The Big Ugly (6 page)

I said, "Life."

I almost said,
a lot of it was my mom's fault
. I didn't tell Lafaye that, though. There's nothing worse than a forty-year-old who still blames her parents for her life.

Lafaye said, "Well, there's no reason you couldn't go back and finish up school. People have done it."

I nodded. "I guess so."

We shook hands, and she climbed into her car. She started it up but rolled down the window.

"Thanks for the encouragement," I told her.

"You're welcome. But let me throw down some wisdom on you before I leave. If you go talk to that trailer trash Evan Hastings about Alexis, be careful. He's a thoroughly disagreeable man."

"Hey, I trained with Department of Corrections, Lafaye. I tangled with the fellas in those Krav Maga classes they made us take. I can execute a pretty effective throat strike and eye gouge. I know how to knee someone in the nuts."

"I get it. You're a badass. I'm just saying. He's bad, for real bad. And he knows people who are even worse."

"You went up against him."

"Yeah, but I'm a bitch in heels."

I smiled. "I own heels, too."

"Sure, Bennett," Lafaye said. "Just don't be alone with him."

The criminal justice system never moves quickly unless it's to do something that's a complete pain in the ass. I had a new parole officer within twenty-four hours.

PO Belton was younger than I thought he'd be. He wasn't more than thirty or so, and his baby face made him appear even younger than that. He had blond hair that he wore a little too long, probably to try to obscure his high, wide forehead. As he leaned back in his desk chair looking me over, his cold gray eyes never blinked.

"So you killed poor Jimmy Romandetto."

I was nervous, but I didn't show it. I just said, "Heart attack was what the cops said."

"Yeah, but why'd his ticker give out? Poor son of bitch was only fifty-two."

"He was smoker," I said. "And he didn't exactly have that 'balanced diet' look to me."

"Yeah, it's a bitch," Belton said lacing his fingers together. "Everything that makes life worth living is bad for you. That's God's little joke on the human race."

"I guess."

"Well, so much for Romandetto. Now you're mine."

"Lucky me."

His pretty lips pouted. "Aw, I'm a sweet guy. A hell of a lot nicer than ole Jimmy ever was, that's for sure. He was checking up on you when he shuffled off the mortal coil, wasn't he?"

"Yeah."

"See, with me you don't gotta have that. I trust you."

"That's nice."

"Exactly. I'm as nice a guy as you're ever going to want to meet. I know how it is for a con like you. You get out of the joint and everyone treats you like shit. I don't believe in that. Forgive and forget, that's what my mother taught me."

"She sounds like a wonderful woman."

He smiled. "You're funny, Bennett. I like a gal with a sense of humor. I do. Nothing funnier than a female with a quick wit."

"Thanks."

"A man can't live on yucks alone, though."

I sat up straight in his uncomfortable guest chair. We'd arrived at the real point of this meeting. A lot of broads had sat in that same hardback wooden chair, stared across the desk at this asshole, and waited to find out what price he was going to name.

"Okay," I said.

"Okay what?"

"How much?"

"How much what?"

"How much do you want?"

He leaned forward and put his elbows on the desk and contorted that baby face into an expression of friendly confusion. "How much what, sweetheart?"

"Money. I know you want some."

He spread his palms out. "I
have
money. More than you, anyway. Why would I need money? I got a good job as a servant of the public."

"Okay."

"But now we have a problem we didn't have when you walked through the door. Attempting to bribe a parole officer … that's not good."

"I wasn't—"

"You just offered me money under the table for some as of yet to be determined preferential treatment, sweetie. You realize that I could pick up the phone right now and have you back in jail?"

I didn't say shit.

"You do realize that. Good." He stood up. Tall and thin, he swept around the desk in one quick movement and perched on the corner and stared down at me. "This is a bad start for you, sweetie. Very bad. Poor Jimmy Romandetto is dead and gone to Jesus and here you are trying to bribe your new parole officer. That's a goddamn bad start to your new life on the outside. People are watching you now. Disgraced correctional officer. Adulterer—least that's the talk around town about you. And now here you are offering monetary remuneration to a public servant in exchange for favors. Your life is just a whole bunch of ugly."

