The Count of Carolina, page 14
part #2 of A Clean Up Crew Series
“What did I hurt, by the way?” J.J. asked, one corner of her mouth curling up.
“Quad, maybe, or hammy,” Nicole said absently. “If he does anything improper…”
“Or if it looks like he’s thinking anything improper… or if you think he’s ever had an impure thought…”
“Danny. Really.”
“I’ll stop.”
“…if he tries anything, you’ll say the code word, and we’ll do the rest.”
“Got it. The final piece of the big picture. Jennifer June waits to see if Dr. Diddle does his thing and then screams ‘Avocados are overrated!’”
“We’ll work on the phrase,” Nicole said.
“No, we won’t work on it. Because there’s going to be no reason to speak it. J.J. is not going to be delivered into the hands of the son-of-a-bitch you came here to kill.”
“Eww, Dad. ‘Clean’ sounds so much better.”
“Does it? Well, guess what, kid. I’ve seen a cleaning. You can call it whatever you want, but people end up just as dead either way.”
“People like this fuck are asking to be killed,” J.J. said.
The effect of her statement on her parents was instantaneous. To Dan, it brought back the memory of Nicole telling him the very same thing, using the same words.
But to Nicole, it made her realize that her daughter was perceptive to the reality of the world as Nicole had come to know it, to see it first-hand. It wasn’t necessarily the world through which passed normal people, striving with all their might to be completely unremarkable. It was a shifted world in which darkness relentlessly sought to devour anything of light, including those unremarkable people. It was populated by a seemingly endless supply of people who were most definitely crying out to be cleaned. And J.J. saw it too, at least in her mind’s eye.
“Alright. Alright.” Nicole was nodding her head, as if she’d reached an agreement with herself. “I’m going to think very hard about all of this. And I’m going to do it very quickly. But while I’m doing it, we need to make a few things happen. For one thing, we need to get out of this hotel.”
“Why, Cole?” Dan asked. “It’s not that bad.”
“Nothing to do with how many stars the place has, love. I’m going full-on hyper-paranoid here. The more I run this security breach through my head, the less secure I’m feeling right now. I’m thinking our cover may be in jeopardy, if not already blown. We need to go completely off-script now. We need to get somewhere safe and we need to become another family.”
“Can’t we use our exit IDs?” Dan asked, impressing Nicole with his use of trade-speak.
“Same source. If our current alias is compromised, the other one will be as well. We may have to go without documents for a bit, but we can’t wait here for new ones. We need to move now, and that may mean a bit of a downgrade.”
“Downgrade!” Dan moaned. “I hoped we were at least going somewhere a little better than this.”
“There are places that don’t bother with any ID, and they don’t care if the last five couples that signed the register were all named Mr. and Mrs. Keith Maniac from Guatemala.”
The beat that followed, the third of its kind, was the most poignant and weighty yet. When the silence was at last banished, it was by Dan and J.J. asking, “Was that Python?”
Nicole smiled. “Get your things together. We’re going to do something very cloak and dagger next, J.J.”
“Spill! What are we going to do?”
“Sneak out on the fire escape. We’re not checking out. If my paranoia is correct, and it usually is, us leaving officially would be just as bad as us staying. So we’ll just tiptoe down the metal stairs and find someplace to regroup.”
Making ready didn’t take long, as Dan had never unpacked their bags. So he grabbed them while Nicole stuck her head out of the window. When she pulled it back inside, she was smiling. “The fire escape is right outside our window. No tricky climbing. Let’s go.”
They made their way down the clanking steps to the rental without incident, covered as they were by the darkness that had settled while Nicole was still telling her story.
Nicole knew exactly where she was headed. Before Darlene had swooped in and taken her away from South Carolina, she’d needed a place to stay, and she had indeed found plenty of establishments that were not particular about what you called yourself as long as you had cash in advance. Her skin crawled at little as she engaged the ignition. She’d comforted herself for many years by reminding herself that she’d never have to see the inside of one of those dives again, and now here she was bringing her husband and daughter to share in the delight.
