Sleep Don't Come Easy (16 page)

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Authors: Victor McGlothin

BOOK: Sleep Don't Come Easy
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Three
W
hen Vera's visitor wandered into her office, he wasn't at all what Vera expected. There were no manicured nails, no expensive timepiece, no exquisitely tailored Italian suit to marvel at and no seventy-dollar salon-styled hair job to impress her. At nine-fifteen in the morning, the visitor's five o'clock shadow wore him like a two-day hangover refusing to let go. A slight grin almost came over Vera when she envisioned Ms. Minnie tucking tail and running from what she used to call “common folk” before the crafty PI remembered the last time she underestimated a stranger's strength and guile. It was a slight miscalculation in judgment that landed Vera flat on her back with a pint-sized bail-jumper leaving tracks on her chest after knocking a door off the hinges to make his getaway. With no intentions of being the same fool twice, she saddled this stranger with a long once-over from head to bootheel. Other than the barely noticeable scar that lay along the ridge of his right eyebrow, the man's face was as handsome as it was perfectly symmetrical. Had it not been for his long, thick blond mane in desperate need of immediate attention, he could have easily passed for a male fashion model, only without the fashion. Movie stars would have stood in line for a chiseled jaw line like his or paid through the nose for a surgically enhanced reasonable facsimile.
His faded Wrangler jeans were authentic, the first pair of those Vera had seen since leaving her hometown of Waskom, Texas, a speck on the map near the Louisiana border. Every so often, she'd run across some store-bought tourist who paid too much to look the part. This drifter's twice-broke cowboy boots were the genuine articles. Hand sewn and full grain leather throughout. His weathered Stetson hat and the reddish tint in his tight skin were both bona fide. Vera could tell that he'd acquired the leathery complexion from long days under a sweltering sun, not hours in a tan-in-the-can ultraviolet chamber. Growing up country in a small farming town, Vera could still differentiate between fake ranch hands and fake tans from a mile off. Her visitor was the real deal.
An initial assessment double-crossed Vera. Everything about this man screamed second-hand, loud and clear. From his well-worn denim jacket, with faulty insulated lining, and plaid cotton shirt, she guessed that each stitch of his clothing had previously belonged to someone else before he'd shoved a fist full of wrinkled dollars across a thrift store counter to claim them for his own.
Although never having been physically drawn to white men herself, Vera had to blink twice when he asked if it was all right for him to sit down. Motioning with her hand, Vera conveyed to him that it would be fine with her for the time being. He nodded a thank-you and then took a seat across from her desk.
“So, tell me, Mister . . . what can I do for you?” Vera asked, before their names had been exchanged. Procedurally, Ms. Minnie would have photocopied the potential client's ID before passing it on to Vera. It was a security measure to verify she was meeting with the person he or she claimed to be. However, there was no recognition of protocol this time around, because Vera's trusty receptionist wouldn't have anything to do with this client including a suitable introduction.
“Rags, ma'am. I've never been a Mister anything,” the cowboy answered eventually, while adjusting his posture as if Vera was a new schoolteacher mispronouncing his name. “Everybody calls me Rags.” His twang sounded airbrushed or watered down, less Texan than Vera expected. She picked up hints of a formal education and polished diction trapped beneath a farm boy veneer. The dry coarseness surrounding his voice threw her for a loop. If she hadn't been looking at him when he spoke, she would have been willing to bet her life that those words came from someone else, someone much older and less appealing.
“Look, it would help if you told me your real name,” Vera advised him. “I like to know who I'm dealing with.”
“Unfortunately, Ms. Miles, I don't have the answer to that.” He leaned forward with a hopeful expression, tucked behind a mask of uncertainty. “You see, I can't seem to remember anything past two years ago when . . .” he said, before his words trailed off. Moments later, he made up his mind to continue with his jagged explanation. “I'm afraid I might have killed someone but I can't recall much about it.”
