Behind him, Tate sat at the desk completing a customer transaction. “Can I get a copy of the receipt?” asked the man. Chowder turned around and watched Tate print one up, tear it off and hand it to him. Ed Castro was a harmless guy. Fifty years old, six foot one, two-forty-five, grey where there was any left up top. He wore glasses and plaid shirts beneath pressed coveralls and a ball cap creased in the middle, which recommended Chowder’s Bait ’N More.
Chowder leaned against the wall and asked him, “What’s that for?”
Ed shrugged. “Always get receipts. Just a habit, I guess.”
Chowder held out his hand, “Lemme see it.”
Ed looked at Tate, then fished it out of his pocket, which was littered with crumpled souvenirs of the day’s transactions. He dropped a reminder he’d spent twenty-three dollars on gasoline and a keepsake from the Come Back Again with a personal note from the waitress, Jackie, telling him to ‘have a good day’ and signed with a heart in place of the dot above the “i” in her name.
Chowder looked at the receipt just issued for fifty dollars worth of live bait and Coors Light from Chowder’s Bait ’N More. “What’s your business, Ed?”
“Pardon?” asked Ed, a little uncomfortable being under Chowder Thompson’s microscope.
“What do you do for a living?”
“Jeez, Chowder, you know I got the grocery.”
“Uh-huh. You carry beer at your place?”
“Yeah.”
“Imports and shit?”
Ed looked to Tate for help. He was confused. Tate had nothing. “Not really. Not much.”
“Coors Light? You carry that one?”
“Sure. Of course.”
“Then what the fuck do you need to be buying it from me for?” Chowder handed the receipt to the big man to inspect.
“Uhhh.”
Chowder crumpled the receipt and tossed it into the trash can. “You show your wife those receipts?”
Ed Castro’s face turned red. “Of course not.”
“Well, I hope not, Ed. Seems that might be the kind of thing that’s tricky to explain.”
“Yeah, guess so.”
Chowder turned to Tate. “No more receipts for customers. Some genius’s gonna try and deduct a blow job from their taxes.” Ed Castro looked at Tate.
Tate winked. “You wouldn’t do that would you, Ed?”
Ed stammered. “Huh? No. ’Course not. Hey.”
Chowder turned his attention back to the fire outside while Tate reassured Ed Castro that he was a valued customer and ushered him out the door. In the lot a Chevy truck pulled in. There was a cramp in his gut. Maybe he was getting an ulcer.
Chowder sat on the commode with a book trying to coax his stubborn bowels into some kind of truce. This sort of sneak attack worked sometimes. If he sat long enough, relaxed and concentrating on something entirely other, he might produce, but at the moment he was accomplishing exactly nothing.
The door shook with a sudden pounding and Tate’s frantic voice shouting, “Chowder, you better come see!”
He clenched his sphincter tight and knew it would take a professional safe cracker to open it again. His anger rose quick. “Get out!”
“Sorry Chowder, but you’re gonna need to come out here quick.”
“The hell, Tate?”
“Irm’s gonna kill him.”
He dropped his book and wiggled his jeans over his hips. He looped his belt and smacked Tate with the door when he flung it open. Tate just pointed to the window. Chowder went to it and parted the Venetian blinds. Tate was right. Irm looked like she might kill the shitbird bleeding all over the side of the trailer. Had the guy pinned against the aluminum side with her left forearm and was hitting his face repeatedly with her right. After a blow, which left a tooth embedded between her knuckles, she let him drop to the ground and began kicking his ribs in.
Chowder looked at Tate and saw the beginning of a rising welt above his right eye. Chowder guessed it was from trying to interfere with Irm’s whuppin and not from getting hit by the bathroom door. “Told ya.”
The front door crashed open and Chowder stepped out and across the lot in five seconds. He roped his arm around Irm’s midsection and she screamed and struggled as he picked her up off of the unconscious man. Chowder caught an elbow on the side of his head for his efforts and threw her against the wall of the trailer.
With a yell of frustration, Irm launched off the dented aluminum back toward the man on the ground and Chowder put her down with a right to the left side of her head. His daughter was out immediately and farted loudly as the tension melted out of her. She looked fifteen years younger instantly. He saw her round-faced and chubby, wearing purple tights and a hooded sweatshirt in the principal’s office, sitting in the chair, sullenly swinging her feet while the flustered educator recalled the list of injuries she’d inflicted on boys during the school year.
“I’m afraid young Irma has exhausted the last of our good graces, Mr. Thompson. She has no respect for the authority of faculty or the right of her classmates to an education.”
