One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve…. Tony counted to one hundred and then tried Leroy’s again. Someone answered on the fifth ring. Dee Wee.
Okay, Dee Wee, don’t be a shit, this is Tony calling, you’ll hear me say my name, you just say yes.
“Will you accept charges?” asked the computer-operator.
“Uh, huh, okay,” said Dee Wee. “What’s charges mean?”
“Dee Wee!” Tony fairly shouted, then lowered her voice. “Dee Wee, it’s Tony, hey, what’s up?”
“Nothin’,” said Dee Wee. “Tony, where you at? Leroy said you was gone.”
“I am gone, Dee Wee. Put Leroy on the phone.”
“I think he’s watching T.V.”
“Put him on the phone, Dee Wee. Do it.”
Pause. “Well, okay, but don’t get mad if he gets mad for me bothering him.”
A clatter, clunk, silence except for background shuffling and mumbled voices. Then clattering again, a click, and “Fuck it, Tony, where the hell are you?”
Tony felt her soul soar at the irritation and the intensity of Leroy’s voice. Things back home had to be pretty damn good for him to sound like that.
“I can’t say where I am, Leroy. But I’m not in Virginia, that’s for sure. I’m really far away.”
“Where’d you go after…after, you know? I thought you got caught or shot or something and taken into custody. You ain’t calling from Emporia jail?”
“No. Is that what you hoped would happen? You and Buddy and Whitey and Little Joe all takin’ off in the car and leavin’ me behind? You hoped I’d get caught and take the fall for your asses?”
“No.”
“Why’d you run off without me?”
“’Cause of what happened in the store, idiot. We didn’t have time to wait for you, Tony, you know that! We wait, and somebody would get us all. We knew you’d probably be okay on your own. You’re good at stuff on your own. You’d either shoot or hide, but you wouldn’t let nobody take you.”
“Oh, yeah?” Maybe they thought that about Tony. Maybe they’d talked about her like that after the Exxon robbery. She was the toughest of the Hot Heads, after all.
“Yeah,” said Leroy. “That’s why, since we didn’t hear nothin’ from you in three days, we thought you was in the jail, getting tortured or something so you’d confess on us.”
“I’m not caught.”
“Good. Where are you?”
“Told you, I can’t tell. But what’s the news? Did we make the TV.? Radio? We made the newspaper, didn’t we?”
“Oh, yeah,” said Leroy. “Mrs. Martin was on the TV. news two nights in a row now.”
Tony felt the chill of excitement run her veins. “Yeah? What did she say? What did she look like?”
“She looked like shit, what do you think? She was in shock or something, standin’ in the middle of the wrecked up store with the crap we knocked down all over the place. The reporters had a couple mics in her face and she said, ‘They killed him, right in front of me, shot him dead!’ They said, ‘Who shot him?’ and she said ‘some kid with lipstick on his face!’”
“What’d she say about us, about the rest of us?”
“Nothin’ much. Just that we knocked stuff over, tore stuff up, stole some stuff. She mostly talked about Whitey and his gun.”
“I had a gun! I put it in her face, up close! That was me up there with her!”
“Yeah, I know….”
“I was the one threatened her, why didn’t she tell the news about me threatening her? She only told on Whitey?”
“She didn’t exactly tell on him, she told about him, she didn’t really know who it was, said it could have been any of a bunch of teenagers who come into the store. Police have been investigatin’, going house to house….”
“I was the one with bullets in my gun!”
“Whitey had a bullet. He shot that guy.”
“But he wasn’t supposed to have a bullet. I didn’t think there were any bullets in there, they all rolled behind the stove.”
A loud sound of exasperation, then, “What? You gave Whitey a gun with no bullets?”
“Just shut up, I didn’t think it would matter. I wanted the one with the bullets, I wanted to shoot up the place after scaring Mrs. Martin, but then Whitey shot first.”
“Stupid asshole little girl!”
“You wouldn’t say that to my face if I was there.”
“Yes I would. You bring a gun with no bullets?”
“Yeah, and it’s done, okay? They know anything yet? Who’d the police talk to so far? Are they showing sketches on T.V.? Drawings of what we looked like?”
“Just one of Whitey, but it don’t look like him. Some farmer in a tractor who drove by the Exxon when we were there said he saw a car go out of the lot like a bat out of hell, but didn’t know what kind it was, just that it was big. Said the sleet was in his eyes. Thought it was green or light blue.”
“They didn’t have a sketch of me?”
“No. Get over it. There’s a reward for information about us, though. $100,000 dollars if we get caught and convicted. Mrs. Martin quit the store. It’s closed until further notice, sign says.”
Tony took a deep breath, blew on it out on the glass of the phone booth, and drew a frowny face in the steam.
“When you comin’ back, Tony?”
“Probably never. I got places to be. People to be with. Wish I could be there to see everything happenin’, but I can’t. I’ll call you, though, check it out. Check on the progress.”
“If they catch Whitey, they’ll catch us. He’ll talk like a fucking parrot on a stick.”
“Maybe. Nobody was supposed to get killed, though. Tough shit, huh? And I ain’t telling where I am.”
“I’ll get the phone bill end of the month. I’ll know exactly where you’re callin’ from. Police get the phone record then they can follow where you’re at….”
Tony hadn’t thought of that. She slammed the receiver down into the cradle and left the booth.
Half a block past the “Catfish Delite” was another motel, “Gulf Towers Motel,” and several small houses on both sides of the road, an alley, a poorly-lit intersection. She crossed over and continued on the same street.
Maybe they’d see Alabama on the phone bill, but they would know Texas. It would be okay.
There was a trailer park on the right, then a small shop selling fishing tackle and boat equipment, a long grassy ball field surrounded by a chain link fence, and then the end of the road. A solid privacy fence of wooden slats blocking Tony’s view from whatever lay on the other side.
A sign, painted in red on the wood, said, “Martin’s Mobile Bay Marina. 3429 Perry Road, Mobile.” Tony followed the fence to the barred gate, and stared inside. There were boats bobbing on water, tied up in what seemed like little stalls. Rows of boats, painted with names that were hard to read in the faint beams of the tall pole lights. Some of the boats had fishing nets stretched to dry across their backs. Others had large seats with harnesses and large poles. These, Tony knew for sure, was for catching and holding on to big fish. No little catfish hooks here. She wondered what they’d use for bait. Eels? Snakes?