Dirtbags (11 page)

Rhonda lowered her head. Just outside the office, the line cooks chattered away in Spanish about something they found beneath the grill.

“Sounds local to me,” she said. She pretended to write something on her clipboard. “Next item for business: uniforms.”

He let her natter on a bit, but in the end, little mattered. He saw the value in stroking management. Their need to make a difference pestered him, sure, but he fancied it a small price for the shit pay he offered. Let their efficacy run its course, and when the day came that it made fiscal sense to substitute an extra fifteen grand in salary to allow his managers to abandon all initiative and do what they were told, then he would pay it. The day beckoned, but it was still far from nigh.

First, he needed a lake house.

His new wife, Reyna, could be a handful. London swore she didn’t bother to look at something that wasn’t in the upper ten percent of the going market. She was precisely the audience London figured fussed with things like Rhonda’s local tomatoes. If she lived in a house, she eyeballed a more expensive house. Her car would never do, but rather the latest car. He should have realized that first night they had sex that, while bent over table thirty-five and in handcuffs, her saying, “You can do whatever you want to me, just do it, just do it,” that he would never be able to keep up with her, so why bother trying?

So the new house, the new car, the new tits, and now . . . a lake house. Two weeks out of the year in some country or another wouldn’t do it for Reyna London; she needed residence on the road. Her own hotel. Instant vacation, at her beck and call. London feared an increase in lobster prices might banish him to sleeping on the couch, for lack of a lake house.

London's cell phone rang and interrupted Rhonda’s blather about uniforms. It was Reyna. The first bit indecipherable, but she found her footing, and he quickly got the gist of it.

“Jason got sent home from school today,” Reyna said through the phone.

“What the hell?”

“He got in a fight with the other kids,” she said. “They’re giving him a hard time, saying he has two mommies.”

“It’s a Catholic school,” London grumbled. “Half the kids have two mommies.”

“I’m about to hang up,” Reyna said, then followed it with something London couldn’t understand. He wanted to ask her to please repeat it, but she’d moved on and figured so should he. “The point is,” she continued, “you should sit him down and have a talk. He only has one mommy, and I need him to understand that.”

“He understands,” London said.

“I don’t think he does,” Reyna said. “I see the way he looks at me.”

“It’s all your imagination,” he said. He smiled politely at his manager, then stepped outside the office. Free from the prep room and out near the hallway supporting the bathrooms, he thought himself safe. “Don’t you worry about a thing.”

“I’m worried just fine without your permission,” she said.

“He knows,” London said. “He knows you’re his only mommy now.”

“That’s just the problem,” she spat. “I ain’t his mommy. That junkie bitch in Dallas is his mommy, not me. I don’t want the credit or the blame for that kid. When he gets arrested for date rape or drugs or window peeping—and you know he will, have you seen the way he looks at me?—I don’t want to be on the hook for it. No, he was fucked when I got here, and I’m not taking the fall. He needs to be set straight. This whole damned town needs to be set straight.”

“Folks know good and well you and Jason ain’t related just by looking at you,” he said. “Besides, I’ve got quite a bit going on over here tonight. There was an accident.”

“Oh no, was somebody hurt?”

London shook his head. “Just a Mexican.”

“Thank goodness,” Reyna said. “Don’t forget you let the insurance lapse. I told you that you wouldn’t be finding a better deal. And don’t use this as an excuse not to go to the school tonight, Tom London. Do you hear me?”

“I wouldn’t dare—”

“And that dog!” Vitriol lost none of its charms over the cell phone. “I asked you to do something about that dog, and it’s still there.”

“Fritz?” London’s heart ached. “Jason loves Fritz. He’s had him since he was a baby.”

“I don’t care,” she said. “It’s depressing to see that thing lying around when I come home. It’s not going to get better. Take care of it now.”

London nodded. His shoulders slumped. He meant to say more, but Reyna hung up and went on about the million things she somehow managed to line up in a night. London couldn’t bear to get rid of his dog, but knew he would rather not reckon with Reyna.

London would never admit to anyone that he had horrible luck with women. Frankly, he believed the exact opposite. How could a man consider himself unlucky with females when he found so many of them? But the women in his life could be trouble. Not just Reyna, but his first wife, Corrina.

