JJ08 - Blood Money (9 page)

She
shrugged.
“Some.”

“Will you really think about what we’ve talked about?” I said. “Can we talk about it some more soon? Can we do that? Will you wait? Not do anything until we’ve talked it through some more?
It’s
your decision, and I
won’t
. . . I
won’t
try
to stop you once
you’ve
made it, but I
don’t
want you making it alone or being alone or with a stranger if you decide to do
it.”

Tears
began to stream down her cheeks as she nodded. “Promise.”

She smiled, her moist cheeks gleaming in the midday light coming in the window beside her bed.

We
had such a complicated relationship. She had never done a lot of parenting. Self-centeredness,
vanity,
addiction
weren’t
qualities that lent themselves to motherhood. As an adult, I had been more of a parent to her than she had been to me, but she was the only mother I would ever
have
and I
didn’t
want her to die,
didn’t
want to lose her one second before I had
to.
But far more than that, I
didn’t
want her to miss out on the truly transformative experiences being offered to
her.
Not
now.
Not when she had so little time left.

I
ran into Melanie Sagal at the Dollar Store on my
way
home from
work.

Anna had asked me to stop
by
and pick up a few things and I was glad she did.

A dark-complected girl in her late teens with dark, straight, stringy hair, a trim but curvy
body,
and extremely straight, extremely white teeth, Melanie—one of the girls at
Potter
Farm last night—was striking from a few feet
away.
Up close, a certain hardness, twitchiness, and insecurity undermined her attractiveness.

“I just want you to know I
ain’t
no
hooker,”
she said. “I got
two
kids and not a lot of options, you know? But I
ain’t
for sale. I’m raising both of ’em on my own without a lick of child support from either of their
sorry
ass daddies and I do what I
have
to to take care of ’em. What mom worth anything
wouldn’t,
right? But God knows my heart and knows I
ain’t
no
hooker.”

I nodded.

She was wearing very short cutoffs that showed off her long, smooth, shapely legs, sandals that showed off sexy but uncared for feet, and a tight white spaghetti strap tank top camisole with no bra beneath that showed off both the curve of her breasts and her dark nipples.

Though it was September she was dressed for full-on
July.
In her defense,
there’s
not as much difference between July and September in Florida as other
places.

“I know
you’re
not,”
I said. “Really?”

“Of course.”

“You’re
not just
sayin’
that?”

“I’m
not.”

“Good.”

From where we stood at the front edge of the building, I could see the steady flow of people entering and exiting. Small-town folk, like me, who
didn’t have
a lot of shopping options.
Poor
people, like me, with little or no discretionary income. Here to buy the basics and not
much
besides.

The Panhandle was largely an impoverished place. Particularly the small towns like Pottersville. There were the working poor like me. People who
didn’t
subsist in poverty but did
live
from paycheck to paycheck with debt and virtually no disposable income. Then there were the extreme poor who
wouldn’t
be able to eat were it not for food stamps,
would
be unable to survive were it not for assistance, people who had no discretionary anything, only desperation.

The immorality of income inequality in our country was as devastating as it was dangerous. The vanishing middle class meant there were mostly extremes now
—
high-end department stores for the wealthy and Dollar Stores for the rest of
us.
Both were booming while most everything in between was struggling. There were no
exclusive
or expensive shops or boutiques in Pottersville, but that
didn’t
mean we lacked
variety.
There were three different Dollar Stores.

Of all my friends,
family,
and neighbors, none were struggling to survive because of laziness or lack of effort. The seemingly random and capricious nature of their
struggle
was due to lack of opportunity––that, and the greed of those pulling the levers of the great machine, who decided to keep such an obscene amount for themselves.

“So tell me about last
night,”
I said.

“Creepy ol’
Ronald
Potter
hired me and Carla
Jean
to come out and help host his
party.
Well,
the party after the main
party.
Girls
aren’t
allowed at that.”

“Never
have
understood that,” I said.

“Me either.
Anyway,
I’ve done this before . . . and it was good money and
there’s
not much to it. Just sort of hang out and entertain the troops, so to speak. But
here’s
the thing, and this is what it all comes down to for me and why I even considered doing it—we
don’t
have
to do anything we
don’t
want
to.”

I nodded. “Such as?”

“The
way
he puts it is he pays us to be there.
That’s
all. What we do while
we’re
there is up to
us.
Now,
don’t
get me wrong, we want everyone to
have
a good time so we’ll get tipped and be invited back to the next
one.”

“So what kind of stuff do you do?”

“Bring ’em drinks. Dance with ’em. Show ’em our
tits.
Fool
around if we want to––but only if we want
to.
And remember these are mostly old geezers.
Doesn’t
take much. Oh, they talk big, but most of ’em
can’t
do much of nothin’. Plus which they’re all drinkin’ so
much.”

I thought carefully how to
word
my next question. “What sorts of things do they ask for?” I said. “In the back rooms?”