"I'm sorry."

He nodded and said, "That's good, but sorry don't pay my bills."

"What does?"

"Well, since you brought up money, how much is your brother paying you to work the desk at his place?"

I told him.

"What's the matter," he asked, "you guys not close?"

"It's all he can afford to pay me."

"I reckon I can make due with twenty-five percent," Belton said.

"Extortion is a crime, you know. Ever think I might just march my ass down to the state parole board and tell them about this shakedown?"

"A former prison guard who did time for beating up a prisoner, who's been out of the joint one week, whose first PO just happened to die in her company, and who now wants to claim—with no evidence, mind you, besides her own good word—that her new PO tried to extort pennies from her … please excuse me while I shit my pants, Bennett."

I met his stare. What the fuck was there to say?

I nodded.

He smiled. "Well said. From now on, I'm your first stop on payday. Twenty-five percent. Every two weeks. Past that, I'll stay out of your way. That's good news, ain't it?"

"Sure."

"Sure it is." He stood up and walked back to his chair and sat down. "You can go where you want, do what you want, see who you want. And it's only for a few years. I'll write up nice little reports about you, about how well you're doing and how hard you're working, and at the end you'll come out rehabilitated. If you really think about, that's a hell of a deal."

"It's an incredible value," I said. "You should advertise."

He beamed at me. "Hey the jokes are back! Glad to hear it." He motioned at the door. "You can go, darlin'. I think we've reached an understanding."

I stood up, took one last look at his stupid, smiling face, and left.

I walked out of Belton's office building and an American flag mounted by the doorway slapped me in the face. No one saw it. His building was a four story cinder block in the middle of town, but no one was around. I wasn't sure that Belton had any neighbors in his building because my car was the only one in the parking lot. For that matter, I wasn't even sure Belton had a car himself.

I leaned against the tired old Escort and stared at the empty parking lot like it might have some answers.

It didn't.

I dug out my cell phone and called Nate. I told him I'd be doing things in the city the rest of the day and begged off dinner with the family.

He muttered that it was okay, but when I hung up I got the feeling that he wasn't happy.

Indian Head Estates was a large trailer park sitting just off the interstate. At the entrance to the park, I passed a five-foot wooden Indian head mounted on concrete. The road wound around a little pond and a sandy playground and split off into a grid of streets. I drove down the estates, passing row after row of mobile homes on streets with names like Redskin, Geronimo and Tomahawk, and it took me a few minutes to figure out that Indian Head Loop was the road that encircled the entire park. Once I had pieced that together, it didn't take me long to find the office/home of the manager. It was the last trailer before a long stretch of woods, and the road itself even stopped, blocked off by a heavy orange construction barricade that read: Do Not Enter. An old Arkansas Razorback flag hung limply by a door with a sign that read: Management.

There was a new black Ford F-150 in the driveway, so it looked as if Management was in. I walked up and knocked on the thin door.

I hadn't heard a television going inside, but I noticed when the sound shut off and someone grumbled and padded across the floor.

The shirtless man who opened up the door to me had skinny arms and a beer gut. Scars covered his bald head like haphazard tattoos. A deep gash split his chin as if someone had once tried to cut him a cleft with a hatchet.

"Yeah?"

"You Evan?"

He stared at me as if I'd insulted him. Then he leaned out the door and looked past me at his short driveway. Seeing only my beat up Escort beside his truck, he said, "Yeah."

"I was wondering if I could talk to you."

"About what?"

"About Alexis Kravitz."

Dumb eyes glared at me from beneath a heavy, white-slashed brow.

I smiled and nodded. "Mind if I come in and talk? Only take a minute."

He rubbed his split chin with his thumb and glanced out at the driveway again. Then he said, "Alright."

I stepped inside.

The place was dark. All the windows were covered, and covered as if there would never be a need to uncover them. The trailer smelled of smoke and booze and sweat and cheapness.

