The Plinko Bounce, page 28
“I know you’re recordin’ us, and that’s why you’re repeatin’ a bunch of false crap. Cole killed his wife, and I was the fall guy. Jury decided in my favor. I served my time for what I done. I ain’t never harmed a dog in my life. You’re talkin’ crazy. Nobody can believe anything you say.”
“When do you want to meet?”
“Maybe I don’t want to. Maybe you should be speakin’ to my new lawyer, Buck Simpson.”
“Then, fine, don’t meet with me. You called me, remember? Ignore me, and you’ll get a big fat nothing, and also understand you and I will be enemies in the future, and my day will come.”
“Okay. I’ll be there Monday. At my aunt’s. The camper. I’ll be recordin’ us, and Becky’ll know I’m goin’ to meet you, just in case.”
“Well, Mrs. Dylan-Haley will know I’m meeting you.” Andy paused. “I’m not the violent felon with an eleven-page criminal record.”
“Noon,” Bullins said.
“Six,” Andy replied. “I have a job, unlike you. I’ll be there on Monday, February first, at six o’clock. Maybe you should write it down now before you take drunk on free casino booze. This Monday at six. Six at night, not in the morning. Try to be coherent.”
“I’ll be there, asshole. Bring a checkbook.”
Andy disconnected the call, immediately phoned Lynn Dylan-Haley, and lied to her about the specifics of his meeting. “Per your request, Boss,” he told her, “I have a get-together with Damian Bullins this Sunday at his aunt’s. He contacted the office high as a kite several days ago, raging and demanding to talk to me about his case, and I finally returned his call. During a relatively sober window, he seemed as if he might listen to reason. Reason and a check.”
Lynn sighed. “We’ve explored that option already—my client won’t pay him anything, especially since you’ve contradicted his story, and we’ve gained some advantages legally. I also worry about you having a negotiation with Bullins. He has another lawyer, and you’re factually at odds with him. A conflict.”
“He called me and wanted to discuss the criminal case I represented him on. Buck Simpson represents him in a civil proceeding. If I refuse to so much as speak with him, can you imagine how I’d be raked over the coals if I ultimately have to testify against him in court? I can just hear the cross-exam: ‘You wouldn’t even accept his call and allow him a chance to explain or correct your recollection?’ I’m damned if I do, damned if I don’t, Lynn.”
“Be that as it may, I simply don’t see Cole Benson paying this guy.”
“Every case has some value. It may be no more than nuisance value, so let me take a run at this, and I’ll be in touch Sunday night. You can always decline, and it’s certainly possible Bullins arrives impaired and irrational and we accomplish nothing. A comprehensive settlement would be a tonic for everyone, myself included.”
“Well, thanks for the effort,” she said. “You be careful. Bullins is dangerous and a killer.”
“Believe me, I’m well aware who he is.”
•••
The next morning, Friday, Cindy delivered several messages and a rubber-banded stack of letters to Andy, who was in his office, but oddly, not busy or preoccupied as usual. Instead, he was staring at the ceiling, reclining in his chair, his feet propped on his desk. “Thanks,” he said, but didn’t change his gaze or connect with her.
He didn’t read the messages or open his mail. He left work early and dropped by the strip-mall salon to see Kellie. Once a month, she volunteered to pick up sisters Nora and Flora from Blue Ridge Care Village and bring them with her to have their nails done, her treat. Kellie had met the firecracker widows, both in their eighties, when she was at the rest home interviewing a client’s grandma, and they’d been palling around ever since. As Andy walked in, Flora delivered the punchline to a joke, and the three ladies went on a laughing jag. He stayed with them until thirty fingernails were shiny and bright and the sisters’ thumbs were finished off with yellow rose decorations. “Noah and I will miss seeing you this weekend,” he told Kellie before he left, then kissed her cheek.
Flora grinned wide and remarked, “You are something else, Andrew. Always the gentleman.”
That night, with Noah asleep, Andy disappeared into his shop at eleven fifteen and worked on the armoire for five hours, occasionally returning to quaff coffee and look in on the boy. He fashioned drawers and compartments until he feared fatigue would blunt his skills and he’d make a mistake he couldn’t repair. He spent the majority of Saturday working on the piece as well, felt bad about leaving Noah to entertain himself but didn’t have any other choice.
