The Outlaw Stinky Joe (Baer Creighton Book 4), page 15
Shirley opened the screen.
The door was mostly closed, but—Shirley observed the evidence. Black boot prints up by the knob. Wood splintered where the dead bolt entered the frame; a giant piece, long and skinny, dangled on the end of two screws still in the jamb but blasted inward.
Lester Toungate likely couldn’t get his foot that high, but the punk El Jay could.
Shirley’s neck tingled. She turned around, slow, and took in her surroundings. Looked for parked cars that shouldn’t be parked. People in windows. Cameras. She realized she had no idea what right looked like. She didn’t come out often enough, this way. When she went for groceries, she exited from the back side.
She eased open the door. Bent and leaned in. The place smelled normal, like an old office with metal file cabinets full of paper, and carpet that hadn’t been replaced in thirty years. A place where someone had smoked cigarettes for dozens of years, but not in the last few months.
The thing she expected to smell—dead Clyde—she didn’t.
Holding the door by the edge, Shirley stepped fully inside. She reached for the light switch, but stopped short.
Careful, in case Clyde was somewhere in the rest of the house, she moved to the side of the desk and then around behind, and stood by the chair. The desk was clean, save a few unopened letters. The computer was off. Keyboard grimy. Beside the computer, an Obama bobble head.
Shirley reached to a file cabinet and pulled the silver handle of the topmost drawer.
Locked.
Two more, also locked.
She stepped back to the door, and turned as if she’d just entered.
“CLYDE?”
She waited.
“CLY—IDE?”
She backed out of the office.
Something about Clyde ... everything about Clyde, made her skin crawl. She’d shared intimacies with him, anodyne, clinical, sex-performer intimacies, and he always emerged a riddle. Her expertise and career bonafides with men gave her the ability to intuit a man’s emotional connection and manipulate it.
Always in the man’s service, of course, to heighten his enjoyment.
But with Clyde, she’d always felt as if he was also a performer. Also manipulating people up and down their emotional bandwidths, not in the noble pursuit of enhancing their sexual gratification, but in the narcissistic chase to increase one of his own forms of satisfaction. After enough sex with Clyde, Shirley realized, he didn’t enjoy it. He was after something else. Some other button that needed pushed.
She soaked in the office. Whatever life force had animated it ... In her heart, deep behind a black wall forbidding entrance, where intuition illuminated facts as they became apparent, Shirley knew Clyde Munsinger was dead.
She backed out, and heard footstep on gravel; light, as if kittens were at play.
She turned.
That stripper girl was out for an afternoon run. That muscular little gazelle in pink leotards and a purple running jacket. Fuzzy mittens. Loved to do laps in the trailer park.
Bitch.
Shirley waited until the girl’s path on the gravel road brought her to perigee with the trailer court office.
“Hey!”
The girl jumped. Shuffled a few steps, and stopped, her face twisted with confusion.
“Hey, where the hell were you last night? I paid your damn rent!”
“What?”
“What’s your name? Ulyankee.”
“Ulyana.”
“Okay, Ulyana. Since Clyde’s been here, we’ve been on the same rotation. So what the hell?”
“I—”
“You know exactly what I’m saying. Don’t fake that Russian no hablo shit.”
“I paid rent with cash.”
“Oh.”
“What happened here?”
“Someone busted in the door.”
Ulyana frowned, distant.
“What do you know about it?”
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit.” Shirley smiled, big. “Ulyana, love, we girls ... You know it’s a different world for us, right? We have to use our heads. Tits, ass, and any other tool we find laying about. We have to work together. I know your hustle because I’ve played it longer than you. I know you pay rent the same as me, and last night, before Clyde came to my place he went to yours. I know he did. Just look at you. So level with me. I think something bad’s happened to Clyde, and if that’s the case, the people who did it to him are gonna come back for me, and when they don’t find what they want, they’ll wonder if Clyde gave it to some other girl. You get what I’m saying? We’re in the same boat.”
