I shook my head. “People been calling for two weeks about that reward money.”
“I figured,” Arthur said. “That’s why I didn’t think much of it. Hell of a car, though.”
“What’s that?”
“That fella that stopped by. Had the longest goddamn car I ever seen. A ’39 Lincoln, black, and about a mile long. That’s what I call an automobile.”
“Where is that number?”
“By the register.”
He followed me back into Slocumb’s, where I shuffled through some receipts and deposit slips and found a phone number for a man named Padgett. I showed it to Arthur and he nodded.
I had the phone in my hand and started to dial.
“I’ve been prayin’ y’all catch the fella that did that to Mr. Patterson,” Arthur said, wiping the sweat off the back of his neck with an oil-stained rag. “I prayed for it since it happened. Figured it’s my town, too. Ain’t that right?”
“I’M NOT GOING TO LIE TO YOU, MR. PADGETT,” I SAID. “IT’S not a position I’d want to be in.”
Cecil Padgett was in his late twenties. A slender, handsome man with intense blue eyes and that kind of tanned skin that comes from hard outdoor labor. He smoked and listened to me, sitting on a sofa in the center of an Airstream trailer he shared with his wife. He nodded with everything I said, grounding out his cigarette in a tin can on the coffee table.
His wife hovered around in their tiny kitchen, pretending to be rearranging dishes but exchanging glances with him until he stopped looking to her.
“So they might try and kill me.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I read about that other fella. Not a good way to go.”
“He was connected with the rackets. The man who we think killed him probably did it because he switched sides.”
“Those gangsters probably wouldn’t be pleased with me either.”
“We would ask that you and your wife stay in a hotel with protection until the trials.”
He nodded.
His wife dropped a tea cup and it shattered on the floor. She put her hand to her mouth. I looked to Padgett and he stood, asking if we could get some fresh air. It was night, and we stood out by our cars, the fat ceramic Christmas lights hung over the little canopies set up from all the Airstreams at Tropical Paradise Court in Columbus.
“Why were you downtown?”
“We wanted to see a movie,” he said. “I was checking the times.”
“Did you stay?”
“No, sir,” he said. “It was a western, and those things always leave me feeling kind of low.”
“How’s that?”
“Too many people have to die.”
I nodded, and reached out to shake his hand and said, “Merry Christmas.”
He looked past me. From one of the trailers, a fat woman in a big red sweater walked outside, waiting for her little dog to squat and go to the bathroom. Another trailer door opened, and a man threw out a bucket of dirty water, heat steamed up off the gravel. Nearby, Padgett’s ’39 Lincoln sat with the hood open, its engine in pieces.
“So when do I have to let you know?”
“When you can.”
“How ’bout now?”
“Now is good.”
“This ain’t about the reward.”
I nodded.
“When I read about that fella dying and me not standing up… It’s hard to put into words.”
“I understand, Mr. Padgett. You’re standin’ up now.”
“Guess I am.”
“Feels good, doesn’t it?”
22
ON CHRISTMAS DAY, Thomas got duded up in his brand-new Roy Rogers gear, complete with vest, hand-tooled belt with R.R. written in studs, and a deluxe holster filled with a pair of toy six-shooters loaded with caps. He’d already shot at Anne’s cat four times, and that caused a minor break in the peace. But she’d forgiven him and gone on outside after breakfast to try out a pair of white J. C. Higgins roller skates and say hello to a schoolmate who lived two doors down. Santa had also brought Thomas a junior boxing set, and Joyce, as a joke, had bought him a Happi Time service station set that came complete with plastic figures of the attendants who worked the grease rack, platform, and pumps. All this coming as a joke, because he liked to see me work at the station more than sit behind a desk at the sheriff’s office.
Joyce picked up one of the figures, eyed it, and looked back to me and said, “The fella wears a hat. How come you didn’t wear a matching hat?”
I’d given her a fourteen-karat watch I’d seen her eyeing at Kirven’s, and she’d bought me a Craftsman electric razor kit. While Anne zipped around in our driveway on new skates and Tommy raised hell in the backyard, I picked apart the kit and placed the contents on the coffee table.
“You see the mirror plugs in, too,” Joyce said. “It has a small light.”
I reached behind the chair where I sat, still in my robe, and plugged it in. “Well, I’ll be.” I studied my face in the reflection, seeing Joyce’s chin resting on my shoulder, and she gave me a solid smile.
“How’d you ever land such a handsome man?” I asked.
“Lord knows, it was tough,” she said. “So do you like what you see?”
LORELEI SHOWED UP JUST AFTER WE’D FINISHED UP A BIG Christmas dinner – Jack Black joining us while taking a break from the night patrol – and, as I opened the door, I realized I hadn’t seen her since she’d been found half dead on the rocks. I’d heard she’d left town with Billy but never expected to see the girl in PC again. The surprise must’ve shown on my face, because she stepped back off the landing to the walkway and looked down at the ground, unable to speak.
The first thing I thought about after I invited her in, her declining and standing there shivering, her breath like smoke, was that her nose and under her eyes reminded me of a fighter with all that scar tissue. There was also a long scar that ran down half of her face that looked as if it had come from a knife but maybe from the sharp rocks.
“Come on in.”
She wrapped herself with her arms, wearing nothing but a man’s long dress shirt and pegged blue jeans. “I cain’t,” she said. “Billy’s got trouble.”
Jack was beside me now. After two more sentences from Lorelei, I nodded, and Jack moved for the car. I took the girl’s arm and drew her inside.
Just then, Thomas popped up – still dressed as Roy – and aimed his gun at her. She jumped, holding her chest, and I grabbed the end of the barrel and pulled it down.
“Watch it there, partner.”
With her head down and under my arm, she moved into the kitchen “Joyce, this is Lorelei. How ’bout some supper?”
Joyce smiled, her arms elbow deep in suds, and looked back at me. She knew all about the girl. “Please join us,” my wife said.
Not a minute later, we were in Jack’s car, and I radioed into the office to Quinnie to call in some of the Guard boys.
“It’s Casa Grande,” I said. “Right off Opelika Road. That place that looks like the Alamo.”
AN HOUR EARLIER, BILLY HAD DRESSED IN THE MIRROR AND combed his hair back with pomade he’d found in Reuben’s medicine cabinet. He studied his eyes and steadied his hand as he’d practice going for the gun tucked in the small of his back. He’d imagine the skinny figure before him wasn’t him at all but Johnnie Benefield, and he’d wait till Johnnie would ask him about his daddy’s money, Did you bring it?, and Billy would say, Sure, and he’d empty his gun into Johnnie and drop the bastard in the dirt, right in the very place where he’d soiled Lorelei, Billy still seeing that hairy back and slabbed teeth in a jack-o’-lantern’s grin.
Billy reached for a pack of Luckies and pulled on his daddy’s two-tone leisure coat, covering up the gun at his back, and slipped in some bullets in the pocket. He studied himself again and practiced three times more to make sure the oversized coat wouldn’t be a burden. But it wasn’t a burden at all, and, each time, he saw the image of Johnnie dropping in the reflection behind him.