Two for Flinching (2 page)

Eventually, he gave up. Winded, he put his
hands on his knees and swore between breaths. I could tell he was
crying. “Where is she?” he sobbed.

“I don’t know.”

“I’m not giving her up.”

“I don’t blame you.”

Blondie had returned, sitting in the street.
She was a lab mix, given to jumping on friends and strangers alike.
Now, though, she just examined us with her head cocked to the
side.

“Go home, Steven.”

“I’m going to find her.”

“I hope so,” I said, “and when you do, you
may want to consider seeing a counselor.”

“Fuck you,” he said, breathing hard form the
exertion or the tears, I couldn’t say. “Beason Camp. Marriage
expert.”

“Good night.” I hooked the leash to Blondie
and left him with his tears in the street.

I made sure Blondie had plenty of food and
water and poured myself another shot. One for the road. I left my
bomber jacket on the coat tree and climbed silently up the stairs.
I stopped outside one of the closed doors, the door to the master
bedroom. I don’t know how long I stood there, thinking yet not
really thinking, vague memories of better times, before I opened
the door across the hall and went into the tiny guest room.

Chapter Two

I was sitting at the table in the
kitchen/dining room combo drinking coffee and reading the
Chickasaw Falls Times
when I heard activity upstairs. Shower
running followed by blow drying. I had finished both sections,
front page and sports—all fourteen pages of it—before she appeared
on the stairs. Shoulder length brown hair, makeup artfully applied,
dressed in a maroon sweater and a pair of Levis. Though I would
never say it aloud, she was as pretty as her mother.

“Morning, Uncle B.”

“Good morning, Erin. How did you sleep?”

“Ok. Had to stay up late to study for a
test.” She went to the cabinet, took out a to-go mug, filled it
from the pot and dumped enough sugar into it to put a diabetic in a
coma. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

“It was pretty late.”

“Working on a case?”

“Something like that.”

More noise from the second floor, hurried
footsteps and Blondie arose from her spot at my feet and started
wagging her tail. The boss of the house came down the stairs, jet
black hair wild, olive complexion and beauty a model would die for.
“Hey, daddy.”

“Hey, baby.” I stood, scooped her up in my
arms and hugged her close. “Have a good night?”

“Uh huh.” She rubbed sleep from her eyes.
“Erin and me watched Alvin and the Chipmunks.”

“Again?”

“Yeah.”

“What do you want for breakfast?”

“Chocolate pudding.”

We negotiated a little and finally settled on
Fruit Loops. I wasn’t too sure it was a step up from pudding, but
at least she would get some calcium.

“No milk.”

“Part of the deal, Sarah.” I poured the
cereal and milk into her favorite princess bowl and gave her the
Dora the Explorer spoon. “It’s good for you.”

She frowned. “Can I watch a show?”

“Sure, honey.” I went to the living room and
turned on the television. It was already set to the Cartoon
Network.

Erin said, “Can you drop her at preschool? I
need to get there early today, study some more for my anatomy test.
Oh, and I got a hot date tonight.”

“Sure.” I sat at the table across from my
daughter. “Hey, baby, I’ve got an idea.”

“What?”

“You want to go to school or would you like
to cut and go with daddy? We can go to the gym and then you can go
to daddy’s office.”

She pursed her lips in deep thought. Sarah
was old enough to start kindergarten in the fall, but she had a
late birthday and I thought it would be better for her to wait. It
would give her another year to grow, another year of maturity. I
didn’t think it would matter much in elementary school, but it
could be huge when she hit high school. Her mother hadn’t agreed,
but my wife’s opinion was no longer a consideration.

“Today is Peyton’s birthday. Her momma is
bringing cupcakes.”

“Okay. You can go to work with daddy another
day.”

Sarah shook her head, her long curls flying.
“I can make her a pretty picture at your office and give it to her
tomorrow.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“Yep,” she said proudly. “Sounds like a
plan.”

