The District Manager (7 page)

“Hello?” I ask into the piss-colored cave.

“Hang on,” the voice of a white redneck answers back. It is a voice emanating from a shaved head with pierced ears that is presently absorbed with something on a computer screen. “Come in, close the door. Don’t worry about locking it, it locks automatically,” he continues, without looking back to see who I am.

I remain still.

Finally, he turns around in his chair to view me. He is seated behind a large table littered with debris: paperwork, empty chip bags, beer, soda cans, and mildewed pizza. A naked light bulb dangling from the ceiling is the sole source of light. “You Mason?” he asks stuffing a cigarette between his thin lips.

“That’s right.”

“Mason, I’m Spider Monkey.” He rises from his swivel chair and extends his hand. I extend mine, thinking a handshake, when he says, “Dude, I’m not trying to shake your hand, I want the money. Five Bens.”

I remove five hundred dollars from my wallet and meticulously display each of the five Ben Franklin’s in succession like a fan.

“Don’t you just hate these fuckin’ new hundreds?” he asks.

I feel emboldened. “Yeah, they look like some gangsta shit. I got ahold of an old hundred not long ago; I mean the old, old ones. Man, that’s what money looks like in heaven.”

“Fuckin’ A, man. You’re alright!” he says as he carefully folds and then stuffs the crisp bills into his pocket. He tugs on his smoke and then looks me in the eye through a slow exhale. “Take a seat, Mason.”

I do as I’m told.

“So tell me about yourself, what you do for a livin’?”

The panic returns.
No goddamn way I’m gonna tell this freak who I work for. I might never get out of here alive.
Ricocheting through my head is a lie—a convincing lie. “I’m a nurse. I work at the hospital here in Wagoneer.”

“A nurse. Are you gay or something? I mean, that’s cool…we can accommodate that if we need to.”

“No. Definitely not gay, but that’s why I’m here. This is for a friend who needs this medicinally.”

“Yeah, Keith. He was vouched for. And so are you.” I guess he can tell I’m wound up. “Just relax, dude. It’s all cool,” he says crushing out his smoke. “So what’s it like bein’ a nurse, having to wipe people’s asses and shit?”

“Yeah, I’ve seen some stuff. Bad stuff.”

“I bet man. So tell me, what are you into? You need a girl…or a boy? I can set ya up if ya like.”

“No, I think I’m good. I’ve got a girlfriend.”

“Cool, how ‘bout gambling. You a gambling man, Mason?”

“Not really…the only thing I’ve ever bet on is horse racing,” I answer without thought, just trying to make conversation.

“Well, I don’t got horses, but I got other stuff.”

A shiver shoots up my spine. My right shoulder involuntarily jerks upward and begins shaking.

“You cold or something?” he asks me as he stuffs a huge wad of dip behind his bottom lip.

“Uh…no, of course not. It’s so fucking hot out.”

“You got that right.” His mouth deformed from the tobacco. “I tell ya what, Mason…you ever need a girl or want to make some pics: football, basketball, baseball…other stuff, you let me know.” He rises from his chair and extends his hand. “This time it’s for shakin’,” he jokes.

“Spider Monkey, it was a pleasure to meet you.”

“Likewise, Mason.” I turn to go when he calls me out, “Hey man! You forgot your weed, bro!” He tosses me the bag.

“Oh, yeah…thanks!”

When I get outside I see the rain has subsided and the sun is out. Prior to the storm it was humid as hell, now it’s a goddamn tropical rain forest. I hop in the old Expedition, turn the key and crank the tepid A/C. She’s trying hard, coughing out tufts of cold air. I pat her on the dashboard, both to appease and genuinely commend.

What other stuff was Spider Monkey talking about?

I ease out of the parking lot and on a whim, instead of turning around, I turn right…towards Jules’ place.

“Can I help you?” A feeble woman asks after taking some time unlocking and then opening the door.

This must be his wife,
I’m thinking. “Yes ma’am, my name is Mason Dixon and I’m looking for Jules Reynolds.”

“Are you with the police? Haven’t ya’ll already looked around here enough?”

The police?
“No, ma’am, I’m not with the police. My name is Mason and Mr. Reynolds is a friend of mine.”

“Well, Mr. Mason, Jules is my husband, and I may be sick, but I’m not stupid, and I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you before. I wish you people would just level with me. Is he dead?”

Dead?
Something’s up here, and though I don’t wish to lie to this poor woman, I need to try and find out what’s suddenly kicking around in my gut. So I lie. “Yes ma’am, I apologize for not being forthright. Yes, I am with the police.”

“I knew it. Well, ya’ll already checked around the place. Done tore up the house and shed.”

“We’d like to check his office again if possible, Mrs. Reynolds.” I’m gambling here as I don’t know if he has an ‘office’ per say in his residence.

“Well, okay. Do your worst. Just clean up after yourselves this time.”

She opens the door and I enter. She does not ask if I have a badge. She does not wonder why I am out here alone without a partner. I have to keep up the ruse and think about questions I might have while she is with me, so as not to provoke suspicion. I then realize she’s going to leave me to my own devices.

“Just clean up and lock up when you leave, officer,” she states so languidly that the tiredness of the words themselves compete with the immense black circles under her aged eyes. I guess she assumes I know where the office is. But before I let her retire down the dark hallway, her movements suggest she’s wishing to travel, I stop her with a question.

“Refresh my memory, ma’am, how long has it been since your husband went missing?”

“A week ago today,” she says, and vanishes into the cocoon of waiting death. After all these years, I finally understand that smell that my great-grandmother’s house had when I entered it as a child. The smell of decaying food between dentures—the smell of rot.

