Southern Cross (19 page)

“We had one right here in the cooler.” Myrtle came over to join in. She pulled out a chair as if dinner no longer mattered.

“It was the worse scare of my life, fellas. Apparently he was out back sunning hisself on the loading dock when Beane went into the walk-in cooler to get a barrel of pickles. Must’ve walked right by that God-awful rattlesnake and neither noticed the other. All we could figure after the fact is while Beane had the cooler door open, the snake went on in and got locked up. So little ole me goes in there the next morning for bacon and the minute I opened that door and step inside, I hear something rattling.”

She paused, shivering, shutting her eyes. Everyone was silent and horror-struck as they hung on to every word.

“Well,” Myrtle went on, “I didn’t move. I looked around and couldn’t see nothing at first and then I heard the rattle again. By then I pretty much knew what it was. I mean a rattlesnake’s rattle has a rattle all its own and that’s what I was hearing sort of in the direction of the ten-gallon buckets of potato salad and coleslaw.” She paused again.

“Where was it?” The man in overalls could wait no longer.

“I’ll bet it was eating a rat back there.”

“We don’t got rats in the cooler,” Myrtle was quick to defend.

“Then where the hell was it, Myrtle?” Smudge said.

“That far from me.” She held her index fingers six inches apart.

Everybody gasped.

“It was coiled up right next to the mop, its tail sticking up and rattling to beat the band.”

“What’cha do!” Voices chimed in.

“Why, I got bit,” Myrtle said. “Right there on my left calf. Happened so fast I hardly felt a thing and then that snake was gone like a streak of grease. I was in the hospital a week, and let me tell you, my leg swole up so big they thought they might have to cut it off.”

No one spoke. Myrtle got up.

“Your food ought to be ready,” she said, heading back to the kitchen.

Ruby Sink tried for hours to get Lelia Ehrhart on the phone, but when call waiting kicked in, whoever was on the line simply ignored it.

Agitation and loneliness usually sent Miss Sink into the kitchen, where she had no one to cook for these days except that sweet young police officer renting one of her many properties. She had often thought about inviting him in for dinner, but she didn’t have time to cook a big meal.

Making shortbread cookies was one thing. But pot roast and fried chicken were another. Her various boards and associations consumed her, really. It was a wonder she could ever get around to fixing that boy anything. She dialed his pager and left her number, assuming he was probably busy at a crime scene.

The page landed in Brazil’s beeper as he was knocking on Weed’s front door. It hadn’t taken much investigation to
check the city directory and see that the Gardeners, not the Joneses, lived in the small house behind Henrico Doctors’ Hospital where Brazil had dropped off Weed last night.

When Roop tipped off the police that a gang called the Pikes had claimed responsibility for the cemetery vandalism, Brazil knew Weed quite possibly was into something deep and dangerous.

Brazil knocked again and no one answered. It was dark out with no moon. There were no sounds coming from inside the house and no car in the driveway.

“Anybody home?” Brazil loudly tapped the door with his Mag-Lite.

West covered the back door, and after several minutes of silence she came around to the front.

“He knows we’re looking for him,” West said, slipping her nine-millimeter Sig back into the shoulder holster.

“Maybe,” Brazil said. “But we can’t assume he’s figured out we know who his brother was.”

They were walking back to the unmarked car. Brazil shone the flashlight on his pager and read the number. He got out his phone and dialed. Miss Sink answered immediately.

“Andy?”

“Hi,” Brazil sweetly said as he thought of the florist’s card on the table in West’s hallway.

“We’re closing the cemetery to the public,” she told him right off.

West took her time unlocking her door. Brazil was certain she wanted to know who he was talking to.

“I think that’s a great idea,” Brazil said.

“The statue’s going to have to go into the shop, which is no easy thing when you think how much it weighs. So until we can get it out of the cemetery, the association has decided to keep everybody out except funeral parties, of course.”

“What time?” Brazil said in a hushed voice.

“What?” Miss Sink said. “I can’t hear you.”

“Right now?”

“Oh.” Miss Sink sounded confused. “You mean is it closed right this minute?”

“Yes.”

“It is. Do you like pot roast?”

“Don’t tease me,” Brazil whispered as West jerked open her door.

“I’m not wheezing,” Miss Sink said. “But this time of year, the pollens are awful, especially if you’re in the garden very much. Well, I guess pot roast isn’t what young people eat these days. Not fried chicken either.”

“Oh yes I do,” Brazil said as he went around to his door and got in.

“You know what the secret is?” Miss Sink’s mood was considerably uplifted.

“Let me guess. Honey.”

West abruptly pulled out onto the street and gunned the engine.

“Exactly right,” Miss Sink exclaimed. “How did you know that?”

“Had it before. About time I had it again.”

“Now that’s talking,” Miss Sink said. “I’ll get back with you and we’ll do something about it.”

“I sure hope so,” Brazil said. “Gotta go.”

West was driving as if she hated the car and was determined to punish it.

“At least I don’t make personal calls on the job,” she exclaimed.

Brazil was silent. He stared out his window. He took a deep breath and sighed. He glanced over at her, his feelings a volatile mixture of euphoria and heartache. She was jealous. She must still care. But he couldn’t stand to hurt her. He almost told her the truth about Miss Sink. But when he remembered the florist’s card, he thought,
forget it.

Bubba was not in good spirits as Smudge drove through the tar-black night, rocking over ruts and splashing. Stars were out and stingy with their light. Bubba wished he’d never come. He felt awful. He thought he might throw up.

“We really haven’t gone over the rules,” Smudge cheerfully said.

“I thought we said they’d be the same as always,” Bubba despondently replied.

“No, I think we ought to add a default clause,” Smudge proposed. “Since so much is at stake and this is a one-on-one competition.”