***

I took Sarah into the gym and let her run
around while I shot. I was never a very good shooter—at least on a
basketball court. I couldn’t dribble very well, either. But I’d had
some athletic talent and was a good rebounder and a fair defender
and had started for a middling high school team my last two years.
I shot ball now to loosen up, reaching that age where you had to
warm up before you could stretch. Sarah had decided to kick the
basketball up and down the hardwood court. I went through my ten
minutes of ritual stretching before dropping Sarah in the YMCA day
care.

I did my twenty minutes of penance on an
elliptical machine, the resistance set at the maximum level. I
followed that with a five minute cool down on the treadmill. The Y
was fairly deserted and I was able to get my lifting done in thirty
minutes. After another five working the lonely heavy bag in the
corner, it was time for a quick shower. I collected Sarah from the
nursery and she broke for the gym. I followed. It wasn’t as if I
had anywhere I needed to be.

I stood under the basket in my jeans and
sweatshirt, dribbling as she climbed the bleachers.

“Beason,” a voice called from the door, “you
still throwing up bricks?”

Randall Rogers had been a teammate of mine, a
year younger who had made the varsity as a freshman. The point
guard, he could always shoot and dribble. Now, he was balding and
coming to the gym to work off the twenty pounds he had somehow
accumulated over the last ten years.

“Hey, Randy,” I said, “some of us get better
with age.”

“Yeah, but can you still dunk?’

I shrugged.

He smiled. “See ya.”

“Randy?”

He turned, a hand on the door. “Yeah?”

I took two steps, jumped and threw it down
one handed. “I still got it.”

Randall Rogers laughed all the way into the
lobby.

***

“Hello.”

“Beason? This is Eric Hendricks. You covered
up?”

“I’ve got some time. What do you have?”

“A big one.”

“Injury or divorce?”

“Divorce. Can you handle it?”

“Sure.”

“We need to move fast on this. I’m going to
send you a package right now.”

“Okay.”

“And Beason? There is a big payday on this
one. Don’t fuck it up.”

“I’m on it.”

***

I looked around my office. It was on the
second floor of a closed sock factory. Sarah had fallen asleep on
the couch on the far side of the large room. She had quit taking
naps a year ago, but even she was not immune to the power of that
couch. It snagged me on a regular basis. Aside from the computer,
my desktop was empty.

I tapped the space bar to wake it up. I had
to wait a few minutes for the email to pop up in my inbox. I opened
it. Apparently, Melvin Jenks was stepping out on his wife, Cynthia.
Cynthia suspected her husband was planning on meeting his mistress
(probably the secretary) that very evening. Melvin Jenks. We had
never met, though I had seen in his name in the newspaper. He was
the president of a local bank. Hence, the big payday. My job was to
find hard evidence of the affair.

I heard the outdoor stairs rattle. I didn’t
have any appointments and walk-ins were rare in my business. As a
matter of fact, business was rare lately. Maybe it was my lucky
day. Maybe I was going to get two clients in a one hour period. My
door opened and two men came in. Maybe it wasn’t going to be my
lucky day.

The first guy was big, six feet or so with
muscles bulging at his exposed neck the way they do on professional
bodybuilders. The second guy, though, was the one who made my
spidey sense tingle. Next to his partner, he looked almost tiny,
five foot ten, a buck sixty, an unhealthy pale as if he had never
seen the sun. He had a stillness about him, a calm readiness in his
body language, hazel eyes that took in everything without moving. I
opened the top drawer of my desk and found no help there. I didn’t
carry my gun when Sarah was with me. Of course, they didn’t know
that.

“Beason Camp?” The big guy came complete with
a big head, dark, unruly hair, and a broad nose that was on the
crooked side. The ugliness in his face went much deeper than the
skin.

“Yeah?” I let my chair fall forward, the
balls of my feet on the floor, ready to move. “How can I help
you?”

He grinned, took two steps deeper into the
room and swung his head around. Not near as subtle as his partner.
He did a double take at the still form on the couch. The smile
turned upside down. He looked at his partner and pulled out a cell
phone. While he made the call, my eyes never left the smaller man.
His didn’t leave mine, either.

