Beluga Page 4

  We argued up to the front porch steps, as if it even mattered by then. What with the dogs and the general proximity to Dupont goods and Dupont holdings, we were already so far along toward smelly that staying out or going in wasn’t worth quibbling about.

  “What are we after?” I asked Desmond.

  He pulled a tissuey, yellow invoice from his front shirt pocket and checked the details. “Dinette table. Four chairs. K-Lo thinks he can fumigate them.”

  “K-Lo thinks professional wrestling is real.”

  A Dupont cracked the front door to see what all the fuss was about. It didn’t matter that he shut it again after only a couple of seconds. We got wafted at enough to give us pause.

  “Why didn’t we stay retired?” I asked Desmond.

  “Appearances,” Desmond told me. “They owe sixty-eight dollars.”

  I turned back toward the road. “Not anymore,” I said.

  Desmond was right there with me. “This going back to work might get a little expensive.”

  We kept coveralls in the back of Desmond’s Escalade. We stripped down to our underwear right there at the tailgate, shoved our clothes in a sack and tied the neck shut, and headed for the laundry on Highway 1 just south of Greenville where they still claimed to Martinize in an hour and usually even meant it.

  There was a car wash next door, and who should pull in while we were sitting there waiting but Beluga S. LaMonte and a buddy of his in an unduly tricked-out Tercel. With the Rolls-Royce grille and the shiny chrome spinners, a spoiler with flame decals on the trunk.

  “Don’t say it,” Desmond told me as we were walking over. Larry had probably had our thirty thousand dollars for six weeks.

  Larry was pumping quarters into the washer. His buddy was holding the wand. Larry glanced at us. Except for hockey masks, we looked like that guy in the slasher movies. So first he was frightened and then just squirrelly in the usually Larry way.

  He looked like he had some line of Beluga bullshit to visit on us, but me and Desmond happened to be upwind. So Larry’s buddy covered up his nose with his forearm while Larry told us the only thing that human nature would allow.

  He grimaced and said to me and Desmond, “Shew!”

  FOUR

  Larry was all for squirting us down with the power washer. Or he was all for his buddy squirting us down until Desmond assured him we’d kill them both. Instead we got directed downwind, to the far end of the stall where Larry and the guy who turned out to be Skeeter guessed they could tolerate us.

  “What you been into?” Larry asked us.

  “About to ask you the same thing.”

  Larry smiled and pointed at me. I’d grown to hate it when he did that.

  “So?” Desmond asked.

  “Look here,” Larry told him and pointed at the front left tire of his Toyota. It was a brand-new Michelin. They were all new Michelins. They still had the factory chalk marks on them and ratty residue from the tags.

  “You did the job?” Desmond asked.

  Larry and his buddy nodded.

  “So how did it go?” I asked Larry.

  He started to smile and point again.

  “I’ll rip that arm off and beat you to death with it.”

  Larry glanced at Skeeter. “Told you.”

  Skeeter nodded like I’d lived down to everything that Larry had assured him I’d live down to.

  “Answer the man,” Desmond said.

  “Went all right,” Larry allowed.

  Larry’s only virtue was that he couldn’t help but be transparent. He could tell glorious lies, but you always knew they were entirely manufactured. Larry routinely got this look in his eyes when the truth was something else. It hadn’t gone all right. I knew it straightaway. Desmond knew it, too. Skeeter was standing there with the power washer wand, just wincing and waiting for the reckoning.

  “What happened?” Desmond asked them.

  Larry showed us both his palms. “He’s okay. They fixed him up.”

  “Who?”

  “What was that boy’s name?” Larry said to Skeeter.

  “Bugle’s all I ever heard.”

  “Bugle?” I said. “Who the hell’s that?”

  Larry pointed with his thumb what he took for West Memphis way. “Boy up there,” he told us. “Got under the truck some way.”

  So me and Desmond stood there stinking at the downwind side of the car wash stall while Larry and Skeeter piddled out scraps of their calamity at us. The great tire caper—we finally pieced together—had not gone according to plan.

