D
elroy Lewis was a member of a biker club one time called Spades, all black guys, least fifty of ’em in black leather, the ace of spades painted on their yellow helmets. Once a month the Spades took a ride to some sleepy town in the country and fucked with people on the street. Delroy rode with the gang four times, got filthy dirty riding in the ass-end of the pack and quit the Spades.
He wore sport shirts with high collars to shorten his neck, the man long all over his six-foot-six-inch frame, 178 pounds wet, a skinny body on toothpick legs. He wore a white scarf loose around his neck and sunglasses in his hair.
This was a time before Delroy went down for shootin the snitch, the idea of Chicks Who Rob Banks came to him.
He owned a cocktail lounge on New Center Road called the Cooz Club that featured chicks writhing bare-naked on a pole that rose from the narrow strip of stage back of the bar. They’d get up there in their heels, eyes dreamy, out of focus, and the guys at the bar would bet on which chick would fall off, side bets on hitting the bartender or not. He made drinks looking over his shoulder. Once Delroy had the idea, he turned the bare-naked ladies into bank-robbin chicks and was doing fine till Janie tripped the dye pack. He’d told them how many times, check the money in bank straps before leaving and remind each other. Jane was alone and hadn’t checked.
He phoned the other chicks, Kim and Cassie, had to wake them up saying, “Collect your clothes and valuables, any dope, get all your shit together and be ready to leave when I get there in ten minutes. You listenin?” He said, “Jane got picked up and is gonna roll over on us.
Jane,
the chick you do banks with.” He’d have to go over there and slap ’em some, make sure they took everything they owned out of the house. Finally, they got in Delroy’s car and drove out to horse country.
Going past miles of white fences and thoroughbreds raising their heads to see Delroy’s Mercedes flying past.
They were approaching trees and some bushes now. Delroy slowed down and stopped on the side of the road.
“Come on out and we’ll relieve ourselves together, ladies. Won’t have another chance to pee-pee for a while.”
Kim said she couldn’t do it with him watching.
Delroy said, “Girl, I see you bare-ass naked every day. Get out the car.”
Once the girls were out looking for a good place to pee, Delroy took his PPK from inside his shirt and racked it. By the time he was in the trees, Cassie was pulling up her jeans. Kim was still squatting. He walked up and shot Cassie first. She fell without making a sound. But now Kim was screaming to bust a lung. Delroy shot her and she stopped. He made sure neither one had ID on her and dragged their bodies into the bushes.
A
marshal brought Carol and Boyd to Nichols’s office, rapped on the glass door, stepped aside, and Boyd saw Raylan standing by the desk, Raylan coming around it now, looking right at them.
Boyd said, “You knew we were seein him.”
“I didn’t,” Carol said, “really. It was someone else who called, both times.”
“I’m not talkin to him,” Boyd said. “I got nothin to say on the matter hasn’t been written in reports. Far as I’m concerned the case is closed tight.”
Carol said, “Try to control yourself, all right?”
The door opened and she was saying to Ray1an, “Well, isn’t this a surprise, my old bodyguard.”
I
’ve always enjoyed watching you,” Carol said. “Even when you were showing off and shot one of my employees . . . It wasn’t in the head but in the
hair
? I asked Boyd, ‘He’s so accurate he can do that?’ Boyd said, ‘He wanted ’em dead they be dead.’ ”
They took the two chairs facing the desk, Boyd gripping the arms of his, staring at Raylan sitting at the desk now holding forth. Boyd saw him waiting to try some new approach and said, “What’re you gonna pull on us this time?”
“Tell me if I have it straight,” Raylan said. “You shot Otis while he’s firing a twelve-gauge at you.”
Boyd took his time. Did he shoot Otis?
No, goddamn it,
but said, “Yes, I did.”
“You hit him and he fired in the air.”
“I believe so, yes.”
“How many times?”
“Did he shoot? I don’t know, a couple.”
“Racked the shotgun and tried twice, after you hit him in the chest from fairly close.”
