Bad Juju & Other Tales of Madness and Mayhem (26 page)

“Fucking maniac!” screams Dietz. He leans across and flicks open the dash-box. For a moment Jimmy thinks Dietz intends to grab the .38 and let loose with a barrage of lead. But he only wants the bottle of Dickel. The spinning sound of the metal cap unscrewing echoes loudly in the aftermath of the almost collision.

When Dietz hands the hip bottle back to Jimmy, there’s maybe a shot left in the bottom. Jimmy finishes it and throws the bottle out the window.

They enter Defoeville’s old business district, looking for the Sheriff’s Office. Again Dietz dials Ned Ritter’s cell number. For the umpteenth time, the call jumps directly to voice mail.

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” Dietz interjects.

A plate-glass window catching the last blistering waves of sunlight announces:

Sheriff’s Office
. Inside, a uniformed female bull holds sway.

“Gents. How may I help you?” Annabel Lee inquires, leaning back in a standard issue gray desk chair, New Balance-shod feet at rest on the desktop.

“Tryin’ to hook up with Sheriff Troop…or Deputy Ritter. Can’t seem to raise him on the blower.”

“For starters,” she replies, “there’ll be no hookin’ up around here. Cause this ain’t no Turkish bath. Second, Ned Ritter’s AWOL, as usual. Third, the Sheriff’s cell phone is turned off, as usual, so I have no f-ing idea where he is.”

“Can’t you go through the phone company, trace him somehow. It’s a FUCKING EMERGENCY!”

“It’s a felony to threaten a police officer.”

“Okay, okay. Deputy Ritter called me earlier today about two fugitives traced to your jurisdiction. The same ones who murdered my mom last night up in Dallas. Drove a letter opener into her brain. I busted ass to get down here to give a hand in apprehending these armed and dangerous dickwads. If Sheriff Troop thinks he can take these two down by himself, he’s likely to get his ass in a sling. So Jimmy and me…” He grips Jimmy with one arm and draws him close. “So Jimmy and me need to hook up, excuse me, meet with Sheriff Troop ASAP.”

“Best I can do is leave a message for the sheriff in his in-basket. What motel you stayin’ at?”

Dietz stares at her in disbelief. Then twirls and walks out.

On the street Jimmy catches up to Dietz and pulls on his arm. “What’re we gonna do now.”

“Fuck if I know.”

20.

For an instant Maud’s eyes meet those of her mother passing by out on the road, staring up at her from the Bronco’s open driver’s side window.

“Holy shit, piss, and fuck,” Maud says.

Behind her Mr. Bates sprawls across the bed, naked except for a pillow pulled over his face. His thing is red and distended. A scrunched-up condom lies at the edge of the bed like a crushed flower. A hog-like snort escapes from beneath the eiderdown bolster.

Maud leaps onto the bed, shaking Bates wildly. When she yanks the pillow away, his sex-besotted gaze falls upon her with the weight of a lead-lined x-ray apron. Desperate, Maud grabs a flower vase from Lydia’s vanity, drops the bouquet onto the floor and throws the algae-ous water on Bates. He explodes from the bed.

“What the hell!”

“My mother’s home,” Maud says from a bent-over position, as she ties her Pumas. Otherwise she’s still naked. Mr. Bates laughs. Ha, ha.

“No way, José.”

“I shit you not.”

Like some religious zealot touched by god, Mr. Bates eyes glaze over. He starts to nod, slowly, then faster and faster. On the bed behind him, snake-like, the heavy end of the condom eases over the edge and falls to the floor with a tiny plop.

Maud grabs Bates’ clothes and pushes him out of the bedroom and down the hall to a large tumbledown bathroom with wintergreen and mauve tiles dating back to the time of Bonnie and Clyde. Maud longs to surrender to her hopelessness, drop to her knees before the antique toilet bowl and puke her guts out. Instead she takes two deep breaths and slaps Bates across the cheeks.

Be of good cheer,
she thinks.
Things are bound to get better.

“Get dressed and come down stairs,” she orders Mr. Bates. “I’ll tell Lydia you came by to help me with my science fair project. You were just using the bathroom, while I went to change out of my school clothes.”

“She’ll never believe you.”

But Maud is already racing down the stairs, two steps at the time.

21.

The man calling himself Alberto follows Lydia up the back steps, through the enclosed rear porch, and into the kitchen of the rambling Floodway homestead. Her impromptu invitation recalls to Alberto the image of Americans from school: brash, open, uninhibited. For an instant he doubts that Lydia is a murderer.

