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Authors: Brian Panowich

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BOOK: Bull Mountain
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Marion had nothing. The gig was up. She knew it. Cutter sat back down and picked up his paper as if
his problem child, Marion, ceased to exist. A few minutes later, wrapped in a black sarong and matching flip-flops, Marion was at the back door. She pushed the silver metal bar across it that said
FIRE EXIT ONLY
in faded red letters. The alarm hadn’t worked in years, and the metal door swung open with ease. She stood in the gravel parking lot out behind the club and lit a cigarette. Only four
left in the pack. At least she was in a comfortable pair of shoes. That thought made her smile. She knew it was the remaining drizzle of speed in her brain making her look at the bright side, but it wasn’t going to last. Nothing good lasted.

She tossed the butt onto the gravel, crossed the lot, and looked into the back window of the beat-to-shit Bonneville that Barb and Tim had given her,
to see her seven-year-old son curled up and sleeping under a pile of her clothes. He’d ripped open the trash bags of stuff in the backseat to make himself a comfortable place to sleep. Marion thought he looked like an angel—a homeless angel. What was that she’d thought about nothing good lasting? Simon was good. He would last. She watched him like that for a moment more, when a second pair of eyes
appeared next to her in the window’s reflection.

“Where you going, girlie?” Louis grabbed her shoulder and spun her around hard enough for the bones in her neck to crack, then shoved her up against the back quarter panel of the car.

“Goddamn, Louis. Take it easy.”

“I take it however I can get it,” he said, and squeezed her shoulder harder. “I know you ain’t looking to roll out early
without saying good-bye.”

“It ain’t like that.”

“Well, then, tell me what’s it like? Because I can tell you what it looks like to me. It looks like you’re trying to skate on the two bills you owe me, and I told you I always get paid.”

“And I told you I’d pay you on Friday.”

“Oh, yeah? How you gonna pay me with no job?”

“That’s my business, now get your fucking hands off me.”

“Bitch, who you think you’re talking to?” Louis delivered a haymaker to Marion’s soft belly that folded her in half. Louis stepped aside and she immediately fell to the gravel. While she gasped for air on her knees, he snatched her purse off her shoulder and dumped it out on the ground beside her. He shuffled through the makeup, bits of paper, car keys, and loose change, and found the folded
wad of bills wrapped in a pink hair tie. All ones and fives.

“This ain’t gonna cut it,” he said. He stuffed the money into his pocket and lifted Marion to her feet. She tried to speak but could only cough and wheeze for air. “I guess we gonna have to come to some other kind of arrangement.” He spun Marion around backward and shoved her up against the hood of a Dodge pickup. She tried to fight
him while still trying to breathe, but Louis twisted her arm back and behind her, pressing her face down on the truck while he went to work on the sarong. Behind them, at the back door of the club, Todd laid the bag of chicken wings he’d promised Marion on the ground and quietly slipped back inside.

“I told you I could make this all romantic-like,” Louis said, after he tossed the sarong and
the ripped thong to the ground, “but I think this is the way you wanted it, ain’t it, girl? You like this rough shit, don’t you?”

Marion was only able to grunt out three words in a croaked whisper. “Don’t . . . do . . . this . . .” She tried to slide out of his grip, but he pulled up on her arm to the point she thought it might snap.

“Yeah, girl, swing it for me,” Louis said, unzipping
his fly.

Marion didn’t see the beer bottle hit Louis in the back of the head, but she heard the hollow thud of impact and watched it bounce to the ground beside her. “Owwww. Shit!” Louis let go of her arm, and she slid to the ground, landing hard in the gravel.

The boy stood about ten feet away with another empty bottle in his hand. Louis was still seeing stars when the kid slung the second
bottle like a Major League pitcher. His aim was a little wide and he missed the man standing over his mama, but he hit the side of the truck, and the bottle shattered like a bomb. Shards of busted brown glass went flying and both Louis and Marion covered their faces. “Get away from my mama,” the boy yelled, and balled his tiny fists up and raised them like a boxer.

