Nowhere Nice (Nick Reid Novels) (12 page)

I sure couldn’t see Luther and, because of the racket, I couldn’t hear him either. A compressor was running just about constantly, and there were two air wrenches going.

Two guys came out of somewhere, told me, “Look out,” and went blundering past with a bumper.

“Where’s Grady?” I asked them

One of them flung his head toward the back of the place.

The deeper I got in, the more I could see. Luther was talking to a couple of boys near a workbench by the back wall. He was shouting at them really, waving his arms and prancing around. Luther was naturally expressive, so I couldn’t be sure he was upset until I’d closed on the three of them close enough to hear him call those boys “cocksuckers.” That wasn’t Luther’s style at all. He was vulgar by lifestyle and pedigree and probably disposition, but he wasn’t one of those guys who swore and profaned in the general course of things.

When Luther spied me, he said, “These fuckers,” and spat on the cement floor.

“What’s the trouble?” I asked him.

“They got Percy Dwayne.”

“Where?”

“Won’t say.” He glared at the homelier of those two fellows, though that was a close call.

They turned out to be brothers. Greers from Arcola who had claims on Percy Dwayne. When I asked them why they’d snatched him, they tried to explain their reasons to me. The prettier one said anyway, “He took some shit and stuff.”

“We need him,” I said. “You can work this out later.”

Those brothers grinned and snorted.

“Which of you is Grady?” I asked them.

The homelier one said, “Him.”

He was still pointing when I smacked him with Desmond’s Ruger. I caught him just above the ear with the flat bulk of the thing. He had time for one offended glance before he dropped onto the floor.

“Like I said,” I was talking to Grady now, “you can work out your Percy Dwayne problems later.”

He weighed his options. Me and Luther watched him. He glanced at a mallet on the workbench. Looked around to see who was handy to help him. He might have even have tried to reason how much a pistol blow would hurt.

I guess it was pride and testosterone that caused him to ask me, “Who the fuck are you?”

I held the pistol whipping in reserve and punched him in the stomach. He doubled over and gurgled some. My shoulder ached like hell.

“Should have kicked him,” Luther advised me. “Like this.” Luther laid into the Greer with a snakeskin boot.

An audience was collecting by then. A dent puller. A paint guy. Some sort of female in a tube top. She lit a Lucky Strike. She had tattooed fingers and an angry cesarean scar.

She asked me and Luther, “What did he do?”

“Insurance company sent us,” I told her.

I didn’t even need to tell them to mind their own damn business. They appeared to figure an insurance company probably knew what it was about, so they all just sort of wandered back wherever they had come up from.

“Where’s Percy Dwayne?” I asked that Greer.

He just drooled and mumbled.

“Bring him?” Luther wanted to know.

“Hell,” I said, “I guess.”

TWELVE

I couldn’t blame Desmond for being upset about the state of his Escalade. When he’d divorced Shawnica and she’d laid claim to the first Cadillac he’d owned, Desmond had sworn he’d buy another one brand new off the lot and keep it precisely the way he wanted it kept. That meant shiny and thoroughly detailed on a regular monthly basis. The money we’d taken off that Boudrot had made all of that possible. Now that Boudrot was loose, Desmond was having to half trash his vehicle to find him.

“Funny, isn’t it?” I said, and I touched on the particulars that made the whole business ironic.

I shouldn’t have been too terribly surprised that Desmond had a snort for that.

We’d parked Grady from the body shop between Luther and Dale on the backseat. Eugene was in the way back with his hound and smelling finally better than the dog. Partly because of the extra four feet between us and partly because of the caustic lye soap.

The Gojo in the body shop hadn’t done much for Eugene. He’d tell us every now and again, “I itch.”

Now we had to deal with Grady Greer who was as fragrant as a camel. Worse still, he was being uncooperative, had no plans to give Percy Dwayne up.

“You can have him back,” Luther promised. “We’ve just got pressing business with him.”

“Who’s to say I ain’t got pressing business?”

“Can I hit him?” Dale wanted to know.

Partly to frustrate Dale and partly because I wanted to be civilized, I tried instead to reason with that Greer from the body shop.

“We’ll just need him for a day or two. Then we’ll bring him right back to you.”

“The hell we will,” Luther informed me. “I ain’t giving up Percy Dwayne to this shithead.”