  Larry, as it turned out, had been late to the rendezvous. He was supposed to meet Skeeter and the man with the truck—they didn’t seem to know his name at all—at one in the morning at the interstate truck stop on the Arkansas side of the river. Larry was “tardy,” to hear it from Larry. That turned out to mean four hours late.

  “I got busy,” Larry told us. “Doing shit and stuff.”

  Skeeter did a bit more wincing. Me and Desmond watched Larry squirm.

  “Casbah?” Desmond asked him.

  It was a club up by Clarksdale, the sort of place a guy like Larry would think the picture of class. They had a bandstand and beer glasses, professionally installed urinals.

  Larry told us, “Hell no!” in a fashion that we both knew actually meant yes.

  “Told you.” I couldn’t help myself.

  Desmond hardly needed me piling on, but people like Larry were exactly the reason we avoided people like Larry. There he’d organized a job and couldn’t show up on time to do it.

  “So what happened?” I asked him. “Just lay it all out. It’ll go better for you in the end.”

  “Little late getting started,” Larry told us.

  Skeeter couldn’t help but snort.

  “Sun up?”

  Larry couldn’t decide, but Skeeter nodded my way.

  “And you went through with it anyway?” I asked Larry.

  “We was all there.” Larry smirked at me like I was some kind of meticulous dope. Yet another stickler plaguing the world.

  I was too disgusted to take much part in things after that. Desmond walked them through it. The guy whose name they didn’t know backed his Peterbilt into the alley where the trailer full of tires was parked. Larry and Skeeter were moving the chocks from the wheels when Bugle came out to make trouble.

  “The lookout, right? The guy watching the tires?” Desmond asked them.

  They both nodded.

  “Thought you bought him off or something. Wasn’t that the plan?”

  Larry’s mouth said, “I did,” but his eyes said, I sure wished I had.

  I got reinvolved to the extent of pointing at Larry’s new snakeskin sneakers.

  Desmond grunted. Desmond showed me his massive open hand by way of inviting me to shut up.

  “Boy went crazy. Didn’t he?” Larry glanced at Skeeter.

  Skeeter nodded. “Kept coming at us.” He shook his head. “Little white kid. Kind of dopey.”

  “Little?”

  “Twenty maybe,” Larry said, “but puny and tweaked or something.”

  Again he glanced at Skeeter, and Skeeter nodded. “Not acting right.”

  “So he gets run over,” Desmond said.

  Larry nodded, shrugged, managed an exasperated smile.

  “And you just left him?”

  “Kind of in the middle of something.” Larry was all indignant now, like Desmond needed the ins and outs of trailer hijacking explained.

  I was attempting to squash my agitation by wandering around the lot, but it was a small lot, and I kept circling back where I’d just been and picking up my own Dupont stink in baleful concentrations.

  “I checked on him,” Skeeter told Desmond. “Know a boy who’s an EMT. He tracked him down. Leg broke in two places, but he’s going to be okay.”

  “And the tires?” Desmond asked them.

  “Down where I told you,” Larry said, all smug now like he was some sort of mastermind.

 
I wanted to hit him a couple of times hard.

  “Did you pay that guy? With the shed?” I shouted.

  Larry pointed and grinned at me again. I’m a sensible man and, by every practical measure, Larry seemed to be needing to get beat the fuck up. So I decided that was just the business I ought to be up to at the moment. Even Desmond couldn’t stop me. He appeared to understand my needs.

  He said, “Nick,” as I stormed past him.

  Larry told me, “Come on now.”

  Beluga LaMonte wasn’t the sort to take a punch. Larry collapsed before I’d even hit him. He went all invertebrate on me, just laid there on the cement in a pile, so I kicked him a couple of times since we were both there already. Then I picked him up and hung him on the bracket the car wash people had thoughtfully supplied for cleaning floor mats with the pressure washer.

  I told Skeeter, “Give me that,” and reached out for the wand.

  It was set on power wash already, and I gave Larry the once-over. A woman came in from the stall next door to see what all the howling was about.

