Gone South Page 10

  “You’ve got to be insane,” Flint rasped.

  Pelvis kept grinning. “Been called worse, I reckon.”

  Flint shook his head. The walls seemed to be closing in on him, and on all sides there was an Elvis. The dog was yapping, the noise splitting his skull. The awful stench of buttermilk wafted in the air. Something close to panic grabbed Flint around the throat. He whirled toward the door, wrenched the latch back, and leapt out of the foul, Elvisized room. As he ran along the breezeway toward the office with Clint twitching under his shirt, he heard the nightmare calling behind him: “Mr. Murtaugh, sir? You all right?”

  In the office, where a Confederate flag was nailed to the wall next to an oil portrait of Robert E. Lee, Flint all but attacked the pay phone. “Hey, careful there!” the manager warned. He wore blue jeans, a Monster Truck T-shirt, and a Rebel cap. “That’s motel property!”

  Flint shoved a quarter into the slot and punched Smoates’s home number. After four rings Smoates answered: “Yeah?”

  “I’m not goin’ out with that big shit sack!” Flint sputtered. “No way in Hell!”

  “Ha,” Smoates said.

  “You tryin’ to be funny, or what?”

  “Take it easy, Flint. What’s eatin’ you?”

  “You know what, damn it! That Eisley! Hell, he thinks he’s Elvis! I’m a professional! I’m not goin’ on the road with somebody who belongs in an asylum!”

  “Eisley’s sane as you or me. He’s one of them Elvis impersonators.” Smoates let out a laugh that so inflamed Flint, he almost jerked the phone off the wall. “Looks just like him, don’t he?”

  “Yeah, he looks like a big shit sack!”

  “Hey!” Smoates’s voice had taken on a chill. “I was a fan of Elvis’s. Drilled my first piece of pussy with ‘Jailhouse Rock’ playin’ on the radio, so watch your mouth!”

  “I can’t believe you’d even think about hirin’ him on! He’s as green as grass! Did you know he took a detective course by mail?”

  “Uh-huh. That puts him ahead of where you were when I hired you. And as I recall, you were pretty green yourself. Billy Lee raised hell about havin’ to take you out your first time.”

  “Maybe so, but I didn’t look like a damn fool!”

  “Flint,” Smoates said, “I like the way he looks. That’s why I want to give him a chance.”

  “Are you crazy, or am I?”

  “I hire people I think can get the job done. I hired you ’cause I figured you were the kind of man who could get on a skin’s track and not let loose no matter what. I figured a man with three arms was gonna have to be tough, and he was gonna have somethin’ to prove, too. And I was right about that, wasn’t I? Well, I’ve got the same feelin’ about Eisley. A man who walks and talks and looks like Elvis Presley’s gotta have a lot of guts, and he’s already been down a damn hard road. So you ain’t the one to be sittin’ in judgment of him and what he can or can’t do. Hear?”

  “I can’t stand bein’ around him! He makes me so nervous I can’t think straight!”

  “Is that so? Well, that’s just what Billy Lee said about you, as I remember. Now, cut out the bellyachin’ and you and Eisley get on your way. Call me when you get to Alexandria.”

  Flint opened his mouth to protest again, but he realized he would be speaking to a deaf ear because Smoates had already hung up. “Shit!” Flint seethed as he slammed the receiver back onto its hook.

  “Watch your language there!” the manager said. “I run a refined place!” Flint shot him a glance that might’ve felled the walls of Fort Sumter, and wisely the manager spoke no more.

  At Number Twenty-three Flint had to wait for Eisley to unlock the door again. The heat hung on him like a heavy cloak, anger churning in his constricted belly. He understood the discomfort of pregnancy, only he had carried this particular child every day of his thirty-three years. Inside the room, the little bulldog barked around Flint’s shoes but was smart enough not to get in range of a kick. “You okay, Mr. Murtaugh?” Eisley asked, and the dumb innocence of his Elvis-voice was the match that ignited Flint’s powder keg.

  He grasped Eisley’s collar with both hands and slammed his bulk up against the Elvis poster. “Ouch,” Pelvis said, showing a scared grin. “That kinda smarted.”

