Bad Juju & Other Tales of Madness and Mayhem (23 page)

“Awesome,” Brian says.

“If I did that to your dick, you’d be screamin’ your head off.” Standing at the window, she pulls back the lace curtain an inch or two and gazes at the street hammered by the two o’clock sun.

“Come back over here, baby. Let me kiss it all better.”

Lydia leans down to retrieve her Wal-Mart panties from the stained carpet.

“I’ve got to get back to work.”

“Oh, come on. One more ride for the big fellow.” Brian shakes his semi-hard penis, as though it were a godsend.

Lydia hooks her bra; then fiddles with the buttons of her blouse. “I’ve really got to stop doing this, Brian. Zeke’s bound to find out. Then what am I going to do. I’ve got two kids, a mortgage, a shit job...”

“Life’s full of risks.”

“What if I divorced Zeke and we got married?” This one comes down the alley toward home plate like a wild-assed spitball. Brian steps back from the plate, letting it fly by. The ref calls a strike.

“No way, José. Marriage is NOT my thing, darlin’.”

“No. Of course not. How foolish of me to bring it up. A big shot criminal defense lawyer like you. A commitment other than to the aggrandizement of your ego just doesn’t play.”

“Darlin’, you know when we started this, I told you it was just for fun. I like you a lot but…”

Lydia buttons her almost-too-tight slacks and slips on her sandals. She looks at him one last time. His penis is now little more than a breakfast sausage. His brow furrows with concern that she might do something crazy, like pulling out a pistol and blasting away.

Instead she opens the door.

“Kiss my ass!” she says and walks blithely out and down the stairs.

5.

“Call me Alberto.”

He holds out his hand but the driver ignores it. “Thanks for pickin’ up. Hot. Very hot.”

“Hot as Hades,” says the driver.

He’s still eying Alberto up and down, expecting him to morph into evil incarnate. Or at least a bayou vampire. Alberto smiles.

“Nice truck.”

Out of some wayward sense of duty, Mason Barrow always picks up hitchhikers. But that doesn’t mean much. He distrusts anyone he hasn’t known for at least twenty-five years. And he hates liars. His truck is thirteen years old and looks like shit.

Ain’t nobody going to vouch for this pilgrim,
he thinks.
Maybe I should just shoot him and leave ’im by the side of the road. Course some would call that murder, a flaunting of one of the Lord’s commandments. On the other hand, aren’t our finest sons toiling in the killing fields of Iraq? Moral ambiguity’s like a slow-acting poison. Either you cut through the bullshit or slip into a coma and die.

He shifts his F-150 into gear.

“Where ya headed?”

Alberto smiles.

“Not too smart to be out walkin’ in this heat,” Mason says to fill the gap. “Easy to die of sunstroke.”

“Hot.”

“You can say that again. So, where’d ya say you was goin’?”

“Going? Yes, going to Dallas.” Alberto smiles again. “You take me Dallas?”

“No way, José.”

Barrow concentrates on his driving. Sun-burnt fields, some with a smattering of cattle or goats, almost dry mud-bottom creeks lined with cottonwoods, and the occasional ramshackle farm pass by outside the insect-spattered windshield.

“You took the wrong runway to get to Dallas, pal. Next town up’s Defoeville. That’s where I’m goin’. Have ta drop you there.”

His passenger nods his head.

“They’ve got a nice café. Get yourself some lunch.”

But Alberto’s eyes are already closed. Behind the curtain of skin, his mind replays Bill Cody’s death by fire.

Do not surrender to your emotions,
he tells himself.
You have sworn to bring down the great glass towers of Dallas, home of the Cowboys. Many will die. But none of them are innocent. The blood of your family is on their hands.

The flames in his mind no longer rise from Bill Cody’s crumpled truck. He dreams of a ruined house in a Baghdad suburb, destroyed by Hellfire rockets from an American attack helicopter. The screams are from the seared lips of his two brothers and a sister.

6.

“Zeke. I’m starving. Let’s knock it off and get us a feedbag.”

Zeke Floodway, in farmer’s dungarees and a flannel shirt with its sleeves ripped off, jumps down from the kitchen counter where he’s been bolting cabinets to the wall. A scruffy beard and unkempt shoulder-length hair tell the story of a hippie lad now past forty but still puffing on the old hookah in between shots of Jim Beam. Sawdust and dirt streak his sweated forehead. He pulls out a red bandanna and swipes his brow.

“Where ya wanna go, Elmo? How ’bout a burger down ta Edgar’s?”