A cockeyed fat girl sat on a sofa smoking cigarettes. Maybe twenty or so, she wore cutoff jeans and a green pocket T-shirt. When I came in, she glanced at me and then turned her attention back to the television on the other side of the room.

On the screen played one of those gruesome video compilations of real-life death scenes caught on tape—the kind of underground movie that splices together footage of fatal accidents and suicides and murders. As Evan closed the door behind me, a woman onscreen was being mauled to death by a grizzly bear.

Evan told the girl, "Go on in the back while me and this one talk."

Without a word, the girl stood up and left the room. Her footsteps clomped down the thin floor of the hallway, then somewhere a door closed.

I asked, "Does she do tricks, too?"

Evan sat down in a La-Z-Boy next to the sofa. On the walls hung knives. Long ones and short ones. Dozens of them. There was something that looked like a samurai sword over the entrance to the hallway. Knives appeared to be the only form of decoration in the trailer.

Evan said, "Why you coming around asking me about Alexis?"

I sat down on the sofa where the girl had been. "You know her."

"So?"

"She's not here now is she?"

"Nope."

From a little TV-dinner tray in front of him, he picked up a hunting knife with an eight-inch blade and slid it along a sharpening steel with a black handle.

"She come back here after she got out of prison?" I asked.

"What do you know about her being in prison?"

"I was inside with her."

"Is that right?"

"That's right. Ellie Bennett. She might have mentioned me. We were in the same block. I got out and now I'm looking for her. I heard she might have come back here after she got out of Eastgate."

He sliced the knife down the steel. I noticed scars on both of his hands. His gut rose and fell against his lap as he asked, "What were you in for?"

"Assault."

He grinned. "Who'd you assault?"

"I heard Alexis was here for a while …"

"Heard wrong."

"You sure about that?"

He stopped to fix me with a scowl. When I didn't flutter my eyes or run for my life, he said, "Well, Alexis ain't much for sticking around places. Especially if she thinks she's got somewheres better to go."

"Where'd she go?"

"Her momma died. You hear about that?"

"No. When was that?"

"A month ago. Something like that. They wasn't close or nothing, but her momma was taking care of Kaylee. Lived down in Texas somewheres, so Alexis went down there to settle things and pick up the kid."

"You go with her?"

"Just as a matter of principle, I generally try to avoid Texas."

"But she came back, right?"

"Yeah, but it wasn't long before she run off again. Got involved with that preacher and skipped out."

"Preacher? What preacher?"

He nodded at the television. Onscreen a small, dead girl was being pulled out of a swimming pool, but I caught on that he meant television in general.

"A preacher on TV?" I asked.

"Yeah that dude that's running for … politics, you know …"

"Jerry Kingston? The guy running for Congress?"

"Yeah."

"What do you mean she got involved with him?"

Evan scowled at me and sliced the blade across the steel. "I don't know."

"But, involved with him how?"

He flicked his tongue across his teeth and pointed the knife at me like a finger. "It ain't too polite to come into a man's house and start demanding answers to questions. Pretty goddamn rude, as a matter of fact. You ask me a question oncet, I'll answer it if I feel like it. But you ask me twicet … and you'll upset me."

"Well shit, don't get upset, you might cut yourself again."

Evan Hastings closed his eyes. He shook his head. "See," he said slapping the knife against his palm, "problem is you don't know who you're talking to. Most men ain't got balls nowadays. And women, some women, they come to rely on that. They start believing there ain't no real men left."

"I can see you're all man." I didn't actually mean to provoke him, but I am by nature a smartass, so maybe it came out provocatively.

Evan opened his eyes and fixed them on me. Then he stood up and walked over to the door and locked it.

I stood up.

He leaned against the door.

I said, "Let's take it easy. I just came here looking for my friend. You don't know where she is, I can just be on my way."

He rubbed the flat of the blade against his bare gut and groused, "See, now you want to take it easy. A second ago you wanted to be mouthy, but now you want to take it easy. All it took was me locking the door. Just slid a little piece of metal into a little slot and now all the sudden you want to take it easy."