I'm afraid
and
I might have
sounded even more like the products of a formal education to Vera, but she had run across slews of scholarly criminals before, so she took a moment to reconsider that notion as well. Suddenly, she wished she had listened to Ms. Minnie's ancestors, when they whispered to her earlier. A strange white man had all but admitted to killing someone and there Vera was trying to figure out what to do next. Having been caught off guard, she lowered her right hand from its resting place on the desk. As soon as she began to ease the drawer open, Rags's eyes melted into pleading green pools of sadness.
“Please, Ms. Miles, don't. That won't be necessary. I didn't come all this way to hurt nobody.” The cowboy easily sniffed out Vera's move before she had the chance to pull it off. Because his words appeared as authentic as his boots, she decided to return her hand to the place where she'd moved it from. “I just need to catch up to some answers and I believe you're the one who can lead me to 'em.”
“Me, why me?” she asked utterly confused.
Rags shrugged his square shoulders. “I can't rightly say. I just know that I hit town, walked around for a few days and ended up here.”
Vera sat motionless, thinking she must have been crazy to let the thought of getting involved in this case run around loose in her head. Since putting on a game face was as natural to her as putting on a coat of lipstick, she was smooth and effortless. “Look, Mr. Rags, or whatever your name is, I would like to help you out, but I'm a businesswoman. Charity doesn't pay the rent, which means you'll have to find another agency with a pro bono program to climb into that bed you've made. I don't have time to hear any more of what's troubling you.”
“Troubling me?” he repeated, with a whiff of disbelief. “Ma'am, I can deal with trouble but this is something bad. I can't hardly get no sleep and it won't let my soul rest at all.”
Vera was intrigued but not enough to go out on a limb that didn't appear to have a bag of money dangling from it. “I am very sorry for you, sir, but I—”
“I have money,” Rags offered abruptly.
Vera's eyebrows arched dramatically. “How much money?” she asked, in a direct manner that didn't allow room for being lied to.
“Will two thousand be enough for you to hear me out?”
“I'm listening,” her shaky voice replied. Vera wanted to get to the bottom of Rags's claims and his pockets before he had the chance to wave that two grand in front of another somebody, who wouldn't be sharing it with her. All she could see were dollar signs, the ones that she'd recently allowed to slip through her fingers after succumbing to a moral dilemma and a temporary overwhelming case of scruples. Rags had her full attention, full and undivided.
Vera watched him cautiously, this man who wrestled the greenest ripest Granny Smith apple she had ever seen out of his raggedy pocket. When he blushed like a child who'd just won a first place blue ribbon, Vera endured a massive letdown. She'd been on the edge of her seat, silently hoping to get a good look at something green and something to deposit. After noting her immediate and apparent disappointment, Rags quickly set the apple on the corner of the desktop nearest to him before pawing through his pockets again. The second expedition proved more fruitful as the cowboy snatched his hand out to make an impressive showing.
Vera's mouth popped open when he displayed a swollen knot of crisply rolled bills, big-faced bills. Even though he counted out twenty Ben Franklins, which moved her like a strong West Indian breeze, she couldn't stop thinking how large his hands were. They were oddly big and thick for a man with such a wiry build. Suddenly, Vera was moved by something else, an irritation that she couldn't explain. She loitered between two unsettling states of mind. If those were the hands of a killer, why was he so willing to part with such a large amount of folding money when it appeared that he couldn't afford a decent haircut? That's when Vera determined that she'd better watch her step more vigilantly. Treating all men as guilty until proven innocent had worked for her up until then and it was a step in the right direction. Whether Rags was the murderer he believed himself to be or not, a rush to judgment suited her just fine. Experience had taught her that every man was guilty of something.
Before Vera knew it, she had gone and popped her game face back on and it was staring Rags up and down again, this time for a different reason. Vera's intuition had her sizing him up. Rags was almost six feet in height, two inches taller than her. A speedy notion came on like the flu. If bad came to worse she might have to plant her size ten in a place that guaranteed a level playing field. She recognized a certain anatomical truth—the one thing that makes a man could also break a man, if her aim was right. The immediate concern was a stack of bills sitting atop the desk longer than Vera was comfortable with.
