Jan Burke - Bloodlines

“Sweet Lord,” Ezra said, watching as a shadowy creature crawled from the marsh. He put the truck in gear and pulled out onto the road, spilling coffee all over the floorboards as he tossed the lid of the thermos down in his haste.

He reached the paved road before his conscience overrode his panic. He was a God-fearing man who read his Bible and he knew the story of the Good Samaritan as well as anybody. The Las Piernas marshes were not the Black Lagoon. That had been a man. A man most likely in trouble. He turned the truck around.

He carefully maneuvered the truck so that the headlights were shining toward the place where he had heard the sound. He immediately saw the form he had seen before. Lying facedown, now, not even all the way out of the water. Soaked in mire.

Ezra got out of the cab of the truck, carrying a flashlight clenched in his fist. He was generally a peaceable man, but stories of the Good Samaritan or no, a fellow had to be careful. What business did anyone have out here this time of night, anyway? What if this fellow was drunk and surly? Never could tell with drunks.

As he approached, though, he saw that the man was shivering hard. Ezra’s wariness left him. The man wasn’t just shivering, it was a dreadful kind of shaking.

“Hey!” Ezra called. “Hey, you all right?”

The man half-lifted his head and looked at Ezra, although Ezra wasn’t sure the man really saw him. The man’s face was a horrible sight, bloody and distorted, one eye completely swollen closed. The other eye was open, and Ezra saw that it was a blue eye. The man moaned and dropped his head again. The shaking continued.

Ezra came closer. He had never seen a man who had been so terribly beaten.

Ezra pulled him from the water, then tried to coax him to his feet, but realized the man had passed out. He tried to rouse the man and couldn’t. The man’s skin was so icy, he was worried that he had not just passed out but died. Ezra lifted him, and the man made a whimpering sound that cut right through Ezra. He had a strange feeling that this was not a man given to making that kind of sound.

He was bigger than Ezra, who struggled to keep his balance as he half-carried, half-dragged the man to the truck. Before long, Ezra was nearly as damp from marsh water as the man. He put him in the passenger side of the cab and closed the door. The man was completely silent now.

He’d take him to St. Mary’s, Ezra decided. It would make him late with his deliveries, but he didn’t trouble himself too much with that. With any luck, the hotels wouldn’t stop buying eggs from him if he told them he had to stop to save a man’s life.

That is, he added, looking at the figure slumped against the door, if he had been in time to do any such thing.

A S THEY RODE IN THE TURQUOISE AND WHITE CHEVY BEL AIR, BETTY Bradford decided that she liked Lew Hacker, liked him plenty. He wasn’t much to look at, but still, she liked him. She liked that he was quiet and calm and didn’t ask a girl a lot of stupid questions about whether she was a real blonde, or how had she ended up in the life, or could he have a free one?

Lew never talked about any of that with her, although she knew he was as flesh and blood as any other man. Hell, he had a stiffy right now. Hadn’t, before she took off her shoes. She turned sideways on the front seat, pulling up her knees so that her feet were on the seat between them, her skirt a tent over her legs. And look who had a tent pole…

She pulled a pack of Black Jack gum out of her purse and asked him if he’d like a piece. He laughed a little, getting the joke, which made her like him more. He said he’d always liked Black Jack, even before he was twenty-one, a joke she got right away, which made her feel good, proud of herself.

“We’re not going to the cabin, are we, Lew?”

“No.”

“So you’re passing up all that dough we’re supposed to be getting?”

“Supposed to,” he repeated. After a moment, he said, “I didn’t like Gus’s mood.”

“I’m with you,” Betty said. “What good is the money if you ain’t breathing?”

“That’s it.”

“They didn’t tell us everything that was going on tonight, did they?”

“No.”

“I mean, okay, someone is owed a beating, that’s one thing. Do you know what Gus was up to while we were busy with that guy at the party?”

“No, but I can guess.”

She thought this over for a moment, then said, “I’m sticking with you, if that’s all right.”

“That’s more than all right. You’re a smart girl.”

No one had ever said that to her. Not ever. But it was true. Maybe she wasn’t Albert Einstein-okay, she’d be the first to admit that she never did so good in school. Even so, she was able to think for herself, and she had known Gus long enough to have an idea of when he was turning dangerous. That was the first thing a person ought to figure out about anybody, especially in her line of work.

It wasn’t always easy. The boss had more than one or two creeps on his payroll, some worse than Gus. She thought about one who no longer worked for him-Bennie Lee Harmon-because he had been sent to San Quentin, sentenced to death for torturing and killing a couple of working girls. The poor kids were just a year or two younger than she was. She shuddered. She never would have guessed it about Bennie. He was good-looking, even seemed kind of meek.

One of the boys said that Gus himself had gone crazy not long ago and cut up a young girl down in Nigger Slough, west of town. One of the others said it happened a long time ago, somewhere else. Until tonight, she hadn’t been so sure that it had ever happened at all. Nothing in the paper about it, but they never did write much about things that happened to the coloreds, especially not that ragged bunch down in the slough. Killing a white girl, though! Until tonight, she didn’t think Gus would do anything like that.

She had seen that Gus was in a dangerous mood tonight, and he was in one even before Bo went in to talk to him.

Bo. Now, there was a big, sweet dummy. While he went in to talk to Gus, she went into the bathroom and happened to see something she wished to God she had never seen: a laundry hamper with some bloody clothes in it. She figured Gus would never, ever, not in a thousand years, leave something so obvious out where someone could see it. It never would have been there if they hadn’t surprised him by coming back so soon. And she figured that if Gus had been happy about them being back so soon, he would have said, “Great, let’s go, everybody,” and they would have all gone together. But he told Bo to follow him into his office.

She didn’t say a word about what she had seen, but Lew went into the bathroom a little later, and she knew he saw it, too. He hadn’t said a word all night, but after that, he even looked quieter.

She read Gus the minute he walked out and told them to go to the cabin. Saw him look hard at Lew. She didn’t think Lew gave anything away, though. He was calm as could be. She wondered if Gus thought Lew was stupid just because he never said anything. Gus was the idiot. Putting Bo in charge of anything wasn’t really such a bright idea.

She thought about her car and frowned. Would she ever see it again? Probably not. Not a good idea to go back to Las Piernas, and that’s where it was, locked in the garage at Gus’s place. The car was a present from a married, rich man who had spoiled her for a time, until he had learned she was two-timing him with Gus. But he let her keep the car, which had special pink carpet installed over the floorboards.

That was the rich guy’s little joke, and oh, how she had laughed when she first saw it. She never wore pink dresses, but she adored pink underwear. It gave her a kind of secret pleasure, knowing she wasn’t wearing anything drab and white, or too sexy like black or red. Pink was innocent, but a little naughty, too. The fellows she went with always went wild for it-the rich fellow more than any of them. He told her the carpet in the car would be just like her underpants, a little hidden delight that most people wouldn’t see until they got close.