  “I dislike you,” Flint said icily. “I dislike you, your hair, your clothes, your dead fat hillbilly, and your damn ugly dog.” He heard the mutt growling and felt it plucking at his trouser leg, but his anger was focused on Eisley. “I believe I’ve never met anybody I dislike worse. And Clint doesn’t care for you worth a shit, either.” He let go of Pelvis’s collar to unhook a button. “Clint! Out!” His brother’s hand and arm slid free like a slim white serpent. The fingers found Pelvis’s face and began to explore his features. Pelvis made a noise like a squashed frog. “You know what you are to me?” Flint asked. “Dirt. If you get under my feet, I’ll step on you. Got it?”

  “Lordy, lordy, lordy.” Pelvis stared transfixed at Clint’s roving hand.

  “You have a car?”

  “Sir?”

  “A car! Do you have one?”

  “Yes sir. I mean, I did. Ol’ Priscilla broke down on me when I was comin’ back from seeing Mr. Smoates. Had to get her towed to the shop.” His eyes followed the searching fingers. “Is that … like … a magic trick or somethin’?”

  Flint had hoped that if he had to take this fool with him, Eisley would at least be confined to his own car. Then, without warning, Eisley did the unthinkable thing.

  “Mr. Murtaugh,” he said, “that’s the damnedest best trick I ever saw!” And he reached out, took Clint’s hand in his own, and shook it. “Howdy there, pardner!”

  Flint almost passed out from shock. He couldn’t remember anyone ever touching Clint. The sensation of a stranger’s hand clasped to Clint’s was like a buzz saw raked up his spine.

  “I swear you could go on television with a trick as good as that!” Eisley continued to pump Clint’s arm, oblivious to the danger that coiled before him.

  Flint gasped for breath and staggered backward, breaking contact between Eisley and his brother. Clint’s arm kept bobbing up and down, the little hand still cupped. “You … you …” Words could not convey Flint’s indignation. Mama had seen this new development and had skittered away from Flint’s legs, bouncing up onto the bed where she rapid-fired barks at the bobbing appendage. “You … don’t touch me!” Flint said. “Don’t you ever dare touch me again!” Eisley was still grinning. This man, Flint realized, had the power to drive him stark raving insane. “Get packed,” he said, his voice choked. “We’re leavin’ in five minutes. And that mutt’s stayin’ here.”

  “Oh … Mr. Murtaugh, sir.” At last Eisley’s face showed genuine concern. “Mama and me go everywhere together.”

  “Not in my car.” He shoved Clint’s arm back down inside his shirt, but Clint came out again and kept searching around as if he wanted to continue the hand shaking. “I’m not carryin’ a damn mutt in my car!”

  “Well, I can’t go, then.” Pelvis sat down on the bed, his expression petulant, and at once Mama was in his lap, licking his double chins. “I don’t go nowhere without Mama.”

  “Okay, good! Forget it! I’m leavin’!”

  Flint had his hand on the doorknob when Pelvis asked, in all innocence, “You want me to call Mr. Smoates and tell him it didn’t work out?”

  Flint stopped. He squeezed his eyes shut for a few seconds. The rage had leapt up again from where it lived and festered, and it was beating like a dark fist behind the door of his face.

  “I’ll call him,” Pelvis said. “Ain’t no use you wastin’ the quarter.”

  Leave the hillbilly jerk, Flint thought. To hell with Smoates, too. I don’t need him or his lousy job. I don’t need anybody.

  But his anger began to recede like a bayou tide, and beneath it was the twisted, busted-up truth: he could not go back to the sideshow, and without Smoates, what would he do?

  Flint turned toward
Pelvis. Mama sat in Pelvis’s lap, warily watching Flint. “Do you even know what this job is about?” Flint asked. “Do you have any idea?”

  “You mean bounty huntin’? Yes sir. It’s like on TV, where —”

  “Wrong!” Flint had come close to shouting it, and Mama stiffened her back and began a low growling. Pelvis stroked her a couple of times and she settled down again. “It’s not like on TV. It’s dirty and dangerous, and you’re out there on your own with nobody to help you if things screw up. You can’t ask the cops for help, ’cause to them you’re trash. You have to walk — or crawl — through hellholes you couldn’t even imagine. Most of the time all you’re gonna do is spend hours sittin’ in a car, waitin’. You’re gonna be tryin’ to get information from the kind of slimeballs who’d just as soon be cuttin’ your throat to see your blood run.”

