“Look at her,” Lionel said. He grabbed her face and turned it toward me. “Bet you can’t remember, but she’s just the spitting image of your mother.”
Lionel wouldn’t run. But he wouldn’t sit still and lose all his dope either, and working to save his product would tie him up for a bit. If I was lucky, that was enough time to put me a half step ahead of him. But something told me that was as likely as finding a box of day-old sunshine.
I rolled my window down and lit a cigarette, cruising empty backcountry roads as the sun began to set. Growing up, on hot summer days we’d jump off the highest cliffs we could find into cold spring quarries. And every time I did it, there was a feeling halfway down that everything was moving too fast and I couldn’t quite believe how I’d put myself in that position. That’s how I felt now. I needed to talk to Toola.
I caught her just as she was locking up the house, on her way out for the night. We sat on the porch swing together, listening to the crickets and watching the chickens hunt them in the stiff yellow grass.
“You been out playing hero?” she said.
“Do I look like any kind of hero to you?”
She grinned. “Sometimes salt looks like sugar.”
Could I trust Toola? was the question. Sometimes I think your feelings mostly lead you into bad places, especially when you’ve spent your whole life alone and searching. But then, you never know if those feelings are worth anything unless you try.
“Selby Cluxton is dead,” I said.
Toola’s eyes went wide and she quit trying to light her cigarette and just looked at me.
“I found him, this afternoon. Off of Paint Creek Road. You’re the only one I’ve told, but the sheriff will find out soon enough.”
Toola looked confused. “How come you didn’t tell the sheriff ?”
“People will be smart enough to guess my father did it,” I said. “But they won’t be smart enough to prove it. Not without some help. I want to make sure they can, but I need time to do it. I don’t want him to wiggle out of this one.”
I waited to see how Toola would take that, but she was smart and a big girl; she had to be to survive the way she had. She didn’t even blink.
“Lionel’s back,” she said.
“He’s back,” I said. “Look, there’s a lot going on and I’m not sure how it’s all going to play out. Why I’m telling you is, you ought to lay low for a while, until things die down. I don’t think you’re in any danger, but better safe than sorry.”
“I got people expecting me. Customers. I don’t know if—”
“They can wait a day or two. It won’t kill them any. This thing with Selby, it’s going to shake up a lot of people, there’s no telling how they’ll react. Or what Lionel will do.”
Toola stood up and stuffed the pack of cigarettes in her jeans. It wasn’t in her nature to rely on anybody. “Shoot, if it’s that bad, maybe I ought to leave town,” she said.
“It’s not so bad as that yet,” I said. “And if it ever is, then I’ll be there running right behind you. But for now, go stay at your mother’s old place. Nothing bad will happen there.”
Toola paused and looked away. I stood up, sweating and nervous. How does a woman decide to trust a man? Why would they ever? The moment stretched. Then, finally, Toola nodded. That’s all, just nodded one time. I knew enough about her experience with men to know that even that much was harder than it seemed. I just hoped I wasn’t going to be the next man to let her down.
Toola packed quick and went on her way, and for a moment I felt about as alone as I ever had in my life. I wanted to stay at the house with all its reminders of her, but that made me feel weak and anyway it was too far from the action. So instead I drove back to that bankrupt lumberyard where me and Billy had met a few hours before.
It was full dark now and my mouth was dry. My brain was working on overdrive but not in a good way. Things were in motion and there was nothing for me to do now but wait. That gave me too much time to think and worry, remembering all that I knew of my father.
I kept thinking of a dealer named Donald Ray Wallace the most. One time, years ago, when I was little, Donald Ray got tired of working for my father. In fact, he got so tired that he went to the police station up in Harris County and offered to set my father up, wear a wire and get him on tape making a big heroin buy. The cop up there told Donald Ray that was a good idea, the cop told him to go about his business as usual and he’d call him when the warrants and such were in place. A few days later the cop told Donald Ray to meet him out at the Milk Creek mines, that he’d give him his instructions and wire him up there. Except when Donald Ray drove out to those old abandoned mines the cop wasn’t there. Only Lionel was. And nobody ever saw Donald Ray again.
Lionel didn’t live on luck, is my point. He was smarter and meaner and willing to do more than anybody I’d ever met. He had to be, to stay on top as long as he had. Nothing I’d ever done in my life could compare.
Was Billy Price leading me to the same fate as Donald Ray? Were there men like that cop in Harris County working in my department? Was there something I was missing? I couldn’t say. But there’s times in life that the world calls you to shoot your shot, and this was it for me.
My radio cackled to life. Billy was calling me in.
I put my flashers on and floored the gas, running red lights and passing every car in my way. Before long town was far behind me. Heat lightning shot across the sky, but everything else was black. Miles rolled past just that quick, then I turned off Cross Creek Road and headed into the woods down a ragged dirt track that I hadn’t seen in more than twenty years.
How many times in your life do you know that you’re approaching a moment that will change everything in your world, either for the good or for the bad? That old feeling, falling quickly through space and wondering how I put myself in that position, came over me again. My heart was pounding, thinking of Donald Ray Wallace, my mother, of all the times Lionel had come out on top. I crested that last big hill and saw cherry lights from patrol cars — one, two, three, four in all. I prayed Billy Price had come through.
I parked on the perimeter and got out of my cruiser, with my holster unbuckled and my hand by my gun. As if that would help me. Billy came running up, like he’d been waiting for me.
“It was exactly how you said it’d be,” he told me. “Just exactly.”
His eyes shone wide and his smile too, like some kind of game-show winner. My heart tripped a little, in a good way. But I kept my hand near my gun all the same.
“Tell me,” I said.
“I sat up on that hill like you told me and on about midnight here comes your father with the other two, and they start unloading product off their truck into that bunker.” Billy motioned to the other deputies working somewhere behind him. “I got dispatch to call up a couple of the guys real quiet, and we ambushed them as they came out of the bunker for the last time. We got all of them, the girl, C.T., and your father. It was just as simple as you said it’d be.”
Billy couldn’t keep the smile off his face. I let out a shaky breath and buckled my holster. I don’t think Billy saw me. He was in his own world now.
“You know what to tell everybody from here on out?” Any screwups could still kill me.
“Oh, sure, that’s the easiest part,” Billy said. “I’m gonna write it up how you told me to. On my way home, I see some jerk swerving all over and I go after him. I lose him in these hills but then I see some lights off in the distance and decide to investigate. That’s when I see your father and that girl and C.T. unloading a bunch of dope into that old bomb shelter.”