good.”
“No, ma’am.”
“Yes, you is.” She smiled. “What you wantin’ Humes fer? He fucked up again?”
I smiled back.
“You gonna kick his ass?”
“Just want to talk to him.”
She looked up at me and studied my eyes. She squinted one eye and then patted me on the arm. “C’mon, he ain’t never in here. But don’t you be tellin’ him how you found him.”
She left the office door open and led me down a long hallway to a metal door by an emergency exit. Hundreds of tourist pamphlets sat in a nearby bin. Everything from Graceland to the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale.
The woman unlocked the metal door and held it wide open.
“Go on,” she said. “Last door on the left. That’s where he sit at, pickin’ his ass and lookin’ at Playboys.”
I leaned down to the short old woman and kissed her on the cheek.
E ver since the truck stop, Perfect had had the uncontrollable desire to scrub Abby MacDonald clean. She stank. She smelled of body odor and gasoline and coffee breath. She had stubble underneath her arms and probably had long hair growing on her legs. Her eyebrows were unkempt and long cuticles grew over her nails. How could she live like that? How could she even think this was acceptable?
Perfect hated everything about the girl. She hated her greasy dirty-blond hair and her unmade face and her sinewy little body. Probably some kind of runner or athletic freak. Abby wasn’t curvy. The girl didn’t understand that women were supposed to be full and rounded.
In the concrete room, Perfect studied Abby. The way her head hung down in her hands, the mud splattered on her wide-legged jeans, and those awful running shoes. And, God, how she wouldn’t shut up. The little girl kept on crying and calling her Ellie and asking her to disappear.
Perfect, now dressed in hip-hugger cords and a white T-shirt with a sequin heart, moved closer to the girl and watched her cry. Humes sat on top of a blackjack table, a gun on his hip, drinking a cup of coffee. That bastard was waiting for the show to begin. Oh, well, guess she’d have to deliver.
Perfect grabbed a good handful of greasy hair from Abby’s head and pulled her to the stainless-steel tub. She tore the horrible-smelling T-shirt from her body and told her to take off those dirty jeans or die.
The girl kept sobbing but did what she said, lightly pulling them down over her knees, shaking.
Perfect knew the girl was expecting rape or some kind of sexual kicks from them. Instead, Perfect shoved her stinking ass down in the tub filled with scalding water. The girl, just wearing white bra and panties, pressed her back to the wall and covered her breasts with folded arms.
Perfect shook her head, put on a pair of Latex gloves, and lathered up a loofah.
She pulled up Abby’s armpit and began her long overdue cleansing process.
T he room at the end of the hall was more than just an additional office. Think Mission Impossible crossed with Dr. Strangelove. At least thirty black-and-white televisions showing various scenes from the casino were arranged along a gray cinder block wall. One had a closeup of the blackjack dealer’s hands and another showed some kind of warehouse where men unloaded an eighteen-wheeler. A narrow desk with microphones and a couple of rolling chairs sat close to the monitors. A coffee mug stamped with the Magnolia Grand logo and a crumpled pack of cigarettes lay on the desk.
I felt the mug. Still hot.
I took a seat in the chair and picked up the October Playboy sitting by the mug. Girls of the SEC and some pretty lame music reviews. I skipped past the reviews and some kind of rich man’s guide to stereo gadgets and went right to this month’s centerfold before leaning back in the chair and studying the wall of televisions.
A woman stood by a slot machine picking her nose and a young Hispanic boy was sitting on his father’s shoulders as the man danced in a disco. Two security guards hung out on the hood of a Pontiac, smoking cigarettes and talking shit.
“Hey,” someone said. “What the fuck are you doing back here?”
P erfect ran a towel over Abby’s reddened skin, the dirt scrubbed away with the hard loofah. The girl was crying because she’d gotten a little chapped and was bleeding. How else was Perfect supposed to get that stench away? God, that girl smelled so rotten and awful.
Humes had his gun pointed at the girl’s chest and licked his lips looking at her wet bra and chest. He smoothed his hands over her little stomach, soaking in the control he felt. Perfect smacked the gun away, told him to go back to his seat, and bound Abby’s wrist with handcuffs to a metal water pipe.
The girl now lay lengthwise on an elevated bed the casino used to give guest in-room massages. Abby was still crying and bleeding when Perfect dripped the hot wax into the girl’s armpits and spread it with a plastic spatula.
“Abby, don’t worry, I’ll take care of you. You’ll be fresh and smelling like honeysuckle when we let you go. Don’t worry,” she said, caressing Abby’s face in her hands. “You and me will be just fine.”
Perfect spread strips of cotton paper on her armpits, smoothing it in the direction the hair grew. She held Abby’s face in her hands, feeling the blubbering and whimpering, as she quickly ripped the paper backward, taking away a thick collection of dark hairs by the root.
Abby screamed and cried more.
“I remember the first time my mother made me get all dolled up,” Perfect said. “I was eight. She made me sit in a hot bath till my toes turned to prunes, and then rolled me in baby powder. She put gobs of blue eyeliner on me, painted my lips fire-engine red, and dressed me in my Sunday sailor suit. Told me I had to look right for my uncle. Said he liked sweet little girls. Are you sweet, Miss Abby? Are you my sweet little girl?”
The girl coughed and then spit right into Perfect’s eye. Perfect just smoothed away the spit and poured more of that hot yellow wax into Abby’s armpit. Abby was yelling and screaming and kicking now.
Perfect nodded over to Humes and they tied her legs to the table with some torn bed sheets. She used a short piece to gag the girl. Didn’t even know this was good for her.
She applied the wax and another strip just like she was taught and ripped it back away. Abby screamed a muffled scream, her eyes reddened and full of tears.
Perfect found a comb from her purse and then started roughly pulling away the tangles from the girl’s wet hair. She whistled a little bit as she worked.
She liked to feel good about helping someone be clean.
I turned to the door where I saw a kid in his early twenties with slick black hair, wearing a blue blazer and khaki pants.
“Sent back here to see Mr. Humes,” I said.
“No one told me,” the kid said.
“Are you Mr. Humes?” I asked.
“No,” the kid said, studying my face.
“Then maybe that’s the reason.”
“Nobody likes a smart-ass,” the kid said.
“You’d be surprised,” I said.
The kid’s jaw muscles twitched and he grabbed a radio at his hip.
“You stay here, buddy,” the kid said. “Don’t leave.”
I made a pistol with my thumb and forefinger and dropped the hammer. The kid shook his head and walked back down the hall.
Maybe Humes didn’t handle collections or maybe they’d already found Clyde. Or maybe I was wasting my fucking time. At least this was better than sitting in my warehouse in New Orleans rearranging vinyl.
I walked over to the cooler and poured some water into a paper cup. Really was pretty cool the way they had all these monitors set up. I laughed at some white dude in a white suit trying to dance and at some old lady who was beating the shit out of a losing slot.
I was about to turn back to the Girls of the SEC when something in the far right corner of the monitors caught my eye.
The scene wasn’t in the main casino. Looked like it was in some storage area with cinder block walls filled with old slots. Two people talking.