That Greer snarled at Luther and acquainted him with the harm he’d do to him in the wild.

“Can I hit him?” Dale asked me.

Desmond turned and informed me, “You’re steam cleaning every damn thing.”

“All right.”

I was talking to Desmond, but Dale assumed I was turning him loose on that Greer. No harm much came of it, though. Dale couldn’t throw a proper punch out in a bean field. In the back of an Escalade, he was good for even less. He caught that Greer with the sort of blow you might use to discipline a schoolgirl.

“And where the shit are we even going?” Desmond asked me. We were heading back east toward Leland and Indianola by then.

I couldn’t say, was largely waiting for Grady Greer to tell us, and Dale hadn’t hit him hard enough to tempt him to speak.

“Don’t be stupid,” I said to that Greer, but he pulled one of those Delta cracker faces that was meant to let me know he’d be as stupid as he pleased.

There wasn’t much help for it. “Hit him again,” I said, and Dale and Luther and Eugene all thought I was talking to them. I can’t be sure how that Greer clung to consciousness after the battering he took. They all hit him about simultaneously from three different directions. It sounded like somebody had thrown a bag of rice down the stairs.

That Greer took a second to collect himself before telling all of us, “Ow.”

“I half missed him,” Eugene said from the way back as he swung on that Greer again. He caught him flush on the cowlick this time.

“Shit, buddy!” That Greer raised a hand to his head.

“Fucker shot my dogs!” Eugene told him.

“Percy Dwayne?” he asked.

Desmond was already looking for a spot to pull over before I could suggest he ought to. We had too much explaining and coercing to do to undertake it over the seat back, so Desmond eased off the road by a catfish pond, rolled up the bank, and parked on the levee. The place stank of guano and floaters, a ripe variation on eau de Eugene.

“Get him out,” Desmond barked at Dale.

Dale looked like he was going bristle until Desmond pointed to a spot down the levee. “You can swing on him over there.”

Dale liked the sound of that and dragged that Greer out of the car by his collar. He tried to anyway, but that Greer had run up on Dale before. It turned out Dale had written Grady Greer a summons or two, had even pulled his sainted mother over up at Metcalfe, a woman who’d never driven above forty in her life. So that Greer had simmering resentment for Dale, which Dale failed to factor in.

We hadn’t bound him up or anything, given how thoroughly outnumbered he was, so that Greer let himself get fished out of the Escalade by his collar until he was upright on the levee, where he felled Dale with a blow.

“Hey!” Dale said to him.

He was sprawled on his ass in the dirt by then. The “Hey!” was mostly for us. Dale seemed to think we should have stopped that Greer from hauling off and slugging him or, at the very least, should have been beating him out of collegial indignation. Instead we were all just standing there wondering what might happen next.

“Don’t remember me, do you?” that Greer asked Dale.

“I don’t know you,” Dale told him. Dale gripped his chin and wiggled it some, just to see if all the parts and pieces were unfractured and connected. Dale did that like most people ream their ears or pick their noses given how often civilians wanted to hit him and how frequently they did.

“Ruleville,” that Greer said. “2008. October. And I’ll tell you now what I told you then. I wasn’t doing shit.”

“Ticket?” I asked him.

Grady Greer nodded. “Sixty goddamned dollars.”

That was enough of a scalding reminder to prompt him to kick Dale hard one time.

“Hey!” Dale was talking to us again.

“Get up,” Desmond told him.

That was no easy thing for Dale in ordinary circumstances, given how thick and lumpy he’d become. With an indignant Greer flailing at him, he was slower even than normal.

“If we stand here,” I said, “and don’t do a damn thing, are you going to give us Percy Dwayne?”

That was closer to the kind of bargain that Greer figured he could live with.

Dale, of course, just told all of us, “Hey!”

“Daddy’s got him. Him and Uncle Flo. You’ll need to work it out with them.”

“About money?” Desmond asked him.

“Ain’t it always?”

“You’ll take us?”

That Greer nodded my way.

“Well,” I said. “Go ahead.”

If Dale could have run, he would have. Instead he got knocked back down on the levee, and the fun was just beginning when my phone rang in my pocket. It was Kendell calling
me
this time. He usually got to me through Desmond.

“Yeah,” I said to him.

