'It seems like a long time ago,' she said. 'A hundred years. Jimmy turned me out on the cons, but I had already turned myself out as a whore. It started out as a way to get even with a john, a rich bastard who had fucked me over badly, then the next thing I knew, I discovered a talent for it…'
'I guess I can vouch for that,' I said.
'And Jimmy had his moments. But they had become few and far between. Shit, I thought if I made the son of a bitch pay for it, he'd feel guilty enough to leave me alone. But he wouldn't stop. No matter how high I raised my price, he paid it. Until the other day when he decided to pound on me when I wouldn't give it up.'
'What changed your mind?'
'I don't know,' she whispered. 'We've got too much history. I didn't know where else to hide after all this stuff down here went bad. I was scared, man. There was a dead cop, Jimmy wouldn't tell me what was going on, and I guess I got tired of him treating me like a whore.
'He wasn't always like that. After Rollie drank his way out of the bar business, Jimmy took care of him when I couldn't. Then the feds took his boat and started hanging on his ass like fat ticks like he was some kind of big-shit smuggler.' Then she stopped, shook her head. 'In the beginning, man, it was fun. More fun than the other part. Not that I hated the other part – the money and the clothes, the guys kissing my ass, the limos, the low-rent movie stars. But now… I don't know.'
'Now?'
'I don't know,' she repeated. 'Sometimes it starts to feel like I'm just another fuckin' whore.'
'But you don't have any idea who set me up?' I asked again.
'Not the vaguest,' she said. 'Jimmy set it up.' Then she paused. 'Did your friend shoot him?'
'Hell, no,' I said, unlocking the shackle. 'Jimmy's own hired help put one in his ear. So I guess that's the end of it. I'll take you to the airport when you're ready.'
Molly glanced up quickly, a wild look in her eyes as they cut around the corn crib. 'You know, man, suddenly I'm thinking maybe I should stay here for a while.'
'What?'
'I don't know,' she said, a small frightened grin on her face. 'I don't know who hired you or for what and I don't know what the hell you've got in mind but maybe I can help.'
'What?'
She stood up quickly. 'Hey, man, listen. I think you're right. Maybe I should stay out of sight. Just until you clear this shit up.'
'That'll be the day,' I said, then suddenly tired and confused, I sighed and slumped over to sit on the cot. 'How's your mother fit into all this?'
'I don't know,' she said. 'She was just some whitebread hard-shell Baptist kid from a little town outside Shreveport. Vivian, I think. She came down to Baton Rouge to do some cheerleading and sow a few wild oats, then got knocked up, so her redneck parents run her off and she wandered down to Lake Charles and went to work hopping tables for Rollie. That's what she was doing when I was born.'
'So who knocked her up?' I asked, a question as aimless and pointless as when I asked Albert Homer why his wife left or how his father died.
'Some black basketball player at LSU,' she said.
'Maybe you can help,' I said, standing up. 'Maybe you can help after all.' I was on the scrambled cell phone to Carver D in a long heartbeat.
When I walked through the driving rainstorm to borrow Tom Ben's pickup again, he was sitting in the living room in his recliner, wrapped in his bathrobe, and sipping something that smelled like bourbon and honey. 'Shit, son,' he said, his voice hoarse and gravelly, 'I should have let you walk me home last night.'
'What happened?'
'Like an idiot I fell asleep in the rocking chair on the front porch, and woke up with this throat,' he said, then tilted up his mug to finish the dregs. 'Maria,' he shouted over his shoulder,
'It's Saturday, man, and I'm going downtown to shop for ladies underwear,' I said, and the old man smiled a moment before he started coughing.
Molly walked into the fancy woman's store like a queen wearing a sweat suit and plastic slippers, trailing me like a royal guardian. We'd stopped at a western store on the way to buy me a black cowboy hat and a black leather jacket, and I didn't make any secret of the Browning strapped under my arm. I hoped we looked like rich, eccentric Texans. If the response of the sales clerks was any indication, it worked. They nearly trampled us in their haste to serve. Molly was a quick study and obviously had shopped with other people's money before. We were in and out in thirty minutes. Molly looked like something worth guarding, elegant in a lilac cashmere suit, high-heeled knee-high boots, and a long sueded lambskin coat, and a matching floppy hat.
'How do I look?' she asked as she settled into the cluttered cab of Tom Ben's pickup.
'You have to ask?'
'A woman likes to hear it.'
'Pretty classy,' I said.
'Thanks,' she said. 'I feel pretty classy. So what am I supposed to do?'
'Just stand outside the pickup,' I said, 'and don't run away.'
'That's easy enough,' she said, then patted my leg, smiling.
Jonas Walker stood just inside the doorway of his church, as he said he would over the telephone, glaring at me through the slanting rain as I walked up the steps. I stopped beside him, then turned to watch Molly climb out of the pickup, then lean against the pickup, professionally elegant.
'What do you want?' Jonas Walker asked without hesitation. 'What the hell is so important that you'd take me away from my family on Saturday night?' he demanded, drawing himself up to his full height as if he could intimidate me.
'Well, let's see,' I said. 'First off, I want a little respect.'
'What?' The large man doubled up his giant fists.
'Respect,' I said. 'That's important. Then I want to introduce you to the daughter you abandoned all those years ago. She's a high-class hooker and a professional con artist, but compared to you, man, she's a saint. I'm sure your congregation will appreciate meeting her.'
'My flock knows about my troubled life and the sinful days in my youth,' he said without much conviction.
'You've told them, of course, about the cocaine bust that got you thrown off the LSU basketball team and would have gotten you a jolt in Angola if the coach hadn't called in some political favors.' Jonas Walker had nothing to say. The deep, angry lines around his mouth said it all. 'And if that's not enough to gain your respect, you phony asshole, I've got enough financial information about you, your church, and Mr. Hayden Lomax to keep the IRS and a dozen forensic accountants busy for years.'
'I'll ask you one last time,' he growled. 'What do you want?'
'Where's your brother?'
'Montana,' he answered slowly, as if he didn't want to give him up but had no choice. 'Up in Montana.'
Of all the answers I might have expected, that was the last. 'What the hell? Where?' was all I could say.
'Lomax has a place north of Livingston,' he said. 'Some kind of experimental mine site. Trying to cook minerals out of bad ore, I think. It's about halfway between Wilsall and Ringling, off to the east. You'll see some dirt roads leading to some gas leases. At the end of one of those roads, you'll find an abandoned mine called Punky Creek and a small steel building. Enos is guarding the machinery or some such bullshit while it's being sold off.' Then he paused.
'That's a hell of a place to hide a black man that size,' I said.
'That's the point,' he said. 'He gets bored, he drives to Billings, gets on a plane, flies to Denver or Seattle, flies back when he gets tired.' Once again he hesitated.