“Who you think you talk to? Me?” Ulyana backed away, moved her head up and down while eyeballing Shirley, toes to head and back. Smirking. “My hustle? You need protection, that’s your problem.”
“Who’s protecting you?”
Ulyana smiled.
“Toungate?”
Ulyana said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Well, if it’s Toungate, you better worry. Because they’re the ones who just turned my place inside out. And killed Clyde. So watch your dumb ass if you think a Toungate’s gonna protect you from a Toungate.”
“What do you mean?”
“Clyde has dirt on them. A computer drive that has all the evidence the government would need to put the whole Toungate clan behind bars forever. They want it. They thought I had it but I don’t. So they’re going to start looking other places. You’ve been screwing Clyde. They’ll come for you too.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, oh.”
“Paul. What does Paul have to do with it?”
“That’s your protection? Paul Toungate?”
Ulyana nodded, less certain.
“Paul couldn’t protect you from a wet paper bag if you was drowning.”
Ulyana wrinkled her brow.
“It’s an Americanism. You wouldn’t understand. Paul’s worthless.”
“You know Paul?”
“Don’t ask a hooker how she knows a man. He’ll turn on you to suit his daddy just as fast as his daddy says so. Your only hope is to work with me. You got to tell me what you know.”
“Paul was spying on Clyde last night. That’s why I couldn’t let Clyde in.”
“What do you mean? Spying how?”
“Paul was in my trailer watching Clyde at the office, and after I paid rent with cash, Clyde went to your place. Paul watched all that.”
“Inside my place?”
“No. No cameras or anything. He was just watching where Clyde was going.”
“And you think that makes you safe?”
Ulyana shrugged. “Shouldn’t I?”
“Not if the next time they come back I tell them I gave the computer drive to you.”
“Why?”
“‘Cause you’re a smirky frowny Russian. Babe.”
“Please—I don’t want trouble.”
“Well you better listen and do as I say. When I come up with a plan I’ma come get you.”
“That’s it? What do I do now?”
“Go to work. Take your clothes off and bend over. Same as anybody else.”
Shirley considered two possible ways of carrying on the revolution started by Betsy Peck.
First, give the information to the FBI. They had forensic accountants and other geniuses who could crack the code as easily as toe-sucker Lorell Higgins, CPA. She could pack an overnight bag, grab all her cash—about thirty thousand, accumulated over the last ten years she’d been focused on retirement. She’d have to duck out of the world completely.
But then Brass, his wife Clair and daughter Vanessa would also need to hide until the FBI arrested everyone.
Who knew how much time that would take?
And Brass—man-puss that he was—would never go for it. He wanted a career as a politician. “The optics!” he’d say, as if anyone was looking save the Toungates, who’d likely want to use him as leverage to get to her.
Brass would have to fend for himself. That day would someday come, anyway. She wasn’t going to live forever. But it didn’t sit right with her, running off while Brass faced danger of her creation, alone. Especially since she’d raised him to cook brownies instead of shoot guns.
Last, if she did leave, where would she go?
Vegas?
That was a whole ‘nother level of competition. She’d be starting without a book of clients, with nothing but discount rates and a touch of audacity in self-promotion, to get the business up and running. And she’d be putting herself on the shelf right next to those shaved clean all up and down, plastic tit teenybopper whores who, upon serious reflection, offered real value at any price.
Nah, move to Vegas, she’d be giving BJs at truck stops just to feed her ice cream habit.
Maybe Yuma, Arizona. There was a military base. Soldiers would pay to screw a wet towel.
If …
Thinking through the problem put a fire back in her heart.
Who the hell was Lester Toungate to make her get up and leave the business she’d spent years and years, literally the sweat off her back, to build?
In a just world, Lester Toungate would be pondering where to move his business, since he just messed with Shirley Lyle.
