Beluga (7 page)

He wasn't thrilled to hear I'd come for a swap. He groused about it as he circled Larry's Tercel and soaked it in. He lifted the hood, then stuck his head through the passenger window and surveyed the interior.

“Title clean?”

I nodded.

He eyed the shiny Rolls-Royce grille. “I don't know. Guess the niggers'll buy it. Key in it?”

I nodded again. The guy who wasn't Speedy climbed in, started Larry's car up, and tore out onto the truck route. I could still hear him winding the gears when he was probably a half mile away.

His terrier came over and sniffed me. Duponts. He backed off with a growl.

The guy who wasn't Speedy traded straight up for a Chevy pickup. He was willing to go for a Ford, but I knew Larry would like a Chevy less. It was their pint-sized model and was a little rusted out from hauling fertilizer. The radio didn't work and the compressor was dead, so Larry and Skeeter wouldn't have any air-conditioning or music. All in all, it was a fitting vehicle for a worthless layabout.

The guy who wasn't Speedy wanted fifty dollars from me. When I asked him why, he said, “Got to get something out of the deal.”

“You're getting that,” I told him and pointed at Larry's Tercel.

“You know what I mean.” He rubbed his fingertips together in the universal sign for lucre. “Got to feed Homer.” The terrier barked. We settled on twenty-five.

Rats or something had built a nest back under that Chevy's dashboard. They'd gotten insulation from somewhere, and it kept boiling out as I drove. I was coughing like a miner by the time I got to Indianola.

Desmond was just where I expected to find him, in his spot at the Sonic. Larry was riding shotgun. Skeeter was pitched up between the seats watching Desmond demonstrate how to dress a Coney Island. Like Kendell and like Tula Raintree, Desmond was a stickler, too, but he concentrated the bulk of his stickling on his hot dogs. He couldn't do much about the rest of the world, but he could control his ketchup and relish.

I pulled in beside them and blew the horn. They all glared at me at first. Particularly Desmond. Horn blowing wasn't acceptable Sonic etiquette. Then they saw who it was, and only Larry continued to have a fit.

“Shit, man,” he told me.

He came out of Desmond's Escalade to survey what he knew must be his Chevy.

Beluga LaMonte shook his head and groaned. “What did I tell you? What did I tell him?”

Skeeter said, “No Chevy.”

I shrugged and tossed Larry the keys. “Best I could do.”

“Shit,” Larry told me. He eyed his new wheels. “Shit,” Larry told me again.

“We're going to check on that trailer in two days' time, and it'd better be half empty,” I said.

Larry huffed and looked exasperated. He glanced at Desmond, who nodded.

“What's your damn hurry?”

“Day after tomorrow. Got it?” Larry just looked at me. “Got it?” Skeeter nodded. “Go on,” I told them.

With a show of distaste, Larry climbed into the Chevy. Skeeter gathered their lunch and joined him as Larry fired the engine up. That Chevy smoked a little. It chugged. It was hitting on most of its cylinders but in no useful sequence.

“Ain't no tunes,” Larry told me. “And what's this shit?” He showed me a tuft of insulation.

“See you Thursday,” I said.

Larry found reverse, and they went sputtering out of the place.

“What took you?” Desmond asked me. He had a mouthful of hot dog by then.

“Took a while to find a truck. Got arrested.” Desmond stopped chewing. “Kendell didn't call you?”

He shook his head. “Arrested for what?”

“The shit in Larry's car.”

Desmond chewed some more and squinted at me.

“Sack of pot. A gun.”

Desmond managed a nod. “He kind of remembered after you'd left.”

“Kendell says I can't kill him.”

“Kendell's like that.”

“Why didn't you tell me about your girlfriend? The one in Greenville. I've got to be hearing this shit from Pearl?”

That caught Desmond by surprise. He studied his Coney Island. He took a huge, deliberate bite. He chewed for a quarter minute before he asked me, “What girlfriend's that?”

“The one at the shoe store. Pearl knows all about her, and here I'm doing shit still for Shawnica.”

This was about as close as me and Desmond ever came to arguing. He ate a curly fry and weighed his options.