“I don’t understand,” Bubba commented as suspicions gathered.

“Let’s say Half Shell’s being her typical loudmouth cold nose and starts treeing about two or three trees away from the tree where the coon is. And Half Shell’s doing it every time. You might just want to bag it instead of staying out in the woods all night. Same thing goes for me.”

“So if I default, you get the thousand dollars. If you default I get it. If both of us default, neither of us get a thing,” Bubba deduced.

“You got it, good buddy. We’ll go one hundred and twenty minutes, five minutes’ rest between each segment, regular competition rules.”

Bubba had no idea where he was when Smudge finally parked the truck on a muddy road and climbed out, leaving the headlights on so they could see. They sat on the tailgate and put on their boots and coats.

“Left my Bucktool inside,” Bubba mumbled.

He crawled into the front seat, far out of Smudge’s view, and dug inside his knapsack for the pearls on black string. He stuffed them into a pocket. He slipped out his Colt Anaconda .44. It was not his gun of choice for the night. But Bubba had nothing left. The rest had been stolen. He slid the monster revolver into a Bianchi on-belt HuSH nylon holster beneath his long, full coat.

“We all set?” Smudge asked.

“Let’s get on with it,” Bubba bravely replied.

They let their dogs out of the pens and both began howling and baying, tails wagging as Bubba and Smudge restrained them with heavy nylon leashes.

“Good girl,” Bubba said as he kneaded Half Shell behind her long silky ears.

Bubba loved his dog, no matter her deficits. She looked like a long-legged, sleek Beagle with surprisingly soft fur. She loved to lick Bubba’s hand and face. Bubba was reluctant to let her go crashing through those woods. If she got snake-bit or a coon tore her up, Bubba couldn’t live with it.

Smudge had out the stopwatch. Bubba was petting Half Shell and encouraging her to find a coon this time.

“Go!” he said before Bubba was ready.

Weed ran through the dark along Cumberland Street until he neared I-195’s Cherry Street overpass. Banking either side of it were thick growths of trees and shrubs closed in by a high chain-link fence.

He walked over a grassy bank, furtively looking left and right as he reached the fence, which he could not see through because the foliage was too dense. He almost didn’t care what was on the other side. So what if he fell fifteen feet into rushing traffic? What was left in life but for Smoke to find him?

Weed climbed the fence and pushed branches away from his face as he worked his way down the other side. He held his breath as his feet touched ground and blindly pushed his way through tall grass and shrubs, holding his arm in front of his face to protect his eyes. He found himself in a clearing where he could just make out a small camp and a figure sitting in the middle of it, the tip of a cigarette glowing. Weed’s heart flipped.

“Who’s there?” an unfriendly voice sounded. “Don’t try anything. I can see in the dark and I know you’re puny and don’t got a gun.”

Weed didn’t know what to say. He had no place to run unless he tried to get back over the fence or decided to jump the wall and land on the expressway.

“What’s the matter, kitty got your tongue?” the man asked.

“No, sir,” Weed politely said. “I didn’t know nobody was here. I’ll be glad to leave.”

“No place to go. That’s why you’re here, now ain’t it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You can stop all that yes sir shit. My name’s Pigeon.”

“That ain’t your real name.” Weed ventured a little closer.

“I don’t remember my real one anymore.”

“How come they call you that?”

“Because I eat ’em. When I can, that is.”

Weed’s stomach flopped.

“What’s your name, and why don’t you come a little closer so I can get a good look at you.”

“Weed.”

“That ain’t your real name,” Pigeon mimicked him.

“Yes, it is, too.”

Weed was hungry and thirsty, and the constant thunder of traffic frightened him. A chill had settled over the night and he was cold in his baggy jeans and Bulls jersey. Pigeon lit another cigarette and Weed caught a glimpse of Pigeon’s face in the spurt of flame.

“You’re pretty old,” Weed said.

“Older than you, that’s for damn sure.” He inhaled deeply and held it.

Weed stepped closer. Pigeon smelled as if he were rotting alive.

“Once you been in here awhile, your eyes start seeing again. Notice? I think all those lights from the cars below us have something to do with it,” Pigeon said. “You don’t look like you’re much older than ten.”

“Fourteen,” Weed indignantly replied.

Pigeon dug in a trash bag and pulled out part of a submarine sandwich. Weed’s mouth watered but he felt kind of sick, too. Pigeon dug in the bag again and set down a two-liter bottle of Pepsi that was half empty. He flicked the cigarette butt into the night.

“Want some?” Pigeon asked.

“I ain’t eating or drinking nothing that came out of the garbage,” Weed said.

“How you know it came out of the garbage?”

“’Cause I seen people like you digging things outta the garbage. You go around with shopping carts and don’t live anywhere.”

“I live here,” Pigeon said. “That’s somewhere, isn’t it? Get your butt closer. I’ll show you something.”

Weed tried to block out the smell as he walked all the way to the blanket Pigeon sat on. Pigeon reached into a pocket of his ragged Army jacket and showed Weed a Baggie filled with something.

“Peanut butter crackers,” Pigeon confided in his rough, raspy voice. “Didn’t come outta the trash. The soup kitchen downtown is where.”

“You swear?” Weed said as his stomach begged him to help out a little.

Pigeon nodded.

“I gotta bottle of water that’s never been opened. Soup kitchen again. I guess I can share with a little lost boy.”

“I’m not lost,” Weed said.

Bubba was. The minute the dogs had been cut loose, Half Shell had taken off through the woods in one direction while Smudge and Tree Buster had gone in another. The dogs crashed through underbrush for a good ten minutes before Half Shell barked three times.

“STRIKE, HALF SHELL!” Bubba hollered.