Dirtbags (19 page)

The door opened, and in London’s head, a choir of angelic voices heralded from the heavens or from inside the trailer or from somewhere, but they blasted horns and made such a ruckus that he nearly fell backwards before he realized it was just love—true love, not the kind he found with that bitch whore ex-wife or the ruthless cunt he’d married after—but something you find only once in life if you were lucky and, if you were even more fortunate, found in time to capitalize upon and, for him in that very moment, her name was Rhonda Cantrell, and she stood before him, and judging by the look on her face and the tremor running through her body, she felt it, too. He took her in his arms.

“Oh god, it was right in front of me this entire time,” he said between mouthfuls of her neck, lips, cheeks, and whatever else he could manage. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

She laughed nervously. “Sorry? What do you have to be sorry about?”

“I almost lost you,” he said.

She seemed to want to push him from her, but that impulse was good and resisted, and she did very little at all to repel him. Her arms went up his sides and down his back, then made their way back to his chest to push him away before running through his hair. The electricity was unimaginable. She seemed to drink of him. He held her, too.

“We should go inside,” she said.

“No,” he said. He kept it up, the spasmodic kissing, the incessant groping. As if she would slip away if he lost contact. He fought and pawed and grabbed and sucked . . . “No, let’s get to my car. You and me. Let’s leave right now.”

She slowed him. Looked him in the eye and wouldn’t let him look away. “Your car?”

“Yes. Let’s leave. You and me. And Jason. All of us. Let’s get in my car, and we’ll never come back.”

She swallowed. Worlds collided behind those steely greens of hers. He could see her trying like hell to form words, but nothing would come. He hoped he hadn’t pushed it too far. He put his hand on her arm, and she pulled away instinctively then, as if she regretted it, fell into him.

“Tom,” she whispered, “you should go.”

“Not without you.”

“You really should leave.”

“I love you.” He lifted her chin so he could gaze into her eyes. “I never want to be apart from you again.”

A tear formed in her left eye, that green swimming and drowning in a salty slurry before spilling over, making its getaway, then shattered and slaughtered by her finger as she wiped it. “I can’t,” she said. “I just . . . I can’t—”

“Bullshit,” he said. He opened her door. “Let’s grab some of your things. You won’t need much. We’ll buy more things.”

He laughed and stepped into her trailer. She tugged at his arm.

“No,” she pleaded. She yanked and jerked but he was too strong. He entered. “Tom, just leave. Do you hear me?”

“Nonsense,” he said. “We don’t need anything except each other. I won’t make the same mistakes with you. Not by a long shot. This time it will be different. I will be different.”

He hadn’t come two steps inside the trailer before he saw Calvin Cantrell, sitting in the recliner, holding a small pistol, which he pointed at him. The only other seat was the sofa, but heaping mounds of what could only be junk crowded every inch of it and had been covered with a bed sheet. What light there was shone dim as shit, but not near as dim as London considered himself at that very moment. Anger was only a reflex.

“What are you doing here?” London asked.

“That question rings a touch odd coming from your lips,” Calvin said. “Seems like it should be me doing the asking, honestly. But that would be silly since I’m the one asked you over. We got unfinished business, looks like.”

London looked sideways at him. “There’s something wrong with you,” he said.

“Funny,” Calvin said, “sometimes I get the feeling I’m the only normal one left on the planet.”

Behind him, London heard Rhonda enter the trailer. She closed the door.

“Rhonda, get out of here,” London barked. “Don’t hurt her. This is all my fault.”

Calvin smiled. “Lock the door, honey.”

She obeyed. “Can we let him go?” she asked. “Please?”

London felt a vise on his stomach. He wanted to throw punches, lash out at shit, call the world a motherfucker. He wanted to rage and destroy and set shit on fire. He wanted to drop to the ground and kick and scream in a tantrum for the Furies. He wanted to beat Calvin Cantrell in the face until he stopped moving. He wanted to throw back the bed sheet on the sofa and grab anything and everything from beneath it and use it to bash in Calvin’s skull. He wanted the entire planet destroyed.

“Is it the money?” London asked through clenched teeth. “Is that what you want? I told you I would get you the money.”

“Oh yeah?” Calvin passed the gun from one hand to the other. He never took his eyes from London. “I admit, at first it was about the money. Seems like a thing or two else has since muddied up the works, though. Things far beyond money.” He said
money
as if it were coated with vermin and reeking of plague.

“Then what is it?”

Calvin leaned forward, put his elbows on his knees. The barrel of the gun stayed on London’s midsection, just out of reach. “You know,” Calvin said, “I’ve found there’s a mess of folk out there who play this little game where they reckon to keep hold of how people perceive things. Follow?”

London shook his head.

Calvin took a breath and continued: “Where they think if they tell plenty enough lies, plenty enough people will believe them and, after a while, all them lies become true. Like magic.”

London found he’d gone dry and it was difficult to swallow.

“Not me,” Calvin said. “I don’t play that game. No, sir.”

London had enough. “I don’t have time for this. My son is waiting for me.” He turned to the door. Rhonda, still in front of it, stepped aside. He put a shaky hand to the knob, then heard the metallic click behind him.

“Hold still, if you would,” Calvin said.

“You don’t tell me what to do.”

Calvin threw up his hands. “You still don’t get it. You know what gets my goat good and riled? You think you can wipe your feet on everybody in this world and especially you got it in your head you can do it with me. Mr. London, that is a falsehood. That is untrue. Now step back from that door or I aim to put a few holes in you.”

London turned. “You can’t.”

“Beg pardon?”

“You’re the Couples Killer.” London smiled. “Calvin Cantrell: The Couples Killer. You can’t just kill me and leave me in your trailer. You’ll muck up your calling card.”

