Bad Moon On The Rise (6 page)

Oh, Jesus, Mary, Mother of God, all
wrapped up in a basket of breadsticks. We landed in a patch of
blackberry bushes rimming a cotton field.

Do you know how prickly blackberry
bushes are?! It was like being attacked by a thousand stinging bees
at once. Pinpricks of pain stabbed my ankles, my arms, my face,
tearing through my stretch pants to rake my legs. I screamed, but
at least the torture put a crimp in our tussle. One roll through
that row of bushes and onto the cotton field and we were
done.

“
Damn, that hurts,” I
said, picking briars from my eyebrows. It’s all good clean fun
until someone puts an eye out.

He groaned and sat up, catching his
breath.

“
Why did you run like
that?” I demanded indignantly. The earth beneath my butt was
damp.

“
You’re asking me why a
black man ran from a cop who appeared out of nowhere and was
heading right for him?” he asked sourly as he inspected one of his
dreadlocks. It was studded up and down with tufts of white cotton
like some sort of weird mutant candy. “Oh, man,” he said in
frustration. “This will take me forever to get out.”

“
I’ll help.” I was
resigned to winning his cooperation. I began to pick the wisps of
cotton from his hair while he plucked the briars from his
robe.

“
I’m not a cop,” I
explained. “I'm a private investigator and all I wanted to do was
talk to you about Tonya Blackburn. You didn’t have to
run.”

“
I’m not going to tell you
where she is,” he said glumly.

“
You knew I was going to
ask you about Tonya, didn't you?” I sucked on a finger where a
thorn had drawn blood. Pickin’ cotton’s no picnic, either.
“How?”

“
Because you’re the third
white person in two weeks who has come after me looking for her,”
he said. “And every single one of you looks like
trouble.”

I pulled my fake P.I. license out of
my pocket and showed it to him. It looked just like the real thing,
which I was not allowed to carry, seeing as how I had the small
matter of a long-ago felony on my record.  “Read it
carefully,” I said. “Did anyone else have one of these?”

He stared at it dismissively, then
ratcheted up the sarcasm. “No, one of them had an actual
badge.”

“
A badge? You’re
sure.”

He glared at me. “Yes, unfortunately,
I’m sure.”

Okay, beautiful man or not, his people
skills left a lot to be desired. 

“
What kind of badge?” I
asked, rather stupidly.

“
The kind cops carry
around?” he suggested sarcastically, flinging away a tuft of cotton
in disgust. “Do you know how long it took to get my hair like
this?”

“
Sorry!” Geeze. What else
did the guy want me to say? I went back to picking the cotton from
his hair while we talked. “So one guy was a cop and the other
was...?”

“
I don’t know what the
other was,” he said. “He never got close enough for me to get a
good look at him. He wasn’t as fast as you.”

Was he making a joke? I smiled. This
was progress. “What did they want?”

“
They probably wanted to
know where Tonya was,” he said. “Same as you do. I didn’t tell
them. And I’m not telling you.”

“
You seem to protect her
pretty seriously,” I said gently.

He was silent.

“
I heard you pulled her
out of a drug house over in Perry County.”

He remained silent.

“
What’s the story with you
two?” I asked. “Why are you still trying to rescue her from
herself?”

He looked away from me, studying the
end of one dreadlock. It smelled faintly of coconut.

“
How long have you known
her?” I tried again.

“
Since first grade,” he
mumbled.

“
Ah.” Lifetime friends are
hard to come by in this day and age. It was a strong
bond.

“
If she owes someone
money, I’m not going to help them find her,” he said.

“
She doesn’t owe anyone
money. Her mother wants to find Trey, that’s all. In fact, I’d
pretty much say that Sally is desperate to find Trey. She’s worried
sick about him and I think we both know why.”

At the mention, however indirect, of
Tonya’s drug habit, his whole face sagged in despair. I felt bad
for him. What must it be like to have watched someone transform
from a bouncy, enthusiastic six-year old who had her whole life in
front of her into a skeletal, lifeless, lying shell of a human
being intent only on putting more poison into her bloodstream? To
love someone like that, yet still remember the promise of what they
might have become, was a poison in itself and a terrible sorrow
unless you could make yourself stop caring. Obviously, he wasn’t
there yet.

“
I’m really sorry,” I said
to him. “I know what it’s like.”

“
You can’t know what it’s
like,” he said simply.

“
Believe me, I do.” I
thought of all the hot Florida nights I’d spent cruising certain
streets in my pick-up truck, looking for a certain car, hoping to
spot the face of the person I loved and wanted so desperately to
protect.

“
I don’t want to hurt
her,” I explained. “Just let me know where you last saw her, so I
can get in touch with Trey.”

He would not answer. He was staring
down at a muddy tangle of trampled cotton plants, maybe thinking of
a time long ago.

“
I think Sally’s dying,” I
said gently. “That’s why she wants to find her grandson so badly.”
It was the first time I had said out loud what I had suspected from
the start of this case.

He looked up at me. “What makes you
say that?” he asked. “She’s tougher than the rest of us
combined.”

I thought of the way Corndog Sally had
sat hunched over in my office the first time she came to see me,
the slight trembling in her hand. A chink in her armor, a sign that
all was not well. And the tone of her voice had been so...
final.

“
It’s just a feeling I
have,” I explained. “I think that’s why she needs to know Trey is
safe.”

“
Oh, man,” he said,
pulling his knees up against his chest. “Not Sally.”

“
Please,” I asked. “If you
tell me where I can find Trey, I’ll sit here all afternoon and pick
the cotton from your dreads.”

He looked away. That’s when I heard
it: voices coming through the woods. His friends to the
rescue.

“
I’ll give Tonya any
message you want me to,” I said. “I’ll make sure she’s safe, if
only for a little while.”