Boyd paused, thinking of how he’d told it to the sheriff’s people. “See, Otis was firing before I shot him. After I hit him, I guess he only got off one more.”
“You thought he might hit you?”
“Jesus Christ,” Boyd said, “you ever been shot at? I give you the benefit of knowin you don’t stop and think, you’re returning fire.”
“You hit him,” Raylan said, “and he fired in the air. But you say he was shootin at you before you put him down.”
“Startin to,” Boyd said.
“But didn’t hit the trailer you’re standin in front of. Where you suppose his shot went?”
“I don’t know,” Boyd said. “We both shootin at each other . . . I try to see what happened now, man, it’s all gunfire . . .”
“You know what I think?” Raylan said to Boyd sitting straight in his chair. “The old man died with a loaded gun. He didn’t get off a shot. Carol told you to fire the shotgun and you fired up in the air or off somewhere in the dark. But not at the trailer.”
“We didn’t stop to wonder,” Carol said, “why Otis didn’t kill us. I close my eyes and I see him hurrying, he must’ve been afraid, but now he couldn’t back down. He began firing . . .” She paused and said, “There’s no possible way you can link Boyd to the old man’s death, other than obvious self-defense. The man fired a gun at us and somehow he missed, didn’t he?”
Raylan said, “That’s what you told the sheriff’s people and they took your word for it.”
“I think it’s obvious,” Carol said, “the old guy didn’t know what he was doing.”
“Except old boys I’ve talked to, hunted with Otis, said he don’t miss with his shotgun.”
“Well, he did that night,” Carol said and told him, “No one’s perfect, Raylan. Not you or Otis or his buddies. Otis is in heaven, with his old pals from the deep mines. Coal miners get old and die from being coal miners.”
“But while they’re alive,” Raylan said, “they have a right to be alive.”
T
he only conversation in the elevator was Boyd saying, “The man won’t let go of it, will he?”
They were out of the building, crossing to the parking lot before Carol spoke. “There’s simply no way he can prove you shot Otis.”
Boyd said, “
I
didn’t shoot Otis. You did.”
She said, “What’s the difference? You’re standing there watching.”
Boyd paid for parking and got behind the wheel, surprised to see Carol in back. Coming here she’d sat next to him, less she was reaming somebody out as Miss Company, but never raising her voice. She still hadn’t given him nothin to do in his new job, head of Disagreements.
Boyd said, “You afraid I caught leprosy from bein in the marshals’ office?”
“I’m trying to recall,” Carol said, “when I told you to empty the shotgun, where you fired.”
“In the air. You saw me. I didn’t hear you tell me to hit the trailer.”
She couldn’t deny it. After a few moments she said, “I’m not going to any more interrogations. You know we were being recorded? No, you didn’t. They have all your stammering. You can act surprised and stammer a little, but only when you know what you’re going to say.”
“You happen to notice,” Boyd said, “I put the spent shells by Otis, for realism?”
Boyd saw her smile in the mirror. He believed she liked his carefree attitude, long as he didn’t take it too far. She was almost a nice person when things pleased her. When they didn’t, he’d see her gettin pissed off at him for some picayune thing and come near firing him. He didn’t think she’d try to blame Otis on him, knowing he’d turn around and drag her in. She’d be busy in court instead of doin her regular job, makin people’s lives miserable.
What he needed was a threat to hang over her head. Keep her from doing something nasty to him.
Boyd was wondering, Could he get Raylan to side with him without snitchin on Carol? Remind him of walking picket lines together, seein eye to eye when it came to coal companies fuckin over miners? Say to Raylan it was getting hard to work for Carol. Hell, it was like working for Duke Power again. Remember those days we stood up together? Say this working for Carol was tearing him apart.
Something along those lines.
He started the car and said to the mirror, “Where we goin?”
“The office,” Carol said. “You’re on your own the rest of the day, unless I need you.”
“So I should wait in the car.”
“You can’t help being a smart-ass, can you?” Now she told him, “What I’ve wanted to do all week is get Otis’s widow off my back, Marion Culpepper. Since you’re head of Disagreements you have her sign
our
agreement, where we pay her five hundred a month. Tell her we’ll get her Social Security bumped up and give her the deed to her new trailer home in Benham. Even has a hot water tank.”
