Rigged (13 page)

“What do I mean?” Damon repeated and looked over at Rook, who was leaning on the door, arms crossed as usual, with his eyes locked on the floor. “Rook, maybe you can tell these boys what I mean.”

“I think you mean you’d like to know what the hell Jimmy and Petey thought they were doing in the parking lot of the strip club,” Rook said.

“Oh, yeah. That’s right,” Damon said, as if he’d actually forgotten what he was going to say. “What I mean is, what did you two country sheep-fuckers think you were doing in the parking lot of that strip club, messin’ with that girl and starting shit?”

“Well,” Petey started to chime in, “there was this guy, and—”

Damon interrupted again, “Jimmy, is there some sort of communication breakdown here or what? Who told your retarded brother to talk? Hell, I didn’t even know he could speak.”

Jimmy didn’t like it when people made fun of Petey, and had it been just about anyone other than Damon, he would have kicked his ass, but he knew Damon didn’t mean anything by it. He was just mad, like when their daddy would tie one on and spout off stuff like that. Once he’d rationalized that, he continued, “He was just tryin’ to help. See, there was this guy—”

“Again with the guy?” Damon said with a disgusted scowl on his face. “You mean to tell me that you two were plannin’ to rape a guy in the parking lot last night?”

Jimmy was officially lost and had no idea what to say next. 

“I need to get something straight right now,” Damon said as he stood up and walked around the room. He kept opening and closing his fists, flexing his forearms until the veins in them looked like spider webs. “From what I hear, you two inbred idiots decided you wanted to party with a stripper last night, but instead of just buying that little piece of ass like anyone else would, you thought you’d just snatch her up and make her squeal, like some kinda fuckin’ scene outta
Deliverance
. Is that what all you banjo-playin’ crackers from down south do?”

Actually, both Jimmy and Petey were born in North Dakota, but for some reason, people always mistook them from being from the South. “We just wanted to have a little fun,” Jimmy said, sounding like a scolded schoolboy.

Damon stopped and smiled. “Oh, I see. Just a little fun.” He started to laugh, a chuckle at first, but then so hard that his face began to redden. “Jesus, why the fuck didn’t you two tell me that? All this time, I’ve been worried that you’re just stupid and reckless. I didn’t realize you were just having a little fun.”

Jimmy didn’t understand the joke, but he started to laugh anyway, with his brother chuckling along in the background.

Damon walked over to Jimmy and smacked him on the knee, laughing like he was going to keel over from exhaustion. Then he walked over to Petey and put his arm around him. “You two… man, I-I can’t believe this. I was so nervous at first. I thought…” He slowed his laugh down in a hurry and wiped a tear from his eye. “When Rook told me what happened, I assumed the worst.”

“We ain’t bad guys, Boss,” Jimmy stuttered dumbly, still laughing like a fool.

“Good, because I thought…would you believe I thought I had two guys on my crew who were about to wreck a deal worth fifteen million dollars?” He stopped and moved his arm from around Petey’s shoulder, then wrapped his huge catcher’s mitt of a hand around Petey’s fleshy throat. “Fifteen million dollars!” When Jimmy stood up, as if there was anything he could do about it, Damon yelled at him, ordering him not to move. Meanwhile, he had Petey pinned against the wall, his face already turning red as he struggled for air. Damon looked over at Rook. “You’re their handler, aren’t you?”

“Not by choice,” Rook said.

“Regardless, tell me what you think. How do we handle this kind of audacity?”

Rook shrugged. “You know my vote.”

“Put your hand on the table,” Damon said, looking back at Jimmy.

Jimmy quickly obliged, setting his hand on the plywood surface.

Damon asked Rook, “What size?”

“Nine.”

“Good enough,” Damon said and nodded at Rook.

Rook grabbed his handheld drill from the table and put the tip to the back of Jimmy’s hand. “Look at it like this,” Rook said to Jimmy, his voice so even and flat it was like he was reading from a book, “you can tell people its stigmata. Maybe they’ll pour out some hefty tithes to you.” He revved the drill, lifted his body up and over the drill, and dropped his weight, plunging the bit straight through Jimmy’s hand.

