Carcass Trade (32 page)

“You don't need to tell me that.”

“You're an uptight asshole like your brother. Two peas in a pod.” She reached for an ashtray on the lamp table next to her, handed it to me with the joint. On the bottom of the clear glass was a painted spread of cards distributed in a royal flush.

Just a little suck and I handed it back. We sat saying nothing for a long time. In the back of my mind I was thinking about Monty, wondering how he'd react when he found out Miranda and I knew each other and what I should do when he did. Miranda toked again, and I said, “I hear you're pregnant.”

“And you're wondering whose.”

“I'm wondering how weird the baby's going to be.”

“Don't sweat it. It's gone.”

“Mm,” I muttered.

“Screw you.”

“Did I say—?”

“Fuck you anyway.”

She carried the joint with her when she went to the front door, opened it, and looked out. The air was welcome. “I'm sorry,” she said, then closed the door and stood massaging one elbow.

“It's all right,” I said.

Memory seemed to turn in her. She asked, kindly, “How are you?”

“I'm okay. Losing plumbing isn't all that bad. I forget what a Kotex is.”

“Well, that part would be nice,” she said with a laugh. She returned to the recliner and doused what was left of the joint, and rocked in slow, tight jags.

I said, “You helped me when I was going through the tearful part.”

“I did?” she asked softly.

“You don't remember?”

“Maybe a little,” she said. “What did I say?”

I made something up. “You said I'd be a lousy mother anyway.”

The merest smile formed on her lips.

“No,” I said, “what it was was I blabbered, you listened.”

She thought about that awhile. “You're still married?”

“He died.”

“Oh,” she said, with a frown and a whisper. “I remember now.” Then she sat forward and said in a rush, “I'd get in my car and leave if I were you. You don't belong here.”

“Why, Miranda?”

“Because.”

“Because why, Miranda?”

“You were a cop. Your husband was a cop.”

“So? I'm not now. Not for ten years. If I was a cop, what would I be doing doffing clothes at Monty's and smoking a joint with you?”

She jumped up and began pacing. “Just leave. I mean it.” When she stopped to gesture, her hands shook. “I'm telling you . . .” she said, then sat down again, a look of helplessness on her face.

“What, Miranda?” She just shook her head. I went to the kitchen window, looked around, giving her some space. Then I came back and sat in the chair opposite her again, leaning forward. It was time.

I said, “Who was the woman in the car, Miranda? Who had to die to take your place?”

Her eyes grew wide and she gripped the armrests. The bones in her neck showed sharply. “You're crazy.”

“A woman turned to charcoal in a car registered to you,” I said. “Tell me how she deserved that.”

“You
are
a cop.”

“Not exactly.”

“Oh Jesus,” she heaved. “You don't understand.”

“What's to understand? You put her there or you didn't.”

“Of course I didn't put her there,” she whispered. “What do you think I am?” She pushed on the back of the recliner until it descended a little, and rested her head and shut her eyes, remaining very still.

I went over and knelt beside her. “You're sorry about that,” I said. “It wasn't supposed to happen, was it?” She turned her head from side to side, her face a series of tortured expressions while her eyes stayed shut. “Miranda, I know that any woman my brother loves could not be responsible for something horrible like that. You think I'm a dummy? I may be an uptight asshole, but I'm smart enough to know that.”

When her eyes opened, tears were ladled at the bottom lid. She studied the ceiling; then a huge drop rolled into her ear. Her voice was at a lower, harder register. “You better get out of here. You don't know what's going on.”

“Tell me and we'll both know.”

Bringing the recliner up, she tried taking another hit, but the nub in the ashtray was cold. “These aren't people you just fool with. I'm serious.”

“Monty?” I asked, rising.

“And others.”

“The guy called Switchie?”

She nodded again. I sat at the end of the love seat an arm's length from her.

“Who else?”

She waved her hand, munched in her lips, and looked away at the television, a blonde woman helping a fat man cook on screen.

“How'd you come so far, Miranda? You had a life with your husband and . . . and Nathan. That wasn't so bad, was it? Two men who adore you.”

