Dirtbags (23 page)

Gil laughed. “What kind of restaurant hires a stripper to manage the place?”

Her shirt was unbuttoned, but she stopped short of removing it. “You want to piss me off, or you want me to keep dancing?”

“You didn’t ask for my money yet.”

“Do I have to remind you: I don’t work here no more.” Then, to prove it, she put her mouth on his, something she normally waited until she was in the parking lot to do. They got to going, and he jammed a hand inside her britches and figured this to be the closest to heaven he was bound to see, but his luck being what his luck was, the door flew open and she suddenly was off him and half-undone on the floor, and over them both stood mean old Bubba Greene.

“Dear god in heaven,” Gil Shaw stammered. “Bubba, if you’re pissed, please understand she told me you’d be good with it and that it was okay that she and me . . . me and she . . . she and . . . us was back here and—”

“You take the word of a stripper?” Bubba growled. He shook a finger covered with blood from God knows who.

“She ain’t a stripper no more,” Gil said. “She’s a restaurant manager.”

Bubba shook his head and didn’t have to say anything as Big Jack did the rest of the talking for him. The giant black man picked Gil up from under his shoulders and hefted him out of the room, down the hall of the converted doublewide, and out the door. He pitched him into the sand and red clay parking lot, and without so much as a goodbye, turned and closed the door. Gil sat in the lot and thanked his lucky stars, figured this was as good as it got for him, and crawled off to his pickup. His jeans jacket had been left inside, draped over one of the metal folding chairs, but he reckoned if it were the only thing he lost that night, he’d indeed be quite the lucky man.

19

Big Jack led Rhonda to the back office and, once inside, handed over her shirt. At first, she refused and figured on staring Bubba Greene down, paps and all. However, the chilly spring night air had already infiltrated the room, and she’d slipped into her shirt in no time.

“It’s awful cold in here, Big Jack,” she said.

Big Jack’s eyes bugged, and a smile stretched across his entire face. He pointed an overstuffed finger toward the wall along the back of Bubba’s office where a giant hole let out all the heat. She looked at the hole and didn’t look away, as if it might not be there the next time she checked. The room had been torn asunder. She thought about asking how things got so trashed, but she knew. She knew good and well.

Before she could say anything, Bubba Greene entered the office in a flurry, huffing and puffing and making a bigger deal of things than she thought necessary. He seemed to disagree with how gently Big Jack handled her, so rather than punch something else, he grabbed the bottle of brown and took a violent swig.

“Go on back to the front, Big Jack,” Bubba said. “Keep an eye on the girls.”

“You don’t want me to stick around, boss?”

“Why’s that?”

“I don’t know,” Big Jack said. His face looked as if he’d sat on a whoopee cushion and was the last in on the joke. “You done already punched a hole in the wall. Maybe I should stick around so as you don’t do something else you might regret.”

Bubba reached into the top desk drawer. He removed the pearl-handled Colt revolver and set it on top of a stack of beer invoices. “You think I have many regrets, Big Jack?”

Big Jack stared at the gun. Rhonda rummaged through the jackets on the deer-antlered coat rack, found an old windbreaker and slipped into it. She took a seat on the couch and watched the scene unfold with detached interest.

“You ain’t going to shoot her, are you?” Big Jack asked.

“No, sir,” Bubba said. “I’m going to shoot you if you don’t get up front and do the job that, if you’d been doing in the first place, there wouldn’t be no hole in my trailer wall, nor would I have to stop dealing with what I deal with in order to deal with this shit right here.”

“My job?” Big Jack’s mouth opened a bit further than Rhonda thought proper.

Little appeared to be keeping Bubba together. “Your job is to keep out the riff-raff.” He pointed at Rhonda, sitting on the divan. “What is that, if it ain’t
riff-raff?
”

Big Jack hopped to it. He took a final look at Rhonda, his giant maw dropping far enough to catch bats, but must have thought better of saying a damned thing. He threw open the door and was out before anyone could stop him.

Rhonda pulled the windbreaker tighter around her. “Some things don’t change,” she said.

“Is that your assessment?” Bubba asked. He stuffed the Colt into the back of his jeans. “You know, if I wanted the opinion of a stripper and a thief, I’d give it to you.”