Jimmy let out the slightest whimper; he knew if he yelled, Damon would make it worse. All he wanted was for Damon to let go of his brother’s throat. As the blood gushed out of the top of his hand and began to pool under his palm, he saw his brother turning shades of blue, unable to breathe at all, his eyes fading of light. “You motherfuckers,” Damon said, his hand still around Petey’s throat, holding him high enough that Petey had to stand on his tiptoes. “Do you know how much money the strippers in this town make? Some of them make three grand a night. Those stupid drillers make a fortune and got nothing to spend it on here, so they buy booze and drugs. They blow their money on McDonald’s and strip clubs. They throw twenties at those sluts like anyone else would throw singles. They’ve got all the money in the world and no sense in what they oughtta do with it. Those hooking bitches make a fortune in this town. You think there wouldn’t be any heat if something happened to one of them? You think they’d just go away quietly? You think the pigs I pay off are gonna be able to hide rape charges from the kinds of lawyers those bitches could afford? You bring heat on yourself, you bring heat on me.” Damon leaned in closer to Petey. “And if you bring heat on me, I’ll kill ya.” With that, Damon released his grip, and Petey slumped to the floor, coughing. Damon walked over to the plywood table, where Rook was still keeping a firm hand on the drill planted through Jimmy’s. “You’re lucky I didn’t have Rook use an auger bit, and you’re doubly lucky I didn’t make you lay your worthless little pecker on the table. The next time you do anything that draws attention to me, I’m gonna drill a hole in your brother’s head and make you watch all his shit-for-brains pour out.” Damon didn’t ask if Jimmy understood; he just stared at him.

Sweat ran down Jimmy’s forehead and into his eyes, but he didn’t move. It felt like as if he was being stalked by a bear or something, as if it would attack him if he so much as moved. Damon just stared at him, wearing him down with those huge, white, unblinking eyes, until Jimmy looked away. When Rook finally reversed the drill and pulled it out with a spurt of blood, Jimmy grabbed the wound and wrapped the bottom of his shirt around it.

Damon walked to the door and started to open it, then turned back, as if a thought had just occurred to him.

Jimmy felt a spiked panic. 

“What happened to you two?” Damon asked.

Neither Wheeler answered, not so much because they didn’t want to, but because they just didn’t understand the question.

“I mean to your faces, you dumb-fucks,” Damon said, pointing to their respective bruises. “Who did that to you? I didn’t think it was possible, but you’re even uglier than the last time I set eyes on you.”

“He said his name’s Charlie,” Jimmy said.

“Charlie what?” Damon asked.

Neither brother remembered, but they hesitated to admit as much.

“Of course you didn’t think to ask, you numb-nuts. Can you at least tell me what this prize fighter looks like?” Rook asked.

“Uh, well…he’s ‘bout average height I guess, brown hair. He just looks kinda…you know, um…normal—all except for that stupid hat.”

“An average guy in a stupid hat, huh?” Damon said and looked over at Rook. He ran his fingers over his Fu Manchu and nodded to himself. Rook looked concerned, and Damon picked up on it right away. “You got somethin’ to say, Rook?” he asked.

“Yeah. I asked that trick who told you about the explosion more questions after she came down, and she said some guy in a funny-looking hat was wandering around the trailer park earlier, before Dick’s went
boom
.”

Damon looked over at Jimmy and Petey. “I hate coincidences because they’re never that. Go on and check it out, and tell all the boys to be on the lookout for some average-height, brown-eyed, normal-looking guy in a…what kind of hat was it?”

“A porkpie hat, like the kind jazz musicians wear,” Rook said.

Damon snorted. “An average-looking guy in a jazzman’s hat? Jesus, what the fuck is this world coming to when a man walks around dressed like that?”

Chapter 13

Sherry was easier to find than Charlie expected. It didn’t take much more than a few questions, in passing, around the strip club to find out that she was staying with a guy on the other side of town, in an RV park. Charlie was glad he’d stopped by Dee Dee’s, and he was especially thankful that she’d let him borrow some clothes she no longer had need of, likely the abandoned wardrobe of more than one old boyfriend, since they came in all shapes and sizes. She’d asked him how tall he was, to which he’d answered, “I’m five-eleven, six feet on a good day.” The brown leather jacket was a little loose in the shoulders, but Charlie had long arms, so it fit him pretty well in the sleeves. He also took a black, hooded sweatshirt. It was spring but still cold, especially when the sun began to plummet into the barren horizon. He left his hat at Dee Dee’s, assuming he’d established it to be something of a calling card and that Damon would use it as an identifying mark to look for him; Charlie wasn’t quite ready for a face-to-face confrontation—not until he found out more information.

