“This is somebody’s house?”
Quaker thrust his face forward, wearing a weary grin. “Nope. I was stopped behind this guy at a light and I noticed the plate was like the ones we were looking for. The car kind of looked right, so I followed him. When he parked here I called you. Come on around inside and I’ll lead you to the car. Sure hope it ain’t another false alarm.”
“Amen to that,” Hannibal said. He had already done this eight times that day, on occasions when Quaker, or Sarge, had found a car that could be right, but could not find the owner to confirm they fit the description.
As Hannibal turned the wheel to follow Quaker across the hard ground of the parking lot, another Ford slid up behind him. Headlights bounced off his rear bumper, allowed him to see Sarge’s silhouette in his rear view mirror. Seconds later he saw yet another similar vehicle fall into line behind Sarge. Their short convoy bounced along the path through close-parked cars, reminding Hannibal of a trip through a drive-in theater’s grounds. The cars were mostly new and expensive at the beginning of his journey. As they neared the back of the lot they approached a small gathering of older models.
Finally Quaker stopped and pointed at a large, dark-colored vehicle. The space beside it on the driver’s side was vacant, and Hannibal pulled into it, stopping too close to the target car. Sarge parked in the nearest space, seven cars away. The other car, Virgil’s, passed him to park in the next row. Hannibal killed the engine, listening again to the way the open spaces seemed to suck the sound away. Voices carried clearly from the house nearly a hundred yards away. And as he opened the door he stared up into a very clear, star-speckled night sky. A broad full moon hung directly overhead. Just what I need, Hannibal thought.
Sarge’s footsteps crunched toward them, the beam from the flashlight in his beefy fist jiggling across the ground to finally rest on the bumper of the big car Hannibal now stood behind. Hannibal nodded his head at the bright silver characters raised against a cobalt blue background: 902, a dot, then JZB. More important to him was that he recognized the shape of the deep blue vehicle, a Lincoln Town Car at least a decade old. The differences between this car and the new vehicles he had seen earlier in the day were subtle but at the same time obvious. He hissed, “Yes,” in a very soft voice. “This is the car that almost hit me.”
“Neat ain’t it?” Quaker said. “Now we know the guy you want’s a fag.”
“Excuse me?”
“This place is a gay club,” Quaker said, his pale angular face a grinning death’s head in the moonlight. “If he’s in there, he’s a fag.”
Hannibal paced a few feet away. “A customer you think?”
Virgil’s gravely voice rumbled in from behind him. “Not by this car. A hustler. Working the crowd.”
“Sure,” Hannibal said, looking around himself. “This is where the hired help park.”
“So, you’ll know him when you see him?” Sarge asked. When Hannibal nodded, he added, “So I guess we go in and get him.”
Hannibal leaned against his car’s trunk. “That might not be the best plan. He might have a lot of friends in there, he might recognize me. It could get messy.”
“Well, I sure ain’t up to waiting out here all night until he decides his night is over,” Sarge said.
“Besides,” Quaker added, “when he does come out, he’ll probably have company, if you know what I mean.”
Virgil listened to the others, then took a deep breath and let out a long breath through his nose. “I’ll go get him,” he said in a low monotone.
“But you don’t even know what this guy looks like,” Hannibal said.
“Doesn’t matter.”
Virgil was dressed in casual slacks and a knit shirt, but he drew several stares when he entered. First, he was taller than almost anyone in the room. He was a big, solid man and his skin had a sheen like black leather. He strode through the crowded room and something about his manner made the sea of writhing bodies part before him. He looked neither left nor right on his path toward the DJ’s station. The flashing lights in the darkened room did not seem to affect him, nor did he react in any way to the booming music battering his ears. It seemed to be some bizarre hybrid of country and disco, and the men on the floor were twisting themselves into pretzels trying to dance to it.
Inside him, Virgil’s entire being was clenched like a fist. The all male group here made his flesh crawl. Memories clawed at his mind, memories of days and nights in prison when he had to fight both the drug addiction he could not feed and the predators who needed sexual release so much that they turned to members of their own sex and sometimes did not care if their partners were willing or not. Years of successfully defending himself did not make the thought any more pleasant.
At the far end of the dance floor he leaned forward but still had to shout to the bald, leather-clad DJ over the music. After a second iteration the DJ nodded, winked at him, and gave him a thumbs up sign. Virgil turned and made it most of the way across the floor before the DJ lowered the music and spoke into his microphone in a voice just a bit higher than Virgil thought it should be.
“That tall, dark, beefy man heading toward the door has a message for you all. He’s had a little mistake in the parking area and he wants to make it good. So if your license plate number is 902 — JZB, catch him at the door to talk about what he’s willing to do to make it up to you.”
Virgil stopped at the bottom of the porch steps and lit a Lucky Strike. He had managed to avoid the use of illegal substances for five long years and he never drank alcohol because he knew where that could lead. But as he filled his lungs with smoke he knew he could never call himself drug free until he lost this habit too.
The man who burst through the doorway behind him raised a smile on Virgil’s face. He was almost Virgil’s height, six foot four, with straight, black, stringy hair. His slender frame was wrapped in a buckskin shirt and leather pants. He bounced up to Virgil, talking very rapidly, pointing into Virgil’s face.
“Are you crazy man?” the newcomer asked. “I know you didn’t put a ding in my ride. That car’s a classic, man. Do you have any idea what parts for that thing cost?”
Virgil rolled his yellowed eyes and held his hand forward. “Virgil,” he said.
The other man, startled by this simple action, calmed a bit and took Virgil’s hand. “Fancy,” he said.
Virgil puffed air out of his cheeks in a stifled laugh and pointed with his head toward the parking lot. The two moved on, Virgil walking in his usual slow, steady manner. Fancy’s movement was more frantic. He took two steps when one would do, swaying left to right on the path. As they neared his car, Fancy’s high-heeled cowboy boots began dancing a flamenco around Virgil and his arms waved wildly.
“Holy shit, man. Look at that. I can’t believe you parked that close to my ride. What the fuck’s the matter with you? I can’t even open my damn door.”
Fancy started around his car to the passenger side, but stopped as Quaker rose up from between the vehicles, a short length of pipe in his right hand. “Sucks, don’t it?” Quaker said.
Beside Quaker, Hannibal rose to his feet and stared hard at the face framed in the moonlight before him. He watched as anger and indignation slowly gave way to recognition in those eyes. The man’s lower lip began to tremble as Hannibal’s focus shifted to a space over his shoulder.
“This is him,” Hannibal said. “The man in Ruth’s picture.”
Fancy spun to see a human bulldog with receding hair slapping a baseball bat into his left hand. “Then I guess he’s coming with us.”
On closer inspection, Hannibal decided this Fancy was too dark to be a white man. His hair, hanging about his shoulders, betrayed a Native American heritage. His nose was broad as a black man’s, his eyes dark and piercing as he stared up from the chair in Hannibal’s motel room. He wondered how many tourists went straight to the major hotels on the strip and missed the many small single level motels like this one that surrounded the city.