“No fuckin’ way, José, am I gonna eat lunch at that dump and risk gettin’ a dose a E. coli. Somebody oughta put Edgar outa his misery. An’ bulldoze the place.”

“Okay, then. Wherever you want to go.”

“I’ve been meanin’ to try that new gent’s club opened downtown. Somebody told me they’ve got a free lunch.”

“Ain’t no free lunch, Elmo. You’ll end up blowing you profits on a pair of tits and ass.”

Elmo’s mood changes like quicksilver.

“Let me worry about my profits,” he snaps. “You just worry about stayin’ on my good side.” His narrow eyes stare at Zeke, until Zeke looks away.

“Whatever, bro.”

They cruise down Main Street in Elmo’s van. The front end makes a scraping sound, as if they’re dragging a body.

Main Street is a sad ghost of its former distinction, back when being the county seat meant something. Now the old courthouse is haunted by a bunch of third-rate lawyers picking over the bones. The twenty or so Jewish families, and anyone else with an ounce of vision or some unencumbered cash, have long since decamped to Austin or Dallas or El Paso. Lots of empty storefronts with sun-faded
For Lease
signs in their windows. The rest are taken up with insurance, mattresses, lawyers’ offices, rip off appliance rentals, and spurious antique parlors.

“Hey,” Elmo points. “Ain’t that Lydia’s Bronco?”

“Might be.” Zeke recognizes the license plate number. It’s Lydia’s.

“Ain’t the place where she works way on the other side a town?”

“Could be.”

“What’s the matter with you, man? Might be. Could be. You need to get some conviction.”

“All I’m sayin’ is, that Bronco might be hers or it might not. Lot a old Bronco’s around.”

“And if it is Lydia’s, then what in heck is your little honey pot doin’ way over here at…” Elmo glances at his Sanyo sports watch. “At 1:30 on a Thursday afternoon?”

Zeke lets the question hang there like the corpse of a child molester.

Elmo pulls his truck into a slanted parking space in front of the old Griswold Hotel, at eight floors the tallest building in Defoeville. Its main dining room is now
The Night Owl Lounge – A Gent’s Club.
A hand-painted cardboard sign says:
Free Lunch 11 – 2 weekdays.

When they exit Elmo’s truck, the sun batters down on them like the blows of a ball-peen hammer on a tin roof. It’s enough to shrivel any anticipation of what might await them inside.

Elmo pulls open one side of the fake-suede-covered doors. When it swings closed behind them, they’re in freezing cold pitch-blackness. From nowhere a cigarette girl in a snow-white bra and panties swooshes up to them. Besides cigarettes, her tray holds mints, gum, exotic condoms, and religious pamphlets in English, Spanish, and Arabic.

“There’s a five-dollar cover,” she says, holding out her hand.

Elmo gives her a ten. So much for a free lunch, Zeke thinks. But keeps his mouth shut and follows Elmo and the girl from the foyer into the main part of the lounge. It’s nothing like the Motel 6 ambience of the Korean whack shack out by the Interstate.

The size of the room is deceiving, as it’s painted black, walls, ceiling, floor—all black. Psychedelic posters of naked women are illuminated on the walls by special lights. A narrow stage struts into the room. There’s a bar down one wall. The rest of the space is taken up with rows of tables facing the runway.

On the runway a woman on her knees eats out another woman lolling in a hammock.

Two half-hammered lawyers, one young, the other mid-career, sit at the bar making comments about the culinary qualities of the show. Otherwise the place is empty.

The cigarette girl motions Zeke and Elmo to a table up close to the stage. Elmo orders two beers, which are also extra. The two women change places.

Elmo is mesmerized by the action. Zeke walks over to the buffet table at the side of the room. It’s slim pickin’s: a few slices of limp ham, chips and salsa, a bowl of pretzels. Instead, Zeke goes into the men’s room.

Standing at the urinal, Zeke’s mind travels backward in time. To Lydia’s Bronco parked at 1:30 p.m. in front of the old Bockman Block, a nest of storefronts inhabited by lawyers and related vipers.

What the fuck’s going on here,
Zeke wonders.

He shakes his member in confusion, zips up, and walks back into the club. One of the naked performers lounges in Zeke’s seat talking to Elmo.

Zeke just keeps walking ’til he’s back out in the burning sunlight. Standing at the curb, he looks back up to the next block, but the Bronco is gone. The street is devoid of traffic. Of any movement at all.
Is Hell hot or cold?
he wonders.

