Boogie House: A Rolson McKane Mystery (30 page)

“Circling back to the Brickmeyers. ‘Overreaction’ is a strange word to use.”

“Why’s that?”

“You know they didn’t do their own work,” he said. “If somebody had tied Emmitt Laveau up, had beaten him within an inch of his life to keep him quiet, it wasn’t the Brickmeyers-”

“But who the Brickmeyers hired.”

“Right. And so it would be someone with a temper. Someone with an edge toward being irrational.”

“Well, the hulk they hired to be Leland’s bodyguard fits that description. He’s big, and he’s got eyes like a viper. I can imagine he’d roid out if he didn’t get something he wanted.”

“Like a promise to keep his mouth shut.”

“Right. Bodean Driscoll. Word is, he retired from MMA after injuring his back, so he took to being hired muscle for assholes and rich paranoid types.”

The Brickmeyers certainly fit that description. “He ain’t so tough,” I said.

“Until you get him frothing,” Deuce replied. “He probably’s just waiting for the opportunity to tune you up. I bet he’s got all kinds of ways to do that.”

“He and I have come to an understanding,” I replied.

I wished for a beer to materialize in front of me, and when that didn’t happen, I started watching the bartender real close.

Louis waited a few minutes before he slipped up, but nevertheless he slipped up. The bar phone was in his hand, and he was talking to someone when we made eye contact, and he hung up. “You see that?” I asked.

“I ain’t seen anything but the Hawks give up thirty in the fourth quarter. Any luck tracking down H.W.? I’d have helped you, but my dance card is full right now. Bunch of weed peddlers growing plants in their fields decided not to show up for their court dates. That’s getting really interesting.”

A woman sauntered up on the far end of the bar, opposite of where the bartender had been standing, and was drunkenly trying to flag him down.

“H.W. is a non-starter right now. I’ve got a bead on him, so I’m going to stop by where he’s squatting after I leave here. Give him some time to work off a hangover I’m sure he’s got.”

“And you think he’s involved?” Deuce asked.

“He’s got the benefit of being out of sight, which means I’m not fucking with him.”

“I bet he’d appreciate that.”

“But he’s also a variable. I feel like he might fit in this thing somewhere. If he doesn’t, no skin and all that, but if he can find something interesting to say, I might be able to use him later.”

“He’s a big one,” Deuce said. “He could probably lay the pipe to some poor soul. Has done it, I know for a fact.”

“But I circle back to that idea of him being Ron’s brother. What reason would he have helping out the Brickmeyers? Old feuds don’t just clear up.”

“Unless he’s two-timing his brother. Ron’s playing a dead hand right now. Could be because he wants to keep the old boy from getting in trouble-”

“Or it could be because he genuinely doesn’t know what H.W.’s up to,” I replied. “They’re pretty tight, so I don’t think that, but who knows?”

Deuce finished his drink and signaled for another.

When he finally made his way down, I said, “Bossman making you do this?”

He ignored it, so I kept at him. “Or is it someone else? You guys worried about your liquor license, or maybe some competition springing up? That it? All to stay on the right side of a grudge.”

He placed a Bud Light in front of the woman, ignoring her pleas for a shot of Jager, and then said, under his breath, “I’d get up and go -
now
- if I were you. Five minutes, and you’ll wish you weren’t here.”

When his eyes met mine, his countenance was earnest. He wasn’t a bad guy, and though it was obvious he was caught in a fight he didn’t want to be in, he was still taking sides.

Man’s got to keep eggs in the fridge and bread on the table, I reckon.

“You go ahead and go,” Deuce said. “I’ll cover for you here. They can’t be desperate enough to try to go through me to get to you.”

I couldn’t just leave him here. He was a respectable guy, and getting caught up with me was only going to get him hurt. “I can’t let you do that,” I said.

I thought about how well he was liked around town. How people still asked for his autograph. How he still signed every one of them as though they were his first.

“No. Uh-uh partner. You’re already up to your ass in the swamp. You get any more stink on you, and it’ll never come off. I know how to deal with lowlifes.”

I stood up. “I owe you one.”

Before I left, Deuce caught me by the elbow. “You mind loaning me twenty?” he asked. “To pay for my tab?”

His eyes were full of trouble, so I nodded and handed him what cash I had. He must have been having a down week with his bookie.

Seems like I wasn’t the only one getting my roots hacked up. There was something he was hiding, too, but since he didn’t want to tell me, I didn’t pry. He’d get into it when he was good and damn ready, when it was too late to help him.

I slipped out the back door and came face-to-face with a dude I’d never seen before. He had one hand held out, and for a moment I thought he was holding a pistol. I recognized the car behind him, and I suppose I’d noticed it following me around town.

“Rolson McKane?” he asked.

“Yes,” I kind of stammered. My instinct was to put my hands up.

He smiled and pulled one hand from his pocket. He was holding an envelope. “This is a restraining order. You’ve been served.”

He placed it in my hand and walked back to his car. A moment later he was gone. “Doesn’t matter,” I said to the empty parking lot.

A slip of paper wasn’t going to keep me away now.

*  *  *

A couple of cars pulled up as I made my way around the side of the building, and two or three big dudes wearing Brickmeyer Ag & Timber overalls sauntered into the bar.

I pressed myself against the side of the building and waited until they were safely inside before I crept over to my car and drove away.

It was not my intention to get Deuce dragged into all of this, but the longer I involved myself in the Laveau case, the more convinced I became that I was a black hole, destined to drag everyone I knew into the void with me.

