Pawnbroker: A Thriller (10 page)

Chapter 36

COURTYARD MARRIOTT, SUITE 135

MONTELLO, MISSISSIPPI

Ian Wainwright stood pole straight at the window, hands clasped behind his back. He was tall and weedy with a chalky complexion that bordered on cadaverous, contrasting sharply with his dark hair, which he wore slicked back with a gel that made it look perpetually wet. He stared out at the most pathetic excuse for a view he had seen in his fifty-three years: a bourgeois street in a bucolic town in a benighted state in a bastard country. It was as if the gods had retched, then deposited him right in the middle of their divine discharge. He smiled in admiration of his clever mix of alliteration and metaphor. He would most assuredly have to work that passage into the manuscript. Perhaps he could even work in an entire chapter from this miserable affair. Mayhap multiple chapters, everything from the clinical trials to the clichéd graveside ceremony, complete with an off-key group wailing of “Rock of Ages.” Yes. Perchance something useful could indeed be harvested from this most tawdry of life experiences.

“Please kill that whining pussy,” he heard the bumpkin say to the lummox. How very crass.

Wainwright glanced back over his shoulder. Docker stood, nodded his melon of a head, and left the room. Wainwright turned back to the window.

“The hell you looking at?” Ballard said.

“Simply admiring the lovely view, my good man,” Wainwright said, his British accent clipped and precise.

Ballard chuckled. “Yeah, that bait shop’s some kind of beautiful, huh?”

Wainwright wasn’t sure how to respond. The sheriff, simpleton or no, apparently had something of a penchant for brutality when offended, if the tales were to be believed.

Ballard stood, walked to the window, and stood beside Wainwright. “This whole place is a pus-filled boil on the ass of the world.”

Wainwright cocked his head, then slowly cracked a yellowed smile. “Indeed?”

Chapter 37

Doc always reminded me of Doc Brown in Back to the Future—his mannerisms, his hair, that crazy wild-eyed look—and this was a perfect example. He had on his white lab coat and spun around with a goofy, shocked look on his face when I posed my question: “When Milton brought the body to you, was it naked?”

“No, but how was I supposed to dissect him without undressing him?”

“I’m not accusing you of necrophilia, Doc, just wondering if his clothes are here.”

“Why didn’t you say so?”

“Are they here?”

He disappeared into the mess that was his office and returned shortly with a black garbage bag. I dumped it onto the floor. Shoes, socks, pants, shirt, overcoat, the latter two with dried blood stains that were flaking off in places. I rummaged through the pockets. They had already been emptied. No wallet. No keys. No money. Of course no gun. I started stuffing things back into the bag and on about the third downstroke, my hand brushed against something.

My breath caught as I pulled out the folded piece of thin yellow paper. A pawn ticket from my shop! Correction. A piece of a pawn ticket. Just the top part that had my shop name and address. Anything that could have identified a particular pawn transaction or item was gone.

Nonetheless, it did narrow our search somewhat. He was probably there to pick up a pawn. It wasn’t a robbery. I had shot a man in the head who wanted to pick up a pawn, a customer? Of course, there had been the fact that he had a gun on me. But would he have used it? In that instant, it dawned on me that I would never know the answer to that, that for the rest of my life I would wonder whether I had acted in self-defense. Or not.

“You all right, Gray?”

“No, Doc. I’m not.” I shoved the ticket scrap into my pocket and headed out.

A bank of summer storm clouds had blown in while I was inside, dropping the temperature from unbearable to miserable. Several big drops of rain pelted me on the way to my car and thunder rumbled through the charcoal underbelly of the clouds.

Doc stood looking at me from the doorway. I waved good-bye and headed back toward town.

Penny, LungFao, and I spent the rest of the day looking through the pawn room in search of something, anything unusual. We didn’t find it.

By the time I got home that evening, Abby had apparently finished the crying phase of her grief over Knight, and was ready to start talking with me to repair the damage. I wasn’t. All I wanted was for her to stay away from me and let me spend the evening with my kids. I took her into the kitchen and told her that in easily understood fashion, then went back to the family room and the girls. That touched off a new crying jag. I didn’t give a happy damn.

Chapter 38

TWO DAYS LATER

V
inny, I’m telling you this is not right!” I slapped my palm on his desk—hard—to accentuate each of the last three words. The bank got quiet, too quiet, as employees and other customers looked our way.

“Look, Mr. Bolton, you—”

“Mr. Bolton? Mr. Bolton? What the hell is wrong with you? I’ve been with this bank my whole life. Banked with you personally for ten years. Now I’m ‘Mr. Bolton’ instead of ‘Gray,’ is that right?”

