I knew I should head out to Green Hills and see Rachel. She sounded desperate on the answering machine. But I wasn’t ready.
Besides, I was starving. The heat seemed even more intense after leaving the icy cold morgue. Between the temperature and my empty insides, a full-tilt blood sugar crash was on its way.
I crossed the river and snaked my way over to Main Street. The city changed complexion almost immediately. Downtown Nashville could be any urban city in America: skyscrapers, government buildings, plazas, bus transfer points. But cross the river, less than a mile, and you’re in the middle of instant funky. That’s my side of the river now, the working class, blue collar, slowly gentrifying side. No
Quite a change from my married days out in yuppie, upscale Green Hills. Personally speaking, it’s no great loss. Besides, the smoking Ford would have been dreadfully out of place among the Mercedes-Benzes and the Jags.
Around the bend in front of East High School, Main Street becomes Gallatin Road. A couple of miles farther out, there’s a hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant with the best damn Szechuan chicken that’s ever cleared this boy’s sinuses. I pulled into the parking lot next to a twenty-year-old rusted out pickup truck with a pair of pit bulls chained in the back. They looked at me with either curiosity or hunger; I didn’t get close enough to check which.
I’d pulled my jacket off by now, rolled up my sleeves, and decided to live with the drenching sweats soaking through my white shirt. My stomach rumbled at the aroma floating gently toward the bumper-to-bumper traffic.
“Why doan you twy somepeen else?” Mrs. Lee barked as I smiled across the counter at her. I hadn’t even ordered yet, but she knew.
“And pass up the best Szechuan chicken this side of Shanghai?” I said. “No way.”
“You wooden know Shanghai if it came up behind you and bit you on da butt!” She scraped a hand across her sweaty forehead, then whipped the green ticket behind to her daughter, a midteens Asian beauty that I’d been lusting after ever since I moved to this part of town. Hmmmm, maybe it’s not the chicken I keep coming back for. …
She must have signaled to her husband to fix my order Extra Fierce. Maybe she wanted to wean me from my predictability. But as soon as I bit into the chicken, my whole face started sweating like the textbook throes of passion. I could feel the epidermis at the roof of my mouth coming loose. Every breath drawn in through my nose came from a flamethrower. It was exquisite. I took a couple of the fatter pieces of chicken, dipped them in a glass of water to get most of the pepper off, then wrapped them in a napkin and stuck them in my pocket. I wolfed down the rest of the food, drank my diet soda, then carried my plate back up to the counter.
“Almost got me that time,” I said.
“What you talkeen about?” she demanded. Mrs. Lee was as genuinely fussy and ill-dispositioned as they came.
“It was delicious,” I said, reaching across the counter and patting her hand. “See you later.”
The sweltering air outside seemed normal now. I pulled my tie down another notch and opened the door to the Ford. The pits were gone now; the parking lot was safe for humanity. I settled in carefully on the hot vinyl car seat, and after a few deep-throated rumbles that made the Escort sound like an Alfa, I pulled back out into traffic.
I headed up Gallatin Road toward Inglewood. This part of town has more junk stores, salvage warehouses, cheap liquor stores, and pawn shops per capita than any other place I’ve ever seen. Off to my right, Riverside Drive ran parallel a mile or so away, changed names, then curved left and intersected Gallatin Road just ahead of me. I stopped short of the light, turned left onto some side street I never could remember the name of, and meandered back into a really seedy part of town.
Maybe it’s not all
I pulled up in front of the gate and parked. I walked up, shook the gate to make a little noise, and waited for Shadow to emerge from wherever she’d been hiding out from the sun. Shadow, an aging black female German Shepherd trotted around from behind the trailer, ears at attention, a slight tilt to the left that came from age and the genetic hip displacement that seems to plague shepherds so badly.
She was slow, laid back, but I knew that was because I was on this side of the fence. If I crossed to the other side without either permission or recognition, she’d tear my throat out.
“Shadow,” I said, holding a hand, palm out, against the gate. “Hey, babe, what’s happening?”
She stopped about six feet away, sniffing, focusing. Then she approached slowly and ran her huge, wet, black nose up the chain link fencing to my hand. She sniffed a couple more times, then the tail started bouncing around like a clock unwinding. She whimpered a little, then backed away so I could open the gate. I lifted the chain off the hook, pressed the gate open a foot or two, and stepped inside the lot. Shadow was on my shoulders in a second, licking my face and nuzzling me. I reached inside my pocket, pulled out the napkin and unwrapped the chicken.
I took a step back; she was on the ground, jaws dripping.
“Speak. Speak to me, Shadow.” She brought up a gnarling growl that erupted into a bark.
“Good girl!” I squeezed the chicken into a ball, flipped it into the air. It was gone before it hit the top of the curve.
“Where’s daddy, Shadow?” I said. Why do dogs and babies make people talk so damn goofy? “Where’s daddy, baby?”
The sun was really baking now, the bare ground cracked beneath my feet. I looked over toward the trailer, and even with the rust stains and dull, weathered paint, the reflection hurt my eyes. I walked toward the pale green hulk with Shadow flopping happily along at my side. At one end of the trailer, an overworked window unit struggled to pull the humidity out of the air. I knocked once and opened the door.
Lonnie stood inside, back to me, bent over slightly, staring at something on the table. He whipped his head around, shushed me, then motioned me in.
“And for God’s sake, don’t slam the door,” he whispered.
Lonnie’s office and sometimes apartment was a clutter of papers, used automobile parts, scattered books, grease, tobacco stains, empty beer bottles. Lonnie was the smartest repo man I’d ever met, but he had strange tastes.
“What’s going on?” I asked, real low.
“Shhh,” he hissed. “Experiment.”
Lonnie was barefoot, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. In his outstretched hand, he held a few straws plucked from an old broom. He moved slowly toward the massive wooden table that normally served as his desk, but which had been swept clean for the drama du jour.
I strained in the low light to see what that was. Behind us, from the other room, the air-conditioner chugged away like an old steam locomotive. He padded slowly forward, reached out toward the middle of the table, then turned his head around and blindly moved a little closer. I bent down, looking around him, just as the straws touched a tiny pile of what looked like dirty table salt on the wood.
There was a terrific boom and a flash of white, followed by an acrid stink that made Mrs. Lee’s Szechuan chicken smell as benign as Cream of Wheat. I jumped back, slamming against the door. I was blinded for a second, then dived on the floor with a yelp.
“Jesus H. Christ!” Lonnie yelled from the floor next to me. I looked over at his arm to see if I needed to start calling him Stumpy. “It works!”
His arm was intact, which was more than I could say for my ears. The smoke was dissipating. I stood up. A
