Two Bits Four Bits (17 page)

Aside from the
ever-present West Texas wind, there was no sound except the ticking
of the pickup’s engine. A metal hasp with a rusted padlock secured
the front door of the Quonset hut. There had been windows on either
side of the door, but the glass had been broken out or removed long
ago so now the frames only held badly weathered plywood and
remnants of sun-beat duct tape.

I started to walk around
the perimeter of the building to see if there were any other doors
or windows when I heard the low rumble of motorcycles in the
distance. I looked back down the road and could see a cloud of dust
hanging in the air behind a line of four motorcycles. As they
neared and pulled off the road, I saw the one in the lead held a
female passenger behind the driver. The other three held lone male
riders. All of the motorcycles looked like they were custom-built
Harley-Davidsons and the riders were dressed in the denim and
leather of seasoned riders.

The lead motorcycle rolled
to within a few feet of my pickup and stopped. The woman, who I
recognized as Eva Trout from the pictures I’d seen, climbed off the
back and started to walk toward me, but the man she was riding with
grabbed her arm and held her as he dropped the kickstand and leaned
the hog over.

“Just wait a second,” he
hissed. “Don’t be in such a fuckin’ hurry.”

Eva rolled her eyes and
stood with her arms crossed as the man stepped off the bike and
strode over to where I was. He was dressed in well-worn leathers
and had a purple bandana fashioned into a do-rag. He stood looking
at me with his five-day growth of beard and a sneer intended to
make him look like a badass in front of Eva and his buddies. I
hoped it was working on them, because it sure didn’t do a thing for
me.

“Who sent you?” he asked,
looking off toward the horizon.

“Nobody sent me,” I
answered. “I’m here on my own.”

I pulled out one of my
brand spanking new business cards and handed it to him, under the
assumption that he could read. He looked at it for a few
seconds.

“How do I know you ain’t a
cop?”

“I guess you’ll just have
to take my word for it.”

He studied my card for a
few seconds longer.

“Let’s get one thing
straight,” he said. “This lady means a lot to me. And, if anything
happens to her on account of coming out here to talk to you, you’ll
have to answer to me. Do you understand?”

“Sounds fair enough,” I
said.

“Crap, Jimmy! Are we gonna
stand around out here in the wind all goddam afternoon?” Eva
asked.

Jimmy Do-rag just shook
his head and shrugged.

The other three riders
climbed off their bikes and approached the Quonset hut. One of them
unhooked and removed the lock on the front door and pushed the door
open. He ambled into the dark of the building and a few seconds
later rolled up a rattling metal garage door on the side of the
building. I followed Eva into the building with Jimmy Do-rag and
the other two riders trailing behind me.

The inside of the building
had been turned into a sort of biker’s clubhouse, with a dusty pool
table, one partially disassembled motorcycle and a makeshift bar
set up along one wall. Once inside, Eva walked to the back half of
the building where there was a jumble of worn living room furniture
facing a large rear-projection large screen TV. She slapped at the
cushions on a threadbare couch, sending up a small cloud of dust,
and sat down. She looked up and anger flashed in her
eyes.

“
Jimmy, I told you this
isn’t any of your shit. Why don’t y’all just play some pool or
something?”

“But, what if—“ Do-rag
started, but Eva cut him off.

“We’ll just be right here.
Chill, would you?”

Do-rag shrugged and shook
his head again, a combination of movements he apparently practiced
a lot when he was around Eva. Then, he shuffled off toward the
front of the building with his gang in tow.

Eva watched and waited
until they were out of earshot.

“I’m sorry,” she said.
“He’s such an asshole sometimes, but like I said on the phone, I’m
not sure who to trust right now.”

I explained my
relationship to Kandy and how I had come to be involved. I left out
what I knew about Eva’s longtime relationship with Sandy Doyle, the
cash in the safe deposit box and the links to Doyle’s companies. I
told her that Kandy had described the ongoing sexual relationship
between the three of them to the police.

“Well, that really
surprises me,” Eva said. “Kandy and Russell were always so
concerned with keeping things hush-hush that it’s hard to imagine
her talking about it openly.”

“The police were starting
to look at her pretty hard in trying to solve Russell’s murder. I
think she realized she needed to start telling the
truth.”

Eva gave a bitter laugh.
“Telling the truth. Sometimes that’s easier said than
done.”

“I hear you,” I said.
“But, there comes a point when the truth is the only way out of a
bad situation. Why don’t you tell me what happened and we’ll see if
we can’t get things straightened out.”

“Are you sure you’re not a
cop? You sound just like one.”

“Long story, but no, I’m
not a cop.”

She looked at me for a few
seconds, almost started to speak and then shook her
head.

“No, I got myself into
this and I don’t need to drag anybody else in with me.”

She started to stand up,
but I reached up and put a hand on her arm.

“Monica’s worried about
you. I promised her I’d try to help you.”

She looked down at me and
let her panic show for a split-second before sinking back onto the
couch again.

“Monica? How do you know
Monica?”

I told her that I had come
across Monica’s name while doing a background check and had
discovered that the two of them had lived and worked together at
one time. She eyed me warily, weighing whether she wanted to ask
how much I knew.

“I know about Sandy
Doyle,” I said.

“You know what about Sandy
Doyle?”

“I know that he took
advantage of you and Monica when you were younger and you and
Monica helped each other get away from him and that life. And, that
you’ve both done very well since then.”

She laughed.

“We’re really not doing
too bad for a couple of retired hookers,” she said. “That was all
such a long time ago.”

