Heads You Lose (13 page)

Lacey felt a shiver run up her spine. She wanted to smash a beer bottle over Marv’s head, like you see in the movies. Instead, she bought him a beer, laying her money on the bar.

“How about a peace offering,” Lacey said. “A pint on me.”

Tate poured the pint and slid it in front of Big Marv. Lacey got up from her barstool, and as she tossed on her coat, she made sure her arm swung in the perfect angle to knock over the glass and let the beer fall on Marv’s substantial lap.

“I’m so sorry,” Lacey deadpanned. She tossed another bill on the bar. “Let me buy you another.”

Big Marv’s face turned bright red. If Lacey had been a man, you could bet another headbutt would have been in the cards. Despite what women will tell you, there are more than a few perks.

Lacey took in a deep breath when she stepped outside. She held her hands up and watched them shake. She walked to her car, counting her drinks, wondering if she should call Paul and what state she’d find him in.

“There ain’t no way in hell I’m letting you drive home.”

Lacey spun around in the Timberline parking lot, which was really just an amoeba-shaped patch of gravel. Deputy Doug, in his off-duty denim and plaid, nodded in the direction of his pickup truck.

“Whether you spilled that drink on purpose or not, you’ve had a few too many.”

Lacey hopped into his truck without any argument. At the moment, she didn’t have any words left in her. But Doug had a different agenda. He started up the truck and turned onto the dark Mercer road.

“You okay, Lacey?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You want to talk about it?”

“Nope.”

“If you ever want to talk, I’m here.”

“Unlikely.”

“If you change your mind.”

“Okay.”

“I mean it. Anytime.”

Lacey grunted some acknowledgment that’s hard to spell. Doug remained silent until they reached the Hansen home. He had almost run out of material. But he hung in there as long as he could.

“I’m sorry about Hart. That must be hard.”

“Thanks.”

“But maybe it’s for the best,” Doug said. “I always thought you could do better.”

“Not every thought in your head should be spoken, Doug.”

Lacey reached for the car door before Doug had pulled to a complete stop. The door was locked from the driver’s-side panel.

“Can you unlock the door, please,” Lacey said.

“Maybe we can do this again sometime?” Doug said, not unlocking the door.

“Do what?”

“Have a drink sometime.”

“We weren’t having drinks together.”

“Well, we could.”

“Anything’s possible.”

“You know me, Lacey. I’m a nice guy.”

“I’m sure you are.”

“We could go to a movie, maybe.”

“Are you going to unlock the door?”

“Maybe just something simple. Like dinner.”

Lacey reached across the cab, pressed the lock release, and jumped out of the truck.

“Thanks for the ride,” she said, deciding to end on a polite note since she’d already made one enemy that night. Something was up with Doug; she just didn’t have the energy to contemplate it. She pushed the door shut with both hands.

Blaring music from the radio and a blinding light flashing on his eyes woke Paul. Lacey studied the solid welt that had formed and concluded that her brother was in danger of a concussion and needed to be awake. Plus, she had some things on her mind and needed to talk.

“Big Marv said something strange to me,” Lacey said.

“My advice to you would be don’t talk to Big Marv,” Paul replied.

“What happened, Paul?”

“I tripped outside of Diner and fell on my head.”

“What were you doing at Diner?”

“Eating fries.”

“Alone?”

“Uh . . . yes.”

“If I went into Diner and asked if you were alone, would the employees corroborate your story?”

“You’re going to start investigating
me
now?”

“If you keep lying, I will.”

“Lacey, we have got to let the cops do their job and just mind our own business, all right? I’m sorry Hart is dead. But he spent a lifetime making enemies. It’s not so hard to believe that one of ’em finally killed him.”

“A long time ago, I thought I’d spend the rest of my life with him, and now he’s dead. I just need to know who did it.”

Paul got two beers from the fridge and passed one to his sister. He turned on the television and found a rerun of
Nightcrimes.
They sat in silence for as long as Lacey could stand it.

“Did anyone ever investigate our parents’ death?”

Paul muted the television and turned to his sister.