“Ain't my girlfriend. I just see her sometimes. Church friend,” Desmond told me. He went to a Pentecostal place up the road in Moorhead when he was feeling especially sinful or his mother was too much of a trial. He'd go off and pray or just sit for three hours in the sanctuary where the bishop who ran the place would tell his flock what appalling sinners they were.

I'd gone to a service once with Desmond. He was having some sort of crisis, a blend of blood pressure trouble and Shawnica. He'd parked on a pew and dropped off to sleep. I'd stayed awake for the music and the testimony. The sermon wore me out a little, a fractured bit of business about end times and homosexuals. I came away believing there'd be no mincing when the final trumpet blew.

“Why didn't you tell me about her?”

Desmond shrugged. “Sorry,” he said. “Probably should have.”

“Don't want to hear stuff like that from Pearl.”

“How does she know?'

“Given that her ears are ornamental, I can't say, but she knows, all right.”

“My momma probably.”

“She knows, too?”

Desmond nodded.

“Tell me this means you're putting Shawnica behind you. And that goddamn Larry.”

“Trying,” Desmond told me.

“They get these tires all sold, we're done? Right?”

Desmond nodded. That took the sting out of the secret girlfriend a little.

“Want to give me a bite? I'm starving.”

Desmond was spreading relish on his second Coney Island. He looked from me to the dog and back again. He finally told me, “No.”

 

SIX

Skeeter and Larry had both been pals in Parchman with a guy called Izzy. He was nervous and scrawny and got along by being agreeable. He was the sort of inmate who'd get you what you needed or find somebody who could.

Izzy was from Oklahoma or somewhere, not the Delta, anyway. He was a meth cooker when he first got arrested. Then he was a burglar. Then he was an arsonist. Then he was a vagrant and a meth cooker again. Kendell had considerable experience with him, didn't put much stock in Izzy. Izzy was one of those guys you were better off doubting because he couldn't tell anything straight.

So when Kendell called me a couple of days after I'd traded in Larry's Tercel and told me, “Got something from Izzy you might want to hear,” I got a bad feeling because Izzy usually trafficked in stuff nobody anywhere would want to know about.

It was our day to catch up with Skeeter and Larry. I was due to pick up Desmond at Kalil's. He was checking on repo jobs between Indianola and Belzoni. Desmond was efficient that way. As long as we were driving by, we might as well scuff up whoever had gotten behind and needed scuffing.

Desmond had a couple of possibles by the time I found him at the counter with Kalil.

“Did you tell him we're through with Duponts?”

Desmond nodded.

I said to Kalil, “I had to throw my clothes away.”

Kalil shook his head and threw up his hands in his usual show of exasperation.

I nudged Desmond. “Wrinkle,” I told him. “Take what you've got and let's go.”

On the way to Greenville in my Ranchero I told Desmond everything Kendell had told me.

“Little guy with the twitch?”

I nodded.

“What do you figure?”

“Must be some kind of Skeeter and Larry shit. Otherwise, Kendell wouldn't have bothered.”

“Think Izzy gave it up to Kendell? The whole damn thing?”

“If he did, me and you don't know shit. Larry needed money, and we made a loan. Shawnica's brother and all that. We didn't ask him any questions.”

“He won't buy it,” Desmond told me.

“Might if it's all we give him.”

We eased our way into Greenville proper practicing what we'd say. It had been the grandest of Delta towns back when the cotton went out on the river and the steamboats called in a regular sort of way. It was still beautiful with its wide boulevards and massive live oak canopies if you squinted and managed to close off the rot and the barrenness of the place. The churches were still operating. The storefronts were half empty. What had once been sprawling hotels by the levee were more plywood than glass these days.

I was hoping I might run into Officer Raintree and let her get a look at me uncited and unarrested. When I'd rolled out of bed, I'd put on better clothes just on the outside chance that I'd be racing along somewhere and she'd come up behind me. She wasn't around, though. The culprits pew was empty in the hallway. We found Kendell at the desk he kept in the squad room. He didn't use it much, preferring to be in his cruiser out on the prowl. He wasn't looking to hit his twenty and retire. Kendell was keen to make earthly improvements, while me and Desmond, in this instance, were doing what we could to nudge things the other way.

“What's up?” I asked him.

He shook his head. “Not here.”

