Fiddlers

She was wearing a white T-shirt and a green mini. She’d kicked off her flat sandals, and was leaning back in her seat now, her knees bent, the soles of her feet propped up against the glove compartment. The radio was tuned to an easy-listening station, the volume up to combat the rush of wind around the car. It was a bright beautiful day, and she was a bright beautiful girl. He could almost forget she was a hooker.

‘Well, for example,’ she said, ‘what kind of work do you do?’

‘I’m retired,’ he said.

‘What kind of work did you do?’

‘I was in sales.’

‘When was this?’

‘I left the job just recently.’

‘Why?’

‘Tired of it.’

Reggie nodded, brushed hair back from her eyes.

‘So what’ve you been doing since?’

‘Loafing.’

‘For how long?’

‘Past few months.’

‘You can afford to do that?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘I guess so,’ she said, and giggled, and opened her arms wide to the car. Music oozed from the speakers, swirled around them.

‘How old are you, anyway?’ she asked.

‘Fifty-six,’ he said.

‘Bingo, no hesitation.’

‘Is that okay?’

‘Yeah, I like it. It’s called being honest.’

‘Or foolhardy.’

‘Fifty-six. You look younger. I guess it’s the bald head. How long have you worn it that way?’

‘Past few months.’

‘I like it. Very trendy.’

‘Thanks.’

‘You ought to get an earring.’

‘You think?’

‘For the left ear. Right is a signal to fags.’

‘I didn’t know that.’

‘Sure.’

Music swirled around the car, drifted away behind them.

‘I’m enjoying this,’ she said.

‘I’m glad.’

‘I ought to be paying you,’ she said, and then immediately, ‘Don’t get any ideas!’

They both burst out laughing.

* * * *

Huntsville, Texas, is about 70 miles north of Houston and 170 miles south of Dallas/Fort Worth. Not for nothing is it known as the ‘prison city’ of Texas: there are eight prisons in Huntsville, and some 15,000 inmates are imprisoned there. This means that every third or fourth citizen of the city is a prison inmate. It further means that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice is the city’s biggest employer; only two percent of Huntsville’s citizens are out of work.

Walker County prison records showed that Alvin Randolph Dalton was released on parole almost twenty years ago, and subsequently granted permission to move out of state. Parole records here in this city indicated assiduous attendance. He’d paid his debt to society in full, and was now free to go wherever he chose to go, and do whatever he chose to do within the law. But, no longer required to report to anyone anywhere, his whereabouts were a mystery until they checked the phone books, and found a listing for an A. R. Dalton on Inverness Boulevard in Majesta.

A phone call confirmed that he was the man they wanted.

Parker told him to wait there for them.

Dalton said, ‘What is this?’

Same as Hendricks asked up there in Castleview.

‘Just wait there,’ Parker said.

* * * *

The Walker County prison records gave Dalton’s age as fifty-seven. Remarkably fit, jailhouse tattoos all over his bulging muscles, entirely bald and wearing an earring in his right ear, he greeted them in a black tank-top shirt and black jeans, barefooted, and told them at once that Wednesday was his day off. What he did was drive a limo for Intercity Transport, mostly airport pickups and dropoffs, but sometimes trips to the casinos upstate or across the river.

‘So what’s this about?’ he asked.

‘Your wife got killed,’ Genero said.

‘I don’t have a wife,’ Dalton said.

‘Your former wife. Alicia Hendricks.’

‘Yeah. Her. That’s too bad. What’s it got to do with me? I haven’t seen her in fifteen years, it must be.’

‘Lost track of her, is that it?’

Dalton looked at them.

‘What is this?’ he said again.

‘Routine,’ Genero said.

‘Bullshit,’ Dalton said. ‘You guys get a dead woman whose ex done time, all at once your ears go up. Well, fellas, I’ve been clean for almost twenty years now, a gainfully employed, respectable citizen of this fair city. I wouldn’t know Alicia if I tripped over her, dead or alive. You’re barking up the wrong tree.’

‘How long you been wearing your head bald?’ Parker asked.

‘Why? Some bald-headed guy do her?’

‘How long?’

‘My hair began falling out in stir. Before I got busted, I was living in D-Town, wore it long like a hippie. All of a sudden, I’m a white male inmate with a bald head, the hamhocks hung a racist jacket on me, made my life miserable.’

‘When’s the last time you saw Alicia?’

‘Whoo. We’re talkin fifteen years ago, that’s when we got divorced. We’re talkin Johnny Carson leaving The Tonight Show. We’re talkin the invasion of Kuwait. We’re talkin the first Gulf War. We’re talkin ancient history, man!’

‘Was she doing dope back then?’

‘Who says she was doing dope ever?’

‘That’s what you went down for, isn’t it? A dope violation.’

‘I learned my lesson.’

‘Was she doing dope?’

‘Nothing serious.’

‘Nothing serious like what?’

‘Little griff every now and then.’

‘And you?’

‘Same thing. Marijuana never hurt nobody.’

‘That right?’