And that brought up the second option that came readily to mind.
She could give the information to the FBI. Drive some heat on Lester, make him careful about his motions, if he knew they were surveilling him. But the coup de grace would have to come from Shirley.
And Ulyana.
Between the two of them, there wasn’t a sexual angle they couldn’t exploit.
Except …
Shirley knew from experience with other men, Lester had reached the age where his worm didn’t fish. If it did, only with a half box of Viagra and a couple rubber bands.
She’d come at him sideways.
Besides, that punk El Jay was the one who tore her place upside down. Removed the batteries from her remote. He was young and his passions burned hot. With Ulyana’s help, she’d bring down the son.
House Toungate would crash on the old man too.
Chapter 32
Lester sat on a half rotted pine log that a bear had clawed for grubs. He removed his pack to allow his shoulders a moment to work back to normal.
Nice thing about being in the woods—you’re among the like-minded.
Predators.
You ever watch a video on PBS showing a big animal going after a meal—that’s the way you do it. No pissing and moaning. Oh, they might parry a bit until the stronger finds his angle, but after that, pure attack. Wolves, cats, grizzly, whatever. They don’t prance around. They get about the business of killing because in their estimation, killing is good. It fills their bellies. It holds their territory. Secures mates.
Killing is good for everything that matters.
It’s only when you insert the modern morality that things get twisted. Hell, the Romans put their boots on the necks of entire populations. Anything with the nerve to fight back, they cut off its head. Survivors were put in chains and sold. Anybody left—they paid taxes.
In that day, followers revered the strongman. Progress came from strength.
Then along came the modern morality. Roots all the way back to Roman times. No longer did the powerful deserve adulation. Loving enemies became chic. Weakness became the currency of virtue. Kissing ass and playing meek.
The strong were still strong, and always would be. But they lost the moral high ground. Became the villain.
Nowadays power for power’s sake earns condemnation. Well, screw them. Pedophiles in robes perpetrated the whole fraud.
And the only reason it worked was because all the hocus pocus, lovey-dovey horseshit was really just a masque worn by underachievers hiding their flaws.
I hide behind chastity because in truth, I’m ugly.
I’m humble—but only because I haven’t done squat with my life.
Nah, the last two thousand years of so-called morality was a weak man’s circle jerk, orchestrated by robed strong men a little more clever than the ones that preceded them.
Meanwhile, men with guts and ambition did what they always did. They built empires. They made weak people do their bidding. They got rich and, while their bodies were able, indulged them with any ambrosia they desired.
That’s the truth of it right there. The real truth.
Lucky wove between Lester’s legs, and when Lester took the dog’s face in his hands and kissed his nose, Lucky lowered his hind, then rolled to his side. He lay between Lester’s feet with his back to the log. Lester bent at his back as far as the muscles allowed, and on the left side if he could just bend a little more, he hoped it would finally pop, and release.
But in four years, the tightness never popped. Lester stroked Lucky with his fingertips, barely digging into the animal’s fur.
“We camp in a minute. But we need a little more distance before we give up tonight, you hear?”
Lucky flopped his tail.
Lester eased back and let the dog exist without his attention. He placed his elbows on his knees and listened to the forest. Though they walked less than a mile, the solitude muted any sound but the breeze. No machinery allowed. No industry. No products of intellect. Just things that grew slow, and if they killed, did so with teeth or talon.
Except Lester, impostor. Smuggler. Black hearted hunter.
Lester smiled.
It felt good to be the blackest hearted son of a bitch in the wood.
“That’s right, dog.” Lester bent one more time, scruffed Lucky’s scalp at the base of his ears. “All right, time to move.”
Lester stood, knelt beside Lucky, and lifted the dog’s jowl with his finger. No more blood.
“Ready to get a move on?”
Lucky flopped his tail. Exhaled hard enough to move dried leaves.
Lester lifted his pack, but Lucky didn’t stir.
