Hell on Church Street (9 page)

“Howdy, Brother Webb,” he said. “You ready to talk about the preacher’s daughter?”

Chapter Eight

Doolittle Norris was smiling, smiling like a villain, glorying in my squirming.

“What do you mean?” I asked. Might as well fight it for a little while.

“Climb in,” he said, nodding at the passenger side. The book on tape droned on about giant waves sweeping men into the sea.

“It’s a little late for me,” I said.

He shrugged. “It
ain’t
so late. I bet you Mister Brother Card is still up.” He took the cup off the dash and spit and scratched his nose.

“He probably is,” I said.

“Then get in and let’s you and me chew the fat for a little while.”

My scalp itched and my back felt chilled, but I walked around the truck and climbed in. It was a huge tank of a thing, with a dashboard full of lights and a long bench seat. It felt as if he and I were in different time zones. Norris slid the spit cup into a plastic holder by his knees and backed the truck out.
Then he gunned it to the edge of the parking lot, let some cars pass, and flew out the opposite direction toward Fenton Road.
There was a little American flag on his radio antenna fluttering sharply in the wind. We sped past gas stations and houses and long, lonely stretches of trees, and all the while the man on the tape talked about American soldiers being gunned down before they even got to the beach.

“Could we turn that off?” I asked.

Norris shrugged and turned it off. When he reached over to hit the button on the tape player I noticed for the first time there was now a gun clipped to his belt. He noticed me notice it and smiled.

“Last line of defense between me and the bad guys,” he said.

“What’s the first line?”

“Pure heart,” he said. “And the right intentions.” He spit into his cup. “And the law, of course. Can’t forget the law.”

“What do you want?” I asked. I meant to sound tough, but I sounded weak and stupid.

Norris pulled a nasty handkerchief from a pocket and dabbed at his mouth. “Right.
Straight to the point.
That’s the way I like it myself.”

We passed the
Dyess
aluminum plant and Norris said, “See, here’s the thing: I drive around town a lot at night. Keeping vigil, you know. Protecting and serving into the wee small hours of the morning. It’s mostly boring. Occasionally, you run off some niggers who drift out of their part of town into ours. Occasionally, you rough up some mouthy teenagers. But mostly, you just ride around. That’s why I listen to my books. Gives me something to think about on the lonely nights.”

I wanted to say,
The
way I hear it you’re never bored. I hear you spend your time
micro-managing
the drugs coming into the county. I hear the people you beat up are the drug dealers who aren’t giving you a piece of their action.
I didn’t say anything, of course.

“I’m watchful, though,” he said. “For instance, one night I saw this girl walking down Church Street. Teenager.
Kind of on the thick side.
So I’m about to pull over and talk to her but before I can, what does she do?”

He waited until I said, “I don’t know.”

“It’s funny you don’t know, because she went to your house. So I’m thinking, that’s the house old lady McCarthy gave Tim’s church.
Youth minister’s house.
And so, being concerned for the wellbeing of what looked to me to be a minor, I hung around. Waited for an hour or so—during which time, by the way, the lights never come on in the house. Darkness. Then, finally, she came out and I followed her home. I drove past her, waited behind houses, stuff like that and she never noticed. Went straight to the preacher’s house.”

“It’s not what you think,” I said.

“Course not,” he said. “I got a dirty mind unwashed by the blood of the Lamb. I know that. But I kept watch the next night, and the next—made it part of my nightly rounds—and she went back a lot.”

Okay. So here’s the thing: I know that earlier I might have made it sound as if she’d only come back to see me a few times. I suppose it was more than that. Looking back on it now, I think it was more than that. But the truth is nothing bad was happening there. We were in love, after all.

Most people wouldn’t accept the truth, though. I knew that. And I knew Norris wouldn’t accept the truth. So I lied, and he just laughed when I explained the lie, explained that she and I were friends and that we were only talking about problems with her father and school and life. He didn’t believe me at all.

“Sure. Sure, I know,” he said as we slid back onto Church Street. “You were doing your duties as a minister, late at night, in the dark, with a chubby, underage piece of ass. I completely believe you, but the question is: will her daddy?”

I sulked in the corner of his big truck and didn’t say anything. What was there to say to that? I would lose my job. And, if they could, the Cards would have me put in jail for statutory rape, a jail run by Doolittle Norris.

Norris drove past my house (“Now, that
is
your house, right?”) and swung by the Cards’ house as well. He slowed down, grinning at me in the rearview mirror. When we were out of the neighborhood, he cut through the Wal-Mart parking lot a few blocks away and headed back to the church. “Of course, we could avoid all that,” he said. “But you’d have to do something for me.”