“I’ll take a vacation day and finish tomorrow,” he declared to his son as they rode to Brooke’s on Sunday afternoon, though the furniture—beautiful and exquisite, with a secret hiding place—was already completed and draped with a mover’s blanket. “I need around seven more hours.”
“Yippee,” Noah said sarcastically. “Big whoop. It’s all you’ve been doin’. You didn’t even let me help, and now I have to leave early and can’t spend the night. I hope your girlfriend’s happy.”
“We’ll make it up. I promise. I’m sorry about the furniture. It’s not Kellie’s fault. I have an important work meeting tonight, okay? My job. I wish I didn’t. I love you and regret every minute I don’t see you. I realize you can’t understand, and I’m not always able to explain and tell you, but…” His voice stalled in his throat, and he blinked back tears. “I will do anything I can to keep you safe and take care of you. To be your father. Okay?”
“Whatever,” Noah eight-year-old answered, and the perfect, childish response caused Andy to smile and grab the boy and pull him into as big a hug as the shoulder harnesses would allow.
Andy also regretted that he’d had to rush the armoire—the original plan was to surprise Kellie with a Valentine’s Day present. Still, she’d been flirty and excited Sunday morning when he let it slip he’d be skipping work on Monday, sequestered in his shop, putting the final touches on a spectacular gift for her. “I’ll see you Tuesday night,” he said at the end of their call. “Come with high expectations and celebration champagne.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
As expected, Connie Gates was drunk and cloudy and surly when she answered the door at her dilapidated, crackerbox house in Ararat on Sunday evening. A faded Cub Cadet riding mower was junked in the front yard, half-covered by a tarp. The tarp was pinned to the ground by a brick on one side, a rotting wooden planter on the other. At least a dozen bags of trash, several open and spilled, were haphazardly heaped beside a single overflowing garbage can. A Chevy Cobalt with a dented, primer-colored fender and a cardboard-and-duct-tape rear window was parked in the drive, its front tire dunked in a mudhole.
“Whadda you want?” she asked, her speech labored. She swayed and grabbed the doorframe to keep her balance. “Oh, wait, nooo,” she said. “You’re Hughes, the lawyer, ain’t you? Damian’s lawyer.”
“Yes ma’am. I am. Nice to see you again.”
“Why’re you here?” She was wearing pink terrycloth scuffs, sweatpants and a long-sleeve flannel shirt. The hair around her bald spot was thin, limp and oily. She leaned on a cane. “’Specially after you done him dirty. You’re a common cook. Crook.”
“Well, ma’am, I’m here to meet with Damian and try to make him some money,” he replied. “We’re on good terms.”
“Say what?”
“I agreed to meet your nephew here today, Sunday, at seven. It’s seven fifteen, and he’s not arrived yet. Running late, I suppose. You think I could wait inside with you? I’d appreciate it. It’s thirty degrees. Cold. Sorry to be a bother.”
She walleyed inspected him, breathing through her mouth. She rubbed her cheek with her knuckles.
“I brought a peace offering for you, by the way. A bottle of wine. Least I can do after the misunderstandings and difficulties we’ve all been through recently.”
“Wine?” she said. She pawed at her hearing aid.
“It’s in my Jeep. I was planning to drop it off after my meeting with Damian.”
“For me? Free?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve come to see Damian?”
“Correct, Mrs. Gates. You’ll recall I helped him beat his murder charge.”
“Well, hell yeah, bring it on in. Time’s a-wastin’.”
The living room stank of cat piss, kerosene from the heater, rancid food, and a miasma of cigarettes, alcohol and neglected hygiene. The flat-screen TV was tuned to a Bonanza episode, but there was only faint volume. Gates tottered to the sofa and lowered herself onto a cushion. A nearly empty bottle of Aristocrat vodka was on a coffee table, evidently her only company until Andy had appeared. He sat adjacent to her in a recliner with black cigarette burns scarring its Naugahyde arms, mercifully five or six feet distant. He twisted off the top from a bottle of sweet wine and passed it to her. “Do you need a glass?” he asked.
