The Killing King of Gratis (9 page)

It started out fine. Her parents were somewhat loving and her school grades were decent. If she applied herself she could have gone to college and lived a normal life. Growing up she planned that life and was content until Freddie Malpier came along. Freddie moved into her school district when she was a junior. He was handsome and noticed Althea the first week he was there. He was the first good looking boy to ever give her serious attention, and he mesmerized her.

They were dating by the third week of school and seemed joined at the hip. Althea made it her business to be wherever Freddie was. To his credit, Freddie treated her as well as any 16 year old could be expected to treat a girlfriend. He bought the blizzards at the Dairy Queen and made a point of opening her car door. She thought him a real gentleman.

Unfortunately for them both, Freddie was a curious boy. He experimented with drugs and was ready to try new ones when the moment presented itself. One boring night, after cruising down main street in Freddie’s old Buick Regal and finding nothing to do, they went to a field party. Althea’s parents told her time and again not to go anywhere new with Freddie, but their warnings amounted to a whispering breeze when she was with him.

They met an older man there and soon were partying in his trailer at Cowpen’s Trailer Park. At the time, Althea was shocked by how filthy it was but felt safe with Freddie. Once there, Freddie was offered a pipe and they both smoked their first crack rock. Everything would be different after that.

Her first high was amazing. Every doubt and fear disappeared in the curling wisp of smoke rising from that beautiful glass pipe, and she floated away from what life would have been. Unfortunately it lasted only minutes, and she crashed hard as the drug left her system. It felt like a baby losing a mother’s love. She needed more.

Althea and Freddie skipped the next week of school, buying crack where they could find it. They both stole money from their parents and anyone else they ran across. After a couple of weeks, Freddie was arrested for burglarizing a fireman’s home. He was caught while pawning the man’s wedding band. In his drug addled state he failed to notice the inscription, ‘My Heart’s Unquenchable Fire,’ on the inside of the ring. The sentiment didn’t give him away, but the name etched under it did. He was jailed and sent to the penitentiary for two years.

Given her taste for crack, Althea wouldn’t be faithful to Freddie for two days. She found her way back to the dirty trailer where she first tasted the pipe. An hour after she got there she was sleeping with the same man who gave her the first rock only weeks before. The next day he was pimping her out. They traveled from truck stops to bootleg houses, trading sex for drugs. Her parents had no idea where she was.

Althea was lost from her family and everyone else who couldn’t supply her with crack. She stayed with the dirty trailer man until she fell asleep one night in the cab of a tractor trailer and awoke in Valdosta. From there it was living from one trucker to the next, sleeping with anyone for a little cash. After a couple of years she was used up and thrown away. Even the loneliest truckers weren’t that interested. She wasn’t yet twenty.

Althea made her way back to Gratis, realizing she would have to support herself beyond prostitution. Soon she was working all matter of scams and crimes, from forgery to shoplifting. Her real talent, however, was burglary. Her first love Freddie was a miserable failure at it, but Althea had a knack.

She loved watching people and going into their homes and seeing how they lived. She laughed as she wiped herself with their panties or used their toothbrushes to pick her nose. She would infect the whole town if she could. Althea quickly learned to calculate how much crack any stolen item was worth and where to convert that item to cash. After selling herself for years it didn’t seem a bad way to survive.

Althea was at home asleep when Delroy came by. The night before, she broke into the home of the Church of Christ preacher. He was out of town with his family at a revival camp meeting, and Althea had the place to herself. After getting his flat screen TV through the back bedroom window, she took a bible from the nightstand for good measure. If she was going to hell, she at least wanted to reserve a first class seat.

Delroy made his way up the dirty wooden steps of Althea’s home. He knocked for ten minutes before hearing anything from inside.

“Damn motherfucker! Stop your damn knocking! Who the hell is it?” Althea yelled from her bed.

“It’s Delroy, Miss Althea,” he yelled back.

“Well baby, why didn’t you say so? Come on in.”