Charlie arrived at the trailer park close to midnight. When he caught his first glimpse of Sherry, he wondered just how coherent and helpful she was going to be. He first saw her stumbling along, alone, occasionally caught in the ray of a stray streetlight. She was somewhat young, it seemed, but the drugs—meth and maybe crack—had taken their toll; it was difficult to determine where she fell between twenty-five and forty-five. The clothes she wore looked like thrift store merchandise, at best, and her skin hung loose on her face and arms. Even though it couldn’t have been more than twenty degrees out, she was dressed only in a dingy tank-top under a small jacket and a print miniskirt, equally old and stained. She was walking in a straight line, but it looked more reflexive than anything, like she was just so used to being high that her body carried her places automatically. Sherry pushed on the handle of her RV four times before finally pulling the door open, and she had to brace herself in the doorway just to make it up the three steps.

Since he could see that someone else was already in the trailer, Charlie figured he’d take his time and have a listen. He walked around to the backside of the vehicle and rested his back against the wall. There was a strange mellow sweetness in the air he couldn’t identify, many because it was overpowered by the smell of rotten food and stale beer from the overflowing dumpster just a few lots away. A window left slightly ajar yielded clanking sounds and some swearing from male and female voices. Charlie only heard two voices, so he assumed the female must be Sherry. For all he knew, the male could have been her pimp. He pulled out one of his cigarillos as he stood there eavesdropping, but he only brought it to his lips so he could taste the rum tip and let it hang there, unlit. Sherry might be a meth-head, but smoke coming in through her window was far from covert.

“He just…he won’t leave me alone, Billy,” Sherry whined in a shrill voice, as if she was almost in tears. “That son-of-a-bitch is always trying to get me to go out and trick for him. I’m sick of it.”

“He’s gonna leave you alone,” the guy, Billy, said. It took about ten seconds for him to slur the five words out, as if he was drunk off his ass. “If he doesn’t, tomorrow I’m gonna go down and talk with the district attorney. I ain’t afraid to pull some ropes.”

The guy had to mean strings, pull some strings. Charlie almost sputtered the cigarillo out of his mouth at the idea of some crack head wandering into the DA’s office to complain about someone pimping out his meth head girlfriend.
It was a trip in itself just to listen to the two of them hold, what they seemed to think was, a coherent conversation.

“Those fuckers don’t even appreciate me,” Sherry said.

“I know, I know,” Billy said. He sounded half-asleep, or all-drunk.

“I know things, and if they keep fuckin’ with me, I’ll totally go to the cops and rat them all out. They’ll get their asses busted, and they won’t even know who turned them in,” Sherry said, causing Charlie’s ears perk up. He tilted his head up and toward the window. “They think I’m just some dumb bitch who doesn’t know anything. They treat me like I’m some bag-whore they can get stuff out of for nothing more than a little ice.”

“Ba…by,” the man said, separating the syllables with a nauseating belch, “I know how amazing you are. They just don’t appreciate you. They don’t know you’re a diamond in the roughage.”

Charlie tipped his head back and looked up into the night sky. His interest faded quickly when the two went from potentially giving him some information to a trailer-trash version of
Romeo and Juliet
. It was a clear night, the heavens above filled with stars, away from the big-city lights. The moon was just a sliver, barely casting a glow on the ground. A cold wind blew through the trailer park, and Charlie zipped his jacket up slowly and cautiously, as if Sherry or her boyfriend could actually hear him or would even care.

“I’m tellin’ you,” Sherry said, “if they don’t start givin’ me some respect, you can go down to that D.A.’s office and tell him all about Damon and his cooker.”

Wait…cooker? Charlie’s attention jolted back from star gazing as he wondered if she was talking about The Baker the Wheelers mentioned.

After a rustling of pans inside the trailer, Sherry asked, “Where the fuck is the dick?”

Charlie felt an immediate concern that he was about to hear some noises he’d prefer not to, but he needed to stick around; there was more he needed to know. 

“Under the sink,” the man said.

Dick under the sink? Charlie thought, thoroughly confused.