The man calling himself Rags had picked up on that too. “If you're worried about where this money came from, don't be,” he insisted thoughtfully. “Nobody's gonna come looking for it.” In as much as five minutes, he'd read Vera's mind accurately. The time had come for her to return the favor. The wandering stranger didn't flinch when he saw it coming.
Vera's eyes begun to burn after two minutes of matching Rags's sullen gaze in an intense competition of unyielding stares. She had reason to be scared, but Rags needed to see if she could hold her own when it came down to getting what he was after. It appeared that time stood still. Neither of them had planned on looking away as the standoff in Vera's office became unbearable. Rags noticed how her left eye began to twitch in the same instant that she counted beads of sweat mounting on his forehead. It was a game of nerves, a thrilling game, which Vera championed while standing against hundreds of hardened criminals fresh on parole. She didn't fold in the midst of their plans to rattle her with their jailhouse bravado either. A long hard gaze was commonly utilized on the inside as a dire form of intimidation. Some of Vera's parolees brought that thuggish manner of diminishing their adversaries with them after stepping outside the prison gates. During ten years of matching her street survival skills against murderers, molesters and malcontents, Vera had never lost a single game of nerves. Not one.
She collected the money when Rags blinked first.
Vera could not have predicted what had begun as a study in white, would have somehow culminated in her professional defining moment. Rags had stumbled into her life like a slow ride. Not the kind that ends when a woman climbs down off the man she loves but one just as rewarding, the kind that ushers in self-reflection and internal growth toward a clearer point of view with a keener eye. Rags represented something Vera had longed for since receiving her PI license. His peril offered the opportunity she'd been waiting on, a chance to discover what she was made of. Rags was the slow ride Vera needed.
Four
“I
t's always the same,” Rags mumbled softly, his head bowed.
“Every time I close my eyes for too long, I see it happening but can't do anything to stop it. The scene never changes. The rain is falling. It's cold and damp. My chest hurts, full of guilt, I imagine. The man I see is older than me and heavier. He looks tired, tired of life, tired of living. He's been running. His face is sweaty and flushed. Guessing from his terrified expression, he's very surprised to see me. Maybe he surprised me too. I don't know. But I shut my eyes because of the rain, I think. My eyes flutter open then I shoot twice. The man says something to me, sounds like ‘Why?' ” Rags glanced up at Vera as if to say he was sorry before his eyes returned to their hiding place. “I wish I could tell him why, Ms. Miles. I wish I knew why. I really wish I knew.”
After hearing Rags's story for the third straight time in an hour, Vera determined that he had been truthful with her. She couldn't be sure of more than that but she was certain of his honesty. That much she did know. Rags didn't deviate from the sequence of events in any of the episodes he recounted as best he could, from the depths of his horrible dreams.
Vera fought off her own uneasiness each time the man cringed at the same place in the story he told. It was difficult to determine which parts to jot down and which to commit to memory, because in all probability, a man's death was involved and that meant the same for her client or at least his freedom.
Confronting death was often the cost of doing business in Vera's line of work. Dead men didn't bother her. There wasn't anything to fear from a man whose blood had run cold. Vera had seen a number of dead men with their dim-lit eyes frozen wide-open, their pursed lips punctuating silence and their bloated bellies rotting with their last supper but none was as ghastly as her first.
When Vera was a small child, her father caught a slug in the back of his head. The bullet came from his own gun. He'd found his way home one night, stumbling drunk and wearing the smell of another woman's loving commingled with her cheap perfume and hard liquor. Vera's mother was barely twenty-one. She'd vowed that her love for him was stronger than life itself. After losing his job at the oil refinery, it didn't take long before he'd lost his way. Spending the twilight hours on the Louisiana side of the Texas border caused his death. A heartbroken woman who couldn't swim through her tears was the effect. The day following the murder, they found Vera's grief-stricken mother swaying in a jail cell with a bed sheet securely fastened around her neck. It was proof that she truly believed in her vow. The sheriff's deputy wiped away a stream of tears, when explaining regrettably to Vera's grandparents that their only daughter was gone. Vera couldn't say she remembered either of her parents. That white man blubbering on her grandpa's front porch she remembered in the worst way. It was the first time she'd seen a grown man cry and the only time it moved her in a debilitating manner, until peering across her desk at Rags choking back his salty sentiment. Wedged in an awkward position, Vera realized it was her turn to look away.