There were only a couple of clerks around and one tubby lieutenant I saw sometimes at the tamale hut in Greenwood. Kendell stood up and motioned for us to follow him. We went not just into the hallway but out of the building and back to the street.

“What's Larry into?” That was for either of us to take.

I gave Kendell my best blank shrug.

Desmond said, “Shawnica's Larry?”

Kendell applied to Desmond a hard once-over before he nodded sharply once.

Then Desmond shrugged and looked at me.

I said to Kendell, “Best ask Larry.”

We were poor thespians. Kendell exhaled and said, “All right.” He stepped to his cruiser and opened the driver's door. “Follow me over,” he said.

“We're fucking awful,” I told Desmond once we'd climbed in my Ranchero. “You especially.
Shawnica's Larry?
”

“Ain't like there's only one Larry around.”

Kendell headed out Washington toward the truck route.

“Where the hell's he going,” I said.

Desmond just shook his head. We followed Kendell east on the truck route and then north on 61 all the way up to the town of Cleveland, about thirty miles altogether. Then Kendell turned back east on Route 8 and whipped in at the Bolivar County Medical Center, where we parked alongside him in the lot.

I climbed out from behind the wheel, pointed at the building, and said to Kendell, “Izzy?”

He nodded. “Got beat half to death.”

“You thinking Larry did it?” Desmond asked him.

Kendell shook his head. “I'm thinking Larry's next.”

Kendell talked us onto the proper floor, not ICU exactly but close enough. The nurse at the desk, a brittle woman in a sky blue cardigan, gave Kendell the stink eye. She didn't appear to have any use for cops.

“Washington County,” she said and looked us over like we'd come from Lapland and were dressed in reindeer fur. “Stay here.”

She went down the hall and ducked into a room, came back shortly and told us, “Five minutes.” She walked us down to the door she'd just come out of and tapped her wrist to make us mindful of the time as we walked in.

It was a double room. There was a greenish guy in the bed nearer the door. He had drips going in and oxygen, and he was about as dusty sage as a human can get. He looked at us as we crossed toward Izzy's bed over by the window. He said something, I had to think, by the way he clouded up his oxygen mask.

My first impression of Izzy was that he was cleaner than I'd ever seen him. They'd shaved off all his hair just to stitch up his head. He had a cast on one leg, and it was up in traction. His left wrist was broken. His right wrist, too, and a bunch of fingers judging from the plaster and the splints. Both of his eyes were black. He had stitches along his jawline and some kind of drainage tube coming out of a hole in his chest.

“Sweet Lord,” Desmond said at the sight of him. It was about the only thing fitting to say.

Izzy grinned at us, revealing a couple of broken teeth.

“Who did this?” I asked. I directed the question at Kendell, but Izzy volunteered an answer that I couldn't begin to make out. Part toothlessness and part Percocet. He laughed and drooled in closing. Then he tried to scratch his nose and about clubbed himself unconscious. Izzy's twitchy nervousness didn't blend well with narcotics.

“They found him like this in the road.”

“Where?” Desmond asked.

“Out by Laughlin,” Kendell told us. “Mile or two from his place.”

“Somebody toss him out of a car?” I wanted to know.

“Eventually,” Kendell said.

He pulled a notepad out of his back pocket. He flipped it open and read out injuries like they were menu specials. “Sixty-seven stitches. Eight broken fingers. Two broken wrists. One fractured forearm. A leg busted in two places. One broken foot.” Kendell reached over and uncovered what I'd taken for Izzy's good leg. “A bunch of busted teeth. Collapsed lung or something. Cop I was talking to couldn't say.”

“What's this got to do with Larry?” Desmond asked.

“Getting to that,” Kendell told him. That was the stickler in Kendell. You couldn't hope to hurry him up. He did things in the order he saw fit. “The cop that found him asked Izzy to describe who did it. The boy can draw a little, so he took down the details and went ahead and made a sketch, too.”

Kendell pulled a lone folded sheet of paper from his front shirt pocket and handed it to Desmond. He opened it up, looked at it, handed it to me. It was a girl of some sort in what looked to me like a prep school uniform, right down to the socks and shiny patent leather shoes. She had short black hair. Nose studs. Eyebrow rings. A tattoo on her neck. The drawing made her look petite.