Amid some lite crappy jazz that played from hidden speakers, I walked over the drawbridge and into the casino. I strolled over green carpet embroidered with gold magnolia leaves as the sound of falling coins and laughing women echoed around me.
Revolving gold signs read CARIBBEAN-STYLE POKER and SUPER BLACK-JACK.
I found a bar near the blackjack tables, sat down, and ordered a Dixie and a hamburger. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, except for the bit of greens, and my stomach had been talking to me since the Tennessee border. Wasn’t a bad place to sit and get familiar with the surroundings. Maybe rest a little before I tried to find who ran security. Ask him a few questions about why the casino would be looking for a homeless man who didn’t have a penny to gamble.
I watched an old black man in a flannel shirt, a dangling cigarette in hand, punch a plastic cup of quarters into a slot as if a week’s worth of groceries was a spin away. His ancient work boots were coated in blackened Mississippi mud.
The bartender was a wiry white woman with long cherry-red nails and tight permed hair. She was probably in her early forties but had the look like she’d been rode hard and put up wet plenty of nights.
I thanked her for the Dixie and listened to the casino action – a steady beat of applause and crestfallen groans from the roulette wheel, a pinging Casio keyboard-type music beeping from the slots. As I prayed for the hamburger and studied a new gash on the toe of my boot, a woman with an unnaturally large chest and a helmet of blond hair sat beside me.
She gave me one of those smiles when the tongue gets caught between the upper and lower teeth. Her body wasn’t bad, but her breasts were so obviously aftermarket that they almost made me laugh.
The woman tosseled her hair and sighed. Actually tosseled it. Amazing. Maybe she’d do the trick with the tongue over the teeth again.
“What’s your name, partner?” she asked, making her eyes go soft.
“Tom Mix.”
“Let me guess: You’re not here to play poker.”
I kept smiling and watched the woman, who had a hard time keeping a steady gaze as she rocked back and forth. Her breath smelled like a whiskey barrel.
“What do you play?” she asked.
“Mousetrap,” I said. “I’m a damned fine Mousetrap player. But I still have a hard time with that spindly bucket thing, always falls down when you least expect it.”
She rolled her eyes and cackled without a clue.
“So, Tom,” she said, running her hands over the worn knees of my 501s. “You need a date for the night?”
She had on some kind of lacey white bra, more than the Fruit of the Loom type. This contraption had a thick front buckle and little blue flowers on the cups. I coughed and looked away.
“Actually here on business,” I said.
“What room are you in?” she asked.
“Don’t have a room.”
“You have a car?” she said.
Ahh. Ain’t ego a funny thing? I thought I was so damned handsome in my black T-shirt and faded jeans that she couldn’t resist. I wondered how much she cost.
“Nope,” I said. “Just a moped. And it doesn’t even have a seat.”
She snorted out her nose. No laugh. She turned her head away and flipped back her hair. I looked at the worn bartender, shrugged, and then back at the blonde. She was smooth and pressed but in another five years she’d be just as hard, battered, and tired.
I pulled her hand from my knee as the bartender plunked down a soggy-looking hamburger and cold fries. The meat looked almost like cardboard. I glanced over at the blonde and gave her a wink.
“Want some fries?” I asked, shoving a couple into my mouth.
“Go fuck yourself,” she said and almost fell as she got off the barstool.
“Be cheaper,” I muttered as I hit the sweet spot on the Heinz bottle.
About ten seconds later, the bartender wandered over and settled her elbows down on the table. She watched the woman walk away with a gentle smile on her lips. The pinging from the slots grew louder in my ears.
“Who runs security around here?” I asked.
“You lookin’ for work?” she asked in a hard, north Mississippi accent.
“Maybe,” I said.
“Black fella named Humes,” she said. “Office is in the lobby.”
A bby’s ride lasted for about an hour, bumping and jostling her all over the oil-soaked rubber mats in the trunk. When the car finally stopped, a man stuck a pillowcase over her head and stabbed a gun into her ribs. She saw patterns of lights and shapes through the cloth as the man moved his calloused hands over her butt and breasts before throwing her onto some cold concrete and slamming the door.
She tore the pillowcase from her head and began beating on the door and screaming for help. She must’ve beaten on that door for a half hour before she dropped to the ground, wiped her face with her hands, and looked around.
The room was about ten by ten and filled with stacks of dusty blackjack tables and slot machines. A craps table and old roulette wheel sat by the door. Concrete walls and ceiling. She couldn’t hear a sound outside and it was hot as hell. No air-conditioning. Almost like a sauna, she thought, as she moved the hair from her face and tucked it behind her ears.
She felt the scrapes on her elbows and spit out a trail of blood from her broken lip onto the dirty floor. She thought about Ellie and that long stretch of woods behind the gas station while she hugged her knees to her chest and began to cry. She could imagine the men grabbing Ellie and shoving her into the molded leaves. They raped her. She could see them straddling Ellie and choking her. Abby tried to block the thoughts from her mind, knowing it was her fault whatever happened to Ellie.
She heard footsteps approach and closed her eyes as tight as she could. She was away from this place. She was back in Oxford and her parents were alive and Maggie was there.
A bolt slid back with a hard clack.
Two men entered the room. One was a thin white guy about her age with slick black hair and the other was an old black man with gray hair. Both carried guns and wore blue blazers and red ties. Radios squawked on their hips.
“C’mon, let’s go,” the black man said. He had freckles and high cheekbones like an Indian. Mean eyes.
“Leave me alone,” Abby yelled. “Where the hell am I? Who the hell are you?”
“C’mon. He wants to see you.”
The black man grabbed the front of her shirt and yanked her to her feet. He twisted her arm behind her back and pushed her into a concrete tunnel. She gritted her teeth in pain – her shoulder screaming loose in the socket – as they marched her through the narrow passageway. The tunnel took several twists through a dozen curves with fluorescent lights beaming overhead.
At the end of another tunnel, the boy opened a side door into an office with dark wood paneling and dimly lit with Tiffany lamps. The shades looked as if they were cut from shards of colorful hard candy.
The black man shoved her onto a brown leather coach.
When she straightened her head, she gazed right into a shadow sitting in a leather chair. He was hard to see. His features were obscured by bright light and smoke from a cigar. She could see the orange glow of the butt and hear his rapid, uneven breath.
“Hello, Miss MacDonald.” His voice country and weathered. Someone who drank too much bourbon and had smoked since he was ten.
She tasted the blood in her mouth and heard the dull sound of locks pinging in the concrete room where they’d kept her. She tried to squint through the hot light.
“You got to be tired,” he said.
Abby could hear her own breath now. Way too fast.
“Haven’t stopped since the death of your parents.”
Abby bit into the side of her cheek and listened.
“Truck stops, cheap-ass motels. Always wondered, why the highway? Why not the beach? Or another country? You like bein’ anonymous? You like blending in?”
Abby felt the blood heating in her chest. This was it. This was it. “What the hell do you want?” she yelled. It was someone else’s voice. Someone stronger.