Impersonating an officer of the law is a felony, so I am treading on volatile territory here. With Mrs. Reynolds gone, I go wandering through the house looking for what might constitute an office. I deduce, from her behavior that it is in the opposite direction from which she excused herself. Though the house is not too large, and is only one story, the layout is haphazard and non-linear. I continuously look out whatever window might be available to see if anyone might be lurking around outside: actual cops, neighbors, pitiful Mormon kids on bikes. I see no one. I’m wondering if I should maybe move my car around to the side of the house.
But will this possibly wake Mrs. Reynolds? What will the neighbors think?
I decide against this, deferring to the ancient advice of letting sleeping dogs lie.

I finally find the office. It’s located in a tiny room off the utility, and is rife with the smell of old dirty clothes hanging in the air. I begin quietly searching through a handful of drawers and a single, grey, tall filing cabinet. The stuff looks largely untouched. I recall that Mrs. Reynolds had asked me to, ‘clean up, this time.’ I’m wondering what she was referring to.

What I’m searching for is anything that might be applicable to my recent dealings with him. I find nothing in the desk drawers. I switch on the desktop PC. I hear the hum of tread on asphalt while waiting for it to boot. I move lightly to the nearest frontal window and peer through the blinds. I see the back of a pickup shrink down the road. When I return to the desk, the computer’s desktop reveals little. I search through computer files. Nothing.
But Jules was old school…
I start thinking.

I vacate the computer for the tall grey filing cabinet. The drawers house the usual information for a middle class household: insurance info, health records, taxes. But in the bottom drawer, towards the back, I see a manila file with the initials ‘BPI’ handwritten with a Sharpie on the protruding tab. This is what I’ve been looking for, as the thick file has information regarding the dogs and Jules’ correspondence with me as well as other as yet unidentified documents. I kill the PC, having found nothing else related. I grab a dirty sock and wipe down everything I’ve handled, including the window blinds. I’m out of here.

My adrenaline is settling as I sit idling at the stop sign at the end of Jules’ street. Hypnotized by the tired pistons that clank under the hood of the Expedition, I gaze back at the deceptively placid road. Bowers Highway beckons in either direction, but I want nothing of it. It seems I’m not yet done dabbling in potential disaster.

I pull the old gal off the highway, through an open gate, and rattling over a cattle guard, I’m whimsically navigating towards a particular destination. Or so I hope. I’m also trespassing big time— in Texas this can be lethal. The dirt road I’m presently on parallels the paved one leading to the Reynolds’, which I’ve just exited. And it’s guiding me towards a thick wood. Luckily, I happen upon a small garage-sized opening in the scattered brush. With the Expedition partially concealed I put her in park, pull my .38 from under the driver’s seat and set out into the forest.

From where I’m traveling, there is no apparent trail like there was when I last entered these woods with Jules. The earth is muddy from this afternoon’s rain. I’m going to ruin my boots. When I’m almost convinced that I’m lost, I spot the slatted image of houses through the trunks. I skim the perimeter till I happen upon Jules’ backyard. Now, I know where I’m at.

The sun is again concealed behind a clump of dark clouds as the thunder rolls. Giving up its disguise, the thicket opens up. The rodeo arena looks unchanged in its decay from when I last saw it. But is it?

I toss a broken piece of a limb over the fence and bleachers and wait…nothing, no barking. Another limb, and again… nothing. No barking. Again, there is no easy entry as the gates are hyper-locked and the fence is too high to scale. The ladder is where I remember it being, concealed under wads of thick, tall grass. It’s heavy as hell, but I manage to get the damn thing leaned against the top rail. Drizzle greets me as I step off a slippery rung and onto a flimsy wooden slat.

I’m aghast! From up here there’s no sign of the pit bulls at all. The bleachers bounce like a trampoline as I make my way towards the arena floor. One, cracking abruptly, splits open and engulfs half of my left leg. I’m in pain up to just above my knee. I lift myself up and out, I’m now reeling in even greater pain. The jeans I’m wearing appear to be intact. No blood is visible. The rain has graduated from a drizzle to a steady stream. Lightning now accompanies the rolling thunder.

The floor of the arena is even absent of the shit, though a trace of it still lingers in the air. I’m looking for any evidence to suggest that my trip here with Jules a few weeks ago was something other than a hallucination. No puncture holes can be located in the ground where I remember the chains being fastened from.

The gray sky is getting grayer. I need a flashlight, but I have left it in the car. I poke around under the bleachers as the pain in my leg starts to worsen.
Have I broken something? Fuck!

As the wood slats above my head shower me intermittently with the ensuing downpour, I notice something mangled in the weeds. It appears to be a fragment of cloth of some sort. It’s hard to decipher, but it looks to be from a ball cap. I turn it over and read what looks to be the torn remnants of ‘USMC’!
How did the Sheriff ’s forensic people miss this?

An ominous feeling sweeps over me, it is a feeling I have had before while campaigning. It is the feeling that someone is watching me.
But from where?

I look around in paranoia as I hop off the ladder with great difficulty. It’s damn near impossible to negotiate it back to its weedy home, but I do.

Something rustles in the brush.

I turn in the direction of the sound and see the fleeting image of…

…Bear Bryant?

Part II

AUGUST

“Fancy card,” I comment with a bit of sarcasm.

“Yeah, it’s a bit gaudy…kind of like Mexican money,” my boss concedes.

“I don’t know man, when’s the last time you handled
our
money? Have you seen the new hundreds?”

“Oh, I know. Ben Franklin’s rolling over in his grave. That means Aztec United Electric, by the way.”

“Yeah, I know, I can read simple Spanish,” I snipe. “By the way, what’s the story with these people?”