Two for Flinching (3 page)

I caught up with them as they pulled into a
hotel on the edge of town, next to the interstate. Jenks went into
the lot while she parked in front of the lobby. I took the second
entrance and circled the hotel. The Lexus was in the front row. I
parked a good distance away that still left me with a good view. I
took my digital camera from the passenger seat. I snapped a few
wide shots to establish the setting, the car parked in a hotel lot.
The Honda left the lobby and she left the car in the second row
with plenty of spaces between them. I took a few shots of her.
Jenks got out of his car with the takeout and met her on the
walkway. I narrowed the focus and took a bunch of shots of them
together. She opened the door and I was able to get them going in.
I pulled out my cell, scrolled through the contacts and hit the
number I needed.

“Chickasaw Falls Inn.”

“Tom?”

“This is Billy. Tom is off tonight.”

The line of work I was in, it paid to be on
good terms with the hotel clerks in town.

“Hey, Billy. This is Beason Camp.”

“Hey, Bees. You need a room tonight?”

I winced, checking the backseat to see if
Sarah had somehow heard the comment, might somehow know what it
implied. Luckily, she still had the headphones on, watching Alvin
and the Chipmunks on her portable DVD player.

“No, not tonight. I was calling about the
woman you just checked in.”

“Mrs. Driver? She’s a nice lady.”

“She a frequent customer?”

“Once a week, sometimes twice. Why?”

“Why do you think?”

There was a pause.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Where are you?”

“Parking lot. Do you think you could make me
a copy of the registration form?”

“Ooo. You know we’re not supposed to do
that.”

“Uh huh. While you’re at it, make copies of
the other times she’s stayed here.”

“Like I said, we’re not supposed to do
that.”

“Billy, let’s cut the shit about you doing
the right thing. We both know you’ll make more in five minutes than
you would pulling a double shift.”

Billy laughed. “Gonna cost you for earlier
visits.”

“Okay.”

“Give me five minutes.”

I disconnected the call. Headlights flared
and a full sized truck rolled through the lot. It stopped next to
my passenger door. The driver looked at me and smiled, then looked
into the back of the Jeep to see Sarah strapped in her car seat. It
was the same guy who came by my office. The big one. I had to
assume his partner was with him. I was still without my piece. He
shook his head and the truck roared off. The truck had Louisiana
plates and I wrote the number down in my notebook. Jenks hadn’t
been the only one not expecting a tail.

I racked my brain, trying to figure out what
this was all about. I was not a man without enemies. Plenty of
ex-wives and ex-husbands out there who would love to see me get my
comeuppance. There were also criminals I had helped put away,
thieves, drug dealers and a murderer or two. Throw in the scrapes I
had been in dating back to my teens and the list got plenty
long.

Whoever they were and whatever they wanted,
evidently they didn’t want it with my daughter around. I had to
give them credit for that. Which significantly narrowed the list.
Lowlifes were lowlifes for a reason, and most would be jubilant at
the opportunity to harm me with my daughter to witness.

I gave it up. Insufficient evidence. Whatever
was coming was coming. Now I knew to be ready for it. No more
leaving home without the gun. And no more bringing the princess
along for a day with daddy.

Back to the matter at hand. Jenks and his
companion would eat before moving on to their illicit activity. I
had plenty of time to get the records from Billy, but didn’t want
to leave Sarah alone in the jeep. Not with my new friends out there
somewhere.

“Daddy?”

“Yes, baby.”

She had removed the headphones, her dark hair
a mess. “I gotta pee.”

“Sure, honey.” When a four year old tells you
she has to go, there isn’t much time. Lessons learned the hard
way.

I started the SUV and pulled around to the
front of the hotel. Billy was standing behind the desk, smiling. I
pointed Sarah to the restroom.

“A little young even for you, Beasily.”

“Not funny, Billy. Not funny at all.” We
shook hands and he slid a manila envelope across the counter. Sarah
came out of the bathroom. “Did you flush?”

Sarah went back into the bathroom.