“Where are you?” Kendell asked me.

“Over toward Greenville. You heard from Tula?”

“About an hour ago. On her way back from Baton Rouge. Around Brookhaven. She said for me to tell you everything’s okay.”

“Good to hear,” I said to Kendell. “Anything new on Boudrot?”

“Nope, but there’s a thing you need to see.”

“We’re kind of in the middle of something.”

Dale said, “Hey!” He added, “Come on!” That Greer was laying on top of Dale and elbowing everything he could reach.

“Is that Dale?” Kendell asked me.

“Yeah. A guy’s beating the hell out of him.”

Kendell knew better than to be surprised by the news. “Once you’re done,” Kendell told me, “why don’t you come on home.”

“My home?” I asked him.

“Yeah,” he said. “What’s left of it.”

*   *   *

Lucky for us, Dale and that Greer were too old to fight for long. They snarled at each other and punched and rolled around on the levee for a bit. After maybe ten minutes, they were locked in what would have looked like a loving embrace in lamplight on a queen-sized bed.

That’s when Desmond kicked the heap and told them both, “Get up.”

Naturally, they brought a bunch of levee filth into Desmond’s Escalade, which Desmond reminded me about intermittently all the way to Indianola.

“What exactly did he say?” he finally asked me of Kendell.

“I got the feeling that Boudrot’s been by Pearl’s.”

Had he ever, as it turned out.

Kendell’s cruiser was parked in the road out front. Kendell was standing in the driveway between Pearl’s house and the car shed. There was in imperial blue Nissan parked (I’ll call it) in the backyard. The driver’s door was standing open. The lid of the trunk was raised like whoever had rolled up in it had bailed out and fetched his stuff.

I glanced at Pearl’s Buick in the pullout where she usually parked. Luther’s truck was still alongside. They both looked untouched. I couldn’t say the same about the side screen porch. All of the screen wire was slashed and ripped.

I was hardly out of the Escalade before I asked Kendell, “He bust in the house?”

“Busted in all over.”

Kendell pointed toward the car shed. The bay doors were standing open, and I got a sick feeling that told me everything I needed to know.

That car shed bay was the tidiest part of Pearl’s residential holdings. It had been her late husband’s workshop and refuge. She’d honored Gil’s memory by leaving it be. The cement was shiny. The tools were hung, ranked by size on Gil’s pegboard. Even the yellow jack stands looked like they’d been simonized. But there was a big vacant slot right there in the middle where my Ranchero should have been.

“Stole it?” Desmond shouted to me from back by the Escalade.

I nodded. I told him, “Again.”

That’s how I’d met that Boudrot the first time. He’d stolen Gil’s calypso coral Ranchero. Or rather Percy Dwayne Dubois had stolen it from me and that Boudrot had taken it from him. The trouble was, I’d just borrowed it because my Chevy was in the shop, so it wasn’t like it was up to me to let the thing stay stolen. I’d told Pearl I’d bring it back to her just like I’d driven it off, so I wasn’t about to rest until I got that Ranchero back.

Since then, I’d bought the thing from Pearl, gave her cash for the title. So I guess I could have decided that I didn’t need it back. I could have told Kendell, “It’s just a car.” I could have stood there before that empty bay and been philosophical about it. I could have reasoned that Boudrot stealing my Ranchero yet another time was a sign that I was due for a fresh set of wheels.

I could have done all of that, but I did something else instead.

“Motherfuck,” I said, which earned me one of Kendell’s Baptist glares. “That’s a dead man.”

“I didn’t hear that,” Kendell told me.

“Want him in a box or a bag?” I asked him.

“Didn’t hear that either.”

Kendell pointed to the stairway that led up to my apartment.

“What did he do?” I asked.

Kendell shook his head. “Some kind of human tornado thing.”

That Boudrot had started with the door. I got up to the landing, thinking my apartment door was merely standing open, but it turned out the only thing left of it was some splintered wood on the hinges. He hadn’t been satisfied just to kick it in. That Boudrot had busted it all to bits. The panels had all fallen out once he broken the styles and rails, and he’d taken the time and the effort to bust them all up into kindling.

Most everything else in my puny apartment was simply obliterated. Human tornado was about the size of it. He’d made confetti out of all my stuff. I stood in the middle of the carnage and tried to be philosophical again.