Quickly he brushes away this heretical thought.
No!
he berates himself
. The endless killing in my country is because of you Americans. All of you. My sister’s murder is on your hands. Soon the circle of revenge will be complete.

Lydia steps away from the sink holding a glass of water. Motioning for Alberto to sit at the kitchen table, she sets the glass on the gaudy vinyl cloth hiding the old oak beneath.

“Please sit here. I’ll be right back. I have to talk to my daughter.”

At that moment, with the high-pitched squeal of sneakers on burnished wood floors, Maud appears in the kitchen doorway. She looks at Lydia, flashing the shitassed grin of the utterly guilty. Then Maud sees the stranger and everything changes.

Lydia hisses at her daughter. “I need to talk to you in the other room.”

Maud walks to the sink and runs herself a glass of water. She takes a long drink; then turns and looks at Lydia again. “What’s up?” She nods obliquely toward Alberto.

Alberto is stunned by the turn of events. He wants to cry out, beat himself with sharp briers, grovel before the madness of existence. The young woman standing by the window, the daughter of the woman who almost ran him over, is the identical image of his sister Azza! As if she has risen from the dead!

His eyes rake over Maud’s miniskirt and fitted top.
Except my sister would never have dressed like you,
he thinks.
Not like a harlot.

Unable to hold herself back, Lydia snaps at Maud:

“You were standing naked in my bedroom window.”

“Mother!”

“Are you here by yourself?” Lydia’s lips overlap in her eagerness for an instant answer to this question.

“Mr. Bates…”

“Mel Bates, that scumbag? You’re sleeping with Mel Bates?”

“I’m not sleeping with anyone,” Maud says, setting down her water glass and crossing her arms under her breasts. Maud suspects Lydia is cheating on Zeke. So what’s the big deal? “He’s helping me with my science project,” she says.

“Then what were you doin’ naked up there?” Lydia blurts out.

“Can we not have this discussion now? In front of a stranger and all?”

Maud turns on the coldwater tap, leans down and splashes her face. Erect again, she runs wet fingers through her hair, staring out the window.

Mom’s Bronco is there. But why is a man in a black suit leaning into the open driver’s side window? Now he’s opening the door and climbing into the cab.
Holy moly, he’s stealing mom’s truck!
she thinks.

“Mom. No way, José, are you going to believe this…”

“Try me.”

Before Maud can speak again, Warren Jolene thrusts open the door from the enclosed back porch and strides into the kitchen.

“Y’all put your hands up. This is a robbery.” He waves the Saturday night special. In his thick hand it’s a toy, but a deadly one.

For a moment no one cries, spits, yawns, sniffles, coughs, or otherwise makes a move. Then Lydia, with her usual bravado, steps toward him. “I don’t know who you are, pal. But get the hell out of my house.”

Warren’s hand flies out and up, slamming the steel barrel of the gun into Lydia’s face. It cuts a swathe through her flesh from cheek to hairline. A wolf pack of pain and blackness howls through the winter landscape of her brain. She crumples to the floor. Her hands cover the gash in her face, her feet kick like a swimmer treading water.

“Anybody else want some of this?” Warren holds up the cheap pistol.

Maud is crying, her face bleached of color. Alberto remembers Azza’s tears when their father beat her mercilessly for meeting a man, an engineer, for coffee at the university. Alberto’s father is an old man now, spending his time mumbling over the verses of the Koran.

Alberto shakes his head, his eyes on the floor.

“Fantastic,” Warren says in a cheerful voice. “Now everyone put your wallets, watches, cash, and jewelry on the table.”

From outside the explosion of a large caliber weapon makes Warren jerk his head around. A second explosion and he’s disappearing out the way he came in.

22.

Ray Jolene, sitting in Lydia Floodway’s Bronco, his hand about to turn the key left in the ignition, goes into freeze-frame mode at the unmistakable click of a weapon being armed. His mind races like a hamster on steroids. The unyielding tip of a pistol comes to rest against the side of his head, just behind his left ear.

“Don’t do anything dumb,” Sheriff Bobby Troop says in a deadpan whisper. “Just put both hands on the steering wheel. And don’t move a fuckin’ nose hair.”

Ray does what he’s told.
Where the hell’s Warren got to?
he wonders.

“Now, asswipe, I’m gonna open the door. Then you’re gonna get out of the truck real slow and put your hands on the roof. You with me,
chico
?”