The first whiff upon opening her front door made him catch his breath. It smelled of old meat and cigarettes made worse by the damp heat of summer.
This reeks of tumors and puss,
he thought. He went through the front hallway, strewn with dirty clothes and empty beer bottles, and then had to go through the kitchen to get to the main room.

The mere thought of people eating food prepared in that kitchen made Delroy gag. The sink was black with filth and stacked with dishes unwashed for weeks or months. The table was piled with empty cartons of grits and fish sticks, old bottles of hot sauce peeking through the morass. Rotting food was stuck to everything, feeding the roaches that scampered as he came through.

Delroy was in a cold sweat and feeling swells of nausea when he entered the living room.

“Shit Althea, what the hell?” He said upon seeing her.

She was sitting on her bed in that room watching a ‘Matlock’ rerun on her new television. She was also totally naked.

“C’mon now, you know you like what you see. You want to sit by me and watch a real lawyer?” She knew he wouldn’t but loved teasing him. He was a good man to have in her corner but he wasn’t some kind of hero. She paid him good money to help her. He had to know where that money came from.

“Would you please put on your clothes and come outside Althea? We need to talk, please?”

Althea just stared at him, lifted her leg, and squeezed out a big fart to add to the ambience.

“I’ll be out there in a minute.” Before she could ask what he wanted, Delroy practically bolted out of the house, stumbling over empty Hennessy bottles as he left.

Fifteen minutes later Althea came out. She was clothed in shorts and a half tee shirt with no sleeves and no bra. Delroy was struck by the thought that he had never seen such large breasts coupled with so much underarm hair. Her belly swung low from the bottom of her half t-shirt, and the whole assemblage was held up by skinny legs and knobby knees.

Althea smiled at Delroy, exposing black and broken teeth. Her yellowed eyes squinted as the sides of her mouth curled up.

“What do you want to talk about sweet man?” She sidled up to him, looking very much like a cat sizing up her next meal. He winced as her breath hit his nostrils, and then told her about Buster and Millie.

Althea stopped smiling.

“What the fuck are you doing, trying to get me messed up in that shit? Really, I don’t have enough problems without you getting some rich old man and fucking Buster Jackson wondering about me? You are out of your fucking mind if you think I’m gonna help you with anything.” She started to turn and go inside.

Delroy thought this would be her reaction and had planned for it.

“Althea, please stop. I’ll pay you if you help me. I’ve got a hundred dollar bill with your name on it sitting in my pocket.”

Althea turned and almost blasted him out of the yard with her yellow eyed stare.

“My life ain’t worth but a hundred to you? Shit, you think I’m still selling my poo-nanny out of a back room? Who the hell are you?”

Althea was genuinely indignant. She had her own crew for burglaries and forgery schemes. She told people what to do and here was her lawyer trying to buy her for a hundred dollars?
Bullshit
.

“Well Althea, what do you want?” Delroy regretted the words even before they came out of his mouth.

She studied him for a moment, glaring at him with her cat eyes.

“Here’s what I’ll do. First, I don’t even want to get with you now after that hundred dollar comment. So instead of gettin’ my lovin’, and believe me, this kitty is sweet and juicy, you give me free legal advice for life. You represent me for nothing ’til I’m dead. When I’m dead, you look after my son, representing him if he ever gets into trouble. I’ve seen your contracts, Delroy. We’ll call this my retainer paid in full for all of my life and my son’s, too.”

Damn
, he thought,
pretty shrewd on her part to include her son’s life in the deal
. That would be significantly longer than the life span she would surely have. He thought about his niece and nephew.

“Althea, you’ve got yourself a deal.”

She kept glaring at him. “No shit. Now meet me around back in thirty minutes, and nobody needs to see us talking. Make sure you don’t tell anyone my name if they ask, or my son’s, because he’s gonna have something to say about that night.”

Thirty minutes later, after making his way through the brambles behind the back of Althea’s house, Delroy was in her backyard. She was standing there under an impossibly huge live oak with moss hanging almost to the ground. Beside her was her son, Terrence.