  “Oh, I can take care of myself,” Pelvis asserted. “I ain’t got a gun, but I know how to use one. That was chapter four in the manual.”

  “Chapter four in the manual.” Flint’s voice dripped sarcasm. “Uh-huh. Well, bein’ a gunslinger in this business’ll either get you killed or behind bars. You can’t use firepower on anybody unless it’s in self-defense and you’ve got witnesses, otherwise it’s you who’s goin’ to prison. And let me tell you, a bounty hunter in prison would be like a T-bone steak in a dog pound.”

  “You mean if the fella’s runnin’ away from you, you can’t shoot him?”

  “Right. You nail somebody in the back and he dies, it’s your neck in the noose. So you have to use your wits and be a good poker player.”

  “Sir?”

  “You’ve got to know how to stack the deck in your favor,” Flint explained. “I’ve got my own tricks. At close range I use a can of Mace. Know what that is?”

  “Yes sir. It’s that spray stuff that burns your skin.”

  “The kind I use can blind a man for about thirty seconds. By that time you ought to have the cuffs on him and he’s on the ground, docile as a little lamb.”

  “Well, I’ll be!” Pelvis said. “Mr. Smoates told me you were gonna be a mighty good teacher.”

  Flint had to endure another wave of anger; he lowered his head and waited it out. “Eisley,” he said, “you know what a loan shark is?”

  “Yes sir, I do.”

  “That’s what Smoates is. He owns five or six loan companies in Louisiana and Arkansas and ninety percent of the work he’ll expect you to do is collectin’ money. And that’s not pretty work either, I promise you, ’cause you have to shut your eyes to people’s misfortunes and either scare the cash out of them or get rough, if it comes to that. The bounty-huntin’ thing is just kind of a sideline. You can make some good money out of it if the reward’s high enough, but it’s no game. Every time you go out after a skin, you’re riskin’ your life. I’ve been shot at, swung on with knives and billy clubs, I’ve had a Doberman set on me, and one skin even tried to take my head off with a samurai sword. You don’t get a lot of second chances in this business, Eisley. And I don’t care how many mail-order detective courses you took; if you’re not cold-blooded enough, you’ll never survive your first skin hunt.” Flint watched the other man’s eyes to see if his message was getting through, but all he saw was dumb admiration. “You know anythin’ about the skin we’re supposed to collect?”

  “No sir.”

  “His name’s Lambert. He’s a Vietnam veteran. Killed a man at a bank this afternoon. He’s probably half crazy and armed to the teeth. I wouldn’t care to meet him if there wasn’t a chance of some big money in it. And if I were you, I’d just go call Smoates and tell him you’ve thought this thing over and you’ve decided to pass.”

  Pelvis nodded. From the glint in Pelvis’s eye, Flint could tell that a spark had fired in the man’s brain like a bolt of lightning over Lonely Street.

  “Is that what you’re gonna do, then?”

  “Well, I just figured it out,” Pelvis said. “That ain’t no trick, is it? You really do have three arms, don’t you?”

  The better to strangle you with, Flint thought. “That’s right.”

  “I never saw such a thing before! I swear, I thought it was a trick at first, but then I got to lookin’ at it and I could tell it was real! What does your wife have to say about it?”

  “I’ve never been married.” Why did I tell him that? Flint asked himself. There was no reason for me to tell him about myself! “Listen to me, Eisley. You don’t want to go with me after this skin. Believe me, you don’t.”

  “Yes sir, I do,” Pelvis answered firmly. “I want to learn every-thin’ I can. Mr. Smoates said you was the best bounty hunter there is, and I was to listen to you like you was God hisself. You say jump, I’ll ask how high. And don’t you worry about Mama, she don’t have accidents in the car. When she wants to pee or dookie, she lets out a howl.” He shook his head, awestruck. “Three arms. Now I’ve seen it all. Ain’t we, Mama? Ain’t we seen it all now?”

  Flint drew a long breath and let it out. Time was wasting. “Get up,” he said, and those were two of the hardest words he’d ever uttered. “Pack enough for two nights.”

  “Yes sir, yes sir!” Pelvis fairly jumped up from the bed. He started throwing clothes into a brown suitcase covered with Graceland, Memphis, and Las Vegas stickers. Mama had sensed Pelvis’s excitement, and she began running in circles around the room. For the first time, Flint saw that Pelvis was wearing a pair of honest-to-God blue suede shoes that were run down at the heels.