Billy was scrutinizing the bill I had slipped
him. “I told you it was going to cost extra for the old
records.”

Sarah came out of the bathroom.

“Did you wash your hands?”

Sarah went back into the bathroom.

“Anything over a hundred dollars, I have to
have a receipt,” I told him. “You gonna sign a receipt?”

Billy shrugged. “Guess it’ll have to do.”

Chapter Four

Next day, I was in the sock factory, the
princess safely at pre-school and the Colt .45 in the drawer. The
Colt .45 was
my
gun. Have you ever had something and the
minute you touched it, you knew it was
yours
? It was that
way with me and dark Bacardi, the second it was on my lips, I knew
that was
my
drink. The first kiss I shared with Stella, she
was
my
girl. The first karate lesson, I knew I had found
my
sport. I have used many, many, firearms throughout my
life. Rifles, shotguns, assault weapons, machine guns, revolvers
and other automatics. But none of them felt so right in my hand as
the Colt .45. The weight of it, the power it held, the simple
beauty of it. There were other pistols with more firepower, others
with more capacity, sexier pieces others drooled over, but the Colt
.45 was
my
gun.

I was on the computer, chasing down a hunch.
Melvin Jenks and his mistress had stayed in the hotel room until
shortly after eleven before going their separate ways. Looking
back, Mrs. Jenks felt her husband had been acting suspicious for
the last month. Working late, business dinners, mysterious trips on
behalf of the bank. Maybe Jenks had fallen in love with his
secretary. Maybe he had fallen under the charms of a younger woman
who had shown an interest in him that he had not known for some
time. Or maybe he had always been a cheating spouse and his wife
had finally caught on. My gut feeling, though, was that this was
something new. His recent promotion to bank president had elevated
him to a position of power and prominence and the papers were full
of powerful men feeling entitled to a fling.

I started with the free dating websites.
Places like E Harmony and Match.com required a credit card. Credit
cards left trails. I had no doubt that a bank president could
easily find a way to cover his tracks, but I figured he would also
recognize the potential danger.

I maintained a couple of identities on the
dating sites—both men and women. I logged on as
Looking4Mine
, a twenty-seven year old blond knockout. She
was a professional making between forty and fifty thousand dollars
a year, recently divorced with no children, hoping to find someone
to share sunsets and a good bottle of wine. I had downloaded her
picture off Facebook, an unsuspicious young lady from Southern
California and built the bio myself. I tweaked her interest to
reflect her search for a “man of experience” and moved her profile
to public.

I began the troll, looking for plenty of
forty-seven year old men looking for a soul mate, but none that
matched Jenks. I frowned to myself, sure that I was on the right
track. I widened the search to men between the ages of forty and
fifty. It took a while, but I finally found him.
J-love
. I
checked to make sure he wasn’t online before clicking the profile.
I wasn’t yet ready for a chat. The picture was “available on
request,” a sensible move to keep anyone from recognizing him, but
there was no doubt.
J-love
was divorced (which I was fairly
certain would surprise Mrs. Jenks) three kids, in the two hundred
thousand and above salary range. He was also forty-three years old.
Maybe he thought forty-five was too old, that that age would remove
him from too many searches.
J-love
wasn’t looking for a
relationship, only wanted to “get out of the house and have a good
time.” I printed it all out and logged off.

The honey pot bit always worked best when you
could get the pursued to do the pursuing. I knew that Jenks’s page
would show
Looking4Mine
had checked him out and I also knew
that nobody wanting to “get out of the house and have a good time”
would be able to resist her beauty. It was only a matter of time
before he reached out. I hoped.

My stomach was telling me lunch was getting
close when the office phone rang.

***

“Camp Investigations. Your private eye to
the stars.”

“Funny. You still on good terms with Judge
Drake?”

“Yeah.”

“Then you better get out there in a
hurry.”

“Why?”

