Ravens (31 page)

Wednesday night was the night of the jackpot drawing. Shaw McBride claimed that on Wednesday afternoon he was here in Brunswick,
giving Mitch the money to buy a jackpot ticket. But how could he have been, if he was still up in the mountains with his buddy
Zderko, running down that unfortunate animal?

Which meant either McBride or Zderko was lying. And Burris had a feeling which one.

He checked his watch. 5:15.

Was he making some mistake? Was he leaping into bone-headedness again?

He replayed the exchange.

His only mistake was in taking so long to see this.

Because now he had just a few hours left till the Chief heard about his meeting with McBride and fired him.

Though if he was lucky and evasive, maybe he could keep his job till noon.

And now here was something to take his mind off Nell. Could he take this bastard down before noon?

B
urris hit the seediest motels first. At the Blue Pelican there was no one in the office, but he stepped up to a little rat-colored
door behind it, and hammered with the side of his fist. Kept hammering till a voice shouted, “WHAT THE
FUCK
DO YOU WANT?”

Burris said, “Come out here.”

“Who’s that? Dawg? It’s the fucking middle of the night!”

“Roque. Come out here.”

Finally Roque appeared. Bloodshot eyes. Squashed apricot of a nose. “What’d they do this time?”

Burris showed Roque the license photo of Romeo Zderko. “You know this guy?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Look closely. If I find out you’re lying to me, I’ll knock both of your teeth out.”

“Wow, what is
with
you today, Dawg?”

“Last day on the job.”

“You retiring?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“We’ll miss you, Dawg.”

“Call me that one more time.”

“Whoo. I’m impressed, motherfucker.” Roque studied the photo. “Still, I never seen him.”

Burris judged that he was telling the truth. He moved on.

At the rathouse called Golden Isles Villas, it took the drunk behind the desk a while to focus on Zderko’s mugshot. But just
by the way he shook his head, clearly not giving any kind of a shit, Burris concluded he wasn’t lying either.

Blackbeard’s Motel had a camera above the reception desk, so Burris made the clerk step outside before warning her, “Becky,
you lie to me about this one, I’ll confiscate your whole drugstore — you understand me?”

“Oh, stop it, Burris. Just show me your mugshot.”

He did. She said, “Oh yeah, I seen this character. Last week.”

“When last week?”

They went back in and she checked her registration book. Found it right away: “Romeo… Zydeco? Is that how you say that?” She
turned the book so he could look at it. It was for Thursday night.

“You remember him?” Burris asked.

“Sort of. Kind of a nothing little fucker. With some other guy. They checked in kinda early.”

“On Thursday?”

“That’s what it says. Can you read?”

“Seen him since?”

“Once. Like the next day or so. He came in asking about the missionaries.”

“Who are the missionaries?”

“These two girls. They was staying here. But they left.”

“Why do you call them missionaries?”

“That’s what they was. From Missouri.”

“Where’d they go?”

“Dunno. They still around though. I heard they ain’t missionaries no more. I heard one of ’em’s stripping.”

“Where?”

Becky shrugged. “That I didn’t hear. But you know, it’s not endless fucking choices either.”

Romeo,
first thing in the morning, called Pirate Pete’s Swap Show and described the Tercel, and said he would sell it for six hundred
dollars.

Soon he got a call from a cracker with a mouth full of stones. It sounded like the guy was saying, “Beat me in the gutter,
tie your shoe?”

“What?”

“Meet me at the Goodyear Tire store?”

Romeo drove there. The guy was goateed and had a puffy white head of hair, and wore a Monster Truck Showdown T-shirt. He also
wore heavy shades so you couldn’t tell where you stood as far as bargaining. Not that it mattered to Romeo — he didn’t want
to sell the Tercel anyway. He was just doing this because Shaw had told him to.

They drove around the block a few times and the guy seemed to like the car OK. But he asked, “Does it got any problems?”

“Pulls to the left, I guess.”

“What do you mean, I guess?”