“I have to go all the way down to Harlan?”
“She’s here in Lexington, in a nursing home we’re paying for. So we don’t have to drive to Sleepy Holler. Get her to sign and tell her I’ll stop by tomorrow, say a few kind words and wrap it up.”
Boyd said, “Like ‘I’m sorry I killed your hubby’?”
“You want me to fire you? Say that again.”
They stared at each other, Boyd coming close to saying it. Or tell her she can’t fire you, you quit. What he said was, “You know you ended a sentence with a preposition? You said, ‘She’s here in a nursing home we’re payin for.’ ”
“Caught being ungrammatical.” Carol staring at his serious face. “How should I have said it?”
“She’s here in a nursing home,” Boyd said, “for which we’re payin the costs.”
N
ichols got hold of Raylan and they responded to the scene in horse country: thoroughbreds grazing the pastures while the bodies of two girls shot to death lay in a thicket of trees.
“A guy driving past,” Nichols said, “saw crows swarming into the trees. He knew something was dead, stopped to look and got in touch with police. They had it posted: look for Kim and Cassie, who’d skipped when we went to pick ’em up. That fast, while Jane’s safe in custody.”
They were looking at the bodies now—cops standing around—looking at clothes torn from parts of their bodies and their faces pecked to the bone by a murder of crows. “They still have their teeth,” Nichols said, “but no eyes. You notice? I bet they were dark. No ID on either one.”
An evidence tech watching them said, “We’re lucky we got here before the coyotes. Be nothing left but bones.”
Raylan stooped over one of the girls and the evidence tech told him not to touch their clothes. “That blood can give you HIV positive, you get it on you.” Raylan picked up the girl’s hand, a phone number in black marker witten on the palm, before it was smudged with blood.
He said to Nichols, “She did have your phone number.”
“She hung up on us,” Nichols said. “I’m surprised she wrote it down.”
“But no second thoughts about calling you,” Raylan said. “She had, she might still be alive.” He stood up and thanked the cops standing around for securing the scene and told them the two girls were Kim and Cassie. “I don’t know their last names. You might have them on file for prostitution. I believe they were exotic dancers before they became bank robbers. I thank you for helping us out.”
One of the officers said, “Detectives are coming out from downtown. You guys beat ’em to it. You want to wait and talk to the guys? They’ll be working this one.”
“I think we ought to pick up the shooter, you understand, before he knows we’re on to him?”
The cop said, “You know who it is?”
Raylan said, “Yes, we do,” and told them, “Delroy Lewis.”
The cop said, “You can’t identify the bodies, but you know who they are and who killed them.”
“We’ve got another one of his bank robber girls. She told us about him,” Raylan said. “Thanks, fellas, I’ll be in touch,” and walked away with Nichols.
“What if it isn’t Delroy,” Nichols said, “but some other mutt?”
“It’s Delroy,” Raylan said. “I can see him running a gang of girl bank robbers. Making money, maybe surprised it works. Surprises everybody.”
“What’s his buddy say—he happens to have one—‘The girls go down, you go with them’?”
“Delroy says, ‘What girls? I don’t have no girls. Man, I stay far afield. Maybe get the girls a limo for the bank job.’ ”
“He’s showin off.”
“Showin how cool he is. That’s the guy. A limo, everybody knows is his. He takes a few risks,” Raylan said, “but I can’t see him cutting lines in the car. That’s Jane making it sound hip. I bet he doesn’t go near those girls till it’s dark out.”
“One of his girls gets arrested, why wouldn’t she tell on him?”
“Jane did, and he blew it, pretending to be white instead of soothing her. ‘Don’t worry, baby, I’m gettin you a lawyer gonna have your case thrown outta court.’ He moves someplace else and gets three more girls, gives ’em pills, tells them anything he wants and they believe him. He doesn’t beat on the girls, he gives them a slap and then sweet-talks them. They get picked up, he says, ‘Kim and Cassie? I believe I remember those girls, my exotic dancers at the club. What is it they doin now?’ We’ll start looking for him,” Raylan said, “at the Cooz Club, with backup.”