“And, I also know that you
keep in touch with Sandy Doyle on a pretty regular
basis.”

Her smile faded and she
looked down at her hands.

“Monica hates his guts.
She always has. She was always scared shitless anytime he’d come
around the club back then. And, she still thinks he’s gonna jump
out of the bushes like the boogie man and get her one of these
days.”

She looked up and searched
my eyes.

“Sandy was always real
good to me. He was like the daddy I never had. Monica could never
understand that.”

“I also know about the
money in the safe deposit box and Sandy’s accounts at the bank,
Eva.”

She tried to disguise her
surprise as confusion.

“I-I don’t know what you
mean. What money? What accounts?”

“You’re helping Sandy wash
his cash, aren’t you?”

She was visibly shaken by
the question. She blinked rapidly and stared out the open garage
door at the sandy, mesquite-dotted terrain surrounding the
building. She blew a nervous breath out and when she spoke her
voice was shaking.

“Ah, Jeez. How much
trouble am I in here? Are you FBI?”

I ignored the second
question.

“I can’t tell you if
you’re in trouble until you tell me about your relationship with
Sandy Doyle and what happened the night Russell Chilton was
murdered.”

She hesitated for a few
seconds and then started in on the story of how she had run away
from home at age sixteen and ended up working as a prostitute for
Sandy Doyle in a run-down apartment in Odessa. Most of what she
told me followed the story Monica had told me earlier, but there
was a sense of wistfulness in Eva’s telling, as if it hadn’t been
quite the living hell that Monica described. Once she made the
break from Sandy Doyle she hadn’t spoken to him for years, until a
chance meeting brought them back together.

“It was strange,” she
said. “I mean, here was this guy who had made money off me when I
was just a child, but when I saw him again I realized he was the
closest thing to family I’ve ever had outside of my
Granny.”

“Were you working at the
bank when you got reacquainted with him?”

“Oh, no. I was living in
Fort Worth at the time. We started talking on the phone now and
then, and he talked me into moving back to Odessa. He helped me get
a job in a bank in Odessa and we kept in touch over the
years.”

“So how did you end up
moving to Elmore?”

“Sandy talked me into
applying for a job at Elmore National. He said I would have a
better chance of advancing in a small town where the talent pool
was a lot smaller. I didn’t realize it at the time, but he really
just wanted to get somebody inside the bank so he could start
running some of his cash through there. See, all of the banks in
Odessa knew him and watched him pretty closely. Once I went to work
in Elmore he could send Darrell in to open accounts and start
making deposits.”

“Darrell? Who’s
Darrell?”

“Darrell Swain. He works
for Sandy. Or, he did anyway. I’m not sure if he still does after
all that happened.”

“Tell me how the setup
with the safe deposit box worked.”

“Well, not long after I
started work at the Main Office at Elmore National, Russell Chilton
started flirting with me. I didn’t think about it too much, I’ve
had men flirting with me since I was young. And, Russell Chilton
flirted with just about every woman in that bank. I mentioned it to
Sandy and he said I should play along, that it couldn’t hurt my
banking career to be a little extra-friendly to the
boss.”

“So, when Russell came
onto me one weekend when we were at a banking retreat, I flirted
back and we slept together. A few weeks later, we were spending the
weekend together at his cabin in Ruidoso. We had gone out to dinner
and were coming back to the cabin when just as we’re about to go in
the front door he says he has a surprise for me. I’m thinking he
got me some kind of gift or something, but he unlocks the door and
pushes it open and Kandy is standing there wearing nothing but a
big smile and a pair of spike heels. I just about shit my pants. Of
course I recognized her immediately, but I had only spoken to her
in passing at bank parties and such.”

“Anyway, that was the
start of the three of us spending time together. Not long after
that the job at the South Commerce Branch opened up and Russell
decided I should try for it. If I was working at the branch our
relationship wouldn’t be so obvious to everybody working downtown.
Sandy was tickled to death when he heard about the promotion, and
he got the idea that maybe he could start running some cash through
the branch and it wouldn’t draw too much attention.”

“Darrell came in and
opened the accounts and rented the safe deposit box. He would come
in about once a week and put cash in the safe deposit box and then
hand me some of it to put into the different accounts. I made out
the deposit slips and kept Sandy informed about what was going on.
I had a key to the box and sometimes if Darrell was busy or
something Sandy would call me and ask me to take out some cash to
make the deposits.”

“Did Russell know what was
going on?” I asked.

“Russell knew something
was going on, but not exactly what or how it worked. He figured out
that Darrell worked for Sandy and he knew about Sandy’s reputation.
And he knew they were making big cash deposits, but there was no
proof that anything illegal was going on. So, I think Russell was
basically looking the other way, since the deposits were helping
the bank grow.”

“Did Russell know about
your background with Sandy Doyle?”

“No, not until we watched
the tape.”

“What tape?”

“A few weeks ago, Russell
and I were alone at the branch when Darrell came in. Darrell knew
that he couldn’t do any normal business with Russell there, so he
acted like he came in to get into his own safe deposit box. Darrell
had opened up a smaller box in his own name a while
back.”

“So, I let him into the
safe deposit vault and helped him open his box and then left him
alone in there, like I would do with any other customer. Russell
and I waited in my office and talked and while we were still
talking Darrell finished and left. I went into the safe deposit
vault after Darrell was gone and noticed he left his key in the
lock on his box. Russell had followed me in there and he saw the
key and kept insisting that we should take a look inside Darrell’s
box. Well, I didn’t know what might be in there, so I tried to talk
him out of it, but Russell wouldn’t take no for an
answer.”