As rough as Althea looked, she kept her ten year old son looking like a prince. If Delroy had gone into his room, he would have found it neatly kept with a computer, television, and a closet filled with new clothes. Delroy noted that he owned the same red polo and tan khakis that Terrence was wearing.
Everyone loves their babies
. He respected Althea for it.

“Terrence, this is our lawyer, Delroy,” Althea said.

Terrence’s pants pocket bulged. He took a piece of bubble gum out, unwrapped it, and started to chew. He followed up with two more pieces in quick succession.

“Terrence, your mother told me that you know something about Millie Knox and the night she went missing. Do you remember that night?”

Terrence just nodded his head and kept chewing.

“Answer the man when he asks you a question,” Althea scolded.

“Yesh, I shaw something when that lady went mishing,” Terrence by this time was talking with a big wad of bubblegum, having put at least three more pieces into his mouth while he was standing there.

“What did you see Terrence?”

“Well, I shaw that lady leave through the back of CJ’sh. Bushter opened the door, and she jush walked out looking all happy and shilly.”

“Terrence!” Althea slapped the back of his head and put her hand out. “Spit your gum in here!”

Terrence spit his gum into his mother’s hand.

“She was looking silly and smiling at Buster. Buster went back inside and the lady just walked like she going toward the alley. Then I saw a man get out of a green truck and go up to the lady.”

Delroy was listening to Terrence but kept looking over at Althea. She was eyeing the wad of gum plastered to her hand. Without hesitation she popped the wad into her mouth. Delroy thought he was going to be sick.

“What did the man and the truck look like?” Delroy asked weakly.

“He was about your height, wearing tan pants, an orange shirt, and a blue hat, and that truck was old, real old, all beat up and rusty with round headlights. It was a Ford.”

“Did he say anything, Terrence?”

“Not really, wait, he did say something.” While trying to remember what was said Terrence plopped three more pieces of gum into his mouth. Althea smacked him in the back of the head again and held out her hand. He spit his barely chewed gum into her hand. Again she immediately put it into her mouth. Delroy tried to concentrate and not think about Althea’s black teeth chewing her son’s gum.

“He said, let’s see, something like “you’re twinkling in the moonlight,” I think.”

“What did the lady say, Terrence?”

“She looked surprised but was still smiling. He opened the truck door then and said he would give her a ride. She got in the truck but then I couldn’t see her no more, like she was hiding or something.”

She was really glad to see him or she was forced down against her will
, Delroy thought. Either way, it might put Newt in the clear.

“Alright, Delroy, that ish enough for right now. Anyway, that ish all Terrensh hash for you. You can leave the way you came, and remember to leave our namesh out of it.”

Terrence looked up at his mother. “Momma, where’s my gum?”

Althea looked at Terrence and spit out half of the huge wad she was by now chewing. It hung from her mouth and started to droop toward the ground. Terrence rose to her like a trout rising to corn, bit this gum off, and started chewing it as he walked back into the house.

Delroy knew then that he was definitely going to be sick, and ran toward the road. Before he got there he lost what little breakfast he had eaten, heaving loudly enough for Althea to hear him.

She just laughed, let out another huge fart, and went back inside to watch the end of her show. Attorney Matlock would soon have the killer confess on the stand, and everyone would walk away happy.
Not like some bullshit attorneys around here,
she thought, shaking her head.
A hundred dollar bill for what I got? Bullshit.

T
ommy and his new best friend, Tim Motte, II, weren’t idle while Delroy was finding out about the green truck man from Terrence. Deputies followed Delroy in unmarked cars and told Tommy and Motte about Althea.

“Damn, what the hell does Althea have to do with this? Surely Millie wasn’t hanging with her, was she?”

“Sheriff, who knows? Maybe Millie was playing around with crack, maybe Althea knows something about this case.”

“Well, I guess we better bring her in then.”

“Sheriff, if I were you I would go through unofficial channels on this one. You know Althea is too smart to say anything to you or me, and we both know that Delroy probably represents her in this if she has any real information.”

“So what do you suggest?” Tommy couldn’t help himself, but he was starting to admire Motte while working together these last few days. He was smart, unlike his dad, and not an asshole, again unlike his dad.