He’d said all there was to say about Corrina London. He figured he’d said it once and for all and hopefully for the last time. Last time being the week previous, after getting into the vodka following a long shift and sitting up at his restaurant’s bar while the waiters tidied up. Calvin, the manager’s husband, had come around, waiting for Rhonda to get off work. London, rarely in the mood for chitchat, needed an audience that evening and told the bartender to fix Calvin up with whatever he wanted, then grimaced when he pointed out the good stuff.

“You a bourbon drinker?” London asked.

“Sure,” Calvin said, “when someone else is buying.”

“Good man,” London grumbled. He shook his ice cubes. The bartender set about making him another.

“Busy night?” Calvin asked.

“Busy enough,” London answered. “You know, Lake Castor’s had a shit go of things over the past few years, what with the mill closing and them folks moving on. But I’m always amazed at the number of people who still like a good steak. Nobody would turn down a good steak, I don’t guess.”

“Ted Bundy did,” Calvin said.

“What?”

“Ted Bundy did.”

London brought the glass to his lips but did not drink. He looked at Calvin to see if he may have missed something. “That’s what I thought you said.”

“It’s true. He got sent to the electric chair in Florida for killing a bunch of sorority girls. Chi Omega. They offered him whatever he wanted for his last meal, and he said he didn’t want nothing. So you know what they do? They give him the standard: medium rare steak, eggs, toast, milk, coffee, juice . . . the works. I mean, I don’t get to eat like that, and I ain’t killed nobody. Imagine that: if you don’t give no never mind about what you eat for your last meal after killing a bunch of sorority girls, the state reckons it fine enough to send you out with steak and eggs. Ain’t that something?”

London stared at the guy, his drink hovering somewhere near his lips. The bartender chuckled to himself, then found something to do somewhere else.

“He didn’t eat it, though,” Calvin said.

“Beg pardon?”

“The steak. Bundy didn’t eat it. He just let it sit there and sure enough, later that night, they walked him down to the chair and put him out of his misery.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“You said nobody would turn down a good steak.” Calvin shrugged and finished his bourbon. “Ted Bundy did. He turned it down flat. But I reckon he was the exception rather than the rule. Or at least most folks like to think so.” He shook his ice cubes same as London had earlier. “You care if I get another of them bourbons?”

London figured why not and helped himself to another. He let the bartender go, seeing as how they were closed, and there wasn’t anybody but him and the husband left in the restaurant. That night had been a doozy in particular. Corrina wanted to see Jason again. This would be less of a problem if she lived across town or even in the same state. Notorious for being difficult, she decided rather to move to Dallas after they’d separated, and who was expected to foot the bill for their son’s travel? Who indeed? That’s right: the guy with the restaurant.

“You ever reckoned some folks are just as well off dead as they are alive?” London asked.

Calvin tugged at his earlobe and thought it over. All lights in the building were off except the ones over the bar and the ones way off in the back where his wife worked on closing paperwork, well out of earshot.

“Depends, I guess.”

“I mean, what if the person involved was a real shit? A waste of human sperm and eggs, and the world is a better place without them in? What then?”

Calvin slowly sipped at the bourbon. He didn’t take his eyes off the chef. “Some folks have it coming, I reckon.”

“Some folks do indeed.”

They were quiet a spell, and London feared he’d said too much. Sometimes the vodka touched him a bit melancholy, and Reyna told him more than once he was better off without it. He searched Calvin’s face for a tell, something revealing whether or not he would be calling the cops come first opportunity, but got nothing. The guy studied him back, equally as hard. London fetched the vodka bottle and poured himself another.

“My ex-wife left me,” London said. He touched Calvin’s glass with a bit of bourbon, then a bit more.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Calvin said. “That’s a shit situation when—”

“I’ve remarried.” London took his seat again. Outside, the train blew past, whistle screaming. It no longer stopped in Lake Castor, had no reason to. “Trust me, it was an upgrade. My last wife, she had problems. Drug problems.”