Before Rags left the office he'd worked hard at remembering as far back as he could, but the details were so sketchy that Vera almost dismissed the chain of events entirely. Fortunately she didn't dismiss a single thing her client told her. Besides, a PI could never anticipate when or where pertinent clues would fall from the sky. With any luck, it wouldn't be long before it started to rain them down on Vera.
As Rags told it, his story sounded like a mystery straight out of a true crime book. Over two years had passed since his life, as he knew it, had begun. On a windy February morning, in a small central Texas town, Vera's client was found, discovered in an abandoned hunting cabin by one of the local farmers. Dehydrated, malnourished and left for dead, Rags's head had been thoroughly wrapped in hospital bandages, filthy and in such desperate need of changing that they appeared to be tattered strips of cloth. After the farmer rescued him and collected what appeared to be his meager belongings, the name Rags was given to him by this simple-hearted farmer who saved his life. The name stuck, even after Rags had survived his fate in the wilderness and was nursed back to health. Twenty-six months of good country living, hard work and bad dreams held him in check, until he woke up one morning with an itch needing to be scratched. He struck out on his own after losing an internal battle with his conscience.
Vera empathized. When her bills weren't paid on time, she could hardly sleep a wink either. Now that she had some folding money in her purse and a headstart on handling the next month's financial obligations, Vera had plans to catch up on the sleep she'd missed over the previous week. She couldn't have been more wrong if she tried. Vera was on a collision course with the realization that sleep didn't come easy when it became slick around the edges of life. With no leads, nowhere to begin and a possible death sentence hanging over her newest client, Vera soon began feeling like a bad joke told in reverse, the tail chasing the dog.
Impatient thumps on the front door forced Vera to investigate why her receptionist hadn't attended to them. As Vera hustled past her desk, she glared at two very tiny, delicately crafted, origami-styled paper dragons sitting on the corner of it. Rags had skillfully folded a couple of one-hundred dollar bills, while knitting together holes in his tattered memory, before Vera convinced him to rent a room nearby and cool his heels, while she did her best to figure out just how she was going to prove herself worthy of the money he'd let her hold and how to go about getting her hands wrapped around more of it.
Glow Raines was skulking on the other side of the self-locking glass office door wearing snuggly fitting slacks and riding boots with a tight knit sweater beneath a brown three-quarter-length jacket. Vera appreciated her friend's taste in clothing, but the way Glow appeared with the greatest of ease gave her the willies, just showing up out of the blue the way she did. Glow wasn't the kind of woman to stand around waiting on a formal invitation to mix in. Every time it came down to making things happen, she was always right there on the spot. Even though Glow was quick with a knife and worse with a harsh word, she had to be one of the most interesting creatures God ever allowed to walk His earth.
Although Vera didn't spend too much time with other people's faces up in hers, unless it was necessary, Glow's lifestyle intrigued her to the point of envy. She worked more scams, hustles, and con games than anyone Vera had assisted with their parole. So, she had to decide up front whether she would let Glow's pick pocketing, card-sharking, slick maneuvers, attractive features, flawless reddish-brown toned skin or small waistline anchored by a perfectly sculpted behind get in the way of them getting along. It was a tough predicament to say the least, but common sense won out over petty jealously. Besides, Vera recognized how much better it was to befriend Glow than to secretly despise her from afar. They were both better off once she did.
“So what did you do to Ms. Minnie?” Glow asked Vera, while she casually unfolded a miniature cash dragon.
“Never mind that, Glow,” Vera scoffed. “I'm going to step out on a limb and guess that you met my new client on your way in?”
“I might have bumped into him, once or twice,” was her lascivious reply. Glow's sly expression accompanying the second dragon she'd lifted from Rags caused Vera to double back inside her office and purse the paper beasts that belonged to her. She didn't mind her friend fleecing her clients as long as it didn't keep any money from landing in her pocket.