Fuck, that’s the least of my problems, she thought as she pulled out of the parking lot onto streets that were at this hour sparsely traveled. The absolute least.
As she navigated away from the respectable area in which their hotel was located, she thought about the remarkable dialog that had just occurred, as she, in all honesty, had been unsure how she would explain her plan to her daughter. She’d chastised herself for even having the notion long before Dan had the chance to double-down. But by just laying out the pieces, in the correct order and with the proper amount of editorializing, J.J. had eventually hatched the idea herself. That thought caught Nicole off guard and she suddenly had to swallow hard to fight back a sob, as she suddenly remembered her mother telling her about the eggs the two of them gathered. Nicole, or rather June, had been about six at the time, and she was amazed by the way her mother always knew which eggs to take and which to leave. And the ones she left always hatched chicks eventually. Every time. She’d asked her mother how she knew which were which. Her mother’s answer seemed appropriate now.
“We leave the best eggs to hatch on their own.”
Was that what she had just done?
14
Dumpster Diving
Nicole drove east. People from Greensville knew that was the side of town you checked out if you were looking to score illicit substances, as well as the area one migrated to when anything resembling luck had drained from his or her life.
She looked at Dan in the passenger seat. He was asleep. Car rides didn’t knock him out as fast as an airplane trip did, but it was now fairly late at night, and the preceding day had been very taxing. She’d awakened him to tell her story, after all. And while everything had no doubt ramped his stress level once again, having J.J. safe (for the moment) had taken the edge off his parental angst to a degree sufficient to allow for some snores from the copilot’s seat.
The image in the rearview, however, told a completely different story. J.J. was wide awake and was seated in the center of the second seat, a hand on each of her parents’ headrests, her eyes focused forward, looking hard and ready, but at the same time totally lost and out of her element.
J.J. had definitely shown some of the qualities, or at least initial attestations to the presence of those qualities, but Nicole remembered her own experience. While it was true that J.J.’s life had been mercifully free of the trauma that had tinted hers, they weren’t so very much different. Even after June Barker had killed ten men before she’d ever heard of Cleanup Crew, with the wisdom and the 20-20 clarity of age and distance, she realized that when Darlene had found her, she was still a clueless, naïve waif.
J.J. might actually be a little bit sharper than I was. For a millionaire’s daughter, she’s got a lot a street smarts, Nicole thought. But she still has no idea. Hell, Dan worked a case with me and he still has nary a hint of the true scope of what we are and what we’re up against.
When she again stole a glance at her mirror, a mile or so later, J.J. had not moved. But at that instant, they drove under a streetlight and as the interior of the Rogue was momentarily illuminated, J.J.’s eyes shifted and she made contact with her mother’s in the mirror. Her face softened slightly, and she gave her mother a quick, reassuring smile. But just before the light faded, her eyes focused forward again, and her face became steely once more.
She may have no idea what she’s getting into, Nicole thought, but she’s sure-as-shit all in.
Nicole hit a pothole and the jar woke Dan up. He rubbed his eyes and looked out the window. “You said ‘downgrade,’ not ‘move to the Third World.’”
Indeed, the neighborhood through which they were passing looked like it had been plucked from a television documentary on extreme poverty in Central America. Dan even thought he caught sight of a corrugated metal shack.
“The East Side is not quite that bad, Danny, but yeah. We aren’t in Kansas anymore.”
He rubbed his bleary eyes. “Relying heavily on the Wizard today. How much longer?”
“Maybe just a little,” Nicole said, activating her left turn signal. “Depends on how things go over the next few minutes.”
“Huh?” Dan said. He hadn’t liked the sound of that, and he was now fully awake.