“I’m not a thief.”

“You come in here and take money from my business.
That
makes you a thief.”

“I wasn’t charging nothing,” she said with a smile. “I was just trying to get your attention.”

“Well you got it.”

She nodded toward the hole in the wall. “I can see that.”

“Not charging him don’t make it better,” Bubba grumbled. He took another swig from the bottle. “You’ll spoil my customers here. Man don’t pay for nothing he thinks he can get for free.”

“A customer don’t stop being a customer just because you close up shop,” she said.

“That’s rich,” Bubba said. “Where’d you learn that? Selling steaks in town?”

“Actually, I learned it from you.”

A thin grin crept onto his face.

She felt pleased with herself. If there was one thing she could do, it was get to Bubba Greene. She knew how to make him laugh, she knew how to make him mad. And she also knew how to make him . . .

He sat in his chair across from her. Empty-handed. Fidgety. “If there was one person I didn’t reckon to see with their tail tucked, Rhonda, it would be you.”

“Tail tucked?”

“You think I ain’t seen the news?” he asked. “You think the Sheriff himself ain’t come around here on account of he knows you used to work for me?”

She sat back on the couch. “Are you talking about my husband?”

He smiled, as if to ask who the hell she thought he was talking about. She stood from the couch and reminded him she had yet to button her top. She walked toward the desk, the breeze through the hole in the wall catching the flaps of the windbreaker and her shirttails and showing just enough of what she reckoned would keep his attention.

“You remember what I told you?” he asked.

“You told me when I was under this roof, I don’t belong to my husband.” She rounded the desk and stood over him. “You told me I belonged to you.”

He leaned back in his chair and eyeballed the goods. Then, just as quick, he swiveled around and put his back to her.

“I also told you that you run out on me, and you’re out. I got enough girls putting a revolving door on the 809. I expect more from you.”

He stood and walked across the room to what he reckoned was a safe distance. He took the bottle with him. He stood there under the giant framed painting of John Wayne and defiantly nursed the bottle with his good arm.

“Button up your shirt,” he said.

Rhonda blinked three times. If he’d slapped her, she would have reacted the same way. For the first time, Rhonda realized she only had one play, one move in mind when she came to the 809. She wanted Bubba alone in the office and the rest should take care of itself. She considered what options remained on the table: turn up the heat, start crying . . . beg? No, she would have to play with the cards that got dealt, lay them where she could. She buttoned her shirt like a good girl and took a seat in Bubba’s desk chair.

“You think I’m stupid?” Bubba asked. “You think I don’t know what happened to the last guy got involved with you? I read in the paper that they found him and his wife in your trailer with numbers carved in them. Tom London may be stupid enough to sleep with the wife of a psychopath, but I ain’t. Not by a lick, no sir. You stay right where you are.”

Her face flushed red. She looked across the room at him. So far away. She’d expected him to buck and throw a little bit, but she felt him slipping away. Shouldn’t they be going at it by now? Was that even what she wanted?

What she didn’t want was to be living in the woods. She pictured herself a lot of places in life, but never once did she imagine she’d be living in a pup tent in the hollows, hiding out with a serial killer. She fiddled with the bottom of her shirt, wondering why Bubba wouldn’t bite.

“You always told me I could marry whoever I wanted,” she said. “You said I could get married to the King of France for all you cared, that I’d always belong to you. That’s what you used to say.”

“Yep,” he said from all the way across the room. “That I did. I told you to marry who you wanted, but you didn’t just get married, missy. No, you run off with another fella from this place. You left my employ to do so. You thought you was going to better-deal Bubba Greene, and now you’re in a bit of a fix. So you come running. No, you’re disloyal. Disloyal through and through. And there ain’t nothing nobody can do to fix you of that.”

She heard him pick up the bottle from the floor. She wanted to speak, but found it impossible to do so with all the air sucked out of her sails.

He continued: “You was disloyal when I found you, and you’ll more than likely stay that way. Those kind of spots don’t get changed on someone like you. It’s like a sickness. You find you can’t stay true to any one thing, so you bounce along in life, hitching yourself to whatever will have you. No, that’s the way you’ll be until somebody comes along and puts you down, I reckon. Puts you down like a sick dog.” He drank from the bottle. “So it’s best you get on now,” he said. “Get on out of here and head back to your husband. Where you belong.”