He’d taken her for a root beer on the way home while he thought on it, trying to predict her mother’s reaction to the news she’d been ejected from school again. Irm had picked her nose and wiped her fingers on the underside of the table, unflinching beneath his gaze while he killed a pot of coffee. Neither had said a thing the whole time.
“Grab her up top.” He said to nobody. Tate came around and reached under her armpits while Chowder got her knees. They hefted her into the office and laid her on the couch. Her left eye was beginning to blow up and turn purple. Tate went to the kitchenette and began filling a Ziploc baggie with ice cubes. “What’re you doing?” asked Chowder.
“Just getting her some ice,” Tate said, “For the swelling.”
“Uh-uh. Let that shit swell. Her pageant days are behind her anyhow.”
The sound of a truck pulling quickly out of the lot sent him to the window again. That rusty Chevy was gone, leaving a cloud of exhaust. Great. His chicken-dick buddy had split. He went back outside to check the damage.
There was a semi-circle of spectators around the bloody guy on the ground. Some of them glanced in the direction of the departing car. “What happened?” Chowder demanded.
The chunky new girl, Cinnamon, spoke up. “He provoked her.”
Chowder looked down at the victim and saw that it was Terry Hickerson.
“Shit,” he muttered. No doubt he did. “How exactly did he do that?”
Cinnamon giggled a bit at the memory. “He was real worked up all night. Just all riled. Kept after folks till, I don’t know, they hit him.” She shrugged like he was a puzzle. “Offered Irm twenty bucks to go three ways with us.”
“That’s all?”
Cinnamon nodded. “He had a way, though. You had to be there, I guess.”
Chowder patted Terry’s pockets and retrieved his wallet. Inside, he found three credit cards, none with names matching Terry’s, a couple old lotto tickets and a note written in magic marker.
Chowder unfolded it and saw a phone number written beneath the announcement that if you have found this note on the unconscious body of Terry Hickerson you were advised to call his son Wendell Hickerson, who would come pick him up.
“You gotta be kidding me.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
TERRY
Terry Hickerson’s house had been constructed much like his life had been - with many odd bits strung together in unlikely juxtaposition, blaspheming symmetry and patched on as afterthoughts years in between inspirations.
The original structure consisted of a small bedroom and bath with a kitchen and living room heated by a wood-burning stove, simple and executed with enough integrity to bear the years and indignities they carried without a creak. A door had been cut into the bedroom and another, larger bedroom and bath added on so that reaching them required passing through the front. The addition was not heated and thus unused during the coldest months. It leaked in the northwest corner during the constant showers of spring and late summer.
A canopy had been erected on the house’s east side and converted later into a single car garage. Eventually, this was the new, improved kitchen with cabinets on the back wall and linoleum tile on the floor. Somewhere along the way, enthusiasm for this project had waned and the south wall was never completed, leaving the barn-style doors, added when it was a garage, until they broke completely off the rusted hinges. Now there was a vinyl tarp fastened across, which whipped about in the winds strong enough to penetrate the woods, and required replacing every two years. The room’s function had returned to garage, though not the type used to shelter automobiles, only tools, scrap wood for the stove or for patching holes, paint cans and sundry broken things awaiting repair or salvage.
Each addition, over the years, had begun to sink into the soft earth of the yard, leaving varying degrees of incline toward the original modest square structure and daylight gaps in portions of the ceiling that were covered eventually by plywood pieces which had formed, by providence, to the same approximate size and shape.
With his parents separated Wendell Hickerson had split time between them by season once he’d started school. During the winter and spring he lived with his mother in the house she’d moved into just before Wendell’s first birthday. At the last bell of every school year he’d take up residence in the back room of his father’s shack.
The morning of Terry’s eviction from Darlin’s, thirteen-year-old Wendell had taken him back to his home, but been unable to move him out of the car and so left him to sleep it off in the back of his mother’s station wagon, parked in the shade of the long, dirt front drive. The trees surrounding the house provided the only shelter from the summer heat and served to obscure the dwelling almost completely from the pig-trail it was serviced by. In effect, it was more a cave than a building and passers by, were there ever any, might puzzle over the mailbox standing alone on the side of the road.
Layla, his father’s terrier mutt, nuzzled him insistently when he’d settled into the cracked pleather recliner in front of the squat stove. He’d grabbed a beer from the cold box and cracked it with his left hand while giving Layla her requested thumps with his right. Satisfied, she’d returned to her place on the couch and stared at him while drifting in and out of sleep. When he’d finished the first, Wendell gave a moment’s pause before opting for a second beer. The school day, he’d decided, was already a loss. His mom was going to be pissed, but that was nothing new.