*  *  *

Trailer parks are not as prevalent in small towns as people think, though a disproportionate amount of violence, drug abuse, and poverty occur in them. The people rarely form any lasting bonds, and the parks themselves come together almost out of a blind sort of coincidence. They are featureless, the general rectangular shape notwithstanding, and The Wagon Circle was no different. Tenants sold or binged on drugs, and those who didn't were in recovery and bound to relapse.

Laina Donaldson's piss-yellow single wide occupied a stamp-sized area in the back corner, on the other side of two particularly depressing excuses for housing, which had rusted and abandoned tricycles overturned in the yard. Laina's was not quite as repulsive, but only when speaking in relative terms.

I had modest intentions: I just wanted to test the waters with H.W., see what I could draw out of him without spooking him. For that reason, I parked way back by the road and walked in.

The impossibility of my mission became evident once I saw him. He appeared in the doorway for just a moment and then vanished into the darkness of the trailer. Moments later, Laina stumbled through the front door and walked barefoot to meet me.

"Hey there," she said, forcing a smile. "Something I can do you for?"

Years of drug- and physical-abuse had left her scarred and withered. Misshapen, in a way. She still had the leanish look of a younger woman, but the proportions were out of whack, as if gravity was pulling her in all directions at once. She might have been pretty in an alternate universe, one where she wasn't locked in closets during childhood or raped in adolescence. Her deep blue eyes showed signs of having glittered once, but now they only seemed dull and speculative, distrustful.

"I need a word with H.W.," I said. "I saw him inside. Just send him on out so we can talk. I'm not in the mood for a routine."

She showed mock bewilderment. "Don't know who you're talkin' 'bout. Just me here. I would invite you in, but the house ain't decent for company. You understand. I’ve been trying to kick, and I just ain’t been in the mood."

Her smile returned, revealing cigarette-stained teeth. Remnants of makeup cracked on her face, leftover from the night before.

"All right," I said. "Guess I was mistaken. If you see him, will you relay a message?"

"Sure," she said, adding, "if I see him and all."

"Great," I said, raising my voice so that everyone at the park could hear me. "Tell him I'm going to personally look into whether or not he has any outstanding warrants. If he does, then, well, he knows what happens from there."

Her face grew flush, and she reached out with both hands in an attempt to push me away, trying to yell me down by saying, "Stop it! Stop it!," but in her stupor she telegraphed her intentions, and I only had to step aside to keep her from assaulting me.

I kept talking, this time to Laina. "And you don't want the authorities digging around out here, do you? Last time I took you in, it was for drugs, wasn't it? That's an awfully small living space in there. Not many hiding places, I suspect. The longer you go without an arrest, the longer you can say you've been clean. Am I wrong?"

"Stop it," she slurred, her face tight with anger and frustration. "Get out of here, you dickhead. He don't want to see you."

I gave it another moment, dodging a swipe from her bony hand, before backing away. "All right," I said. "Just know I'll be back."

I turned to leave, just as the screen door rattled uncomfortably against its hinges. I turned to see H.W. standing on the top of the makeshift staircase. "Let's go on and get this over with," he said.

His skin was the color of breakfast ham in light syrup, brought on by years of working in the sun. He wasn't so much barrel-chested as he was just plain enormous. He had country bulk and was nearly two of me. His eyes remained perpetually narrowed, and his hands constantly searched for purpose during conversation, scratching and picking and rubbing to keep from being completely still.

He waited for his lady friend to go inside, and for a time he gave only half-answers to my questions. I tired quickly with his routine. He sounded like he'd been coached to avoid answers, so I said, in a voice halfway between whisper and growl, "Since you're doing your damnedest to avoid saying anything, I'll go ahead and speculate for you. I think you and your brother are involved in Emmitt Laveau's murder, and I know I don't have evidence, but my hunches have proven pretty accurate lately."

H.W. seemed unfazed. "Hmm. Yeah, I don't know what in the hell you're talking about. Maybe Ron's involved, but I don't have the slightest idea."

"What else you got going on in the Junction?" I nodded in the direction of the house. "Other'n her, what's got you coming down here?"

The big man turned toward the house, placed his hands on his hips. When he turned back, his lips were oddly parted, and I sensed he was on the verge of saying something. Dark, wet circles had formed under his armpits, and he picked at the front of his shirt, trying to fan himself off.

"It ain't got nothing to do with Ron," he said, finally. "I ain't even talked to him.”

I nodded as though I understood. “Random question: what happened to your brother’s foot?”

He gave me a curious look but didn’t seem angry. “What do you mean?”

I tapped one leg. “Right leg. Never noticed it before, but it seems like he carries it a little bit. Doesn’t look like a limp, but I’d bet that’s exactly what it is.”

“Oh, that? He’s had that his whole life.” All of a sudden, his face brightened a little, like he had been let off the hook. He laughed mockingly. “You ain’t never noticed that, McKane? And you a cop, Jesus.”

“How’d he get it?”

At that question, his eyes darkened somewhat. “Accident when we was kids. Never healed up right, and he just never thought to try and get it fixed once he got grown.”

“You do it? You give him a bum foot?”

He stared but didn’t answer. That wasn’t why I had come out here anyway, so I didn’t pursue it any further.

“If you’re not plotting something with your brother, then what in the hell
are
you doing in the Junction? I thought you were off setting fires underwater.”

He scratched the back of his neck. “I, well, I'm down here cooling off."

"Going south? Not your best idea."

"I tried to stomp a fella's guts into the dirt at a bar up in Oregon. I'd have turned his lights out for good if some of my buddies hadn't pulled me off him. He lived, from what I heard, but his plumbing's all frigged up now. It ain't exactly attempted murder, but it ain't far from it, either."

"And you think I won't turn you over?"

"You won't, McKane. You're not a cop anymore. You don't have a reason to be flipping over rocks and taking the magnifying glass to the cockroaches, do you?"