The satisfied grin on Glow's face revealed that she was either up to something or she'd just pulled it off with little to no difficulty. It reminded Vera of the first time she laid eyes on the inexplicable Glow Raines, who was working one of her angles. She was outfitted as an old homeless woman, draped in full costume with a pregnancy-inspired empathy suit beneath a weathered trench coat. Even more impressive, Glow was done up in theatrical makeup and a black stocking cap pulled down over an old fashioned going-to-church-style wig. The miniature shopping cart Glow used as a prop was filled with aluminum cans. That overstuffed fanny of hers was two throw pillows.
Vera had watched the woman through the window before and was willing to bet that she panhandled three to four hundred dollars a day. That's when Vera discovered how hordes of businessmen in a hurry found it in their hearts to pitch in a few bills each to help a supposed senior citizen down on her luck. Up and down the sidewalk Glow trod and waggled, back and forth and back again. Watching her from the window, Vera took notice when it appeared that the homeless woman's steps quickened as the day wore on, instead of dragging to a slow crawl. With nothing better to do, Vera shadowed her on foot, casual-like, for six blocks. She laughed out loud when Glow stepped into an alleyway, ditched the collection of aluminum cans and swaggered up to a self-parking lot. Vera was still laughing when Glow sped past her in a new BMW hosting the same satisfied smile she had come to know so well. After what she'd witnessed, Vera couldn't wait to see her again, knowing right off that Glow had a certain degree of competence that came in handy in a pinch and the gall to use it if necessary. The following week, Vera shadowed Glow to the same destination, struck up a conversation, applauded Glow's craftiness, and then shared a hearty laugh. After a sixty-dollar retainer, as a show of good faith, Glow agreed to pitch in on cases every now and then. More than two years had passed since they'd thrown in together, formed a part-time business association and become the best of friends.
Since bumping into Rags, Glow had introduced herself indirectly and became somewhat fascinated that a stumble bum like him had enough loot to play with some of it. “Why'd you let that man scare off Ms. Minnie, Vera?” Glow asked. Her question was anchored to a soft frown.
“I didn't let him do nothing,” Vera answered, her eyes staring past Glow's face. “She's got some hangups, from her childhood I'd bet. You know times were different then. Ms. Minnie never did learn to trust white people, even though things have changed.”
Glow eyed the cuticles on her right hand then sighed behind the weight of an ensuing thought. “Well, maybe because Ms. Minnie hasn't seen enough real change to change her mind about things. I mean, the past ain't so easy to forget. Uh-uh,” Glow contended seriously, with a stiff head nod. “Not for any of us.”
“Glow, please. Girl, you're making my head hurt. Before I knew what hit me, this strange white man shows up at my doorstep, then you come in with some of his money in your pocket and now you're trying to hand me baggage that ain't none of mine.”
After Glow stood up and rubbed the rise of her slacks with an opened palm, she eased her behind down on the corner of Vera's desk like an alley cat. “Vera, I don't like mincing words any more than you do, but we've got to talk about what brought that cowboy here and what baggage he's carrying.”
Vera ran down the story Rags had told her. Glow listened attentively. She almost flinched when Vera spit the word murder out like a poisonous pill. “Yeah, Glow,” she reiterated. “The man just walked right in and said he might've killed somebody maybe a couple of years ago but he can't be sure. Ain't no statute of limitations on murder and I don't have a single clue why he ended up at my front door now.” Vera witnessed Glow's hazel eyes narrow with suspicion. “What is it, Glow?”
“Something is wrong about this whole scene. What if he's fixing to burn somebody down and plans to leave the ashes at your feet? Just think about it. You don't know him from Adam. He could be planning to do his dirt and leaving you to clean it up.”
Vera considered what her friend said then she tried to shake it off. “I don't know. I've got a bad feeling about the case but it's got hooks in me already. You're right about one thing for sure. Something is very wrong about this whole scene, very wrong.”

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