“Well, look at this little
fucker,” Louis said, rubbing the growing welt on his shaved head. “Shorty here want to play like a man. Come here, shorty. You can watch what a real man does to a whore that don’t pay what she owe.” The kid was only sixty pounds if that, and tiny even for a seven-year-old, but he stood his ground and dug in, even when Louis produced a knife that caught every bit of the light from the streetlamp.
Marion started to stand and rush him but was barely on her knees when the back door of the club busted open and Big Moose, the club’s bouncer, a three-hundred-pound bruiser with jowls like a bullmastiff’s, walked out into the lot. Todd followed behind him, and last, Cutter himself, toting a pump-action shotgun.

“What in seven hells is going on out here?” Cutter hollered across the lot. Louis
slipped the blade back into his pants and made his hands easy for Cutter to see. “This bitch owes me money, man.”

“Well, I don’t. So get the fuck off my property.”

Louis knew better than to shit where he ate, so he didn’t even bother to argue. “Happily, Cutter, happily.” He smiled at the little boy, who was still holding his fists high, then sneered at Marion. “Our date night is still
on the books, girlie. I’ll be seeing you.” With that, he slunk in between a row of cars and disappeared. With the threat gone, the boy flew to his mother and almost knocked her over again. His scrawny legs locked on her, scraping off flecks of gravel and rock that stuck to her bare legs and ass. Cutter yelled something else, something about not showing her ugly face around his joint again, but all
she heard was Simon sobbing in her ear.

“I’m sorry, Mommy.”

“Don’t be sorry, baby. Don’t you
ever
be sorry. It’s going to be okay. I promise. We’re going to be okay.”

CHAPTER

18

S
IMON
H
OLLY

2012

Officer Holly stood in front of the hospital’s vending machine with his phone pressed to his ear and a torn sheet of notebook paper tucked under his arm. He hadn’t slept in more than twenty-four
hours and needed some caffeine. As the phone rang, he fished a dollar bill out of his pants pocket and smoothed it out. He inserted the money into the machine and pressed the Diet Coke button. Nothing happened.

The phone stopped ringing and a gruff voice answered. “Montgomery.”

Holly switched the phone to his other ear. “Yeah, hi, Agent Montgomery. My name is Simon Holly. I’m a police
officer here in Mobile. We met on the Fisher case. The one with—”

“I know who you are, son. That was some fine police work you did down there.”

“Thank you, sir. I couldn’t have done it without the help I received from your office.”

“Glad we could help. What can I do for you, Officer?”

Holly pulled the folded sheet of notebook paper out from under his arm and flipped it open. He
also kicked the vending machine that had just taken his money. Nothing happened.

“I was hoping I could give you a name to run by your people over there. I’m working on something and I’m having a little trouble getting what I need.”

“Why are you calling me? Don’t you have access to the databases at your department?”

“Well, I should, but after that whole Fisher affair, I’m not exactly
the most popular person around here, if you get my meaning.”

“The big boys don’t like you rookies solving their high-profile cases?”

“Exactly, sir.”

“Well, fuck ’em, son. If you’re on a case, you shouldn’t be cut off from resources. Who’s in charge down there?”

“That’s kinda it, sir. This isn’t a case. It’s personal.”

“I see.”

The line was silent for a moment and Holly
kicked the vending machine again. Nothing happened. A male nurse who looked more like a security guard in scrubs looked over and tilted his head.

“Well, what have you got?” Montgomery said.

“One name. Pepé Ramirez.”

“Spell that for me, son,” Montgomery said.

The big nurse approached Holly and surprised him when he put a hand on his shoulder. “Excuse me, sir?”

Holly turned his
back to him, ignoring him, and spelled out the name for Montgomery. “He’s a low-rent pimp, this Ramirez,” he said, “a gangbanger out of Jacksonville, Florida. I just need to take a look at his file. He’d be older. Most likely in his sixties, if he’s even still alive. That should help you narrow it down if more than one pops up.”

