Max Collins - Scratch Fever

It was a girl. A young woman in a denim jacket and jeans. So the bundle under the blanket had been a small, sleeping person.

“I wanted to make sure it was you,” she said. She was staying near the van. A busty little brunette with a pretty, heart-shaped face.

“You’re Jon’s girl, aren’t you?” Nolan said.

“Not his girl, exactly,” she said, shrugging. “But I’m who you think I am. I think.”

“Toni, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” she said. She seemed surprised that he remembered her name. And a little pleased. “Can I put my hands down?”

“Yes, and come over here.”

She went to Hale.

“Bob,” she said, putting a hand on his arm, which was still leaning back so he could keep his hands on the Land Rover’s hood, per Nolan’s instructions, “this is a friend of Jon’s. I didn’t want to worry you before, Bob... but something’s happened to Jon.”

He looked confused. “What are you talking about?”

“Somebody’s kidnapped him, I think,” Toni said.

“Did you call the cops?” Hale asked.

“Can’t,” Toni said.

“Better be quiet,” Nolan told her.

“Why can’t you?” Hale asked.

Nolan raised his gun.

“Just asking,” Hale said.

Nolan looked at Toni. She nodded. He looked at Hale. He said, “Jon and I are involved with some people who wouldn’t like the police involved. You don’t want to know any more than that.”

“You’re right,” Hale said.

“I’ll put my gun away if you’ll take us inside and keep your dog off.”

“Okay.” Hale shrugged.

“Go get his shotgun,” Nolan told Toni.

She did.

Nolan broke it open, handed the shells to Hale, then handed him the empty gun as well.

He turned to Toni. “Get my shoes, would you?”

“You’re in your stocking feet!”

“That’s why I want my shoes.” He pointed to them.

She got them for him. He put them on.

Then Hale led them into the Barn, commanding his surly dog to heel, which it did, reluctantly.

Hale took them out into the bar, where he turned on some lights. The dog headed for a nearby pinball machine and curled up beneath it and slept; even in repose, it looked like a killer. Nolan asked Hale if he had some coffee. Hale asked if instant was okay and Nolan said fine.

While Hale got the coffee, Nolan got the story of what had happened here, from Toni’s point of view.

“When Jon never got back,” she said, “I went out and found the van was still here. I couldn’t think of anything to do but hope you got Jon’s message, and wait for you to show up.”

“So you waited in the van.”

“Yeah, but I fell asleep and didn’t hear you get here. Didn’t hear you prowling around, either. You say you tried the doors on the van?”

“The ones up front, yes.”

“And I slept right through it. I’m not very good at this, am I?”

“Well, you’re new at it. And I’m quiet.”

“Yeah, you sneak around in your socks. I didn’t wake up till that horn started in. Scared the shit out of me, too.”

“So Julie runs a gambling joint,” Nolan said. “That explains the Chicago connection.”

“What?”

Nolan shushed her, as Hale joined them in the booth with the coffee. The big man seemed almost friendly now. He had even taken the time to put some money in the jukebox; Charlie Daniels was singing something mournful at the moment. But it did serve to give a social flavor to this forced meeting.

And Hale clearly liked Toni; he looked at her with an obvious, though somehow childish, lust.

“Why’d you stay out in that van?” Hale asked her. “If I’d known you was in trouble, you could’ve come stayed in my pad.”

“I never thought of that,” she said with a straight face.

“Toni says this woman — this Julie,” Nolan said, as if he didn’t know who Julie was, “asked about Jon.”

“Yeah. She was interested in booking ’em over at her club.”

“His band, you mean.”

“Yeah. She has quite the place, over there by Gulf Port.”

“Tell me about it — the Paddlewheel.”

“I suppose I could. I could also call Julie, after you leave, and tell her you was asking about her, you know.”

Toni touched Hale’s arm again. “Please don’t.”

“You don’t want in this any deeper than you already are,” Nolan told him. It wasn’t exactly a threat.

Hale thought about that.

Then he said, “Okay, you convinced me. Ask me what you want and get out of here. I want to get back to bed. Listening to that dog is making me sleepy.”

Over under the pinball machine, his dog was snoring.

“You know,” Hale said, “you could just as easy killed that bitch of mine out there. But you didn’t. Maybe that says something about you.”

“Maybe it does,” Nolan said.

THE DOUBLE bed, covered by a garish green and red floral spread, came out of the wall at right; a TV and dresser with mirror were against the wall at left. There was just enough room between for Infante to pace.

It was a dingy little room, with smudged-looking yellow plaster walls and a green shag carpet speckled with dirt; over the bed was a picture of two horses running. Tacky, Infante thought. Just the sort of depressing room he didn’t need right now. But he had no choice but to be here; this was where that guy Harold said to come. Besides which, there wasn’t any other motel in Gulf Port.

Infante had rolled in just after three and had driven around a little bit, checking it out, and found Gulf Port wasn’t a town at all, not really — just a collection of trailers and shacks, no business section or anything. If there hadn’t been a full moon, he wouldn’t have been able to see the town, hardly, which would have been okay with him.

Scattered along the outskirts of Gulf Port, though, were eight or ten bars, all thriving, and that explained it: Gulf Port wasn’t a town, it was a watering hole, a place to go when the bars across the river closed up at two.

The motel was down the road from a place called Upper’s, a big one-story brown brick country rock joint with a hundred cars in the lot. The neon sign in front of the motel said “EEZER INN” in pulsing orange. Cute, Infante thought. The woman at the check-in desk was chubby and about fifty-five, with a lot of makeup and perfume and a frilly white blouse unbuttoned enough to show the start of big, withering boobs. Sickening. Ex-whore, he supposed. She was reading a Harlequin paperback. She’d tried giving him a sexy smile as she handed his room key over to him, and it all but made him barf.

There were ten units in front and another ten in back, and about half of them were full up. He’d asked for one in back, and now he was pacing around inside the dreary little cubicle, feeling as unappealing as the desk clerk and as dirty as the room itself.

He hadn’t had time to grab any of his things before leaving. He was still in the black outfit he had worn with Sally when they went in after Nolan’s bitch. He felt dirty. He needed a shave. He considered taking a shower, but then he’d just have to get back in these sweaty clothes, and he couldn’t stand the thought of that.

He’d shower after his employers, the man Harold and the woman Julie, had come and gone. He had called them as soon as he got in the room, which was five minutes ago; they should be here any time now.

He stopped pacing. He sat on the double bed, with his back to the running horses. The silenced 9 mm in his waistband nudged him, and he took it out and put it beside him, on the bed. Then he sat leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, forehead against the palms of his hands. He felt very alone. He missed Sally.

“I’m going to kill that fucker,” he said. To himself. Through his teeth.