It felt like the whole damned house had caved in on me. But then, in the darkness of the kitchen broken only by dusty shafts of silver cast by distant streetlights shining through the windows, I felt hot breath on my face.
“You and I are going to talk,” a gruff, low voice said. I struggled to recognize the voice and couldn’t. But I recognized the peculiar smell that came with the hot breath.
Bubba Hayes.
I’d been in trouble before, had seen times in my life where I wondered if I were going to see another day. Like when I did the undercover story on suburban kids going into the projects to buy crack and nearly got my head blown off in the crossfire of a street corner shootout. But never have I felt as close to the grim reaper as I did that very second, with the three-hundred-pound-plus Reverend Bubba Hayes sitting on my chest.
There was one thing Bubba had to realize: until he got off my chest, it was going to be a somewhat one-sided conversation. “Can’t …” I managed to whisper, “breathe …”
He bent over, the dark vague shape looming over me now, blocking out even the streetlights’ glow.
“Neither can Mr. Kennedy. Unless you want to join him, you’d better do exactly what I tell you.”
I could feel drowning man’s panic washing over me. For a second, I hoped that terror and its ensuing adrenaline rush would give me the strength to toss him off, like the little old lady who lifts the Volkswagen off the mechanic when the jack gives way and traps him underneath. Only I could tell after a few quick muscle twitches that there was no way. He had me pinned. My thoughts were coming slower now, the sparkles again in the edges of my vision. I’d have been better off if the house had fallen on me.
I managed to nod my head yes but just barely. He must have felt me move; a moment later, his legs flexed, and his huge backside came up off my chest just enough for me to suck in one desperate, loud gulp of air. The rush of oxygen into my lungs left me light-headed, and the stretching of my rib cage hurt so acutely I almost cried out.
But it felt wonderful to be breathing again.
“I didn’t have anything to do with it,” I said. “I didn’t kill him.”
“Do you know how long he worked for me?” Hayes demanded. There was a whooshing sound in the air, like the sound of a golf club, and then his palm slammed into the side of my face. The slap caught my left cheek and the very tip of my nose. Strange, I thought, it burns more than anything else. I imagined, in one of those ridiculously irrelevant thoughts that invade human brains in times of crisis, that I now knew what it was like to have my head shoved against a hot waffle iron.
“Do you know how good a friend he was to me?” Another whoosh, and this time the slap came on the right side of my face, like somebody closing the waffle iron. Something wet ran down the side of my face; I hoped it was blood and not snot. I’d hate for this s.o.b. to think I was crying.
I lay there, sucking in breath, figuring that his questions were purely rhetorical. I hoped he’d yell the next question a little louder and that Mrs. Hawkins downstairs might hear him even without her hearing aids and call the police.
Both of his hands, which looked in the dark like cast iron skillets coming at me, encased the side of my head and locked it down.
“All right,” he hissed, “who did it? Who did Mr. Kennedy?”
“I don’t know.” I felt his hands clamp even harder onto my head. He lifted it an inch or two off the wooden floorboards, then slammed it back down with a loud crack.
An explosion went off, like Lonnie’s little homemade goodie blowing a crater in his office table. I wished I had a cupful of the stuff right now; I’d blow us both to hell just to get this guy off me. Blinding pain turned everything red, and I thought, damn, man, there go the closure strips again. I’m gonna need those stitches yet.
“If you didn’t kill him, you know who did.”
My arms were pinned at my sides, running beneath his huge thighs down the side of my leg. I shifted a shoulder on the floor. If I could get one hand up just a few inches, I might be able to get one hand into his crotch. Then he’d see what it was like to have the room turn red on him.
Only it wouldn’t work. The Reverend Bubba Hayes was obviously experienced at using his bulk as a weapon. He had me, and more than anything else, more than the pain and the fear, it made me mad. Who the hell did this guy think he was? If I could only get close enough to bite him.
“You talk to me, boy.” He was back in my face again, his breath less rotten now that my nose was swollen shut. “I had to see his wife, his children, tonight. You know what that was like?”
I panted there quietly for a moment. He’d decided to give me room to breathe, but it was still no picnic. I opened my mouth, tried to form words.
“I can’t talk like this. You got to let me up.”
His bulk came down on me heavy again and my rib cage crunched into my lungs. I tried to hold my breath, to keep him from forcing all the air out of my lungs, but I knew I couldn’t hold on long. I felt the panic again, only I was too battered, too weak, to get much strength out of it. Maybe he was going to kill me after all. And it came to me that it was really stupid of him to do that. It didn’t make sense. To die senselessly filled me with sadness and regret, and I felt tears coming into my eyes. Had he broken me finally? Is this the way people died? I wondered. Crying and wishing that it didn’t have to be this way?
“If I let you up, boy, you’re going to spill your guts. And if you try anything stupid, I’m going to break you in half. You understand?”
The breath I was holding spewed out of me in a wet spray. I shook my head as enthusiastically as I could.
Then he was off me.