One hand propped her forehead. “That Zac's for shit,” she said. “Out of Kentucky's better.”

I leaned over and put my hand on the one that rested on her knee. “Who was the woman in the car, Miranda? Tell me.”

Her head jerked up, and she said, “Why are you doing this? Why do you have to know?”

“Maybe I can help.”

“Nobody can help me.”

“I'm not sure about that.”

“Monty tried. He's the only one.”

“Monty tried to help you?”

She slipped her hand free of mine and thumbed her bra straps through her shirt, giving her hands something to do. She took on a tough tone. “When I met Monty, I was the Crystal Queen, fiending everything. I had a sugar bowl filled with rock. I dropped crank in my coffee. That's before I knew coffee'd wash it out of your system.” Laughing, like I was a pal now.

“Was this before you married the doctor?”

“Yes. Tabs and cubes, tranqs and ludes. You name it, I did it, up, down, sideways. Ice? God, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. Straight-to-the-brain orgasm. No more diets and fourteen hours between hits. This was after your brother,” she said, looking at me as if for approval. “After Nathan,
before
this time, I mean. It gets confusing.”

“I guess it would. Then you met Monty.”

“I knew Monty from years ago, when I was a little kid. My dad rode motorcycles. At first I didn't recognize him. I bumped into him in an auto parts store when I was buying windshield wipers. I thought he was cute. He started flirting with me. Then we realized we knew each other, and we kind of cooled it. He introduced me to Robert.”

“
He's
the one knew Robert?”

“First, yeah.” She laughed. “I always wanted to marry a doctor.”

“And he cleaned you up.”

“Monty cleaned me up. He doesn't like drugs.”

“Except grass.”

“Piff. That's not drugs.”

I thought, He doesn't like drugs, but Agent Vogel said he shipped precursors. The man didn't add up. “The woman in your car . . . can we talk about her?”

“Why do you keep at it? Why do you want to know?”

“Who was she? A friend?”

“I need something.” She looked around the room as if tracking a fly, then at the stub in the ashtray.

“Just talk to me.”

She whipped into the kitchen and got herself another cooler. Untwisting the bottle cap, she cut her hand, and swore, and sucked between her forefinger and thumb. “Maybe I'll die of lead poisoning—not of the Uzi kind,” she said. “Serve me right.” Her shoulders dropped as she came back and sat on the coffee table, on top of a sports magazine. “What do you care, anyway? She's dead. Beyond help, as they say.”

“Lost and gone forever. Dreadful sorry, Clementine,” I said. “Is that what you mean?”

“She wasn't such a nice person.” Miranda took a drink and set the bottle down.

“And that makes all the difference.”

“No, that's not what I'm saying! I meant . . . who knows what I meant? Anyway, the main thing, it's best that Nathan thinks I'm gone. But he won't think that now, will he? You'll tell him.”

“A guy's suffering,” I said.

“A lot of guys are suffering. Women suffer more.”

“Like the woman in your car?”

She sucked the web of her hand again.

“Miranda, the woman had no head, no hands or feet. She was burned that bad.”

“Stop it!” All the air went out of her then. Her hands opened into wounded curls as if the palms had just been smacked by rulers.

We heard a sound out front, of doors closing.

Jumping up, she said bitterly, “Here they come,” and went to the window and peered between the strips of plastic lace curtain. “You want to know things? Well, dig this. Switchie? He murdered somebody. And that one there got rid of the body.” She nodded toward the faded red smear of Simon's truck showing between the curtains. “He put it in his truck and hauled it away. Get out. You're a little fool if you don't. They're coming.”

Simon's face squinched into a happy grin at the lingering smell of weed. “You girls leave any of that for us pore ol' boys?” He stood with his shirt half open and his feet spread like a duck's. The money Monty gave him tubed in the pocket of his shorts like a magnum penis.