  That woman went back next door and finished washing her Riviera. She must have called the law as well, because a deputy showed up. White guy, the short, thick one I didn’t really know. He’d come from Atlanta or somewhere and made out like Delta crime was small-time and provincial compared to what he’d seen back east and everything evil he’d known.

  Desmond knew him a little through Kendell. We were all just standing there by the time he arrived. Larry was wet and was missing a layer of skin in a couple of places, but he was quick to tell the deputy that he was doing fine.

  “Dropped the damn thing,” he explained and pointed at the wand, which I’d handed over to Skeeter while I took Larry off the wall.

  “Well,” he told us. “All right.” He pointed vaguely. “Scared that lady.”

  “What lady?” Desmond asked him.

  She’d parked her Riviera over by the vacuum cleaner island. She was glaring at us through the driver’s window until we all glanced her way, when she dropped that sedan into gear and lurched off.

  The deputy made a show of sniffing the air. He considered me and Desmond. “Duponts?” was all he said.

  * * *

  We made them show us the tires. We followed the two of them all the way to Belzoni. They had some trouble finding the farm where they’d stashed the trailer, didn’t own a map between them, couldn’t dredge up their boy’s number. He was running a catfish operation for some conglomerate out of Nashville, and that was about all Larry and Skeeter knew. They stopped about every human they came across and asked after that boy, so soon enough there was nobody much around who didn’t know we were there and who we were hoping to find.

  “Don’t say it,” Desmond instructed me, probably a half-dozen times.

  Sometimes I held my fire. Sometimes I said, “All right, but…” and laid out my encyclopedic claims against Beluga anyway.

  We finally found the tires. I think we were just driving around by then. You could see the damn trailer from the road. I don’t quite know how that counted for hidden. It was parked up under a tractor shed alongside a string of catfish ponds. The trailer had slatted sides, so you could see the tires right through them. It didn’t help that the word MICHELIN was painted on the slats as well.

  Larry was all cocky again climbing out of the car. “See?” he said. “Right here.”

  “You couldn’t buy a tarp?” I asked him.

  He very nearly pointed at me and grinned.

  “Nick,” Desmond cautioned me. He needn’t have worried. I could see that Beluga LaMonte was entirely uncorrectable by then.

  The boy they’d entrusted the tires to was aerating the pond with an old Ford tractor. He had what looked like a giant screw gear attached straight into the drive joint, and he’d backed up and dropped it into a pond and was churning the water with it.

  “What the hell’s he doing?” Larry asked just generally. Larry clearly knew next to nothing about anything.

  Skeeter told him, “Oxygen’s low.”

  Larry said, “Oh,” like a man who wasn’t better informed but had just moved on already.

  Larry gave us a tour of the tractor shed, which took about half a minute. Then we all climbed up and looked in the trailer.

  “That’s not six hundred tires.”

  “You can’t know that,” Larry told me. “I had a guy figure it for me.”

  “Wasn’t Rain Man.” I tallied up a couple of rows and multiplied them out. “Two fifty, maybe. Two seventy-five.”

  Larry just told me back, “Naw.”

  “Unload them at fifty apiece and get out,” I told him and then said to Desmond, “Let’s just get our thirty back. They can keep the rest.”

  “Fifty apiece?” Larry shouted at us. “They Michelins, man.”

  “You ran over a guy with a trailer full of tires that anybody who comes by here can see.” I pointed toward the road to head off rebuttal from Larry. “That brings in the police. They’ve surely got a BOLO out by now. Description of the truck. Description of the trailer, and here the damn thing sits. And we don’t even know yet who you stole it from. It seems pretty unlikely he’ll just stay up there in West Memphis and take it.”

  “Don’t worry about him. Half in the grave.” Larry looked to Skeeter for confirmation, and Skeeter nodded.

  “What do you mean?” Desmond asked him.

  “Sick,” Larry said and shrugged. “Got other shit on his mind. He won’t be worried about no tires.”

  “Who?” I asked him.

  Larry grinned and pointed at me. “Some white guy.” Larry shrugged.

  I told Desmond, “I’ll check on it. You just get him to cover this up.”

