Blacktop Wasteland(41)

“Yeah, ya do. Horace and Burning Man gonna ask you about it and you gonna tell them. I tell you, Lou, I wish it didn’t have to come down like this. But if wishes were horses, beggars would ride,” he said. The line went dead.

Lou Ellen turned her head in the direction of the door. They were still pounding on it. Lou closed her eyes. “It’s open!” she yelled. Fuck them. If they were coming to kill her, they could open the goddamn door themselves. She heard heavy steps and then she saw them come around the partial partition in the hallway.

Horace was grinning with a smile that made him look like a jack-o’-lantern that had been carved by a Parkinson’s victim. His salt-and-pepper hair was piled up on top of his head in a bedraggled, greasy mop. He wore an old Texaco T-shirt and denim jeans. His arms were covered in Nordic tattoos. Vikings and battle axes and skulls. Billy “Burning Man” Mills stood next to him. He was a foot taller than Horace and half a foot wider. He wore a white button-down shirt open at the throat and a pair of wrinkled khakis. He had lank black hair with wisps of gray that was parted down the middle. His Vandyke goatee was still more black than white. His green eyes were flinty flecks of jade. If not for the scar on the left side of his face he would be considered a ruggedly handsome man. A burn mark stretched from his chin over his cheek up to his eye and around what was left of his ear. Lou knew he wore his hair long to obscure the scar as much as he could.

“Hey, Lou Ellen. How ya doing?” Billy asked.

“I’m alright, considering,” she said. She realized Lazy had only called to make sure she was home and not in the hospital. Lou dropped her hand to her right side. The cops had her gun, but she had a switchblade that she carried with her nearly all the time.

“Yeah. Getting shot hurts like a sonofabitch. Feel like somebody sticking you with a hot poker all the way down to the bone,” Billy said. He sat in one of the chairs the cops had retrieved from the kitchen. He leaned forward and let his hands hang loosely between his legs.

“Makes you think it’s the most pain you ever gonna feel,” he said. Horace tittered.

“Yeah,” Lou Ellen said. Her mouth was desert dry.

“It ain’t, though. There’s always more pain,” Billy said. He ran his hand through his hair and she saw the rest of his scar.

“Billy…”

“Shh. I just gotta ask you two things, Lou. Just two questions. Then we gonna be gone,” he said.

“The cops were just here. I didn’t say anything. You know I didn’t,” she said. She felt tears building up in her eyes and hated herself for it.

Billy smiled. “Aw, I know that, Sis. We watched them leave. They long gone now. But thank you for answering my first question,” he said. The smile seemed to make his scarification more disturbing. It was as if the ghost of his old face was rising from the grave. Billy scooted his chair closer to her recliner.

“Now my second question is the humdinger. Who’d you tell about them diamonds? You know, the ones Lazy was using to pay for them girls?” he asked. He smiled again and the skin around his eye crinkled like crepe paper.

Lou Ellen felt her tongue squirming in her mouth. She could tell the truth. Just let it all out and hope for the best. Or she could lie. Just pretend she had no idea how those guys knew there was almost two million dollars’ worth of diamonds in the safe. Or she could try and find some middle ground.

“I didn’t tell nobody. But there’s this girl that work there,” she said.

Billy leaned forward. “Aw Sis. Not another girl with a pussy that taste like cotton candy and dreams,” Billy said.

“I didn’t tell her nothing. Not really. We just kinda hung around each other. She might have picked up on some things,” Lou Ellen said.

Billy nodded sagely. He ran his right hand along Lou’s left thigh. “Lazy got a friend in the hospital. She says a little to the left they could have hit your femoral artery.” His hand stopped at her wound.

“Yeah,” Lou Ellen said.

He squeezed her thigh. His hand closed on her like a bear trap as his thumb dug into the wound. The pain was a living thing that grabbed at her throat and choked off her breath. She instinctively pulled out her knife. Billy’s left arm shot out and caught her wrist as she came up with it.

“Come on now, Lou,” he said. He gave her wrist a hard twist and the knife fell into her lap. “What’s her name? The girl who must have a pussy that taste like magic and star-shine?”

“Lisa,” she wheezed.

Billy let go of her leg. He plucked the knife out of her lap.

“Lisa’s the blonde, right?” Billy asked.

Lou Ellen nodded.

“That means it was the other one. The redhead. Jenny,” he said as he sat back in the chair. The biscuits that held it together creaked. Lou breathed heavily through her mouth. “I didn’t think you’d give the real one up. You a bad liar, Lou Ellen. You always had a soft spot for a fat ass. Lisa too skinny for you.” Billy stood.

“No, Billy, don’t hurt her. Please.”

“If it was just a jewelry store, this could go another way. But them cops gonna start poking around. They gonna be looking at the books and seeing the math don’t add up right,” Billy said.

“I ain’t gonna say shit,” Lou Ellen said.

Billy frowned. “I know you good people, Lou. But them boys gonna lean on you hard. If it makes any difference, I told Lazy it should be me. Seeing as I done known you the longest,” he said. He walked around to the back of the recliner.