Vincent Barnes, vice president of the downtown branch of Montello Guaranty Bank, stared at the paperclip in his hands, fidgeted with it, bent it into shapes. And said nothing. He looked up for a moment, saw me glaring at him, then looked back down. I reached behind me and closed the door to his office. The walls were glass, so the rubberneckers outside could still stare, but at least they couldn’t hear.

I took a few deep breaths, lowered my voice. “Sorry, Vinny. Now please, please tell me what’s going on here.”

He looked up, did a quick scan to see who around the bank was still looking in on us, then finally spoke quietly. “I’d help you if I could, Gray. I swear I would. But I can’t push a hundred-thousand-dollar loan through, not with the condition your finances are in. To be honest, based on this”—he pointed to a computer printout on his desk—“I couldn’t loan you a hundred bucks and keep my job.”

“May I see that?” I said. A cold knot had formed in the core of my gut, and it was tightening.

“Not supposed to, but...” He slid it across the desk.

I pulled my chair closer, spun the printout around. “Oh, dear God,” I said. “Those sons of bitches.”

Vinny sat quietly while I scanned line after line of my credit report. In reality, my house was paid for, although it was of course tied up for the bond. It was worth twice that, easy. And other than some mild credit card balances, I didn’t have a nickel of debt. I busted my ass, and I paid my bills.

The printout in front of me told a different story. According to it, every one of my credit cards was maxed out and delinquent. My car had been repossessed. My house was in foreclosure, and a list of creditors had judgments against me.

“This is bullshit, Vinny. All of it. Every stinking line.” I slid it back across his desk.

“I believe you,” he said, almost in a whisper, “but there’s nothing I can do. I have to go with what the computer says. Especially since—” He cut himself off mid-sentence, his eyes on something outside the office. I looked over my shoulder and saw the bank president, Wayne Collins, walk by. With the sheriff. Ballard looked right at me, smiled, and winked. Not a friendly smile. Not a friendly wink. More a “gotcha” wink.

I turned back to my slightly more immediate problem. “Since what, Vinny?”

“I’m sorry, Gray. I really am. But I can’t help you.” He looked back down at his paperclip.

*          *          *

I walked into the shop and found LungFao and Penny running the place. Penny handed me a stack of pink phone message slips. I glanced through them and saw that most of them were from someone named Lula Rogers.

“Who is she?” I said.

“Works at the courthouse,” Penny said, and only then did I notice the worried look on her face. “You better call.”

Chapter 39

“Well?” Penny said when I hung up the phone.

“I have three days to come up with the hundred grand, or I wait for trial from jail.”

I filled her in on the credit report, on seeing Ballard.

“Not good timing,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“Lucas called this morning. He’s pushing for the retainer, and I’m afraid he might call my hand over a hundred grand.”

The door chimed and an elderly lady I didn’t recognize walked in. She was carrying a Crock-Pot, moving in tiny little steps. Her clothes were dated, as were her glasses—black, pointed outer edges—but there was something about the way she carried herself that held my attention. Her back was stooped, but her chin was high. Her hair white, thin, but meticulously neat. As she drew closer, I saw a multitude of lines on her face, but her makeup had been applied with care and time.

LungFao started toward her, but I raised a hand, palm toward him. “Can I help you today, ma’am?” I said.

“Oh, I hope so, young man. I surely hope so. You wouldn’t believe the week I’ve had.”

Her name was Lucille Boggs. She was eighty-four, a widow, and lived alone in an efficiency apartment at Montello Manor, a depressingly generic retirement village on the edge of town. Her Social Security check had been lost in the mail and she was desperate.

“Let’s see what we have here, Ms. Boggs,” I said.

“Oh dear, do call me Lucille, young man. ‘Ms. Boggs’ sounds so, so...stiff.”

She raised the lid from the Crock-Pot and took out a small package wrapped in a faded velvet cloth. After putting the package on the counter, she pulled back the velvet one corner at a time. Inside was a small, gold cardboard box. She removed the lid and set it aside with the care one might show when disarming a nuclear weapon. In the early days, this kind of ceremony would have had me wondering what precious artifacts lay inside. Thousands of little boxes later, I wasn’t in the least surprised to see a couple of small gold rings and a smattering of costume jewelry. Between the Crock-Pot and the jewelry, she had twenty bucks’ worth. Tops. Maybe.

“How much do you need, Lucille?”

“Are you the ‘Gray’ in ‘Gray’s Green Cash,’ young man?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Gray, I have to have a hundred and twenty-five dollars, and I want to tell you why.”

