sorry.”

“So he's collecting protection,” Tula said, “and stealing every stinking thing.”

Our Hoyt nodded and shoved his empty iced tea glass my way. “I like the sweet,” he told me.

I pointed at Larry. He looked like he wanted to tell me he didn't fetch tea for any damn body, but Desmond made an authentic fist, and Larry hopped up from the table.

“What about that girl?” I asked our Hoyt. “Black hair. Tattoo.” I pointed to my neck and then picked up the Taser I'd confiscated and showed it off. “Hers.”

“Seen her once,” that Hoyt said. “She's out of Louisville or somewhere. I heard Mr. Lucas say one time that folks never saw her coming.”

“Does he use her much?” Tula asked.

That Hoyt nodded. “Hard cases, I guess. And him and her got this thing.”

“What thing?” I asked him.

“You know.” He then made an altogether vulgar dumbshow in a bid to describe sex to us. He used his greasy hands. He flopped his tongue out while he panted.

Larry showed up in time to see it. “Hell, buddy. It's only tea.” He set the tumbler down with a show of distaste and retired to his chair across the table.

“I think we've got it,” Tula told our Hoyt. Then she pointed at Pearl by way of instruction.

Somehow that Hoyt knew just what to do. He told Pearl, “Sorry, ma'am.”

“She ever killed anybody that you know of?” I asked him.

“Heard stuff,” he said.

“Lately?”

He nodded. “I've got people around Belzoni. Talk down there about a guy.”

“Catfish pond,” I said.

I got another nod from our Hoyt.

“Who are we talking about?” Tula asked me.

Me and Desmond described what we had seen down by Belzoni. Tula had heard a little of it on her radio, but she hadn't run up on Kendell long enough to get caught up.

“Her?” she asked us.

We nodded.

“Would Shambrough go with her?” Tula asked that Hoyt.

He was quick to nod. “Mr. Lucas likes to watch.”

“Does he help?” I asked.

“Maybe. Sometimes. I don't know.” That Hoyt tossed a scoured rib bone onto his plate. “The way I hear it, he likes to be over in the bushes, tugging on that thing.”

We got another dumbshow, a vivid demonstration of the sort of self-pleasure Lucas Shambrough got up to when his ninja schoolgirl assassin got busy scuffing somebody up. The tongue came out. He panted some more. We all turned out to have grunty groans.

At least when he finished that Hoyt knew to turn to Pearl and say, “Sorry, ma'am.”

 

TWENTY-TWO

Tula was the one who decided to leave Kendell out of it for the moment. We reconnoitered in the lot, me and Tula and Desmond, while Pearl and Larry and our nasty Hoyt got takeout from the Feast of Peking. They'd all agreed they needed hideout food if a hideout was where we were headed. Pearl was more than a little worried about the crockery that might be on hand, and I'd already promised her we would stop for napkins and toilet paper and Sanka.

“Anybody been out to Shambrough's yet?” I asked Tula. “Just for a conversation?”

“Last I heard, they're working up to it. Those people have a lot of juice around here.”

Desmond laughed. He'd been in the Delta all his life, but even he was hard-pressed to make much sense of the sway that Shambroughs held.

“They ain't been nothing forever,” he said, “and here they are still getting their way.”

“I saw her in his house,” I told Tula. “The ninja schoolgirl's living with him. Doesn't sheltering a fugitive count for something?”

“So that
was
you in there cracking heads.”

I gave her my best contrite look.

“If I tell my boss she's out at Shambrough's, he'll ask me how I know it,” Tula informed me, “and then he's sure to have me pick you up. We've got to let it play out. The captain's a Delta boy. He's going to do things exactly the way people do them around here.”

“I hear that,” Desmond said. “Been trying to tell him.”

Desmond and Tula looked at me like maybe I was the cause and source of all the upset and the carnage.

“I'm a straight-line kind of guy,” I said. “No harm in going from here to there.”

“Should have hit her a little harder” was all Tula could trouble herself to tell me. “Then Shambrough wouldn't have anybody to … uh … watch.”

We needed a plan. Me and Desmond had a way of committing to make a plan. Occasionally we even sat down and attempted to devise one. We'd usually get a step or two in and then decide to improvise. Consequently, our plan was always
we'll do what feels right for us at the time.

So when Tula asked us, “What now?” me and Desmond glanced at each other.

“We've got a base of operations in mind,” I told Tula.

Desmond added, “Right.”

“We'll get them safe.” I pointed toward the Feast of Peking doorway. “Give Kendell some time to investigate. That was what he wanted from us. He might have evidence enough off that boy in Belzoni to get a warrant by now.”

Tula shook her head and told me, “Nope.”

“Maybe Skeeter, then,” I said.

She shook her head. “Too soon.”

“Izzy and that Sunflower woman?”

“Enough for a conversation,” she said. “That's all we've got for now, and the captain's going to have it but, like I told you, in due time. He'll get Shambrough into the station house, probably with his Memphis lawyer.”

“So me and Larry have got warrants out on us while everybody else is going clean?”

“Stop whining. You hit a cop,” Tula said. “What the hell did you figure would happen? I'd take you both to jail for your own good, but that'd leave Desmond out here alone.”

Just then Pearl and that Hoyt came out of the restaurant arguing about some TV lawyer. Not one on a show but the guy with the hair on the mesothelioma commercials. Pearl had decided he was a Christian sort, which our Hoyt was actively resisting.

“Not alone enough,” Desmond told us.

Tula checked her watch. “Got to pick up CJ. Check in when you can.”

“We'll be way out in—”

She raised a hand to stop me. “Don't want to know. I could still get the order to pick you up.”

Then she was off to her cruiser, a Grand Marquis that was slightly too dusty for Kendell. She whipped out onto the truck route, heading west toward Greenville and the river. Me and Desmond stood in the lot and watched her go.