“What’s got you asking about that?”

“Big Marv. He made it sound like maybe it was no accident.”

NOTES:

Dave,

Look, I watered Big Marv and Doc Holland, and planted more seeds of suspicion. I even included my own fake TV show to try to maintain some sense of consistency for the reader.

In return for these olive branches, I have two minor requests for chapter 12: How about a Terry Jakes–free chapter and no wayward clues? Let’s build on the core mystery here, rather than inventing new diversions.

Lisa

Lisa,

Big Marv and I both appreciate your acknowledgment of his existence. I’ll see what I can do about your requests, but doesn’t telling each other what to do violate the spirit of the project?

Remember what happened when you refused to let go of the whole Baccarat showdown in
The Fop
? Sometimes you have to trust someone else to get the job done. You wouldn’t remove your own appendix, would you?

Dave

CHAPTER 12

“No shit,” Tate said, putting his crossbow down in the dewy grass. “The boars would come right into the village?”

“They’d come right through your front door if they felt like it,” said the old man on the other end of the log. “It got so bad that we had to call a truce and team up with the Commies just to clear them out. We spent a whole day with ’em driving the pigs back into the forest, picking off as many as we could. At the end of the day we roasted them up together and drank a few barrels of beer. The Koreans were better shots. Our GIs would shoot ’em up so bad there was hardly anything left to eat.”

Tate just nodded.

“Two days later was the battle of Longsing. My battalion was wiped out. I lived in the forest for six days after that,” Sook said. “That’s when I really learned about them. Some say you have to learn to think like they think, well that’s bullshit. Best you can do is just be quiet and patient. Korean wild pigs are some smart, persistent assholes, but they don’t hear so good. They might smell you, but they won’t pinpoint you unless they can hear where you are. First time I caught one I dropped my knife. That’s a wrestling match I don’t care to repeat.”

A man learns a lot about himself when his only weapons are silence and a knife, Tate thought to himself. He’d slept only a couple hours after his shift at the Timberline, but he felt alive out here, ready to do battle. Wild pig season was only a few weeks long, but it was his favorite time of year.

“The thing about the Korean ones, though,” Sook continued, in an elegiac tone, “they were almost blond. Beautiful. Soft hair like golden sheep.
Sus scrofa coreanus.
”
¹⁷
He said it like the name of a high school sweetheart.

Sook was the only guy in town Tate could stand hunting with. For everybody else, it was a chance to get drunk and bitch about their wives. Fucking tea party. Even at his age, Sook could still easily handle a bow with a hundred-and-fifty-pound draw.

“So does Mapleshade know you’re out here freezing your wrinkled ass off?” Tate asked.

“Don’t ask, don’t tell,” said Sook, shrugging as he stood up from the log. “I help to smooth things out around there, they stay out of my affairs. As far as they know, we’re getting the early-bird special at Diner with the rest of the bluehairs.”

Tate picked up his crossbow and the two headed farther into the forest. “So that little Hansen girl’s had a rough time lately,” he said.

“Seems to think she’s Nancy Drew,” said Sook.

“Who?” said Tate.

“Never mind. Anyway, Lacey took me to that yuppie doctor, figured she could use me as a rent-a-grandpa. She’s poking around in there, looking through Doc Holland’s old records. Egan doesn’t have a clue. I guess he’s sweet on her.”

“Little bitch came sniffing around the bar last night,” said Tate. “You’d think after everything that’s happened, she’d start minding her own business.”

“Maybe that’s the problem—she doesn’t have any business to mind.”

“I’d just hate to see a nice girl like that lose her head,” said Tate.

“Take it easy,” said Sook. “I pointed her in a certain direction. You shoulda seen her eyes light up. It should keep her busy, but she won’t get anywhere with it. Good girl, but not quite as smart as she thinks.”

“What about the brother?”

“Grows great Indica,” said Sook. “Seems like the type to know when to walk away. But I’m keeping an eye on him.”

Sook’s ears perked up and he gestured silently to Tate. A doe nosed out into a small clearing in the distance. Tate raised his bow, then lowered it—deer season had just ended.