She didn’t respond. She turned up the bottle, sucked several lusty swallows. A trickle leaked from the corner of her mouth, and she chased after it with a clumsy tongue and finally wiped it away on her flannel cuff. Andy attempted to chat with her, but she wasn’t the least bit talkative, so they were mostly silent and awkward, marked time, and watched Hoss and Little Joe prevail in a saloon brawl. She only grunted, her eyes shrunk to slits, when he told her he needed to use the restroom and would be right back. “Don’t always flush like it should,” she warned him.
He wiggled on fresh nitrile gloves as he walked down the hall, guessing and searching. After three tries, he found the panel in a closet. He pulled a string to illuminate the bare ceiling bulb, checked over his shoulder, slid into the musty space, pulled the door almost shut, and went to work. He finished his task without any complications, turned off the light, and stepped into the toilet and flushed the commode for show.
“Well,” he said after returning to the living room ten minutes later, “seems Damian isn’t coming. It’s seven-forty.”
“You can’t count on him for nothin’,” she griped. The wine bottle was trapped between her thighs, the neck resting against her stomach. “Selfish little shit won’t even buy me a car as famous as he’s got. After everything I done for him.” She focused on Andy. “Can I bum a cigarette?”
“No, sorry. Gave it up.”
“Wiped his nasty ass,” she rambled, agitated. “Put up my place for his bail.” She wrinkled her face. “Where you been, Hughes? Seems you was gone a long time.”
“Bathroom, remember? The flush was A-okay, no problems.”
“Right, yeah.”
“Thanks for the hospitality, ma’am. If you hear from Damian, just tell him to text me.”
She gripped the bottle with both hands, relaxed deep into the sofa, and coughed. “Yeah. Uh, tell him what?”
Andy didn’t answer her question or speak to her again. He left her and drove home, had to brake and swerve a mile into the trip to avoid hitting three deer darting across the country road.
“No luck,” he reported to Lynn once he’d ducked into his shop, changed clothes, filled the dog’s water bowl, and poured himself a cold beer. “Damian didn’t come. I should’ve known better. He’s completely erratic and unreliable.”
“Probably for the best,” Lynn replied. “You’ve covered your bases by responding to him, and anyway, Cole isn’t about to write a check. Not even a nuisance check. But I appreciate the effort. None of this can be any fun for you.”
“The worst part is I had to take my boy to his mom’s so I could go on this snipe hunt. Missed a night with Noah, thanks to Bullins jerking me around.”
•••
Andy departed his house early Monday morning. He could not be late. He was thankful for a clear sky and a dry forecast, though there was a favorable chance of snow flurries around midnight. He’d shredded the Google Earth printouts, then burned the crosscut scraps. His trek through the woods covered 1.9 miles from a parking spot behind an overgrown tobacco barn on a secondary road, and it would be slower and more arduous because he was wearing multiple socks and size fourteen hiking boots on his size twelve feet, a longshot, lawyer’s precaution. He altered his license plates with colored electrical tape, changed a 1 to a 4, an S to an 8, and obscured the registration month, another one-in-a-million protection, but these days it seemed the sky was indeed lousy with satellite eyes. The cylinder in his .38 was full when he flipped it from the frame. A spool of twenty-pound-test Stren monofilament fishing line was in his jacket pocket, a failsafe if the wrong person approached the loaded door. He was dressed warmly in winter camo, including gloves and a face covering, anticipating a long wait. His cell phone remained on the kitchen counter, plugged in to an outlet.
He stopped at Fulton Brothers Building Supply, stripped off most of his outfit, and bought sandpaper and dowels he didn’t need and told Harold, the manager, he was taking another break from lawyering to finish his girlfriend’s armoire. “Man, you need to send me a picture,” Harold said. The receipt in the brown bag showed the purchases were made at 7:49 a.m.