He’d taken her car before. Just meant she had to walk or get a ride to work. She’d get over it soon enough. She’d be a lot more worked up if he brought it back with Terry sleeping inside. After the second he sucked down a third and settled in for a nap.
He woke two hours later to Terry smacking him on the side of the head. “Just go on and help your own self, then. Just go on and take my last beers, why not?” His father seemed upset regardless of the obvious moral low-ground. As if he weren’t beat to shit by a girl and banned for life from Darlin’s.
Wendell didn’t say anything, but got out of the seat and relocated to the spot Layla had napped in. She trotted happily through the room, excited to have the whole gang together. She licked Wendell’s dangling hand and went back to Terry’s side and awaited whatever great idea he would have about what they should all do.
“Chowder says you shouldn’t go back.” Wendell offered, hoping to inspire some sheepishness on his father’s part. Remind him of the morning’s circumstances and why his face was slurpy-colored and his mouth lips looked like pussy lips – all weird shades of flesh and not quite made to close right – and why Wendell was over there and not at school in the first place. Plus where was his tooth?
“That so?” said Terry, settling on a grape Vess that he kept in the cold box for mixing drinks, if he happened to bring that type of woman home. “Well, Chowder Thompson can lick my nuts. This is a free country.” He gulped the soda, grimacing against the flavor, while searching for the sugar and caffeine. Finished, he crushed the can and threw it at Layla who appreciated the attention. “Nobody tells your old man where he’s not welcome.” He smiled his most radiant, bloody smile at his son, trying to instill in the boy a sense of moral outrage at the idea some mere mortal would dictate a damn thing to a Hickerson.
Wendell knew the look. He’d practiced his own in the mirror at home. He knew exactly what it was meant to convey and, despite misgivings about his father’s philosophy and fiber, felt a swell of pride pushing out from on top of his stomach.
“Where’s my truck?”
Wendell shrugged.
“You see it when you picked me up?” Wendell shook his head. Shit. Probably Cal had made an escape in it. They had an understanding about scrapes like that. First sign of trouble it was every man for himself. “Your mom know where you are?”
“She might guess.”
Terry nodded slowly. “She might at that.” He smiled. “You’re gonna catch hell, son.”
Wendell beamed. “Yep.”
“C’mon. Let’s get some food, then.”
Layla rode between them, which his mom would kill him for later, placing her muddy paws all over the seat and then jumping in back and painting the windows on either side with saliva and snot. Terry cracked the windows and Layla shoved her snout into the crevice, licking the top of the glass and barking enthusiastically every time they stopped.
His father insisted that Wendell drive as he had a headache anyway. “Can’t crawl back inside your momma’s cold womb and live, boy. You don’t drive by now, probably never will.” His father lit a cigarette, another thing Wendell would catch hell for, and closed his eyes. “Why don’t you find us some tunes?”
Wendell was overwhelmed with excitement and responsibility and nearly dropped them over the side of the mountain, trying to find a good radio station. He pulled the wheel too sharp, overcompensating for their drift, but his father never said a word. Never even glared at him. Wendell found a southern rock station and paused, his fingers hovering over the dial, waiting to hear confirmation or dismissal of his choice. Terry just sank lower into his seat and placed his left foot on the dash. Every few seconds, he would mumble along with the music, his voice rising for the few words he seemed to know and dropping down again immediately after. “...fly like an eagle...into the future...”
Wendell was piloting his father’s seemingly improvised directions until they’d passed anything familiar to him. The elder Hickerson bade his son further and further south and east, finally instructing him to circle on back to a convenience mart they’d just passed.
“Slow down, boy. Keep going, keep going.”
They idled across the street on the road’s gravel shoulder like tourists consulting a map until the lone car in the parking lot drove away.
“Okay. Easy, now, like I told you. Pull up and keep it running. Give the horn a blast if anybody’s coming.”
Terry pulled a plastic grocery bag out of his back pocket and slipped it over his swelled-up head. He pulled it taut over his face with his left hand and used the index and middle finger of his right to poke himself in the eyes, gouging small holes therein. He produced a pistol from the back of his waistband, checked it was loaded and he was out the door.
MONDALE
He still wasn’t back to his usual self by the time the Assistant State’s Attorney made it to town. The visit from Eileen and the phone calls with Shirley had wrecked him for a week or so. Figured eventually he’d bounce back. Or crawl anyway. But he was still in a shit mood.