“That’s horrible. I’ve heard that—”

“She loved the pills more than she loved her own son. You see, we have a little boy. Six years old. And I guess she decided that she’d rather be screwed on a bunch of pills than take care of him. When I confronted her about it, she took off to Dallas. She ran off and just left me and Jason behind.”

Calvin nodded.

“I’m fine with that,” London said. “Go be a junkie. But now she wants Jason. She wants to take my son after five years of me raising him and running this restaurant and picking up the pieces of my family and putting them back together again.”

Calvin nodded again.

“You don’t get it because you ain’t got kids, but when you do, you’ll understand that my son is the most important thing in my life.” London drained the glass down his gullet. His drinks went quicker now. “And if somebody tries to mess with that . . . ”

“Man, I don’t know why someone don’t have her killed,” Calvin said.

“What did you say?”

“I mean, if she just overdosed or something, she’d be dead, and you could go on with your life, right?”

London couldn’t speak.

Calvin continued: “So, if somebody killed her, then they’d be doing you a favor, wouldn’t they?”

London stared at the bar stools where that conversation had taken place. There were gaps and some question marks, but he could piece together most of it. It could have all been chalked up to a drunken conversation had the fella not shown up at his house, apparently
as planned
, to finalize the details. And just like that, London arranged to knock off his ex-wife.

“Nothing can tie me to this,” London had said. “I’ll have an alibi, and nobody will put you on this, nobody will put me on you.” They’d shaken on it. But something still didn’t feel right. He fancied Rhonda a right, smart girl, but something didn’t add up when it came to her husband.

He found her at her computer, entering liquor sales. He stepped into the office and closed the door.

“We need to talk,” he said.

“Serious stuff or the other?” she asked.

“Serious.”

She pushed aside the keyboard and turned the swivel chair to face him. “Sounds serious.”

He searched for the words, spoke without finding them, as was his practice. “It’s about your husband.”

“Calvin?”

“Yes. I have to ask you something.”

She stood. She pushed the chair under the desk. He sat on the file cabinet, and she stood flush against him, her hands going first to his waist, then under his shirt and across his chest. She put her face to his, and just like that, he planted his mouth on as much of her as he could.

“I’m pretty sure he doesn’t suspect a thing,” she said.

10

Tom London couldn’t have appeared more surprised. Sheriff Lorne Axel held his hat in his hand and looked as sorry as he could be and said so more than once, but had no idea what made him sorrier: the fact that Tom’s ex-wife had been found dead or that Lorne had to truck himself clear over to Lake Castor from Tucker, where they all knew he would prefer to stay. London put a hand to his stomach and backed out of his own doorway, further into the house.

“I’m real sorry,” said Lorne. He fidgeted with the brim of his hat. “Tom, you mind if I step inside a minute? There’s something else I got to tell you.”

London stuttered and fumbled a bit, then opened the door wider for the sheriff. Lorne stepped into the house and looked about. Clean. Spotless, in fact. Freshly vacuumed. In a tight corner of the room, a German shepherd slept soundly on a red beanbag. It did not so much as lift its head.

“Reyna around?” the sheriff asked.

“She went out,” London said. “Work stuff.”

“She’s a real busy lady, that one. I don’t know how she has time to do all she does and still keep such a nice house.”

London nodded, but the sheriff knew he had more on his mind than housekeeping. They walked to the sofa and stood for an awkward moment before London absently invited him to sit.

“Maybe you should sit too, Tom.”

London did.

Lorne licked his lips. He had to be delicate. “You see Tom, Corrina was murdered.”

“Dear . . . ” London returned his hand to his stomach. Water welled in the corner of his eyes. “Murdered?”

“Yes.” Lorne had seen the crime scene photos. Folks in Dallas had them faxed over, and he wouldn’t have believed it otherwise. Trouble didn’t much happen in Lake Castor, but Lorne had an eye on the entire county and some corners drew more mayhem than others. A few years ago, some fellas in the methamphetamine trade moved in and caused a ruckus that left their fair share dead. Some Mexicans brought their brand of shit North with them until they were run out. But for the most part, Lorne didn’t have to see the type of shit he saw in those photos from Dallas. For that, he was grateful.