“Yeah, he’s here,” the big guy said into the
phone. “Only problem is, the daughter is here, too.” He listened
for a moment, killed the call and shook his head at his partner.
“Be seeing ya,” he said to me, turned and stomped out. His partner
backed to the door, nodded once and left without a word.

The silence was overwhelming.

“Daddy?”

I blinked, wondering what the hell had just
happened. “What, baby?”

“Can we get some lunch?”

***

My brother didn’t get back to me until late
in the day. I had spent the afternoon working background on Melvin
Jenks. Jenks was forty-seven years old, which seemed kind of young
to me for a bank president. Of course, the number of bank
presidents I knew of (counting Jenks) was a total of one. He had
graduated from an appropriate Big East college with a masters in
finance and had worked for a handful of banks before being hired as
Vice President of Southeastern eight years ago. He had taken over
the top spot less than a year earlier.
Interesting.
What
power and prestige can do to a man and his morals. He and Cynthia
Floyd had married twenty-three years ago in March, a spring
wedding. They had two teenage daughters and an elementary age son,
Melvin Jr. Amazing what you can get off the internet.

His Facebook page seemed to be regularly
updated, where he ate dinner and the last movie he had seen. His
sole had been excellent and the popcorn had been cold. Pity. He had
an eight handicap and enjoyed hunting and fishing. There was a
picture of him straddling the carcass of a nine point buck,
grinning in his camouflage and hunter’s orange. He was a fairly
large man, a little paunch creeping in, slowly going bald, his
light brown hair combed over the receding hairline. He could
probably get away with it for another year or two. There was a
picture of his home, not really a mansion, but close, and I got a
good sense of the “big payday.” There were no pictures of his wife
and children. Indeed, his relationship status had been left blank,
as if he had overlooked the entry. Yet, he had carefully listed his
high school and college graduation, his old fraternity and his
current social clubs and charity work.

***

“What are you doing?”

“Working. You?”

“Laying on my beach in Tahiti.”

“Must be nice.”

“Uh huh. What’s up?”

“I was wondering if ya’ll could watch the
princess tonight?”

“Hot date?”

“Yeah, right. Work.”

“I wish I could help you, but I’ve got a big
project going and have to work late myself.”

“I thought things were slow.”

“Exactly. Which is why I can’t screw it up.
The missus has to take Sonny to a wrestling meet in Birmingham
tonight. What about Erin?”

“She does have a hot date.”

“You have any babysitters you can call?”

“Besides you?”

He chuckled.

“Parents these days are hesitant to leave
their teenage daughters alone in the company of a stud such as
myself.”

“With good reason. You try dad?”

“He has enough on his plate.”

“Ain’t that the truth. I’m sure he would do
it.”

“I am, too. I’ll figure out something.”

“Oh hell.”

Chapter Three

I picked up Jenks as he left work a few
minutes after five. Banker’s hours. He walked out with a younger
woman with long hair and a short skirt. Details were hard to make
out, but she seemed to be attractive—from a distance. Thin,
self-assured, confident in her heels. They gave each other a
businesslike nod and climbed into their respective vehicles, hers a
late model Honda, his a sporty Lexus. They pulled out of the lot,
Jenks in the lead, and I pulled out of the gas station across the
street.

There was no reason for them to expect a
tail, but I still stayed three cars behind them. They were
allegedly about to commit an illicit act and therefore might be a
little on the suspicious side. Traffic was as bad as it got in
Chickasaw Falls—which meant running a red light without looking
might or might not be dangerous. Both sets of blinkers came on and
I slowed, letting them turn into a Chinese takeout place. I drove
past and stopped at a drugstore, watching them in the rearview.
Jenks went inside while she remained in her car. They must have
called ahead, because Jenks came out after only a couple of
minutes, triumphantly carrying two plastic bags. The convoy set out
again. I let them get ahead. I had a pretty good idea where they
were going. In a town this small, their options were limited and
even if I was wrong, I was confident it wouldn’t take a half hour
to find them.