He was back home at 8:15 p.m., sweat-damp underneath the heavy clothes. He unlocked the shop and returned a Phillips-head screwdriver to its slot in a drawer; it was third longest in a set of five. He went to the kitchen, tapped his phone, and read Kellie’s response to his automatically generated text at 4:30 p.m. telling her the gift was nearly finished. “No rest for the wicked,” she’d replied and added a winking yellow emoji.
As he showered, he braced for the wallop, expected a revelation—or something, anything—to take hold of him, and he put his face in the water spray and spread his arms crucifix-style, but strangely, nothing changed, nothing came on him, not a twinge, not a hot bolt of remorse, not a deliverance, nothing. He was neither lifted nor weighted. He only felt the dull, familiar assurance he occasionally experienced at the end of a difficult court trial, a workman’s simple satisfaction when he’d gained a fair result for a client. He finished with a long, cold stream on his neck and shoulders, then stood naked and trembling, wanted to make sure his small, fierce war hadn’t rendered him senseless or left him broken inside.
“Your surprise is ready,” he cheerfully informed Kellie a few minutes later, wrapped in a towel, watching his lips move in the bathroom mirror, seemingly a surreal tick out of sync with his words. “I think you’ll be pleased.”
“Well, you’ve been at it all day. This must be something spectacular, but don’t sabotage yourself by hyping my expectations too high.”
“I’ve been at it for nearly a month. I wanted to finish this week—it’s the anniversary of the first time I saw you at the office. Technically when we first met.”
“That’s as sweet as it is obscure,” she said.
“I’m not positive of the day, but this is the week,” he said, and it was true. “First of February.” He quit watching his reflection. “You want to come by tonight?”
“It’s almost nine and not everybody has tons of vacation days and a retiree’s lazy schedule. Will it hurt your feelings if we stick with tomorrow as planned?”
“No. I’m tired too. See you at the office. I love you. I’m lucky we’re together.”
Snow began falling earlier than expected, before ten o’clock, and it was far more than flurries, unfurled thick and heavy from a bottomless sky. Andy flipped on the house’s floodlights, dividing up the outside world into a stage of bright, radiant flakes and endless black backdrop. The yard was soon white, the driveway gravel covered. He poured a bourbon, which he sipped once and then abandoned, and he rearranged the furniture so he could sit at a window and watch the world erased and cleansed and reborn. Patches joined him. The snow finally stopped around four in the morning, and there were easily eight inches of accumulation. He might’ve dozed for a moment, but as best he could discern, he never truly slept, never faded away, just remained in an out-of-place chair, numb and forever different and receptive to whatever he was next due.
The Jeep was built to travel in snow, and the courts were closed because of the weather, so at seven thirty, he was able to fetch Kellie and bring her to his house for a breakfast of biscuits, gravy, eggs and sausage patties, and she brought the celebratory champagne and they uncorked it early for mimosas in front of the fireplace. They weren’t through with the drinks, but Kellie claimed the snow and anticipation and promise of a fantastic present were too much like Christmas morning for her to wait any longer, so they put on boots and coats and stamped footprint holes from the porch to the workshop.
“You seem sort of distracted,” she mentioned as he was kicking away snow from the front of the shop’s door. “Kind of, I don’t know…elsewhere. You barely ate.”
“Sorry. I’m fine. I’m just tired. Didn’t sleep well.” He smiled at her. “I’m excited too. Anxious about the big reveal.”
Andy didn’t fool around with teases and speeches. He’d positioned the armoire in the center of the shop, and he held Kellie’s hand and led her to the furniture, which remained covered. He removed the blanket, lifted it straight up. “Hope this makes you happy,” he said.
“Oh, Andy.” Kellie kneeled and touched the armoire’s sides, and she began opening drawers and small cabinet doors so she could see inside the compartments. “It’s absolutely beautiful. Gorgeous. Thank you. And look at the cute little carved feet. I couldn’t love it more. And I love you and your talent and all the work you did for me.” Her breath registered in the frigid air.
“Here’s the encore,” he said, grinning. He showed her how to access the secret compartment.
“I’ll definitely have to find something worthy of the space.” She stood and kissed him, and when her chilly hand rubbed bare skin under his shirt, he jumped, and she pinched him and said, “Let’s go inside where it’s warm and properly celebrate the week we met each other.”