As soon as I felt my body relieved of his mass, I went completely limp, as weak as a newborn. I hadn’t realized I’d been pushing so hard against him, but every muscle must have been locked tight. I was exhausted to the point of nausea.
I heard a scraping across the linoleum, then the creaking of the floor as the man who weighed over a sixth of a ton settled into a ten-dollar kitchen chair. I raised my head, and in the dusty silver shafts breaking through the kitchen window I saw Bubba Hayes at my table, his elbows propped up, his head in his hand.
He sobbed. I stared at him slack jawed for a moment, a three-hundred-pound criminal sitting at my kitchen table crying. Who’d have thought? I rolled over on my side, pushed against the floor, and painfully rotated up onto my haunches. I pulled my knees up into my chest, stretching, trying to figure out how many ribs were broken, feeling alertly for the sharp pain in my chest that might indicate a punctured lung.
Get a grip, I told myself, and brought my arms behind me and pushed myself up into a kneeling position.
The room spun around me. I was apparently overreaching myself once again. I leaned across the floor, grabbed one of the other kitchen chairs, and pulled it toward me. Then I climbed into it, feeling the soft vinyl pad beneath my butt, glad to be up off the hard cold floor.
“So what’s next?” I asked, still panting. I felt a sharp cramp in my right side and massaged my ribs with my left hand, trying to work it out. With the other hand, I grabbed a dish towel off the kitchen table and ran it across my face as gently as I could. It came away with an ugly dark smear, but it was a mostly dry smear. I sniffed, feeling for the sensation of wet on my face. Nothing; my nose had clotted.
Bubba raised his head. Even in the darkness, I could see the filmy reflection off his eyeballs like sharp points of light. I was glad the lights were off; if I saw the look on his face, I probably would have been frightened into paralysis.
“I want the man who did this,” he said, his voice like a bulldozer in low gear pulling a hill. There was no evangelical flair in his voice, no theatrics, just cold, murderous rage. I was glad I didn’t kill Mr. Kennedy for more reasons than just the law.
“Well, you ain’t got him yet,” I said. “Why did you have Mr. Kennedy following me?”
“Mr. Kennedy was following several people. You were just one of them.”
“What were you doing? Playing private eye yourself?”
Bubba dropped his hands to the kitchen table. It shook like I’d dropped a thawed frozen turkey on it.
“I wanted to know what’s going on. It’s bad for business when people think they can get whacked for owing Bubba money. I’m a moral man. I don’t kill people. I give them what they want.”
Yeah, right, I thought: the same old tired argument they all use. Call it sin if you want, call it vice. But don’t call it victimless. But I wasn’t about to say that to Bubba. “So who else was he following?”
Bubba turned away from me. He was heaving and panting now himself, overcome with either emotion or exertion. I neither knew nor cared which.
“I trusted Mr. Kennedy. He was on his own.”
“So you don’t know who else he’d been trailing?”
“I intend to find out. And when I do …”
A silence as threatening and cold as any I’d ever endured lay between us. I felt sorry for whoever killed Mr. Kennedy. If the killer were lucky, the law would get him before Bubba could, and all he’d have to face was the electric chair.
Now he had me thinking. Why would somebody kill Mr. Kennedy?
“There’re only two reasons somebody would have killed him,” I said.
“And?”
“One, Mr. Kennedy was getting close to figuring out who killed Conrad Fletcher. Two, Mr. Kennedy was getting close to someone who was getting close to finding out who killed Fletcher. And they killed Mr. Kennedy to keep control of the situation.”
“You ain’t making sense, boy.”
“No, think about it.” I stood up, energized by the notion that maybe I was closer to figuring this out than I had imagined. One thing was certain: if reason number one was not the motive for killing Mr. Kennedy, then reason number two almost had to revolve around me. There was nobody else out there.
“Except for the police,” I said, “I’m the only one who’s actively looking for Conrad’s murderer. If I’m getting close, then the killer’s going to have to play his hand. But he has to play his hand when it suits him. And with Mr. Kennedy in the picture, there was one more thing he’d have to control. With Mr. Kennedy out of the way, it’s just me and the killer.
“To paraphrase a disgustingly racist, politically incorrect saying,” I ventured after a moment, “Mr. Kennedy was the Ubangi in the fuel supply.”
The Reverend Bubba Hayes swiveled in the tiny chrome and vinyl kitchen chair, a squeal cutting the air from where the legs screwed into the base. If the chair didn’t give way with him on it, it might last the night. But it’d never be the same again.
“I don’t completely understand what you’re saying, boy.” Then there was silence for a moment, until he spoke again. “But what I do understand makes sense.”
I closed my eyes, trying to concentrate through the pain and the fatigue.
“Something’s wrong here,” I said. “And I’m not seeing it. I’m closer than I realize. Don’t you see, Bubba? I’m close. The answer’s out there, and I’m just not seeing it.”
He said something, but by then I wasn’t paying attention anymore. I stood up and rubbed my temples. Damn, it’s here somewhere. I know it is.
It’s got to be.