  “I can’t believe I’m doin’ this,” he muttered. “I must be out of my mind.”

  “Don’t you worry, I’ll do whatever you say,” Pelvis promised. Underwear, socks, and gaudy shirts were flying into the suitcase. “I’ll be so quiet, you’ll hardly know I’m there!”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “Whatever you say, that’s my command. Uh … you mind if I load up some groceries? I get kinda hungry when I travel.”

  “Just do it in a hurry.”

  Pelvis stuffed another grocery sack with glazed doughnuts, peanut butter crackers, Oreos, and dog biscuits. He smiled broadly, his idol sneering at Flint over his shoulder. “We’re ready!”

  “One very, very important rule.” Flint stepped toward Pelvis and stared at him face-to-face. “You’re not to touch me. Understand? And if that dog touches me, I’m throwin’ it out the window. Hear?”

  “Yes sir, loud and clear.” Pelvis’s breath made Flint wince; it smelled of buttermilk.

  Flint turned away, pushed Clint’s arm under his shirt, and stalked out of the wretched room. Pelvis hefted the suitcase and the groceries, and with a stubby, wagging tail, Mama followed her king.

  7

  Big Ol’ Frog

  DAN PUSHED A QUARTER INTO the pay phone’s slot outside an Amoco gas station on Highway 28, less than seven miles west of Alexandria. It was twenty minutes after eleven, and the gas station was closed. He pressed the 0 and told the operator his name was Daniel Lewis and he wanted to make a collect call to Susan Lambert at 1219 Jackson Avenue in Alexandria.

  He waited while the number clicked through. Pain thrummed in his skull, and when he licked his lips his tongue scraped like sandpaper. One ring. Two. Three. Four.

  They’re not home, he thought. They’re gone, because Susan knew I’d want to see —

  Five rings. Six.

  “Hello?” Her voice was as tight as barbed wire.

  “I have a collect call for Susan Lambert from Daniel Lewis,” the operator said. “Will you accept the charges?”

  Silence.

  “Ma’am?” the operator urged.

  The silence stretched. Dan heard his heartbeat pounding. Then: “Yes, I’ll accept the charges.”

  “Thank you,” Dan said when the operator had hung up.

  “The police are here. They’re waitin’ to see if you’ll show.”

  “I knew they would be. Are they listenin’ in?”

  “Not from in here. They asked me if I thought you’d call and I said no, we ha
dn’t talked for years. It has been years, you know.”

  “I know.” He paused, listening for clicks on the line. He heard none, and he’d have to take the risk that the police had not gone through the process of tapping the wires. “How’s Chad?”

  “How would you think he is, to find out his father’s shot a man dead?”

  That one hurt. Dan said, “I don’t know what you’ve heard, but would you like to hear my side of it?”

  Again she was silent. Susan had always had a way of making silence feel like a chunk of granite pressed down on your skull. At least she hadn’t hung up yet. “The bank fired Mr. Jarrett, their loan manager,” he began. “They hired a new man, and he was gonna repossess my truck. He said some bad things to me, Susan. I know that’s no excuse, but —”

  “You’re right about that,” she interrupted.

  “I just went crazy for a minute. I started tearin’ his office up. All I could think of was that without my truck I was one more step down the hole. A guard came in and he pulled a gun on me. I got it away from him, and then all of a sudden Blanchard had a pistol, too, and I knew he was gonna shoot me. I swear I didn’t mean to kill him. Everythin’ was happenin’ so fast, it was like fallin’ off a train. No matter what the TV or radio says, I didn’t go to that bank lookin’ to kill somebody. Do you believe me?”

  No answer.

  “We’ve had our troubles,” Dan said. His knuckles were aching, he was gripping the receiver so tightly. “I know … you got afraid of me, and I can’t blame you. I should’ve gotten help a long time ago, but I was afraid to. I didn’t know what was wrong with me, I thought I was losin’ my mind. I had a lot to work through. Maybe you won’t believe me, but I never lied to you, did I?”

  “No,” she replied. “You never lied to me.”

  “I’m not lyin’ now. When I saw the gun in Blanchard’s hand, I didn’t have time to think. It was either him or me. After it was done, I ran because I knew I’d killed him. I swear to God that’s how it happened.”