Someone asking over a hundred dollars on something worth twenty used to shock me. Not now. People have no concept of how business works. To Lucille Boggs, the contents of that box were priceless. She had no understanding of the fact that I’d do well to get thirty bucks from her collection if she didn’t pick it up. But for some reason, on that day, as I looked into her eyes, it didn’t matter. I could see the years in those eyes, along with something fresh, a pain, a quiet desperation. Even more important, though, was the determination that still shone through. Whatever her crisis was, Lucille Boggs intended to meet it head on.

Chapter 40

L
ungFao walked back in the door with an armload of lunch. “Boss, guess who’s dead.”

“Who?”

“Guess.”

“LungFao, I’m not in the mood.”

“Well, excuse the crap out of me,” he said, a pouting look on his face.

“LungFao,” I warned.

“Mitchell.”

“Tommy Mitchell?”

“You got it.”

“How? Where? When?”

“You ain’t gonna be—”

“Fao.”

“Sorry, boss,” he said. “Guess you’re a little edgy, huh?”

I closed my eyes, drew a long deep breath, and counted to ten. When I opened them, I fired him a look that made it clear the next thing out of his mouth better be a straightforward explanation.

Finally, he got the message. “He got in a shootout with Leroy Huddleston,” he said.

“Goldie?”

He nodded.

“No way.” Goldie Huddleston was a bottom-feeding scumbag crack dealer, but he had also been arrested peacefully many times before and was about as much of a murderer as I was.

“Where’d you hear this?” Penny said.

“Hatley’s. Everybody’s talking about it.”

“He already been arrested?” I said.

“I think so,” LungFao said.

“Let’s go,” I said to Penny. She nodded.

“What about lunch?” LungFao said, still holding the bags.

“Eat it all, Fao,” I said. “And if the shop gets too busy for you to handle by yourself, well...just...handle it, I guess.”

*          *          *

Fortunately for us, it was open visiting day at the jail, meaning appointments weren’t required. We also got the luxury of face-to-face in a closet-sized room instead of telephones and glass. It occurred to me that life was pretty crappy when I considered this to be a seriously positive development.

“Ain’t shot no cop, man,” Goldie said. “Goldie ain’t crazy.”

“Tell us what happened,” Penny said.

“What good’s it gonna do Goldie, my sister? I done told them over and over. Ain’t nobody listening to the nigger.”
Niggah.

“Try us.”

Goldie tilted his head back in an open-mouthed sigh, showing off a mouth full of gold caps. “I’m up on the hill that night, doing business.” Bid-ness. “Up walk Tommy Boy. That’s his street name.

“‘You got something for me, Goldie?’ he say. Meaning he want his cookie dough.”

“Mitchell was on the take?” I said.

“Fifty-two times a year, my man. Anyways, I’m laying it on him, trey bills, just like always, and then I don’t remember nothing else till I wake up. Tommy Boy got a hole in his head, and a piece o’shit pop-gun’s in my hand. I know right off it’s the gun what done him. I stand up, trying to clear my head, and all hell comes down on Goldie. Every cop car in town, man. And here I am. That’s what happened, my sister. Now what you gonna do for old Goldie?”

“We’ll try to help you,” she said as she was standing up. “I’ll be in touch.” She led the way and we were gone.

“How is it we’re going to help him, Penny?” I said. “He may not’ve killed Mitchell, but he’s still a crack-dealing low-life. He sells that shit to kids.”

“I have no intention of helping him.”

“So you lied to him.”

“Yeah.”

“I can live with that.” I thought of something just as we stepped back out into the brutal heat of a Mississippi August. “Come on,” I said, and turned around and went back inside.

Minutes later, we were back in a visiting room.

“You remember me?” I said to Carlos.

“I know who you are.”

Something about him was very different.

“Appreciate your help in the tank, by the way,” I said.

“Most welcome,” he said, and I realized what it was. He was totally devoid of the gangsta accent and mannerisms I had heard and seen in the cell a few days before. His voice was intelligent, articulate.

I guess the confusion showed on my face, because Carlos said, “When in Rome...”

“Why are you here, Carlos?” I said.

“You’re not here about me, so let’s get to it.”

“What do you know about Mitchell’s death?”

“Goldie Huddleston didn’t do it.”

“You think, or you know?” I said.

“There was a witness.”

My heart quickened. “Who?”

“Don’t know.”

“How do we find out?”

“I’ll put the word out that you’re looking. That’ll shake things up. Keep your eyes open and your back covered.”

I nodded. “Seriously, Carlos, what are you in here for?”

“Save yourself first. Then worry about me. And as far as you know, I’m still just plain old Carlos the thug.”