The ASA was a young guy. Political animal. Mondale understood. Chowder Thompson would make a good-looking trophy to mount behind the desk in his office. Was even a time, years ago, Mondale may’ve even been inclined to help him do it. But he’d grown the hell up.
Chowder Thompson was more than a necessary evil, he was citizen number-one as far as Jimmy was concerned. The taxes from Darlin’s last year, funneled through the bait store, had paid for the day care program at the high school as well as improvements to the courthouse and computers for the sheriff’s department. Like what he did and supplied or not, Chowder was good for Spruce.
Between himself and Chowder, they’d got vice regulated and out of the way of those inclined to frown on it. They’d kept regional outfits as well as bike gangs and the new crop of Mexicans pushing north from taking a piece of Hamilton County. But this crusader with the fancy suit and airs of moral rectitude wanted to bring all of it down. Jimmy’d be damned if he’d let that happen.
“Sheriff, thanks for taking the time to see me. Dennis Jordan, pleasure.” He extended a clean, smooth hand toward Jimmy, who took it and gave a good show of returning the smile.
“Sure thing.”
“Sheriff, I won’t keep you long, but I wanted to put a face to your name, as I’ve been reading it so often. Don’t you find that you learn so much more from talking to someone face to face than from reading about them in a deposition?”
“How’s that, exactly?”
The young lawyer took his hand back and sat down across from him. “As I explained on the phone, I am looking into Charles Thompson.” He didn’t wait for Jimmy to acknowledge that he had heard. “As Sheriff of Hamilton County I’m sure you’ve had occasion to know of Mr. Thompson and his activities.”
“I know Chowder, sure. I know he used to ride with the Bucs, I’m sure had some wild times, but far as I know, these days he’s just a business man. I’ve had no problems with him.”
Dennis Jordan cocked his head slightly and smiled coyly. “Forgive my bluntness, Sheriff, but I just don’t believe that.” He straightened in his seat and Jimmy leaned back in his. “I don’t believe Chowder Thompson is an upright citizen and I don’t believe that you think so either.”
Mondale laced his fingers and rested his elbows on the arms of his chair. He put his chin to his knuckles. “Well, I suppose that’s your constitutional right.”
“It is. Well put, Sheriff. Have you heard any of the old stories about Mr. Thompson’s time with the Bucs?”
Mondale shrugged. “Never been too interested in rumors.”
“No, of course not. Can’t go prosecuting anything based on rumors. But surely they’ve grabbed your interest now and again?”
“Seems the Bucs ran crank and dope, maybe some weapons. ATF, DEA, FBI never made anything of it. But, like I said, just rumors and Chowder’s not been with the Bucs in nearly fifteen years. I haven’t heard any rumors about him attending any churches recently, but that’s
his
constitutional right.”
“Sheriff, can I tell you one of my favorite rumors about Mr. Thompson?” The young lawyer didn’t wait for Mondale’s consent. “Apparently the Bucs had something of a sensitive spot about federal informants – got really paranoid sometimes – anyway, one time they’d discovered a possible informant among them and they left the Q&A to Mr. Thompson.” The lawyer leaned into the story, emphasizing with both hands. “First thing Chowder did was take out his buddy’s left eyeball with a spoon. No questions, he just figured that rumor alone was enough to take that much action on. Then he fries it up like an egg at the campfire and eats it with Tabasco sauce.” Dennis Jordan smiled and shook his head. “I don’t know about you, but that kind of autonomy sure could get me a better record. I bet you could use a little more legal wiggle-room sometimes too, huh?”
Both men were silent a moment, then the attorney continued. “Point I’m making, Sheriff, is that Charles Thompson will never pay anything back, legally speaking, for that little rumor, but it’s one of many that I’d like to see him go down for. What I need, and what I’m going to get, is hard evidence to prosecute him on and I’m going to put him and anyone else he’s working with away for a long time.”
Mondale nodded slowly. “Yeah, that’s one I heard too. Never asked him about it though.”
The attorney smiled again. “Like you say, they’re just rumors. You have to hold on to them loosely. But I’ve made my mind up about Charles Thompson.”
That movie-star grin dropped all warmth as it grew wider. “What I’ve not yet made up my mind about, Sheriff, is you.”
Jimmy stiffened and said, “How do you mean?” with what he hoped sounded like an absence of panic.
“I’m trying to decide if you’re just a backwater hick with a badge, sitting on his thumbs oblivious to the criminal enterprise of Chowder Thompson or…” his smile dropped, “…or if you’re his partner.”