“What?” I asked.

He nodded. “That’s better. You don’t need to bullshit me about the girl. I don’t care. She’s...what?
Sixteen, seventeen.
Back not all that long ago, she’d already have a kid or two. Some places in the world they still marry them off at fourteen, fifteen.”

“What do you want from me?” I asked belligerently. “I don’t have much money, but I can give you a little. Just tell me what you want and leave me the hell alone.”

He swung the truck over to the side of the road and threw it into park. I lurched forward and thumped my head against the windshield. By the time I’d regained my balance, he’d
unholstered
his gun and pointed it at my mouth.

I plastered myself to the door and clawed at the seat with my fingernails. His face was a sick orange from the dashboard. “Real quick now, let’s
have
a clarification session. You’re a fucking weasel, and I own you. You’re my fucking weasel. You get tough with me, or fuck around with me, and I’ll skip sending your ass to jail. I’ll put a bullet in your skull and stick you out in the woods under a rock.”

“Okay,” I pleaded.

“You believe me now?”

 
“Yes, sir. Please. Please just tell me what you want.”

He stared at me for a while and then holstered his gun, put the truck in drive and said, “Good. Don’t want us to misunderstand each other.” He smiled again and reached for his spit cup. “I need you to do a little favor for me.”

I peeled myself off the door and settled somewhat into the seat.
Jesus
.

“You know who Mrs. Eleanor
Dyess
is?” he asked.

“No.”

“Old lady in your church?”

I shook my head, although I wasn’t really trying to remember. I was still thinking about his gun pointed at me.

“Course not,” he said. “You’re too busy banging teenagers after church to notice. Mrs.
Dyess
is the widow of Fred
Dyess
who owned the aluminum plant out on Fenton Road. Now she owns it. Or did.”

“What do you mean?”

“She died a couple of hours ago. Cancer.”

Then I remembered Brother Card trying to tell me about her the first night I had dinner at his house. I wished I’d been paying attention. “I remember her now,” I said. “She’s been sick since I got here. I never met her though.”

“That’s understandable, you being so involved with the youth and all,” he said.

I didn’t reply to that.

“Here’s the point,” he said. “Mrs.
Dyess
left something very important with your friend the preacher.”

“With Brother Card?”

“One and the same. And he’s got this important document at his house.”

“How do you know that?”

He shrugged. “The old lady was a religious kook. She had a falling out with her
kids
years ago, and the only person she trusted was Brother Card. The lawyer involved in the distribution of Mrs.
Dyess’s
estate is a…family friend. He was present when your would-be father-in-law put this document in the bottom drawer of his desk at home.”

“But how do you know it’s still there? He might have moved it.”

Doolittle Norris shook his head. “It’s there. There’s no reason for him to have moved it. Not until tomorrow morning, anyway.”

“But—”

“Stop talking,” he groaned. “Jesus Christ. All you have to worry about is going in there tonight and getting it out. Simple burglary. According to the state, you’re already legally a rapist. You can’t step up to a little B&E?”

I shook my head. “But how would I even go about it? I’ve never done anything like this before.”

“You’re about to learn,” he said.

“What is it, this document?” I asked. “What am I looking for?”

He let that hover in the air between us as he pulled into the church parking lot and stopped at my car. “In his office at home…
Bottom drawer on the right hand side.
Where he keeps his important church documents. It’s a manila envelop with DYESS written across it in marker. You can’t miss it. I’ll call you tomorrow night.” He jerked his head at the door. “Now get out.”

I opened the door and climbed out. I felt sluggish and exhausted.

“Hey,” he said.

“Yeah.” I stopped with my hand on the door.

He stared at me for a long time. “Come tomorrow night you’d best have that goddamn envelope.”

“I understand.”

“I’m not talking about going to jail on a statutory rape charge.”

“I understand.”

“Good,” he said. “Get to work.”

Chapter Nine

I waited until his truck disappeared into the distance before I dragged myself back into the church. I was too smart not to sneak into Brother Card’s office and check through his files. I was hoping like hell he had moved that envelope to the church. His door was unlocked, and I searched his office thoroughly. It was all for nothing, though, and that meant there were no options left to me but to drive home and get ready to burgle the Cards’ home. On the way there, I swung by the hospital to see if Brother Card’s car was in the parking lot. It wasn’t. I assumed he had to have been there when the old lady died, done his consoling, and gone home for the night.

When I got home, I went to my room and dropped onto the bed and thought things over. I was still looking for a way out.