That’s How I Roll: A Novel (23 page)

I met the man outside, in the spot that got the most sun. In the nice weather, me and Tory-boy kept a little table and a couple of chairs out there. He especially loved it when it was just the two of us.

If you were to drive by, you’d just see two men, sitting back and sipping some lemonade while they talked. From that perspective, we both looked like a couple of pals shooting the breeze. Maybe that’s what he liked the best of all.

But that day, Tory-boy stayed over with the dogs. He was always protecting me. If he saw anything bad happen, I knew he’d rush that man in the suit like a charging bull. I also knew the dogs would get to that man faster than Tory-boy ever could.

And that the sight of a gun pointed their way wouldn’t have meant a thing to any of them.

So the man could … Well, he could do just about anything he wanted to me. But he’d never leave our property alive, and he looked smart enough to know that.

He had real manners on him, too. Before he took the seat across from me, he said, “My name is R. T. Speck, Mr. Till. I’m a police officer.” If standing with his back to Tory-boy and the dogs caused him any worry, he didn’t show it.

He held out his hand, and we shook.

“Please have a seat, sir,” I told him.

That “sir” wasn’t politeness—it was to tell him that I wasn’t going to be telling him anything else.

“Would you happen to know a young man by the name of Lonnie Manes, Mr. Till?”

“No, sir,” I said. It was the truth.

“I’m not surprised,” he said. “We caught this boy—Lonnie Manes, I’m talking about now—we caught him breaking into Henderson’s.”

Henderson’s was what folks called the pharmacy, after the man who’d started it, a long time ago. His name wasn’t on the door anymore—the pharmacy had been taken over by one of those big chains a while back—but it was still “Henderson’s” to us.

“That boy is about as stupid as they come. If there’s one place in town that has top-quality security, it’d be Henderson’s. They’ve even got a central-station alarm in there.”

I stayed quiet, but I was secretly proud that this cop showed me respect by not explaining what kind of alarm that was.

“He was after the drugs, of course,” the cop said, like saying water is wet. “We caught him walking out the back door with a whole sackful of stuff.”

I didn’t say anything, but I used my body position to tell him to go on talking. He hadn’t driven all the way out here to give me a news report.

“I’m sure you know how police work is done, Mr. Till. I—” He stopped in his tracks, realizing he’d stepped over a line, but he covered up quick: “I mean, from television and all.”

I nodded. Even smiled just a little, letting him know I wasn’t offended.

“We told Lonnie that he’d been carrying enough drugs in that sack to send him down to the penitentiary for the rest of his natural life. Before we were even finished telling him that, he was telling us about everything he could think of. Everything that might make us go easier on him, I mean.”

I just watched the man. The sunlight was strong on his face, and I could see he was older than I’d first thought. I could see right through his eyes, all the way into his brain. My silence was bothering him, so he was considering. Thinking about what to do next.

“You mind?” he said, holding up a pack of cigarettes.

“It doesn’t bother me outdoors,” I told him, “but I appreciate your courtesy.”

He seemed grateful I’d said that. Took him a long time to get his smoke going, even though there wasn’t a breath of wind that day.

Finally, he said, “Lonnie gave you up.”

I made my whole face puzzled. “I don’t understand,” I told the cop. “I already said I didn’t even know a person by that name.”

“The drugs,” the cop said, as if having to say it made him sad. “He told us how the whole operation works. Your operation, I’m talking about now.”

“I haven’t been operated on since—”

That was going too far. I knew it, and I’d done it deliberately.

The man’s face got darker. “Your drug operation,” he said, colder now. “We know all about that mailbox at the end of your
lane. The button. The phone calls to arrange the pickups. Everything. I’d wager, if we were to search your house right now, we’d find enough drugs—”

“Medications,” I chopped off his threat. “Anything you’d find in there would come with prescriptions. Legal prescriptions.”

“Then you wouldn’t mind if I took a look for myself?”

“I don’t suppose I could stop you,” I said, looking over at Tory-boy. He was standing as rigid as a rock, holding the release lever for the chains. One and Two were standing as well. Three was lying down. They were all staring at the cop’s back. “If you’ll just let me take a quick look at your warrant, I’ll be happy to—”

“That offends me, Mr. Till. I wouldn’t come out here with a warrant. That’s your home there; I wouldn’t expect to go inside unless I was invited. And I wouldn’t want anyone else to, either.”

“I appreciate that. Then what
do
you want?”

“I already explained that, I thought. Like I said, Lonnie Manes told us everything. We could sit out in those woods with surveillance cameras for ten years and we’d never see you with any drugs.…”

He let his voice trail off, so he wouldn’t have to say the threat out loud. Tory-boy. If they came and grabbed him, it wouldn’t end right. There was no way it could.

“What do you want?” I said again. The cop didn’t know his words had just gotten me out of the drug business forever. But he had to know that the limb he’d climbed out on was fixing to snap.

“Lonnie was arrested late last night. That’s why I look so raggedy—haven’t even had a chance to shave this morning. I’m the only one who took his statement. I’m considered to be real good at talking with people.”

“I can see why,” I said to him. “But I’m still confused, sir. What exactly do you want?”

