'I'd run 'em off.'
'You told 'em that, uh? Man, you sound like old Carl. That's what he'd do. Come back from Hollywood and find squatters on his land? He'd go out there with a shotgun and run 'em.'
'If he didn't shoot 'em,' Ben said.
Preston got up from the table and went to the phone on the desk. 'Avery Grooms and Hazen. What's Brother's name?'
'Haven't any idea. But that notebook right there has his license number in it.'
Preston dialed, waited a moment and said, 'Eddie? Guess who I'm sitting here with having a beer. Our old point guard, man, Ben Webster.' He nodded, quiet for a few moments, and said, 'I'll tell him that. Listen, what I need, somebody to run two guys name of Grooms, Avery and Hazen, on NCIC.' He opened the notebook. 'And a license number I'll give you, from Arkansas.' Preston spelled the names, gave the number, spoke and listened for a while and said, 'Yeah, if you can do it now, I'll buy you three beers.' He said to Ben, 'Remember Eddie Chocote, the only freshman made the team our last year? That was Eddie.'
Ben said, 'Went on to play for Tulsa.'
'That's right, and he said you were the quickest guard he ever went down the floor with, and that's counting college ball. But you rather ride bulls.'
'It paid,' Ben said, 'else I'd have to've sold the farm.'
'Why keep it? Other than you grew up there.'
Ben said, 'I have to think about it.'
Eddie Chocote came on again and Preston talked to him for a few minutes taking notes, then came over to sit at the table saying, 'Hazen have dog bite scars on his left arm?'
'He didn't show me any.'
Preston looked at his sheet of notes.
'Hazen Richard Grooms, May 12th, 1967. Served a hundred and thirty-two months in the Cummins Unit over there, Arkansas Department of Corrections. You want to guess what for?'
'Tell me.'
'Theft of property and aggravated robbery. Hazen hijacked a highway hauler and they caught him with the tractor. That was, let's see, twelve years ago.'
'What about the old man?'
'Avery Louis Grooms, wears dentures, has 'Lucky Dog' tattooed on his left arm. D.O.B. August 5th, 1940. He went down for theft by receiving and was given ninety months in their North Central Unit, the same time Hazen was in Cummins. There's a detainer on him for parole violation. All you do is tell the sheriff and Avery's gone.'
Ben said, 'I don't know if that would settle it.'
'Maybe not,' Preston said, 'but it would spray their hive, get 'em active.' He looked at his notes again. 'Next piece of business, the Ford pickup's registered to Jarrett Lloyd Grooms, so Eddie ran him on the crime computer. Date of birth April 10th, 1975. He's six-four and weighs two-forty. That sound like Brother?'
'Those're his dimensions. What'd he do?'
'Went down for third-degree battery on a list of assault indictments, but all he got was a year in the Lonoke County jail.' Preston Raincrow laid his notes on the table. He said, 'Ben, these people are into hijacking trucks.'
'We know Hazen tried it,' Ben said.
'I see it as their criminal enterprise. I bet they keep those barns closed tight and locked.'
'I never got close enough to tell,' Ben said.
Preston took his time. He said, 'Maybe I could look into it. Go out there, tell 'em I'm checking on Lyme disease for the county.'
Ben said, 'Or mad cow.'
It got Preston nodding his head. 'Yeah, I like mad cow. Say I need to check the feed and the cow shit.'
'You think they'll believe you?'
'I wear my exterminator uniform and bring Eddie Chocote along with his sidearm. Tell 'em this mad cow business could be a terrorist plot, like anthrax. Eddie's cool, he'll go along. We find stolen property, we tell the sheriff. We find a meth lab working - speed's big around here - we call the DEA.
They'll go out there with marshals. But if we don't get to peek in the barns...' Preston shrugged. 'You ever in a movie had this kind of situation? Guys you think are bad won't come out of the house?'
'I was one of the guys,' Ben said. 'I made a run for it and got shot.'
'You were good at dying.'
'We played guns enough when we were kids. Get shot and go, 'Unhhh, I'm hit,' and fall in the river.' Ben thought of what he'd say next, hesitated and then said it. 'I almost got shot for real one time, taking a midnight dip in the country club pool.'
'And they put you in jail - I remember that. You were with some girl we went to school with.'
'Denise Patterson,' Ben said.
'That's right, she's Denise Allen now, married twice. The first time to some country singer came through with a show and Denise ran after him. The second time to a guy in Tulsa with oil money left over from the '80s. They got divorced and she come back home. Her folks moved to Hawai-ya and let her have the big house on Seminole Avenue she grew up in. That's where she's at now. Yeah, Denise Allen, in the real estate business, sells farms, sells lake property -'
'How do you know all that?'
'Ophelia does her cleaning. She says Ms. Allen isn't like any other ladies she works for.'
'I believe it,' Ben said. 'One time she wanted me to take pictures of her bare naked, she's sixteen years old, and send 'em to Playboy.'
'You keep any?'
'I never took the pictures. I was hardshell Baptist at that time,' Ben said, 'account of Carl had found Jesus. I was reading scripture so I wouldn't go to Hell. I'd go skinny-dipping with Denise and leave my underwear on.'
'I remember in school,' Preston said, 'some guys called her Denise the piece. They said she'd let you screw her long as you were Caucasian. You still Baptist?'
Ben said, 'More Unitarian if anything,' thinking of Kim. Thinking of her for the first time in hours.
Preston said, 'Yeah, Ophelia told her me and you write to each other and she's always asking what you're doing.'
'Denise?'
'Who we talking about? I was you, man, I'd give her a call.'
IV.
The way Denise met Hazen Grooms: one night in that dark, smoky bar at the Best Western, months ago, he asked her to have a drink with him. He was scruffy, but there was something about his pose she liked, his cool, sleepy eyes, and shrugged, why not, and said she'd have a Margarita. He told her he was a cattleman. Denise said, 'You mean you shovel cow shit?' Hazen said he speculated on cattle, oil and land development - looking like he might have five bucks in his jeans. He asked her with his sleepy Jack Nicholson look, 'What's a hot number like you doing in Okmulgee?' Denise kept a straight face and laid her OK Realty card on the bar. If this cowboy was into land development he could put up or shut up. Hazen said, 'Hmmm,' studying the card. He said he had run into a relative of his operated a pecan farm and was talking to him about working shares. He asked Denise if she could put together a lease agreement. When he told her it was the Webster property out in the Deep Fork bottom Denise almost came off her bar stool.
Oh, really?
Since high school she had not stopped thinking of Ben Webster. Not every day, but a lot; in fact more than ever while she was married to those two jerks. She was sure this lease deal would put her in touch with him again. They'd talk about it on the phone and she'd say, 'By the way, I'm coming out to the Coast soon.' Ben could even come here to look over his tenants and she'd act grown-up for a change, try to be more subtle than she was