Miranda's alarm didn't transfer to me, and it wasn't because of the dope—she was right, she got screwed, maybe literally, on the Zac. But I wasn't afraid because Simon seemed like a harmless goon, and nowhere around Monty had I ever seen a weapon. After the killing of Bernie Williams, I thought of carrying, but all I had for a small gun was a mostly useless two-shot derringer whose projectile would've been a pebble tossed at two men in a shed.

When Monty came in, Simon hit him up for the grass: “Hey, good buddy, we gonna party hearty?” He looked at me with a happy grin.

Monty checked Miranda and said indifferently, “Go for it.” But Miranda sat there not offering to go for it, and Simon didn't know where to look, and Monty went to squat in front of the TV, turn it off, and put on music.

I didn't want to be around with night coming and people doping and Monty putting music on. At the same time, I wished I had more time with Miranda. I wanted to give her my phone number. We locked eyes when I said, “I guess I'll see you all later,” hiking my purse strap over my shoulder.

Monty stood up. “Where you in a hurry to? I give you the night off. You don't have to show at the Python.”

I shrugged, said, “Stuff to do.
Stuff
, you know?”

Monty stepped ahead and put a hand on the doorknob. He gave a long look without a smile, then said, “You want to go, go,” and opened the door.

Simon's brows were knitting up, down, up down, trying to put it together.

As I stepped out, a horn blared from a distance and got closer and louder, and soon a green pickup barreled into the yard. A man with a dark face and a straw hat leaned out even before the truck stopped rolling, and then I recognized Mr. Avalos. He was shouting hoarsely, “Paulie's down! In the pit! We can't get him out!”

Monty said, “Shit! That intake valve,” and blew by me and ran to the passenger side and jumped in as Mr. Avalos yanked the wheel around to head back up to the animal confinement building. I jogged to the side of the house and looked. At the far edge of the building was a blue pickup in profile and two figures moving beside it. Ahead of the truck was the white shape of a motorcycle, and standing by it a man in black, with blond hair. Switchie.

As Simon ran for his truck, I yelled after him, “I'll call nine-one-one,” and turned and looked for a house number. “Where are we?”

“Thirteen-thirteen,” Miranda said, following me in. “But don't phone.”

“Why not?”

“Just don't. They'll work it out.” Her hand shook as she fumbled for a cigarette from a pack Simon left on the table.

“You're hard to figure,” I said.

She said, “And you're dead, is what you are. Didn't you see Switchie out there?”

“I saw him.”

Still standing, she lowered her face to her hands, the smoky end of the cigarette close to a wayward strand of hair, then swept her hands away and said, “Listen to me! Get in your car and leave.”

“One of my strong points is that I'm stubborn,” I said, setting my purse down. “I'm not going anywhere.”

She gave a smirk, wisdom entering her eyes. “Like your brother,” she said, then sat on the arm of the brown chair, her braid with the gold-flecked tie riding her shoulder like Simon's snake. She said, amused, “I told you Switchie kills people. You want to know something else? He said he'd like to be a cop if it paid for shit.” The look she gave me was lingering.

“How do you know Switchie killed anyone?”

“Because I was right back there in that bedroom when I heard him say it.”

“Heard him say what?”

“‘I bumped off Rollie.'”

Rollie Pierson! I was not expecting her to say that name, ever. If she said any name, it would be Quillard Satterlee. I echoed, “Rollie.”

“Yeah. He did stuff for Monty,” she said, with a dismissing wave of the hand. “Monty was really, really mad. Yelling. I never heard Monty yell before. I came out of the bedroom for a minute, saw him kick Switchie right out the door. He had his boots on, kicked him right out the front door.” She motioned in that direction. “Before, I told Monty I didn't like him. He said, ‘What's not to like?' People who've shared a bad thing, like prison, I guess, what do they have? They help each other.”

“Why don't you come on home with me, Miranda?”

Her liquid eyes turned to me, she said, “No.”

“Let me give you my phone number.”

“I won't call.”

“But why?”

“Some doors close, they can't be opened.”

“And some doors never really close. Nathan must have told you that.”

A great breath came out of her, and she sagged. “Could I have some water?”