No way, José
, thinks Ray. The Sheriff appears as a distorted stick figure in the chrome window-detail of the Bronco. A stick figure in cowboy hat and sunglasses pointing a large weapon into the shadow behind Ray’s left ear.
This guy’s an f-ing cartoon,
Ray thinks.
Deputy Dawg. There’s got to be an opportunity here.

Where the hell’s Ritter?
wonders Troop.
Sombitch is never around when ya need him.
  Troop’s Crown Vic sits 40 feet away behind some bushes at the side of the road; his cell phone’s in the vanity tray between the seats. The 12-gauge pump is in the dashboard rack.

“I was just borrowing this vehicle,” Ray says. “Mine’s broken down and I’ve got a medical emergency.”

“Shut up! Or you’ll be the medical emergency.”

Just beat this boy unconscious and move on,
goes through Troop’s head, ’cause there’s another killer out there unaccounted for. His left hand moves to the Bronco’s door handle and presses the unlatching nob. The door, out of plumb, grinds open.

Do it now!
roars like a wind through Ray’s synapses. He slams his body against the partway-open door of the Bronco. As the door swings wide, it catches the Sheriff in the knee and wrist. For a second or two Troop flounders. Enough time for Ray to roll sideways out of the truck, find purchase for his feet on the graveled parking area and begin a sprint toward the house.

“Freeze, scumbag,” Sheriff Troop calls out in his deep baritone. He takes aim at the fleeing Jolene brother. The first round catches Ray in the shoulder and jerks him halfway around. Ray’s eyes beg for salvation, even as Troop squeezes off a second hollow-point, this time punching a hole in Ray’s chest. He pitches backward, dead before he hits the ground.

Warren Jolene’s face peers out through the porch doorway. Catching sight of Ray’s corpse near the bottom of the steps, he begins to hyperventilate. His eyes travel outward from the body, across the expanse of gray crushed stone to where Sheriff Troop stands next to the Bronco.

“Murderer!” Warren yells.

He ducks back behind the door stanchion and fires off several shots from the Saturday night special. It’s like shooting at a shadow in a darkened hotel room. Nevertheless, Troop takes a hit in the arm.

“Fuck,” he spits between clenched teeth. He drops into a shooting position on the ground behind the open Bronco door. Closing one eye and sighting along the barrel, he unloads the magazine in and around the back porch doorway. The third bullet nicks Warren’s neck, slashing open his carotid artery. Blood spatters wildly. Warren stumbles backward, half shoving his way, half falling, through the kitchen door.

Even as Sheriff Troop opens both eyes to better view Warren’s erratic moves, Maurice A. Vende creeps closer, until he’s near enough to drive the end of a metal fence post deep into the back of Troop’s skull.

23.

It’s his third. Or is it number 4? Who gives a fuck!

Brian Beetle stands at the White Oaks, some say White Folks, Country Club bar. It’s a long highly polished bar of imported teak. Around him drink the crème de la crème of Defoeville. Judge John Magnus, Jr. Reggie Cohen, Chief Surgeon at Cottonwood Country General. Salazar Ortega and the three Salter brothers, who, as a minority company in an economically distressed county, rake in gobs from highway construction contracts and other public works. Jane Cunningham, Defoeville chapter President of the Daughters of the Confederacy.

Brian nods to Judge Magnus. Jane Cunningham, drunker than a skunk, is falling off her barstool.

Brian gazes into his cloudy drink, hoping for enlightenment. His mind reprises the day. In the morning a meth dealer, recently busted, pays him five grand in small bills. A nonrefundable retainer. Buoyed by this infusion of cash, he takes an early lunch. Then along comes Lydia.

What a pain in the ass. After they fuck, she decides to call off their affair. That’s the way Brian reads her parting salvo.

This prospect sends him into a nosedive. Black depression rears its hideous head.

Hence the bar at the Club. Hence four vodka gimlets. Or is it five?

Not unlike Zeke Floodway across town at the Elks, Brian staggers slightly as he pushes away from the bar. The room swirls and spins like a midway ride at the Texas State Fair.

Drive up to the Big D
, he thinks.
Hit the Ghost Bar at the W. See what the night brings. He taps the bar with his fist. Sounds like a plan.

Outside in the waning day, he hands his ticket to the valet attendant. Moments later he climbs into the bucket seat of a silver Mercedes C350 sports sedan. Clicking the seatbelt lock, he puts her in drive and weaves precariously down the club driveway. At the drive’s end, he stops at the brink of Turner Road. Looks left and right.