David Corbett - The Devil’s Redhead

“So,” he said finally. “How are things up at Happy House?”

“Delirious. That all?”

“Rowena tells me different.” Roy looked across the table as though expecting her to argue. “Rowena tells me Frank’s done a sudden vamoose. And you’re all shook up about it.”

“Weener needs to get her facts straight.”

“You’re calling her a liar.”

“Don’t start with me, Roy.”

Roy chuckled and looked off. He tugged his nose and snorted. “You know,” he said, “if I tried to count the number of times you’ve acted nice to me.” He held up one hand, bending his fingers one by one to count.

Shel said, “Careful, Roy. You’ll get a nosebleed.”

Roy said, “Your mouth…”

“And if Weener- ”

“Her name’s Rowena,” Roy said. “She wants to be called by her name.”

Shel howled. “That why you call her The Swallow?”

“If you were as smart as your mouth, you’d be nice to me.”

“Being nice to you,” Shel said, “would be too painful to bear.”

Roy wiped his face with his hand. “You want too painful to bear? I’ll tell you a little story about too painful to bear.” Roy emptied his glass and did himself up another drink. “Know that storage center Felix runs out near Bethany? The one we’ve let Frank tend to now and again, give him something to do.”

“Frank doesn’t tell me everything he does for you,” Shel said. “I’ve got a good idea why.”

Roy smiled. “Well, given that you’re out of the loop, then, I guess you’re gonna have to trust me, huh? Trust I’ve got… my facts straight.”

“Where’s Frank?”

“Keep your pants on.” Roy leaned back and smiled. “Felix has some equipment stored out there, has to do with a little operation he’s running with this electrical contractor does work for the insurance companies, setting up their claims centers. This contractor, he’s ordered a lot of extra equipment on the sly, sidetracked it over to Felix.”

Roy looked up to gauge her attention.

“I’m waiting for the part that deals with me,” she said.

“You mean Frank, right?”

“Whatever.”

“You’re not gonna bail on little Frankie, are you?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“No, you didn’t,” Roy agreed. “You certainly did not.” He sipped from his drink. “Where was I? Ah. Seems Frank has been paying Felix’s equipment an awful lot of attention of late. That, and the fact he’s a looney shitbird to begin with, has folks concerned. Then this afternoon the Idiot Twins, you know the ones I mean, Screwy and Gooey, the ones Frank cottons to, they showed up at Lonesome George’s wanting three trucks.”

Despite herself, Shel flinched. Noticing this, Roy smiled. He said, “I wonder- Felix got anything to worry about? From Frank, I mean.”

“You tell me.”

“You really don’t know?”

“I haven’t the faintest goddamn idea what you’re talking about.”

Roy lowered his chin and laughed low in his throat, like a nodding drunk. “That just won’t do,” he said. “Will it?”

“Works for me,” Shel said, getting up to leave.

“Sit the fuck back down,” Roy barked. “Frank and the Idiot Twins knocked off Felix’s locker not twenty minutes ago. Felix sent Tully out there to sit on the place, see if anything went down. Plenty did. You following me here?”

Shel felt a sudden sick feeling. Then she was laughing.

“You fuckwad,” she said.

“You think I’m making this up?”

Feeling for the chair behind her she sat back down. Roy studied her, leaning forward on his arms. Shortly he was cackling. A small, drug-driven fury animated the sound. Shel leaned back from it.

“Let’s cover this ground again,” he said. “What’s Frank got going?”

It took an hour of driving through misting rain along the Eastshore Freeway for Abatangelo to reach the Delta Highway. He followed it east for twenty miles, enough to get beyond the storm. In time he came upon a patchwork community of old farms, recent strip malls, scrap yards and housing projects. The place was called Oakley.

He pulled into a roadside market that bore no other name than CHEAPER. Inside, the light was dim except for the beer coolers, which glowed like TV screens. The snack rack was full but other merchandise sat in boxes along the aisles. He purchased a local map, checked the index to be sure it included the road where Shel lived, and returned to the car.

He crouched before the headlights, searching out his way on the map. The latticework of streets grew sparer out where Shel lived. Once his bearings were clear, he got back in the car and wound his way for several miles through low, green hills dotted with laurel trees and scrub oaks. Florid pastures sank away into deep ravines and lakes of rainwater. Moonlight shone through low scudding clouds. An easterly wind was bringing the storm in from the coast, and the smell of coming rain tinged the air.

He drove slowly, navigating awkward turns in the road as it followed ancient property lines. He checked the names and numbers on roadside mailboxes. Many bore RFD numbers that didn’t jive with the address he had for Shel, and he ventured back and forth along the same five miles of narrow, curving asphalt, unable to make sense of where he was, how close he might be, how far. In the end he just returned the way he’d come to the same roadside market in Oakley.

He went to a bank of pay phones along the outside wall. Beside them, a fresh urine stain streaked the plaster where someone had unzipped and let go. The stain had a yeasty stench, and in a nearby station wagon three teenage boys downed beers and chortled madly. When a young woman emerged from the market, the teenagers emitted in unison a cheerless mating howl.

Abatangelo checked the phone directory, but Shel wasn’t listed, even under misspellings. He called Information but the operator had no new listings, either. He tried to think of aliases she might use, recalled a few from the old days, checked these as well but only came up empty.

He walked toward the station wagon with the three sniggering drunks. Leaning down into the driver’s side window, he said, “I’m hoping you guys can help me with a problem.”

The boys were white, neither poor nor well-to-do. The kind whose fathers worked construction or wore a badge or drove a rig, maybe two generations removed from Dust Bowl camp trash. They wore decent clothes, their teeth were straight, and their hair looked like it was cut by a woman. They regarded Abatangelo with expressions of dread. He crouched down, so as to look a little less imposing.

“I’ve got an address I’m trying to find out here, and I can’t seem to get the thing right.”

The three teenagers exchanged glances with vague relief. One of them said, “Lotta people get lost out here.”

“Well,” Abatangelo said, “I guess I’m one of them.”

“What address you got?”

It was the driver who spoke. He seemed the oldest, with sandy-colored stubble on his cheeks and chin. Beside him, the guy riding shotgun, if that was still the term, was blond and good-looking and seemed the most frightened of the three. The last one had the Okiest features of the bunch and seemed bent out of shape about something. Skinny and big-eared, he sat in back alone. Riding President, Abatangelo thought. At least that’s what they called it when he was their age.

From memory, Abatangelo recited the address he had for Shel, deciding against showing them the computer printout. They looked at one another as though to determine if anyone had a clue. It was the one in back who spoke finally.

“You ain’t talking about the Akers place, are you?”

Abatangelo turned toward the voice. “What Akers place?”