“Let’s take another minute,” Lester said. He lay his pack back in the leaves.
He sat on the log again, this time a few feet from Lucky, where he could see the dog’s head without having to crane his own. Lucky’s eyes were closed and his breathing already relaxed enough he could be asleep.
Years. Damnable years. You don’t want to stop them coming, but looking at the stack, wish you didn’t have so many.
Did dogs have the intellectual horsepower to cognate on mortality? Did they see a dead animal and recognize their own bodies were pregnant with the same inertia?
For Lucky, it wouldn’t be long. George Carlin famously said life is a series of dogs and Lester believed it. One after the next. Over his life he’d found a couple of his animals in a ditch, hit by a car or truck. And he saw a couple die the slow wailing death of cancer, rotted from the innards. Once the animal couldn’t walk like it used to; once it started wandering, or whimpered just drinking from a water bowl... the end neared.
But did dogs know a world without them existed?
It didn’t matter anyhow, to the eighty three year old drug lord who would never die. He didn’t contemplate death in a personal sense.
Only asking for a friend.
“All right. Any more laying around you won’t get up all night. I know you. C’mon, Lucky dog.”
Lester nudged Lucky with his toe and Lucky bared fangs.
“C’mon, dog. We got work to do. Get up. Let’s go.”
Lester shouldered his pack, walked a few steps. Lucky raised his front half off the ground. Stood.
Lester resumed, but kept the pace slow.
After a few hundred feet Lester stopped at a stream and allowed Lucky to lap water while he turned a circle and meditated on why the hair on the back of his neck stood.
He didn’t smell anything out of the ordinary—and he trusted Lucky to notice danger long before he did. Still, his senses registered something amiss. Maybe no birds whistled spring tunes. Or he smelled blood, carried on a ribbon of wind. Maybe a far off noise, audible only to the subconscious human ear.
Something amiss.
Lester thought while Lucky slapped water down his throat.
Had he chambered a round?
He broke the bolt on his .30-06 and pulled it back a half inch. Found brass and slapped it home. He placed his hand on the hunting knife at his hip.
“You don’t hear anything, huh?”
Lucky looked up.
Lester turned his head.
The feeling was uncanny. He didn’t believe in the paranormal, on principal. Besides, open that box, pretty soon you’d have to ask why you didn’t take the granddaddy of supernatural seriously. The book with the cross and the man healing lepers. Two thousand years of bullshit. Go down that road, there was a lot to account for. Get your ass run off a cliff with a herd of hogs.
Better to not let the mind wander too far that direction.
“Let’s go, Lucky. Let’s go find that mutt. Or whatever’s ahead.”
Lester knelt, let Lucky get a good sniff on the blue towel.
“Track!”
Lucky put his nose to the air and set off faster than he moved before the break. As if before, he knew where he was going, but lacked sufficient ambition.
Now he trotted and Lester worried about the pace, what he hurried into. He let the dog lead by a couple dozen yards.
Lucky stopped and coughed. Lester arrived beside him and stooped. Reached. Lucky bounded ahead. Did the dog sense the same witching? Was he eager to render it into ordinary sights and smells.?
Nose to ground, back and forth, long bursts ahead, nose in the air, back to the ground—that dog’s walnut-sized brain held more intelligence than his son Paul. Likely El Jay, too. Something beautiful to behold. Lester stopped at a birch and wrapped his hand around it. Put a little weight on that arm and lightened the load on his left leg a minute. All the tromping over rock and logs—and to be truthful, all the plain walking—taxed his muscles. One by his groin, right there—he twisted a little, and the pain was sharp, but like it needed to be, if it would ever release.
Lucky pressed on.
Lester pushed off the tree. Remembered the tragedy of Lucky’s life, how he hunted fingertips and bone shards in cancer dust, because his master rewarded him with a game of tug o war. Kind of emphasized the stupidity of the whole game called existence. Animal or human.
