“You know, Harry,” Lonnie drawled, “you’re getting to have a regular attitude problem.”
“I really am worried about her,” I said, real serious and low. “Kinda weird.”
“Talking about it all the time ain’t going to do any good.”
“You remind me of when I was a kid and I’d fall down and bust a knee open or something and my father would say, ‘Don’t cry.’ And I’d say, ‘But, Daddy, it hurts,’ and he’d say, ‘Well, just don’t feel it, son.’ Just don’t feel it.”
“Good advice, you ask me.”
A piece of a red chili pepper hit the back of my throat, a feeling I’d imagine was comparable only to accidentally swallowing a hot cigarette ash. I started choking and reached for the glass of ice water. Sweat broke out over my upper lip.
“Say,” I said when I’d recovered my composure, “you haven’t got a car or two I can pick up, have you? I could use the quick cash.”
“I lost the bank,” Lonnie said quietly.
I stared at him. “What do you mean, you lost the bank? Who loses a bank?”
“Asshole, I didn’t mean I lost it, lost it. I meant they’re not my clients anymore.”
I set my fork down in my plate. The Nashville Merchants Bank had been Lonnie’s main customer for years. He’d repossessed maybe three thousand cars for them.
“What happened?”
“They were bought by that bank in Virginia.”
“Oh yeah, I read about that.” Merchants was one of the last two locally owned banks in the city; the rest had been swallowed up in corporate takeovers. This just isn’t a small town anymore.
“So they brought in new management.”
“Well, they still got to repossess cars, don’t they?”
“Sure, they just aren’t going to have me do it for them. You know how it is when new bosses come in. They got to change everything just to mark their territory. Sort of like a dog pissing on a bush.”
“Sounds like a done deal,” I said.
“It is. Nothing I can do about it.”
I crammed in another mouthful. “You going to be okay?” A trickle of hot oil leaked out the side of my mouth. One of the niceties about my relationship with Lonnie was that table manners played absolutely no part in anything. One of those male-bonding concepts, I guess.
“Yeah,” he said wearily. “Business had dried up over the past few months anyway. Times’re getting better; people are making their car payments.”
“Times are getting better?” I asked, my mouth open. “Damn, couldn’t tell it by me.”
Lonnie grinned. “Well, they are. Besides, I could use a little downtime. I got some money saved up. My other clients’ll feed me a couple of cars a week, just to keep my hand in. Won’t be nothing like the old days, though. Back when we were picking up two or three a night. Thought I was going to run my ass off back then.”
“Ah, the good old days of economic collapse.”
“Got that right. Besides, I’m working on a deal with a leasing company that may work out. Leased vehicles have to be repo’d, too, you know.” He unfolded the newspaper and held the front page toward me. “Seen the latest?”
CULT LEADER NOT IN CONTROL the headline read.
“What the hell?” I reached over and took the newspaper out of his hand, then scanned the article. The Reverend Woodrow Tyberious Hogg was now claiming he was not in control of his followers, that in their zeal and religious fervor, they had surrounded the morgue on their own volition.
I looked up. “You buy this shit?”
“That Hogg’s not in control?”
“Yeah.”
Lonnie chuckled. “Right, and the Pope don’t wear a funny hat. The guy’s just trying to keep his legal problems to a minimum. It’s like if Koresh had been outside the compound in Waco going: ‘Hey, it’s not my problem those people have locked themselves in there with all those guns.’ ”
I read on. Hogg had held a press conference by phone from his walled estate just in time to make the afternoon paper deadline. His wife died of a stroke, he said, and this had been verified from the group’s own doctor. Rumors of drug and alcohol abuse, and especially the vile rumors about suicide or even murder, were despicable and the work of the devil’s own children seeking to stay the hand of God in the world.
“Guy’s a paranoid psychotic,” I said offhandedly.
“Rooney tunes,” Lonnie said.
“I went down there today,” I said, distracted as I scanned the rest of the article. A sidebar related the history of hostage situations over the past decade or so. It was not an upbeat tale.
Lonnie cocked an eyebrow. “Yeah,” I said. “Talked to Howard Spellman. He’s in charge of the hostage negotiations.”
“We’re screwed now,” Lonnie said. “Hang it up.”
I glared over the top of the paper. “That was uncalled for. Spellman’s not so bad, once one gets used to him,” I said, forcing a stiffness into my voice.
“A horsewhipping’s not so bad, once one gets used to it,” he answered, mimicking my formality and raising his paper cup in a mock toast.
I looked down at the paper, below the fold to the second lead story. “You see this?” I asked. “They’re looking for Slim Gibson in the Rebecca Gibson murder.”
“Yeah, I saw.”
“Police are searching,” I read aloud, “for Randall J. (Slim) Gibson, thirty-seven, for questioning in the bludgeoning death of country-music singer Rebecca Gibson. Gibson, thirty-five, was found beaten to death in the bedroom of her Bellevue home at approximately four-twenty Monday morning. A police spokesman said the star returned from playing a concert with her ex-husband and two other musicians at approximately two-thirty A.M.”
“Nasty business,” Lonnie said. “You ever seen anybody beaten to death?”
I shook my head.
“It’s not pretty,” he continued. “I hear it’s a helluva lot of work, too. It ain’t easy to beat a full-grown human being to death. They don’t take kindly to it.”
I folded the paper in front of me. “I sure as hell wouldn’t.” I scraped up the last of my Szechuan chicken into a scrambled puddle of goop and swallowed it whole.
“Slim’s partner, Ray, came over to my office today. Said Slim’s running kind of scared. I advised him to check in. The cops have to come after him, it’s going to look real bad.”
“If that article’s true, he’s in deep sewage now. You know as well as I do that when the police say they want you just for questioning, that means your ass is rolled, floured, and deep-fat-fried.”
“Ray wanted me to help him, but I’m damned if I know what to do,” I said.