Her face burned hot. She did not speak or move for some time. When finally she spoke, she had considered every word before it left her mouth.

“He’s the reason I’m here,” she said.

“I imagine so. But he’s also the reason I’m asking you to leave. If you’re planning on running out on him, you’re going to have to take up somewhere else, you hear me? I got enough flies in my ointment to have to add a serial killer to the mix.”

“I ain’t running out on him,” she said. She wasn’t convinced it was true, but it wasn’t her she aimed to convince in that moment. “Me and him is partners now. I’m here on his behalf. How’s that for loyalty?”

He nearly spit his corn liquor. “Partners?” he choked. He wiped the tobacco-colored juice from his chin and took another shot to chase it down. “You and Calvin Cantrell are partners? Damn girl . . . You were a mess when I found you, but I have to say, you’re certainly a piece of work now.” He chuckled to himself.

“He wants to speak with you,” she said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Calvin. He wants a sit-down with you.” She leaned back in his chair. “That’s why I’m here. You see, Calvin sent me.”

“Is that a fact?”

“Yes, Bubba. It is.” She leaned forward in his chair. The cold wind from the hole behind her blasted into her back. “You see, Calvin reckons he’s gotten real good at this killing thing. And he reckons somebody like you might have call to need somebody like him.”

Bubba Greene set the bottle down on the floor next to his boots. He leaned over it a moment, as if listening to something. Rhonda didn’t think there was much to hear over the heavy bass from the jukebox in the other room besides drunken cheers from the farmers. He rose and faced her, his back stiff against the wall.

“I’ll admit, there are a lot of intangibles here,” he said. “I don’t like dealing in intangibles. I like it when I know all the angles, all in black and white. But this here is too many intangibles. And you know what the biggest intangible is?” He pointed with his index finger first up to the ceiling, then slowly brought it down and aimed it in her direction.

“Bubba, I—”

“Don’t interrupt me,” he said. “I let you have your piece, now you’re going to let me have mine.”

She closed her mouth.

He continued: “I know one side says ‘Dollar’, the other says ‘In God we Trust.’ I know you got sweetness so good you could sell it in stores, and I know if I see Calvin Cantrell anywhere near me or my business that Big Jack and me will drag him out back to the pines and that will be the end of it. You follow?”

One thing her daddy taught her well was poker. Brutal McCloster had more trouble than most holding onto a job, but he never had a problem keeping a roof over their heads, thanks to poker. When time came to pony up for the bills, he would run out and catch a game somewheres and, in a matter of a few hours, would return with a stack of money, settling things up for a short while longer. He taught her to spit, how to shoot a gun, and how to play when you were in
position
. Position was power, he always told her. Position dictated action and how the action was played.

In all her schooling, Brutal’s daughter realized at that moment, she was well out of position.

“I’m sorry you feel that way, Bubba,” she said. She stood from the desk chair.

“You go on and let all parties involved know how I feel,” he said. He pulled the Colt from behind his back and held it with both hands in front of him, pointed downward and resting at his belt buckle. “Let him know how serious I am.”

“Yes sir,” she said. She slowly walked toward the door.

“I got plenty of people to do my killing,” he said. “More people to do it than I need having it done to. That’s called a surplus, I reckon. But you’d know more about that, having left here to be a businesswoman.”

She put her hand on the doorknob, but didn’t turn it. Didn’t turn her head. So many times, Bubba Greene had come up from behind and done his thing to her. She asked herself if she waited for it now. If she wanted him to take her. Take her from Calvin. To take her in, hole up in the 809, and dare Calvin to stick his head in so he could blow it off with his Colt or his Winchester or even carve him up with his own knife. One thing Rhonda prided herself on was picking a winner and maybe, she told herself, if she picked enough of them, one was bound to pay off.

But Bubba didn’t stop her. He didn’t come up from behind and put his big, twisted hands on her hips and scratchy face to her neck. He didn’t hold her or take her on the couch or over the desk and rain hellfire on anyone who dared interrupt him. No, she told herself, them days were over and done, and he was content to let her walk on out the door.