Calvin leaned back in his chair. He smiled as if he’d just won a three-day chess match.

“You hit that one right on the head,” he said. “You are right indeed. Rhonda, dear . . . ”

London took a short breath.

“Did you enjoy fooling around with the cook here?”

London stepped between the husband and wife. “Don’t answer him, Rhonda.” He stared Calvin down.

Calvin laughed again. “
The Couples Killer
. It’s got a ring to it, but if I had a choice in the matter, I’d have gone about things a different way. But, I made my bed . . . ” Calvin stood, and London flinched. London stepped backwards, but soon found he had nowhere to go. His back touched the door. “Now I reckon I just got to lie in it.”

“Don’t hurt her,” London said.

“Who?” Calvin’s smile dissolved into something more sinister. “You talking about my wife? Is that who you’re sticking up for? My very own wife?”

Each time Calvin said
wife
, London felt a needle poking him. The screws turning.

“Please, Mr. London. Do not tell me how to deal with my wife.”

Calvin took two steps toward the sofa and pulled back the bed sheet in a single motion, as if a magician. London felt the blood rush from his face, felt his entire body run cold, his arms involuntarily throw themselves backward and slap his palms against the door.

“You—”

Reyna lie on the couch, dead. Her empty coal eyes stared up at the ceiling, blood running this way and that. She wore no shirt, only a designer bra, her store-boughts covered in blood like the rest of her. Her hair matted with it, the number
five
carved crudely into her chest, jagged and rough.

London screamed. Hollered. Howled. Calvin laughed louder and louder, as if competing for noise. He raised the gun chest-high and screamed like a lunatic.

“Please no!” Rhonda screamed. “Don’t do it!”

Pain in the left shoulder as it exploded. London went down. Suddenly, he found himself looking at the ceiling. Tiled and dingy, water damage in the corner. He twisted himself on the linoleum, because he couldn’t bear to
not
see Reyna. Why? Was this real? Was it really happening? He saw her on the couch, her arm now dangling over the side, blood running down her ivory arm and then the hand and a long, bony finger, then drip, dripping onto the floor. Pooling.

His vision clouded. Calvin stood over him. Rolled him over onto his back and looked into London’s eyes.

“You weren’t supposed to fall in love with him,” Calvin said to his wife.

He shook his head, then pulled apart London’s shirt at the breast, exposing his chest. The buttons sprinkled across the floor and scattered. It was so cold, so cold. London tried to lift an arm to cover himself, but it wouldn’t move. Nothing worked right. Calvin pulled his knife from his belt and placed the tip of the blade at London’s chest.

“Thank you,” Calvin whispered. “Thank you for everything.”

And he leaned on the knife and it was inside him. London’s world was a scream. A scream and a fire. London wouldn’t close his eyes. Calvin kneeled over him and worked, jostling him, and London wanted him to slow down, it was all moving so fast . . .

Not yet . . .

London thought back to some potato chips he had back at the motel. All the things he’d cooked and prepared and eaten in life, for potato chips to be his last meal . . .

Not yet, slow down . . . don’t jostle him so.

It was cold, and he was in pain, and if he could just jostle him a little less . . .

London opened his mouth, but otherwise wished to remain still . . . still . . . don’t . . . move . . . move . . . 
move . . .

16

The first time she done it was to bury her daddy. Oh, there may have been other ways to go about it, but Rhonda McCloster didn’t have the means or, more importantly, the wherewithal. Old Joe Byrum wouldn’t put her daddy in a box or in the ground unless she paid up first, as nobody in her family line had ever done a lick toward stringing two pennies together. Byrum didn’t fancy Rhonda to be the first.

The bank wasn’t any help, either. Her daddy had mortgaged everything they had a time or two more than possible, and with him gone, it was only a matter of time before she was out on her ear. She asked friends, or what passed for friends in those early days, but she didn’t have the kind who would or could lend her the chunk of change needed to bury him proper. Only one man in town had that kind of money and would bother with the likes of her. She packed up what she had and headed out to Bubba Greene’s.

Bubba owned Club 809. It got its name because the only way to get to it was to head up highway 809 out of town, where there weren’t much more than cotton and tobacco farms, traffic going to and from the gins still in business. Before, there wasn’t much of a chance at a drink on account of the county being dry since Prohibition. But Bubba knew how to nurse a need, and that’s what Rhonda counted on.

He was a big fella. Not big in size or stature, but rough. Well-built. He had the hands and arms of a man carved out by work and hard times, even though those days were long in the rearview. He’d gotten older and, in many ways, meaner. But he had a soft spot for a woman in need. His business wouldn’t be what it was if it were not for women in need.

“I’m real sorry to hear about your daddy,” he said. He let her into the club, which was nothing more than a converted doublewide trailer hidden down a dirt road off the highway. To see it in daytime felt foreign, awkward. As if looking at a landscape with one eye instead of two. “Brutal was something else, and I’m going to miss him. We got to know each other real good over the years.”

Folks called her daddy “Brutal,” although she never knew why. She reckoned he never wanted her to.

“Thank you, Mister Greene,” she said.

“Bubba,” he said. “Everybody calls me Bubba.”

“Yes, sir.” A jukebox in the corner begged to be played. Its lights whirled and rotated, and she did her best to ignore it.

“Did you want to see me about something, darling?”

She nodded. “I don’t have enough money to bury my daddy,” she said. “And I got to do it right away, it seems.”

“They won’t let you run it on a credit?”

“No, sir,” she said. “They said they won’t loan no McCloster money no more. They don’t care that I’m the last one, it seems.”

“So you got no other family?” His eyes, despite his reputation, held a soft kindness. His face, weathered and cracked, couldn’t hide those eyes. He put a hand to her knee. “No boyfriend?”

She shook her head. “I ain’t got nobody.”