The doe turned its face to the two hunters as Sook’s arrow split its forehead.
¹⁸

Paul woke from a deep sleep. Across the room, his cell phone was playing “American Woman” from inside his pants.

On his way to the phone, Paul caught a glimpse of his forehead in the mirror. The welt had gone a weird subfusc
¹⁹
purple.

“Terry,” Paul said flatly.

“Hey, my man. You okay?” Terry said.

“I’m alive. Marv knocked me out.”

“I . . . yeah, I know.”

“You
know
? I thought you took off.”

“I found a vantage spot maybe fifty yards out. Jesus H., that sound was sickening. Like a baseball bat on a soft coconut. Look, brother, I hope you understand I couldn’t be seen up there. I’m sorry I had to leave you there.”

“Whatever. No more favors, Terry.”

“Not a problem, amigo. Hey, you’re not going to believe this,” Terry said. He couldn’t disguise his glee.

“Try me,” said Paul wearily.

“I got all the info I needed. I waited in the woods till all the lights were out and Marv drove you to wherever. In and out in five minutes. So we’re golden. Mission goddamn accomplished. All thanks to you.”

“So where the hell were you all night?”

“Took me most of the night to hoof it to the road and catch a ride. My feet are swoll up like brined hams. When I got your message, I knew you were okay, so I let you sleep it off.”

“How thoughtful,” said Paul. “I think you owe me this much: What’s going on with you and the Babalatos? Why are you fucking with them?”

“Like I said, we’re closing in on a business deal. I just needed a little more information from their office.”

“There’s more, obviously.”

“Okay, here’s what I can tell you. Couple weeks ago Marv wanted to discuss the possibility of establishing some plants out at their place—they got a couple acres behind We Care, north of where we were last night. I went up there with him to check it out. A couple days later I went back to check out an old spring to see if it was still usable, which would make things a whole lot easier for Darryl when it came time to get the place irrigated.”

“Cut to the chase,” Paul said.

“I found a bag of teeth,” said Terry.

“What?”

“I found a Ziploc sandwich bag full of human teeth.”

When Lacey woke, it was late morning and Paul was gone. She’d slept off most of her night at the Timberline, but what remained in her brain was asperous.
²⁰
When a long shower failed to smooth things out, she found herself rooting around in the closet for her old bong, an eighteen-inch purple monster from the Hart days. The Purple People Eater, he’d called it. She filled it and took a massive hit. Maybe she was feeling nostalgic. Or maybe she just wanted to get back outside of herself. For all of Lacey’s derision of pot smokers and unease about the family business, she didn’t hesitate to partake when she felt the need.

But as soon as she felt the hit, her thoughts turned back to her list. She knew what she’d be doing today. She called first to see if it was okay. Marybeth Monroe answered on the first ring, with a somnolent statement of fact: “This is Marybeth.” She was surprised to hear from Lacey but said it’d be lovely to see her.

The Monroes’ house was a half-hour out of town, up the side of the mountain. Lacey drove the winding road through big, beautiful lots that had sat empty for years. No one seemed to be sure why, or even who owned them. That was one mystery she could let slide.

Eventually she emerged from the mist and could now look down onto it, a tattered blanket covering Mercer. She found the house, a caliginous
²¹
shingled thing half perched on stilts. Back when Lacey was in high school, Hart’s mom had just starting dating Dick Monroe, a big-time lawyer.

Marybeth came out to the porch as Lacey exited her car. “Oh, Lacey,” she said, and gave Lacey a long embrace. “So good to see you.”

After an awkward silence, they walked through the front door and into a
Sunset
photo shoot. They sat down on a big white couch in front of an impressive stone fireplace embedded in blond wood.

Marybeth filled her in. She had a boy and a girl in private school up in Orendale, which had just resumed the previous week. She worked from home some days, real estate something or other. Dick was busy but made it home most nights. Lacey thought she seemed to be holding up well, given the recent news. Maybe she was a little medicated, or a little religious, or both. Whatever works, Lacey thought.