7.

The Jolene brothers are a walking catalog of opposites. Fat and skinny, squat and tall, dumb and less dumb, angry and cool, a preacher’s black suit versus slacks and a golf shirt. Ray is the tall skinny one in black with an Associates Degree from Inez Junior College down in the Rio Grande Valley and the imperturbable demeanor of a
mahatma
. Sociopathic eyes gaze sadly from his chiseled face. Warren is the other brother. He wears his hair in an archaic flattop.

They stand at the edge of a pasture, looking down at the Le Baron where it sags into a drainage ditch at the side of the road, its front axel cracked like a peanut shell.

“I hate foreign cars,” says Warren, kicking up a fan of dust. “Made by a bunch a gook ass-wipes.”

“Le Baron’s a Chrysler product, right out of Detroit,” replies Ray, his thin fingers toying with his goatee.

“No way, José. Why’s it called Le Baron, then?”

“How the fuck should I know. Some marketing guru made it up.”

Warren turns and stares at a clutch of cows that have meandered up to the barbed wire fence to get a better look at the newcomers.

“Fuckin’ cows!” he blurts. “I hate the country. Makes my skin crawl. All the bugs, pollen, rodents.”

“Take it easy, Warren.”

“Yeah, genius brother. An easy boost, you said. An old lady with a mattress stuffed to the gills with cash.” Warren pauses to unzip his pants. Extricating his schlong from its place of residence, he pisses in the direction of the cows. “How much did she have? Forty fuckin’ bucks in a jam jar. Then the old bag goes for a gun. Good thing I grabbed the letter opener.”

“Yes. A wonderful piece of luck. Now we’re up for capital murder.”

“Don’t sweat the small stuff, brother. Where the fuck are we, anyway?”

“Sign back there said two miles to Defoeville.”

“Far fuckin’ out. Just what I wanted to do: take a stroll in the country.”

Warren walks over to the Le Baron, yanks open the driver’s door, and pushes the seatback forward so he can reach underneath. He stands up holding a steel-gray Saturday night special, which he slips into his trouser pocket.

“What ’ave you got in your other hand?” demands Ray.

“It’s the old biddy’s ring. And the finger it was on.”

“No. Goddammit! What you’ve got is evidence that’ll tie us directly to the old lady’s murder. Give it here.”

“You can have the finger. But I’m keeping the ring.”

“You wait and see. They’ll be injectin’ our asses down in Huntsville before this is over.”

Ray takes the appendage and throws it as far as he can into the field. Turning away, he walks up the road in the direction of Defoeville. For a long moment Warren’s eyes follow the trajectory of the finger; then he starts after his brother.

8.

At 12:49 p.m. Maud sprints across the tiled hallway of Millard Fillmore Memorial High School and slides into her front row seat in Mr. Bates’ General Science class. Mr. Bates is writing formulas on the blackboard, but turns in time to catch a fleeting glimpse of Maud’s talc-white thighs before she snaps her legs shut.

Maud puts her fist face down on the desktop, the middle finger extended. She smiles like a coquette, all the time thinking how awful it is being sick, the upchucking and the fevered nightmares. The next moment she leaps from her seat, steps into the hall and throws up.

Several passing students scoot out of the way. Mr. Bates looks on with disgust. When she’s done, he steps to the door and hisses:

“Better go to the nurse. I’ll come by later.”

She’s shivering, her skin as splotchy as a sow’s stomach. The nurse gives her Tylenol and tells her to rest on the daybed. Lying on her back behind the metal and cloth screen, her eyes won’t close. It’s just nerves, she tells herself. We always used a condom.

The last thought in her head before she falls asleep on the squishy daybed is: maybe I should buy one of those pregnancy test kits.

Mr. Bates’ lips on hers draws her out of a swamp of fervid dreams. His hand is on her crotch. She pushes it away.

“No way, José,” she says. “If we do it here, we’re sure to get caught.”

“Maybe it would be worth it.”

“You mean the head rush of fucking in the nurse’s office or being indicted for child molestation?”

Bates pouts. But stops groping her.

“What time is it?” she asks.

“Two fifteen.”

“God.” She closes her eyes and puts her hand to her forehead. It feels cold and clam-like. Her neck is stiff. “I feel like shit.”

“Maybe you should go home.”

“Nobody’s there.”

“I could drive you.”

She reaches up her hand and jerks his head down toward her. Her lips fasten upon his like a leech. Her vomit-bitter tongue entwines with his.