As she turned onto a particularly demoralized street, they saw an odd conglomeration of questionable storefronts, vacant lots, and the single most depressing motel Dan had ever witnessed. It didn’t have Bates Motel level creepiness, but the thought of being in one of its rooms when the whole structure collapsed, which seemed to be a more likely consequence than homicide at the hands of the deeply disturbed desk clerk, did frighten him.
“Cole. Seriously?” he asked, grabbing her right arm as she prepared to open the door and step out of the car. She turned to face him.
“I have a little history with this place. If, by some stroke of luck that I have no right to expect, the place hasn’t changed hands, then this place will work just fine and we can get settled in.” As she said this, she looked around and saw that the place she had remembered as quite rundown was now a few decades more so. “Settled in… such as it is,” she added.
The motel had been built during the heyday of their popularity in the early 1960s, and, Nicole supposed, this was a typical example of the architectural style that marked the structures from that time. Or at least it had been. As she walked slowly and alertly toward the door, on which the word “Office” could still be made out… almost, she feared the level of deterioration might indicate that the place, which still had a sign bearing the name “Motel Z,” elevated to a height that seemed totally unnecessary given the layout of the area, had in fact changed hands. And her gut told her it was to someone who wasn’t interested in maintaining the place. As she reached for the doorknob, she found herself changing her mind yet again. She feared it might be the foolish rationalization that was so often born of optimism, but it occurred to her that sort of person would have just bailed on the place by now. Clearly, at this point in its journey through the annals of post-modern pop culture, the Z was probably bleeding out far more money than it was taking in. Only someone whose life had revolved around the place for a long time would still be hanging on. And the glowing desk lamp that was clearly visible in the office window indicated that someone was indeed hanging on.
She opened the door and stepped into the office, which aside from the desk lamp was almost totally unlit. It smelled very musty. A heavyset African-American woman with a bedraggled head of dense white hair was seated at the desk, though her back was turned to the door. Nicole looked at her phone. It was not quite ten thirty p.m., but she realized that the woman was sound asleep. A bell sat on the desk, and after a few half-hearted throat-clearings failed, she gently pushed down on the button, hoping to not make it ring too loudly. Upon her placing pressure on the button, however, the ancient bell disintegrated, falling apart into at least five or six pieces, one of which was the bell section itself. This part, naturally, slid off the desk, hitting the floor right next to the sleeping woman’s chair.
“Jesus, the blessed son of Mary!” she shouted as she jumped to her feet. As she turned around, Nicole was delighted to see that the old woman was Cleea Wells, the same person who had run the place when she was a teenager. Delighted, and, she had to admit, more than a little surprised, as Cleea had seemed ancient to her then, all those years before.
She was less delighted to see that the old crone was holding a shotgun, which she still looked very capable of using. Nicole raised her hands but was smiling as she did.
The woman’s eyes, at first hard and narrow as she peered down the barrel of the gun, suddenly opened wide and crystal clear. “Get in here and shut the fucking door!” she said in a gravelly voice.
Nicole laughed. “I’ve been in for a couple of minutes. See? Door’s shut.”
The woman set the gun down and stepped from behind the desk. She approached slowly at first, taking a few steps. She stopped and whispered, “Junie?”
Nicole, eyes instantly filling with tears, nodded her head as she held open her arms. The woman, though appearing bent and tired, seemed to move the final six feet in a single step, and she fell into Nicole’s embrace. For a very long time, neither woman made any move to end the hug, but finally, Cleea took a step back and gave Nicole a painless swat on the arm.
“Where the hell you been gone to, girl?”
“I couldn’t stay.”
“You always told me that you wasn’t staying long. Then you ended up hanging around so damn long I had to fall in love with you, just in time for you to make good and – whoosh – you gone.”
“Stop it, Cleea!” Cole said, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. It turned out to have been easy for Nicole to fall in love with the old black woman as well. After a first week that consisted of sizing one another up, they began to talk. For Nicole, she was the first adult in almost seven years who had spoken kind words to her. For Cleea, “Junie” had quickly become like her own child, and she was fiercely protective of her, while allowing her space. What she did with that space was a topic they never discussed.
