Bubba was having a hard time staying awake, but this didn’t stop him from driving aggressively. He wouldn’t let anyone into his lane. If someone got too close to his rear bumper, he slowed down more abruptly than he usually did.
He turned off his CB because there was no good buddy to talk to anymore. He didn’t raise Honey on the two-way because he would be seeing her soon enough. He unplugged his phone so it wouldn’t ring.
At Cloverleaf Mall, misfortune, or perhaps bad karma, began to swarm in. It started with a tattooed woman on a Harley-Davidson. She thundered around Bubba, flying between two lanes, dyed blond hair streaming out from her bright red helmet.
‘Hey!’ Bubba yelled as if anyone could hear. ‘What the fuck you think you’re doing?’
The woman rode on. Bubba sped up. He wove through traffic and floor-boarded it after her, squealing off on Oak Glen after she did and backtracking to Carnation and Hioaks, past the Virginia Department of Corrections Headquarters, and down Wyck Street and over to Everglades Drive.
Bubba was too exhausted, his mood too foul, to realize the woman was having a good time with him. When she shot back onto Midlothian Turnpike, Bubba took the turn too wide and didn’t bother checking for cars. Horns blared. People cursed. An old woman in a Toyota Corolla pointed her finger at him like a gun and fired.
A city police cruiser darted in behind Bubba, blue-and-red lights flashing in Bubba’s rearview mirror. This time Officer Budget yelped his siren as he pulled Bubba into the same Kmart where they had met before.
CHAPTER twenty-four
Communications Officer Patty Passman was overweight, with prematurely gray hair and bad skin. She was single, antisocial, and suffered from hypoglycemia, but she was no fool. She, too, knew that her parking meter on 10th Street was about to expire.
If she didn’t get to her car before Otis Rhoad, he would anchor yet one more ticket beneath her wiper blade. What was it now? An average of two a week at sixteen dollars each? Of course she would be better off parking-in the nice new safe parking deck one street over, but there were no spaces left today. Whenever this happened she was forced out on the street, where Rhoad was always chalking tires and stalking expired meters.
Officer Budget recognized the red Jeep Cherokee immediately and couldn’t believe he was pulling it again in the same damn parking lot. What was wrong with this guy? Was he doing it on purpose? Did he have some kind of dysfunction like those people who were always getting sick so they could go to the doctor?
The Jeep pulled into the Kmart parking lot, in front of First Union Bank, same as last time. Budget got out and approached the driver’s door. Bubba was wearing camouflage. He was glassy-eyed and filthy. A dog was in a pen in the back. Budget rapped on the glass with his portable radio. Bubba rolled down his window.
‘Step out of the car,’ Budget said.
‘If you don’t mind, I’ll just give you my license and registration like last time, Officer Budget. I’ve been up all night lost in the woods coon hunting.’
The racial slur was astonishing.
‘Not a good time to say something like that, Mr. Fluck,’ Budget said in an icy voice. ‘How many you catch, huh? You hang ’em from trees or shoot ’em?’
‘We get ’em in trees if we can,’ Bubba said. ‘It’s not legal to shoot ’em right now.’
Budget jerked open the door and looked down at Bubba. He wanted to beat him up. It occurred to him that he might be able to get away with it since this was Rodney King in reverse. But they weren’t in California.
‘Once we get ’em up in the trees,’ Bubba was talking too much because his nerves were frayed, ‘we shine a light in their eyes. Course, it’s the dogs that get them first, really. The dogs track ’em down.’
Budget looked back at Half Shell. The dog seemed docile enough.
‘And just what kind of dog? Pit bulls? Dobermans?’ Budget said hatefully.
‘No, no. Coon dogs.’