“It won’t pull if you don’t go fast. I don’t go fast.”

“Why does it pull?”

“Alignment. I guess. I ran something over and maybe that screwed up the alignment.”

“I gotta pay for a fucking realignment?”

“No, not really,” said Romeo. “You don’t have to pay for anything. You don’t have to do shit.”

“I’ll give you three hundred.”

“OK.”

“You caught the turtle?”

“What?

“You got the title?”

Of course Romeo didn’t have the title, but they went over to the DMV where they were told that the Tercel was old enough that
Romeo could just sign over the registration. So he did that, and took the money, and the guy gave him a lift to Tung’s Auto
on Norwich Street. When the Tercel drove away, Romeo was heart-stricken. In his life, he’d never owned another car. The Tercel
was not a glamour car. It was about as exciting as doing your taxes. But he’d owned it for years and it had never given him
any trouble; it had served him faithfully and in return he’d changed the oil and cleaned the points and plugs regularly, and
he’d always been, quietly, proud of it. He was still feeling mournful when one of Tung’s salesmen came out to see what he
was doing standing there in their lot. Somehow he let the guy talk him into buying, for only seven hundred dollars, an old
Chevy Bel Air, baby’ s-breath blue. A huge car, an aircraft carrier. The kind of car his grandfather used to drive (Romeo
remembered him tooling around Dayton, whistling at the girls, looking like a maniacal leprechaun in his fedora and Ban-lon
shirt). It was an impulse buy, this Bel Air, and Romeo regretted it the moment he pulled out of the lot.

Shaw
sat at one of the wooden picnic tables, disposing of business details with Trevor and a guy named Charlie Cope. Cope was
a librarian from Texas whom Shaw had appointed church quartermaster. Cope was running through their options regarding portable
toilets. It was already impossibly hot, and Shaw was hardly able to keep his eyes open.

Said Cope, “Danny’s Flushes out of Savannah will rent us a full twelve-unit suite for sixty a week per unit. That’s eight
toilets, which we’ll split two male, four female, two disability; plus four wash stations, plus cartage, which I’ve been quoted
at about two hundred, but if we go with Clean Machine there’s no cartage but the unit cost is somewhat higher …”

Shaw nudged Mitch and murmured, “The mighty work of the Lord.” Mitch grinned.

No sooner were they finished with Cope than they had to deal with Mrs. Riley. She said, “Patsy says we’re cooking barbecue
today, and she says we gotta have pork. But it’s in Leviticus, Shaw. Pork is swine and swine is unclean and you shouldn’t
even
touch
the carcass …”

And on and on. But Shaw had ceased to listen; he was following the progress of a sleek car that was coming up the long drive
to the big cabin. Something European — a Lamborghini? A true Lamborghini in all its splendor? As he watched this car, he cut
Mrs. Riley short. “Do what Patsy says. Patsy is a humble servant of the Lord and we should heed her counsel …”

The car stopped and Henry Lonsdale, the financial guy, got out. He gave a quick sidelong look to the crowd of pilgrims. If
it was a disapproving look you wouldn’t have known it: he was too elegant to give himself away like that. He strolled up to
the picnic table and smiled just a little. He wasn’t so crude as to announce that sixty-two million dollars had just landed
in Shaw’s bank account. He just said softly, “Mr. McBride. You ready to go fishing?”

Burris
went to check out the “VIP” Lounge just after noon. The sun was in high broiling ascendancy, but inside it was midnight dark
and cool. A handful of “VIPs” sat there. Pale, doughy, their waists blown, their earhairs corkscrewing out, each a private
huddle unto himself. Burris took a seat at the bar, as far from the little stage as he could get. Making his own huddle, and
averting his eyes from the dancing.

The bartender, Holly Ann, a stone dyke who’d worked there for twenty years, said, “Sup, Burris?”

“Not much, Holly Ann. Club soda?”