“I doubt he’ll be there,” Nichols said.
“I know,” Raylan said, “but we might find out a few things. He’s a show-off. Maybe things he’d like us to know.”
“We got him for a double homicide. What else you want?”
“I won’t know till we look around.”
T
he manager of the club, Kenneth, middle-aged in a blond hairpiece, heard car doors slam and said to Bobby, the kid at the bar sipping a glass of white wine, “Well, finally.”
Bobby went to the store window that wore coats of pink paint on the outside, spelled out in blue neon was
COOZ CLUB
. Under it, smaller in red neon, it said,
THIS IS THE PLACE!
The kid looked through scratches in the paint and said:
“A Crown Vic and a Chevy. Guys are coming out of the cop car and the two guys from the Chevy are holding them up talking to the guys—they have
U.S. MARSHALS
on their jackets— Hey, you were right. It looks like just the two guys, the suits, are gonna come in.”
“Finish your wine, Bobby,” Kenneth said, “and get out of here the moment they ask for Delroy.”
R
aylan came in, Nichols behind him, saw the manager standing by the bar, a teenage boy finishing his drink . . . Raylan said, “Kenny?” The guy bowed his blond hairpiece saying he was, and Raylan said, “How long you been a Kenny?”
“Well, since it’s sort of my name, all my life. Have friends who’ll only call me Kenneth. Oh, and Delroy, do you know what he calls me? Kennet, without the diphthong. You want to know if he’s here? He isn’t. I haven’t seen him since, anyways, yesterday. You don’t believe me, call the boys in and search the joint.”
The kid got up from the bar saying, “This doesn’t sound like any of my business.”
They let him walk out.
Raylan looked at this pink strip club going to seed, the bar with the pole up behind it. Raylan saw bare-naked girls using the pole to aim their assholes at the assholes lining the bar. Sit down at one of those tables over there and get a lap dance with moans.
Kenneth said, “Oh,” as if he’d just remembered something.
“Delroy left you a movie he’s starring in. Actually, he’s the only one in it.”
Raylan said, “He wants me to see it?”
“If you’re Raylan.”
“It’s all Delroy?”
“Don’t worry, it isn’t too long. He manages to get to the point after, well, sort of an introduction.”
Raylan said, “Who shot it?”
“I did. I shoot all his flicks. Most of the ones where he’s by himself are rather boring. His X-rated stuff I think is better than most.”
Raylan said, “Delroy does porn?”
“Some. This one he did, you have to look at while you’re here. Cross your heart and promise you won’t take it with you. Promise?”
Raylan and Nichols both crossed their hearts without looking at each other.
“It’ll be on that flat screen,” Kenneth said, nodding to it above the bar, “for your viewing pleasure. Delroy said offer you whatever you want to drink, on the house.”
Raylan and Nichols still didn’t look at each other.
“You want, I can make popcorn,” Kenneth said, “in a jiffy.”
Raylan said, “Well, Ken, I could use a beer,” and Nichols said he’d have one too.
T
he man on the screen was in sweats, a skinny six-six handling the ball with nice moves, going to the basket he stops and pops a jumper, brings the ball out and goes in and stuffs it. Now he was coming back to the camera, the ball under his arm. He raises the ball in front of him and spins it on the tip of his finger. He’s looking at the camera and says, “That’s how I see the world going around, like this basketball.”
Kenneth used his remote to pause on Delroy.
“He told me he wanted to sound ‘not mysterious, but like it.’ I said, ‘Profound but obscure?’ He said, ‘Yeah like that.’ He said we playin a game bein here. Playin it all the way to the edge and see how it comes out.”
“What he did,” Raylan said, “was shoot two girls while they’re taking a whiz.”
Kenneth clicked the remote to see Delroy on the screen spinning the ball. He lets it drop. Now he was saying, “I can’t be there right now. I happen to see outside a bank a girl I use to know mighta been Jane something? Had red dye all over her outerwear.”