The voices were growing
louder.

He took the plunge. “Last I heard, she
was living in a trailer off Beaver Dam Road out by Salter’s Creek,”
he said quietly. “It’s a red trailer. Sort of. There’s a broken
awning in front of it. She might be driving an old white Chevy
truck I gave her. Or she might have sold it for drugs by now. She’s
hiding out from someone. I don’t know who. I’m afraid to ask.
Probably some dealer she owes a lot of money to.”

“
And Trey?” I
asked.

He looked away. “Oh, Trey will be with
her, trying to stop her. He isn’t old enough to know it’s useless
to try.”

“
When was the last time
you saw her?’

He shrugged. “Maybe two weeks ago. She
wasn’t doing too good. Trey wanted to track down some guy he
thought was his father, some white guy from Durham. Tonya didn't
want Trey to meet him, said it would be a mistake. She wouldn’t
tell him who he was.”

I was finally learning something that
would lead me toward the truth. “And?” I asked. 

He shrugged again. “And nothing. Tonya
wouldn’t give in. She flat out refused to tell Trey who his father
was.”

“
Why?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Don’t know. But I can
guess.”

“
Well, could you tell me
your guess?”

 “
She probably didn’t
want the guy to see her the way she is now. All those years of
putting that shit in her body? It shows. And if you know what she
looked like before the drugs started working on her, it’s...
terrible to see how much she’s changed. I think maybe she couldn’t
stand seeing that in his eyes.”

“
Do you know who Trey’s
father is?” I asked.

He shook his head. “No. I don’t think
they were together long. But I do think she really loved
him.”

“
What makes you say
that?”

“
She didn’t want him to
see what she’d become.”

I hated people in that instant. I
hated all the people in the world who sold drugs for money, tearing
off a piece of other people’s souls for something as meaningless as
cash. I hated the people who raised their kids indifferently and
let them think it was okay to do that. And I hated the people who
would do such a thing to themselves and to the ones who loved
them.

“
I’m sorry,” I said again.
“Really, I am.”

He looked away. Our talk was
over.

His three bandmates emerged from the
woods, dressed in their daishikis like apparitions from another
continent.

“
Everly,” one of the men
said. “What’s going on, man?”

“
Oh, are you guys the
Everly Brothers?” I asked and was met by resolute silence, which is
exactly what I deserved for attempting a joke about the ultimate
white group with the ultimate of black groups. The men just stared
at me silently, shoulder to shoulder, poised as if, together, they
were one well-coiled animal ready to pounce if I so much as
twitched a muscle. 

“
It’s cool,” Everly said,
pulling a tuft of cotton from one of his braids. “How long until we
go on?”

The trio stared, not answering, still
processing the scene.

“
She a cop?” one of them
finally asked.

“
No. How long until we go
on?”

“
About ten minutes,” one
of the men answered as he blatantly checked me out from head to
toe. He smiled at me hopefully, revealing even white
teeth.

No way, Jose. Not the way my ass felt
at that moment. It was stinging from the damp and the
nettles.

“
We’d better get back,”
Everly said suddenly. He rose and brushed the cotton and mud from
his robes, pulling out a few thorns before giving up.

I clambered to my feet since no one
was stepping forward to help me. I tried to be of some assistance.
“The back of your hair,” I explained as I plucked more tufts of
white from his dreads.

“
You cotton pickin’ white
people crack me up,” one of Everly’s bandmates said. His friends
roared in appreciation.

Funny guys. At least when they’re the
ones making the jokes.

I pulled the last of the bigger cotton
tufts from Everly’s hair. “Thanks,” I whispered into his
ear.

“
Just help Trey,” he
muttered as he turned to go. His voice broke as he said
it.

I intended to head out to Perry County
in search of Tonya Blackburn’s trailer first thing Monday morning,
but I made the mistake of stopping by my office in Raleigh first,
primarily to make sure Bobby D. had at least shifted his weight to
an alternate buttock over the weekend and not mummified into a
mountain.

What a surprise. Not only was Bobby
eating a breakfast burrito, he was doing it in front of a horrified
audience of one: an immaculately dressed black woman who was so
engrossed in watching bits of scrambled egg and black bean sauce
dribble down Bobby D.’s front that she did not even look up when I
walked in.

“
Casey!” Bobby bellowed
enthusiastically, spraying his desk with bits of black bean.
“You’ve got a visitor.” Cash register signs practically danced in
his eyes. If she was a new client, he had a percentage cut on the
way.

I didn’t think he should count this
particular chicken just yet. Watching Bobby D. eat had turned the
woman green, which is quite a feat since she had started out as
deep brown.

I didn’t recognize her. She looked
like she could run a Fortune 100 Company. Her blue business suit
was silk and why it wasn’t wrinkled was beyond me. I can’t even put
on silk underwear without it looking like the back end of a
Shar-Pei puppy.

“
Alicia McCoy,” the woman
said, rising to her feet. She extended a hand. Her shake was
confident. “I’m Tonya Black-burn’s sister.”

“
Oh,” I said. Not the most
intelligent response, but I was startled: this was the sister of a
drug addict on her last legs?

“
Can we talk somewhere
privately?” she asked in a clipped voice. Bobby D. was noisily
slurping down his Pepsi and getting ready to dive into a second
breakfast burrito. His desk looked like a Rottweiler and a badger
had tussled on top of it, perhaps fighting over a bag of garbage
from a Mexican restaurant.

But that wasn't even the strangest
sight. As I stared, aghast, at the mess, I noticed a six-foot
fiberglass hot dog leaning against the wall behind Bobby. The end
of it had been painted with a smiling face like those creepy
cartoon wieners that dance across the movie screen begging you to
eat them.