  Desmond nodded and laid out how life would work for Larry in the coming few days. “Put ten or twelve in a pickup and sell them down south of here. Yazoo City. Vicksburg. Go to Jackson if you have to.”

  “Ain’t got no truck,” Larry said.

  I couldn’t help myself. I pointed at Larry’s tricked-out Toyota. “You bought that with our money?”

  Larry admired the car. He nodded.

  “Tried to tell him,” Skeeter mumbled my way.

  “Title in it?”

  Larry got cagey. “Maybe.”

  “Give me the keys.”

  “You ain’t got no right to…”

  I drew back a fist, and Larry dropped like a fainting goat.

  “Key’s in it,” Skeeter told me.

  I said to Desmond, “I’ll take care of the truck.”

  The catfish pond boy shut down his tractor, climbed off, and came our way. He was a white guy, a farmer by the looks of him. He had a scraggly beard and a gut and jeans with the outline of a snuff tin on the left back pocket.

  “Hey here,” he told us. Then him and Larry engaged in some sort of Masonic Def Jam handshake that ended in a hug. They had to have met in Parchman. There was no explaining it otherwise.

  “Got a tarp in there?” I asked him.

  “Probably scare something up,” he said.

  I told Desmond, “You do that, and I’ll get these boys a truck.”

  “Don’t be coming back here with no goddamn Chevy.” Larry had gone all bold now that his prison buddy was at hand.

  I hit him anyway, a straight shot to the stomach. When it came to Larry, that was my Masonic Def Jam thing.

  I had to think Larry was the one who’d crapped up that Tercel already. He’d spilled Crown Royal or something all over the console, and there were corn chip crumbs and tiny scraps of paper littering the floorboard like he was thinking of building a nest and had started gathering the goods.

  So I first had to find the car wash in Belzoni, vacuum that Tercel out, and buy some wipes to tidy it up. Then I drove to a car lot just up 49, near a place called Bellewood. They had a couple of Dodge trucks. I tested both of them. One quit after a half mile. The other had a transmission that sounded like it was made from ball peen hammers. It clanged and rattled every time it ev
en thought about shifting gears.

  When I told that fellow, “Nope,” he tried to sell me a Galaxy station wagon. It didn’t have the suspension to haul around tires, was almost sitting on the ground as it was, but I surely would have loved to have seen Beluga LaMonte rattling around the countryside in it.

  So I kept heading north, stopping at car lots. I was a day late for a Ranger up around Isola, and then I struck out east toward Tibbet, where I knew a body man. He’d done a little work on my Ranchero and sometimes had a truck or a car or something for sale.

  I was tearing through the countryside, fuming about Larry. I was having a conversation with Desmond in my head, trying to persuade him to my view of in-laws. I had an ex-wife, too, and she had a brother I felt no obligation to help. I sort of glossed over—even alone in Larry’s Tercel—the part about him being a Lutheran minister and a narcotic in human form.

  I was too busy, consequently, to notice the flashing lights at first. In fact, I didn’t see them at all until I’d heard the siren. A couple of short yips snagged my attention, and I told Desmond and me together, “Aw, shit.”

  I pulled over onto the shoulder. I went digging through the glove box. There was nearly an ounce of pot and a .22 derringer. I finally located the registration shoved behind the passenger’s visor.

  Officer Tula Raintree bent to peer in at me. “Well now” was all she said.

  FIVE

  My license was in my wallet. My wallet was in the cup holder of Desmond’s car. While Larry’s Tercel wasn’t stolen outright, the claims of ownership were murky, and civilians were generally discouraged from carrying loaded guns and sacks of weed.

  Tula Raintree explained all this to me in patient, officious detail.

  When she asked if I had any questions, I showed her my cuffed wrists and just said, “Really?”

  “Could have hooked them behind.”

  True enough. “Yeah, well. Thanks for that,” I said.

  As cop cars go, her backseat was clean. Either she hadn’t picked up any vomiting drunks or seepy meth heads lately or she was a stickler about her county cruiser along with every other thing. I figured the latter, since she seemed to have an eye for criminals in the landscape, so I had to guess she hauled in plenty of riffraff.