The nurse walked around to face Holly again. “Excuse me, sir,”
he repeated with a little more urgency. Holly covered the mouthpiece of the phone. “Fuck off, buddy. It’s just a Coke machine.” The nurse looked at the machine and raised his eyebrows. Holly turned away from him again.

“I’ll see what I can do, Holly,” Montgomery said. “Give me a good number to call you back at.” Holly did.

The nurse walked around to face Holly for a third time. “Mr. Holly,”
he said.

“What?” Holly said, covering up the phone again.

“It’s time,” the nurse said.

“Time for what?”

“It’s time,” the nurse repeated, but softer and more compassionate. “We’ve been trying to find you. Didn’t you hear the page?”

Holly hung up the phone.

Within seconds, he was back in the terminal wing, where his mother was being monitored. He knew before he stepped into
the room that he was too late. Doctors and medical staff were crowded around her bed and the beeps and buzzing that had filled his head for the past twenty-four hours from all of the various monitoring equipment was painfully silent. When they noticed him in the doorway, the staff backed away and made room for him to enter. His feet were made of lead, each step heavier than the next. A doctor’s
hand was on his shoulder. The sympathetic stares were squeezing the air from his lungs.

“She’s gone, son,” the doctor said.

“I . . . I was using the phone . . .” Holly said, unable to think of anything else to say. The doctor cleared the room and Holly sat on the edge of his mother’s bed. He took her hand and held it to his face. The coolness in her fingers pushed the reality of what had
just happened straight through his chest and he started to cry. He cried in loud sobs—a boy’s sobs. He ran his hand down her face and let his fingers explore the scar that crossed it. She never let him touch it. She always pulled away, ashamed of it. He thought it was beautiful. He thought everything about her was beautiful. Even more so now that the sadness was gone, as if it had evaporated along
with her breath. He laid his head on her chest and closed his eyes. He stayed like that for minutes or hours. It could have been either.

Another hand was on his shoulder. “I’m so sorry for your loss,” a voice said behind him. Holly lifted his head but didn’t look at the hospital’s pastor, who was there to console him. He looked at the black-and-white composition notebooks scattered all over
the floor and stacked on the chair beside his mother’s bed. He’d brought them here from the apartment he’d set her up in, to read while she faded away. Until today, he hadn’t even known his mother kept a journal. Until today, he didn’t know a lot of things. He didn’t know hepatitis C caused liver cancer. Or that it could kill you this fast. He didn’t know his mother had been keeping it from him.
She must have started writing these journals when she got sick. It read like a Greek tragedy. Every horrible thing she went through, and not one word of regret about having Simon. Even when they had to sleep in abandoned cars, or had no food for days. It all started in Jacksonville, with this Pepé, and the night she was cut. From the top of one of the journals he hadn’t read yet, he saw the tip of
a photograph being used for a bookmark. He sat up and willed himself to stand.

“If now isn’t a good time, Mr. Holly,” the pastor said, backing up and giving Holly room to move. “Or if my being here is making you uncomfortable, I can go. Maybe I can come back later.”

“Officer,” Holly said.

“I’m sorry?” the elderly pastor said, clutching a leather-bound Bible to his chest.

“It’s
Officer Holly.” Holly picked up the picture, sliding it out from between the pages of the notebook.

“Of course,” the pastor said.

Holly looked at the photo of his mother and him at the Mobile county fair when he was a boy. He remembered having to sleep in the woods that night, and how she’d held him to her warm chest to keep him from shivering. He couldn’t stop the fresh tears from spilling
over his raw cheeks. He sat back down on the bed next to his mother.

“If you decide you need someone to talk to about Marion’s passing,” the pastor said, “I am always available. My office is only four doors down on the left. I’ll leave my card for you here on the chair.” Holly didn’t answer, nor did he turn around. When the pastor had left, he laid the photo on his mother’s pillow and slipped
a bottle of her painkillers from the side table into his pocket. He did want to talk about Marion’s death, but not with this hospital-staff Bible-beater. He pulled the folded sheet of paper from his pocket and looked at the name he’d circled. He wanted to talk to someone else entirely.

BOOK: Bull Mountain
12.1Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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