“I gave him that,” Kenneth said.
“Girl musta tried to rob the bank,” Delroy said. “I did see her taken to the courthouse, the one on Barr Street? A while later I see you go in there.”
Delroy from another angle.
“Remember the time you came to arrest me and we facin each other? I’m holdin the shotgun at my leg. You told me let go of it or you’d draw and put me down. You not holdin a gun but you say that to me. Man, I had seven years to think about it. You bullshittin me or what? Bluffin? I realize while I’m in the slam you was takin it to the edge.”
Raylan said, “Cause you don’t know how far you can take it”—reciting it word for word with Delroy on the screen—“till you get there.”
Raylan said, “Hold it, Ken, while we take you up on your offer. You think you might stir up a couple of martinis? I like the show so far, even if Delroy’s fulla shit.”
T
hey got back to Delroy saying, “That man I shot you put me away for? You know I wasn’t aimin at his arm. I fired and the gun jumped in my hands. See, I’d borrowed it and never fired the motherfucker till I shot the man’s arm off.”
“The guy’s arm was amputated at a hospital,” Raylan said. He took a sip and raised his glass to Kenneth.
On the screen Delroy was saying, “It wasn’t like I killed him. See, I hear this C.I. asshole snitch was gonna tell you people somethin he made up I done. So now I’m in a situation and borrow this shotgun to protect myself. I face him but missed. It’s the first time I’m usin the piece. I mighta blown his head off but I didn’t, did I? Now the snitch has a lawyer tell me he wants five million for makin him a one-arm man. I tell the lawyer I make ten cents an hour bangin out license plates, off Sundays, Christmas and when I’m sick. I spend some of my dimes on toothpaste and shave cream, buy some hooch, bet a few sports games. I come out of my incarceration with four dollars and twenty cents. How’m I suppose to pay this man?”
Delroy paused and said, “This girl Jane Jones? She mighta talked to you by now—you believe I ever associated with a chick name of Jane Jones. She hasn’t yet called you, I believe she’s gonna. Claims she knows me. Wants to tell you how she thinks I make a living. She calls, I wouldn’t waste my time talkin to her.”
“She already has,” Raylan said
Kenneth looked pleased. “It’s getting good, isn’t it?”
“You’re in it too,” Raylan said.
Kenneth paused the video. “I shoot his movies and tend his bar. I know nothing of his extra-curricular activities.”
“You know the girls.”
“Which ones? There always girls. But none committing felonies that I know of.”
He turned the sound on, Delroy saying:
“Raylan, I think me and you gonna have to meet sometime. I can’t say when right now. You gonna be lookin over your shoulder till I make the scene. Then we gonna take it to the edge.”
Delroy faded out, his face serious; the screen turned black and the credits in reverse said:
A KENNY FLIX PRODUCTION
PRODUCED AND DIRECTED BY
KENNETH
They finished their drinks and Raylan said, “Ken, will you get the tape for us?”
Nothing about crossing their hearts.
Kenneth said, “I suppose you want the original.”
“Everything you shot,” Raylan said.
K
enneth dialed a cell and a voice said, “Kennet?”
“You were right, he came with a SWAT team. I served martinis and we watched your movie.”
“Man brought a SWAT team?”
“A carload of marshals. You’re a popular guy.”
“Kennet, I can’t find where the man’s stayin at. I don’t like tryin to catch him at the courthouse.”
“Why didn’t you ask? He’s staying at the Two Keys. I dropped in on Crazy Night and there he was. I told you that.”
“You go there?”
“Delroy, read my lips. He’s staying there,” and let that hang before saying, “He acts as bouncer and they give him a free room and tortillas.”
“That college bar?”
“It’s fun. I love it.”
Delroy took a few moments before saying, “Man, do it in a barroom.”
“He
is
wearing a cowboy hat.”
“Like the big scene in a western.”
“That’s what I just said.”
Delroy said, “Yeah . . .” nodding, seeing it in his mind.
“It’ll be crowded.”
Kenneth said, “I like spectators.”