“There’s no call for looking at me like you are, Mr. Till. What do I want? I’ll tell you, right out: I want us to be friends. That’s why I had Lonnie write out his statement on separate pieces of paper. What I mean is, separate pieces of paper for each person he informed on. And those pages, they aren’t numbered.

“Being entirely truthful with you, Lonnie didn’t have all that much. That’s because Lonnie
isn’t
much. A punk like him, he’s not what you’d call a man of his word. You can never be sure when he’s telling the truth. Here, see for yourself,” he said, pulling a folded piece of paper out of his suit coat.

It was in ignorant scrawl, just the way someone like Lonnie would write it. But a college graduate couldn’t have written a clearer account of how our drug business worked.
Had
worked, that is.

“You’re right,” I told the cop. “There isn’t a word of truth in all this scribble.”

“Oh, don’t bother,” he said, when I went to hand it back. “That pack of lies isn’t worth a plugged nickel. Might even backfire on the DA if he tried to use Lonnie as a prosecution witness. Put a piece of trash like him in front of a jury, they’re not likely to believe a word that comes out of his mouth.”

“I can see how that might be true.”

“No disrespect, but I don’t think you do, Mr. Till. I told you, I came here hoping to be friends.”

“A man can’t have enough friends.”

“Isn’t that the truth?”

“Yes. Yes, it is,” I said. “And I don’t suppose there’s any reason why a man couldn’t be your friend and sell you an insurance policy, too.”

“Now, that’s your reputation proving itself, Mr. Till. Folks say you’re the smartest man around.”

“Would the premiums on this policy be weekly or monthly?”

“I do think monthly would be best. No reason for me to come all the way out here so often.”

“How much?”

“Well, I guess it depends on the amount of coverage you’d be wanting.”

“I think I’d want the maximum,” I said to him. “The full family plan. After all, you never know when something’s going to happen, do you? Why only buy fire insurance, when a flood’s just as likely?”

“That could end up being a very expensive policy, I have to tell you,” he said. “For that kind of coverage, the salesman has to split
his commission with his supervisors. All the way up to the top, actually.”

“I understand. But that’s what insurance is, right? It can’t stop things from happening; it just covers you if they do. Life insurance won’t stop a man from dying, but it will help his family carry on without him.”

“That’s true.”

“Some folks, they pay insurance on their house for thirty years, and nothing ever touches it. Instead of being upset about all those premiums they paid, my thinking is they should be grateful nothing ever did happen.”

“That’s the way I look at it myself.”

“It just comes down to men being reasonable with each other,” I said. “If the premiums get too high, well, then, a man can’t afford them, and he lets the policy lapse. On the other hand, if the premiums are too low, the insurance company can’t make a living.”

The cop stubbed out his cigarette on the ground. Then he took out a little plastic bag, the kind with tops that seal themselves closed, and put the butt inside. It went into his pocket. There’s a dozen reasons he could have done that. None of them mattered to me.

“A thousand,” he said.

“Once a month?”

“Once a month.”

“And that’s for
full
coverage? For me and my family? Against anything that might happen to cause either of us any problem with your company?”

“Absolutely total.”

“Fair enough,” I said, reaching over to shake his hand.

He held on to my hand. Dropped his voice to a whisper. “Folks say you carry a magnum in that left armrest of your chair. Man’s got a right to do that. But you won’t mind if I look for myself?”

I let go of his hand, leaned back in my chair, and flipped both armrests open.

The cop found the magnum, all right. But he didn’t find the tape recorder I knew he was really looking for.

What he did see was about five thousand in hundreds. Plus some of those little packets of alcohol, bandages, stuff that a cripple like me might need.

“You mind?” he said.

I knew what he wanted. Let him feel all over my body, even lift the blanket off my legs.

“I apologize if I offended you,” he said. “But you understand—”

“I do understand. And you understand as well. That’s all that righteous folks need to make a contract: an understanding between themselves. When one man gives his word to another, it has to mean at least as much as anything you could write down on a piece of paper.”

“You have got my respect, sir.”

“Mutual.”

“I’ll be back—”

“One month from today,” I told him, handing over a thousand in nice crisp bills, pretending that I didn’t see the look of surprise on his face.

hat cop drove off, satisfied that we had an understanding between us. We had an understanding, all right. But that’s not the same as a partnership.

Which he’d learn only if he did something a lot stupider than Lonnie Manes ever dreamed of. That’s when he’d find out that searching me for a tape recorder had been a waste of time.

Around these parts, the one thing nobody is surprised to see on your house is a satellite dish. All the time we were in the yard, talking, that dish was zeroed in on us. When I played back the recording, it was as clear as high-def TV can be. And the sound quality was as good as in an opera house.

I saved it to my hard drive, then I sent it to my coded box, just in case.

If that cop ever turned on me, he’d end up putting his own gun in his mouth. Even if he needed some help to do it.

ike I said, I was already out of the drug business the second that cop had opened his mouth. But I had my plans, and having a tape of him not only taking a bribe, but outright admitting he had to cut a whole lot of higher-ranking cops in on such a take, that could be well worth the money.

The insurance money, I’m saying.

wo different mobs pretty much had things around here all divided up between them: gambling joints, strip clubs, loan-sharking, protection coverage, and, of course, the tax collections.