***

The line had already gone dead. The voice
had been vaguely familiar, neither friendly nor unfriendly. I took
the .45 from my desk. I did not rush out the door. I had the tag
number of my new friends’ truck and my next act of business was
going to be running it down, finding out who had been stalking me.
The voice on the phone was one I knew, yet couldn’t place. He had
been aware of our relationship with Judge Drake and he had known I
would go to Drake. He had used the office phone, not the cell, so
it was unlikely he was a friend of mine. I checked the caller ID.
Private. It could be a setup, an ambush. The caller might be the
one responsible for bringing in the boys from Louisiana. With Sarah
in pre-school, this could be their chance.

Or Judge Drake might have stepped in it
again. He had been quiet for a while, too long. Overdue. I crossed
the office and looked out the window. The cracked parking lot was
big, enough space for forty cars. Back in more prosperous times, it
would have held the vehicles for a shift in the sock factory. That
shift was now working a factory in South America, thanks to trade
deals our Congress had given us. The green Cherokee was the only
vehicle in the lot, parked in what had once been a handicapped
space. No Dodge pickup.

I slipped into my bomber jacket and went into
the hallway. To the right, the hallway ran back into the factory,
but everything—aside from my office—had been boarded up for years.
To the left was the door to the metal stairs. I pushed open the
heavy wooden door and stood back, waiting for a rifle shot.
Nothing. I checked my watch, a cheap Timex, and waited five full
minutes. I didn’t posses many skills or talents, but patience was
one I had in abundance. I did nothing better than anybody I knew. I
popped my head out of the opening and drew it quickly back, trying
to draw fire from an impatient sniper. Nothing.

I waited two more minutes before running down
the stairs, the pistol dangling from my hand. I jogged to the Jeep,
jumped in and fired it up. I felt a little foolish as I drove
through town. The little guy might go for an ambush, but that
definitely didn’t seem to be the big guy’s style. You had to
prepare for what the enemy could do, not what you thought he would
do. Lessons learned the hard way. Foolish was okay. Dead was
not.

I kept one eye on the rearview, took a right,
and another right, eventually circling the block. The streets were
fairly deserted on the edge of town and nobody seemed to be
following me. Back on the main road, I pushed up the speed. I had
wasted enough time and if Judge Drake had indeed poked another
hornet’s nest, I needed to hurry.

I parked in the circular driveway. The grey
stone house sat on a little rise, the rye grass green in the dead
of winter, a magnolia tree towering over the yard. I tucked the
Colt in the holster at the small of my back and climbed the steps.
A man was in the rocking chair on the porch, waiting for me.

Luther Drake was recently retired, his hair
gone to grey, eyeglasses a few years out of date. Normally, he was
a dignified African-American, smartly dressed and stiff-backed with
a military bearing. Today he was in a sweat suit, unshaven, a half
empty bottle of Evan Williams at his feet. And a shotgun cradled in
his arms.

“The war hero to the rescue.”

“Morning, Judge.” I took the white rocker
next to him. “What’s going on?”

“Fucking power company.”

“Yeah?”

“Parked their big ass truck right there on
the road. Engine running, diesel fumes making me sick.”

“You didn’t like that?”

“Hell no, I didn’t like it.” Drake reached
for the bottle and helped himself to a long pull of whiskey. “I
asked them nicely to move along.”

“And they didn’t?”

Luther shook his head. “Said something about
a bad transformer.”

“Why don’t we go inside?” I suggested. “Maybe
have a cup of coffee?”

“Ain’t got no coffee made.”

“I’ll make it,” I said. “Come on.”

He grunted and stood. “Let me check that
twelve gauge.”

He grunted again, but handed it over. I
racked the slide. “Luther, this gun isn’t even loaded.”

“I’m drunk, not stupid.”

We went into the house, through the dining
room, and into the den. The house was in a mild state of disarray.
Three days worth of newspapers scattered on the floor, magazines on
the couch, a couple of empty glasses on the end tables. It was much
neater than my home. In the kitchen, I got the coffee going. I knew
where everything was. It wasn’t as if this was my first visit.

As the maker started making, I went back into
the den to find Luther in his battered easy chair. The bottle was
next to him. I had left the shotgun by the door. “Where’s
Rochelle?”