“Anything
their wives
won’t do,”
she said. “Or
don’t
do a lot. I’m not
sayin’
we do them.
You
asked what they ask
for.”

I nodded.

Because of how quickly I had to get ready this morning, I was dressed more casually than usual, and I
wasn’t
wearing a clerical collar, for which I was grateful.

“Felix’s
wife
won’t
go
down on him and he loves gettin’
head,”
she said.

She seemed to be warming to our conversation
—
something I wanted to encourage.

“What guy doesn’t?” I said.

“I
know,
right? Some guys are happy to get
anything.

I feel funny talkin’ to you about
this.”

“Please
don’t,”
I said. “I’m a man. I get it. And I’m not a
cop.”

“Cops are the
worst,”
she said. “They expect you to do what they say and they’re not nice about it. And
they’re
usually rough.”

“Jake?” I asked.

“He’s
not bad.
Really.
That other one
was.
Andrew Sullivan.
Guy’s
a prick. Put his hands around my mouth and neck and tried to make me
swallow.
I pretended like I did then spit it in his face. I
woulda
caught a bad beating for that but
Jake
stepped in and saved
me.”

“He been violent with you before?” I asked. “When he
drinks.”

“He was drinkin’ last night?” She nodded. “Big
time.”

I knew he was on duty because he was at the prison crime scene. I guess I never got close enough to smell it on him.

Across Main Street, at the drive-thru liquor store, an elderly man on a rusting, once green riding lawn mower pulled up to the
window,
cut the motor, and placed his
order.

“Your
dad, Judge Cox, and
Mr.
Hugh Glenn are always perfect gentlemen,” she said.
“Your
dad has never asked for
anything.
Judge either, except for one time when he had too much to drink and he
begged
me for anal before he puked and past out.
Mr.
Hugh . .
.”

“What?”

“I
can’t
say
it.”

“Sure you can.
You
can say
anything.
It’s
all important and it helps
me.”

“I
can’t
see how this will help . . . but he just likes to sniff me while he . . . you know . . . touches himself.

They’re all good men. I’m glad they’re our leaders. I think your
dad’s
a good sheriff, but I think
Mr.
Hugh
would
make a good one
too.”

I nodded.

Balancing the suitcase of beer on the hood of his mower with one hand while steering the small back wheel with his other, the elderly man
drove
away,
turning right on Second Street and disappearing behind the empty building that had once been a
NAPA
Auto Parts store.

“Ralph Long talks a lot, flirts, but never does
anything.
I think
he’s
gay.”

“
Pretty sure he
is,”
I said.

She looked around us then leaned in and lowered her
voice.
“The
worst
son of a bitch I’ve ever
run
across is Don Stockton.”

I nodded.

“And
it was just you and Carla Jean? I asked.
“Yep.”

“Not the third
woman,
the blonde, that––”

“Have no idea who she
was.
Wasn’t
with
us.”

“
Did you talk to her?”

She shook her head. “I think Carla
Jean
did. Hell, sounded like she let her in the house, but I never laid eyes on
her.
I’d
talk to
Ronald
Potter.
If he
didn’t
hire her she may’ve just been crashin’. Whatever she was doing . . . it got her killed,
didn’t
it?”

“It did.”

“So
scary.”
I nodded.

“That could’ve been
me.”

“
I’m glad it
wasn’t.”

Her face softened and she smiled and turned her head. “Thank you.
That’s
a sweet thing to
say.”

We
were quiet a moment, then I said, “Did anyone leave for a while and come back? Did anything out of the ordinary happen? Anything suspicious or strange?”

“Seemed like everybody was comin’ and goin’ but I
can’t
be too sure. I
don’t
remember a lot. I think somebody
drugged
me.”

“Y
ou
didn’t
tell me Chris was such an ass to you last
night,”
Anna said.

“Told
you I saw
him.”

She smiled. “Good point.”

“Assumed
you’d
guess the
rest,”
I said.

“I should
have.
How could I
have
been married to
him?”

We
were sitting on the small back porch of my—now
our
trailer—watching the
river
swirl its
way
toward the
bay,
the soft glow of the setting sun gently tinging everything gold, purple, and pumpkin.

Evening was palpably present in everything, the
air,
the quiet, the cool and calm.

“Tell
me about your
day,”
I said.

“Very,
very
ordinary.
Missing you was the best and worst of it.
Tell
me about
yours.”

I did.

“So
you’re
working on a murder where the victim is unknown and the body is stolen, an attempted suicide that might actually be attempted murder, a mother contemplating cutting short the little time she has left, and a warden
who’s
gonna fire you for being with me?”

“You
left out the only thing that
matters.”

“What’s
that?” she said.

“I get to come home to
you.”

“You
do,
you dear, sweet man, but are you sure
you
want me? I––”

“Never more certain of anything in my
life.”

“Even with a baby on board, a psycho ex in
tow,
and the sin factor that could cost you your job?”

“I’ve waited my whole life for
you.”