They knew each other from his unfortunate stint at the Coastal Area Drug Abuse Task Force. Burris had organized a big raid,
and she was among those arrested. As usual his reach had exceeded his grasp: the club had a smart lawyer and she’d walked.
In fact everybody had walked. The whole thing was a fiasco. And since then, whenever he’d been summoned to the “VIP” Lounge
for one disturbance or another, she’d treated him with a kind of mocking disdain. She did bring him his soda. But wordlessly,
and then she started to move away. He stopped her: “Holly Ann.”

“What?”

“You got any new girls working for you?”

“Depends what
new
means.”

“I mean like this week. Like she was a missionary before?”

“Missionary? Here?”

“There’s a guy we’re looking for. She might know him.”

“Burris, what you up to? Give some girl a hard time?”

“Uh-uh. Just talk, I swear. It’s not about her.”

She sniffed. She left him there.

So as not to be watching the show, he studied the stains in the carpet.

After a minute Holly Ann returned with one of the girls. “Frankie this is Burris. Burris is a cop. Don’t touch him, don’t
dance for him, don’t do
anything
for him except answer his questions. Then make him go away.”

The girl nodded. Holly Ann left them alone.

Burris said, “Frankie’s your real name?”

“Yeah.”

“You have any other real names?”

“Tess.”

He instantly liked her. Her brow, big and bony, gave her a kind of petting-zoo vulnerability. He wished he could save her
from this life. He said, “Were you really a missionary?”

“Yeah.”

“What happened?”

“Church kinda folded.”

“So you came here?”

She shrugged.

“Seems to me, between spreading the gospel and exotic dancing, there’s a lot of room. Can’t you work somewhere else?”

“Like where?”

“I don’t know. Wal-Mart?”

“
Wal-Mart
? Jesus. This sucks but not that bad.”

He felt stupid for having brought it up.

He produced the photo of Romeo. “You know this guy?”

She didn’t say yes or no.

“Tess. Please. I know he’s a nice guy. But right now he’s in over his head on something. I just want to help him.”

Tess kneaded her big brow with her fingertips, and Burris sipped his soda, and waited.

Finally she said, “OK. He was at Blackbeard’s Motel. I was staying there.”

“How long was he there?”

“Just a few hours. They didn’t even stay the night.”

“They?”

“Him and his friend.”

“You talk to them?”

“Yeah. Mostly Romeo. I liked him.”

“Did he seem dangerous to you?”

She smiled. “No.”

“You see him again?”

“Once. Like Saturday night. He came in here.”

“What’d he say?”

“Nothing. A friend of his had died. Some guy lived in a trailer. Out on that road with the Bible name. Palm of something?”

“Balm-of-Gilead?”

“Yeah.”

He thanked Tess for her help and left a big tip for Holly Ann, and went out into the blazing day.

Back in the cruiser, he got the call he’d been waiting for. Rose Whittle on the radio, saying, “Burris? Come on in. Chief
needs to talk to you. In his office.”

Hell with that, he thought.
Hell
with that preening rooster. Come in when I’m damn well ready to.

Jase
thought it was awesome when he caught his first redfish. Shaw had set him up with a quarter-ounce jighead tipped with a minnow,
and he got a strike in less than ten minutes. First on the boat to score. Way sooner than Tara. It wasn’t big enough to keep,
but right away there came another tug, and this one was a fighter. Shaw showed him how to handle it. Jase let out some line
and the fish swam off the oyster bar and out toward the ocean. He let out some more and the fish jumped. Red with silver pouring
off it.

Jase could feel the presence of Shaw next to him. And the whole family watching and envying him. Today he wasn’t the kid who
melted into the woodwork; today he was the
star
.

“What do I do?” he cried. “Shaw, what do I do?”

“You’re OK,” said Shaw. “Reel him in a little.”

“I can’t!”

“Yeah you can. Come on, get his nose up. He wants you to. He wants you to show him your power.”

Jase pulled as hard as could. The rod bowed and quivered. He pulled till his arms were about finished — and then he felt the
line slacken a bit.