Dark End of the Street

The next day, he’d mounted her. He pressed her face into a pillow and took about five minutes to do his work. Then, he jumped up and told her to get dressed, talking about steaks and whiskey. She barely had time to catch her breath.

The dominance and the short sex continued for two years till he found a cocktail waitress with thirty-six double Ds and rusty-red hair.

Tonight, in one of the thousands of honeycomb rooms at the Grand, he had the same look on his face as he did that day in the trailer. She had no false notions that he was recalling that walk up the long waterfall when he swatted her ass and told her dirty jokes or when he was arrested after shooting an alligator in some run-down zoo.

No, he was just thinking about eating another cheeseburger. And while he flipped through those papers Jon had pulled from that wrecked Bronco, she knew she’d done pretty good.

He stubbed out another Vantage. A dozen already curled up like little blackened worms in the ashtray.

“They’re alive?” he asked.

He was alone with her and Jon. The room was just a double. A lacquered two-seater table. Bolted-down television and phone with a red bubble light for messages.

Jon looked at his zip boots. She looked at Ransom’s eyes. Pissed off, but not really. He just kept watching her damned tits.

“We walked those woods for two hours, Levi. Don’t give me any shit. I have leaves in my hair, blisters on my heels, and dirt up my ass. So don’t start.”

He cackled out one of his bourbon-soaked laughs and gathered the papers before him. His gray hair dropped over his skin, weathered the color of an old horse saddle. His eyes blue and hard.

“Y’all did fine. Kid?”

Jon walked forward.

“Ten thousand sound all right to you?”

“No.”

“No? For not doin’ shit.”

“I don’t want nothin’. I always finish.”

Ransom, dressed in a white suit and black linen shirt, got up with a groan and walked into the bathroom. Place smelled of plastic and fresh paint. She didn’t believe it had ever been used.

She followed and watched his back and heard the click of a lighter. He turned and she saw the papers starting to brown and curl in his hands edged with orange and blue flames. The air now smelled rancid.

Not like paper. Like some kind of animal cooking.

She walked back to the two chairs and the small table overlooking the Grand’s parking lot. She wondered what it had all been. What was so damned important that he’d had two people killed and wanted to do in two more?

Perfect watched a real junker car turn into the lot. Car held together with duct tape and Bondo and glue. A man in his early twenties got out. White. Blue jeans and NASCAR T-shirt.

He stood for a moment watching the neon twirl round that silly fake Gone with the Wind facade as a teenage girl, pregnant as hell, followed and came around behind him. He snapped back to her and fired off some mean words. And the teenager kept moving to him. She reached out and held his hand. The man turned to watch her in the glow of the parking lot lamps.

Perfect couldn’t quite see what was happening. But she thought they were both crying. Yeah, pretty damned sure.

“Perfect?”

She turned.

“Y’all have two hours to get to Memphis for a flight.”

Jon hung back. His face half hidden by shadows, split down the middle by a tableside light.

Levi said, “New Orleans.”

She looked at him. Her mind still kind of on the sad little couple.

“One last piece.”

She looked back at Jon. Nothing. Just the split face.

“Last week, I sent some people down to take care of a man I should’ve killed thirty years ago. They didn’t get shit. But I know his sister is shielding him. I know it. You get her. All right? You find out. This is your thing, Perfect. They always open up their damn souls to you in five minutes. Find out where he’s hidin’.”

He smiled.

Thirty years ago. That was a long time to be pissed off, she thought. But it made sense. Those papers were a bunch of police reports and court files from Memphis.

All seemed to be from December 1968.

The Waffle House was the place to be when people were trying to kill you. I mean, you’d really have to work at it. Shoot through about a dozen grizzled old fuckers cutting waffles and greasy eggs. They’d probably catch the bullets in their teeth and keep on chewing, I thought as I pressed a wet napkin filled with clumped ice to my head. I still felt sick as hell. Almost as bad as when this 330-pound tackle for the 49ers sat on me during an exhibition game and kicked me in the helmet as he walked away. I remember trying to jump on his back but someone yanked me off. Then I blacked out.

Abby watched my eyes, her brows drawn together.

“You ever been kicked in the head?” I asked.

She shook her head.

“Kind of feel that way.”

She shrugged and finished her cheeseburger.

A cheeseburger. A Coke. A pat on the head. Sorry someone was trying to kill us.

Man, ole Abby was taking it in stride, though. You’d think she’d be pissed off as hell, or frightened. But she wasn’t. She was resolved. Fucking resolved. Wanting to track all her worries to the source.