Cleea leaned backwards as she continued to look at Nicole, moving her head up and down as she took her in from top to bottom. “Last time I seen you, you was wearing ripped-up blue jeans,” she said. “And not them couple-hundred-dollar ripped-up jeans them girls wear now. Just tired-ass, worn out jeans.” Cleea did the shoes-to-hair scan again and added, “Not no more, though.”
“I married a wonderful man who did very well in software, I have two college-age kids, and things are a lot better for me now.”
“That’s real good, Junie. Real good.”
“Cleea, I need to ask you a favor. I decided to change my name when I left Greenville, so I don’t go by June anymore. Would you please call me Nicole?”
“Nicole!” Cleea scoffed in a way that only a southern woman can. But after a moment, she said, “Yes, it fits you. It fits you now. Not Junie anymore, then. Nicole, what brings you to the majestic Motel Z this evening?”
Cole smiled and said, “I need a room for myself, my husband, and my daughter.”
Cleea, ambling at her normal pace once more, moved back behind the desk, her plush slippers, well past their expiration date, making scuffing noises, and examined her row of keys hanging on numbered hooks. She reached for one but stopped and said to Nicole over her shoulder, “How long you thinking you be staying?”
Now Nicole did a pretty fine example of a rebel scoff herself. “Why? Do you have a lot of reservations coming up? Big convention coming to the East Side or something?”
Cleea laughed but said, “Don’t you sass me, young lady. I’m trying to decide between two rooms. One’s done up a little nicer, but the water heater seems to be breaking down a lot. If you’re going to be here for a few days, you’ll probably want the other one. Not quite as luxurious, but you won’t run out of hot water in the middle of a shower.”
“Well, I honestly don’t know how long we’ll be here. It will definitely be a couple of days at least.”
Cleea’s hand moved away from the key she’d been about to grab and selected one a few hooks down from the first. She handed it to Nicole, letting the hard plastic key ring bearing a worn number “7” and an even more fatigued motel logo swing like a pendulum until Cole wrapped her hand around it. “Hot water it is,” Cleea said.
“Let me pay you for three days up front. That way, even if we end up having to make a quick exit, you’ll get at least that much.”
“You could, you could,” Cleea said, pursing her lips and nodding. “Or you could not insult me by talking about money. You’re my guest, not my customer anymore.”
“Cleea,” she began, but the old woman held up an arthritic finger to stop her.
“No back-sass, I said!”
“I need my car out of sight from the street,” Nicole said, shifting verbal gears suddenly.
Cleea didn’t miss a beat. “Don’t you worry, sugar. After you get your things in your unit, you can pull it around back. Park it next to my Buick. And don’t you scratch my baby either.”
“You still have that Buick?”
“Yep. Of course, it don’t run anymore, but that’s not really a problem, because I can’t really drive no more anyway. Still don’t want you scratching her, though.”
“I won’t scratch the Buick.”
Nicole gave Cleea’s hand a squeeze. She’d been absently holding it out, even though Cole had taken the key. She released the old woman’s extremity and turned to walk back outside.
“A cop came by asking after you about week since you was gone,” Cleea said from behind her.
Nicole stopped and turned. She said nothing.
“I told him I ain’t never heard of you, and sure as hell ain’t never seen you.”
“You did?”
“Well, of course I did. Why you talk like that? Of course I did.” She let out a laugh. “Know what else I said? I told him not to be coming around my place, because if people seen a cop snooping around, I might lose business.”
“Now that’s funny.”
“Anyway, after a while, the whole Lake Hartwell thing stopped getting talked about, and he never came around again.”
“Lake Hartwell?” Nicole asked, poker face instantly activated.
“Come on now, June… I mean, Nicole. Right about the time you showed up around here, they started talking about them missing men. Then right after the news broke about that lake shack up there, you vanish without so much as a ‘thanks for them tiny soaps!’ Then this detective shows up…”
