“That’s very funny. She’s married.”
“Love is just a kiss away. So the song says.” Playfully Skink seized Jim Tile by the elbows. “Tell me, Officer. Am I arrested or not?”
“That’s up to Mister Max Lamb.”
“I need to know.”
“They’re talking it over,” Jim Tile said.
“Because if I’m not bound for jail, I’d dearly love to go find the bastard who beat up your Brenda.”
For a moment the trooper seemed to sag under the weight of his grief. His eyes welled up, but he kept himself from breaking down.
Skink said, “Jim, please. I live for opportunities like this.”
“You’ve had enough excitement. We all have.”
“You, son!” the governor barked at Augustine. “You had enough excitement?”
“Well, they just shot my water buffalo at a supermarket-”
“Ho! “Skink exclaimed.
“-but I’d be honored to help.” The skull juggling had left Augustine energetic and primed. He was in the mood for a new project, now that Bonnie’s husband was safe.
“You think about what I said,” Skink told Jim Tile. “In the meantime, I’m damn near hungry enough to eat processed food. How about you guys?”
He charged toward the door, but the trooper blocked his path. “Put on your pants, captain. Please.”
The corpse of Tony Torres lay unclaimed and unidentified in the morgue. Each morning Ira Jackson checked the Herald, but in the reams of hurricane news there was no mention of a crucified mobile-home salesman. Ira Jackson took this as affirmation of Tony Torres’s worth-lessness and insignificance; his death didn’t rate one lousy paragraph in the newspaper.
Ira Jackson turned his vengeful attentions toward
Avila, the inspector who had corruptly rubber-stamped the permits for the late Beatrice Jackson’s trailer home. Ira Jackson believed Avila was as culpable as Tony Torres for the tragedy that had claimed the life of his trusting mother.
Early on the morning of August 28, Ira Jackson drove to the address he’d pried from the reluctant clerk at the Metro building department. A woman with a heavy accent answered the front door. Ira Jackson asked to speak to Senor Avila.
“He bissy eng de grotch.”
“Please tell him it’s important.”
“Hokay, but he berry bissy.”
“I’ll wait,” said Ira Jackson.
Avila was scrubbing rooster blood off the whitewalls of his wife’s Buick when his mother announced he had a visitor. Avila swore and kicked at the bucket of soap. It had to be Gar Whitmark, harassing him for the seven grand. What did he expect Avila to do-rob a fucking bank!
But it wasn’t Whitmark at the door. It was a stocky middle-aged stranger with a chopped haircut, a gold chain around his neck and a smudge of white powder on his upper lip. Avila recognized the powder as doughnut dust. He wondered if the guy was a cop.
“My name is Rick,” said Ira Jackson, extending a pudgy scarred hand. “Rick Reynolds.” When the man smiled, a smear of grape jelly was visible on his bottom row of teeth.
Avila said, “I’m kinda busy right now.”
“I was driving by and saw the truck.” Ira Jackson pointed. “Fortress Roofing-that’s you, right?”
Avila didn’t answer yes or no. His eyes flicked to his
truck at the curb, and the Cadillac parked behind it. The man wasn’t a cop, not with a flashy car like that.
“The storm tore off my roof. I need a new one ASAP.”
Avila said, “We’re booked solid. I’m really sorry.”
He hated to turn down a willing sucker, but it would be suicidal to run a scam on someone who knew where he lived. Especially someone with forearms the size of fence posts.
Avila made a mental note to move the roofing truck off the street, to a place where passersby couldn’t see it.
Ira Jackson licked the doughnut sugar from his lip. “I’ll make it worth your while,” he said.
“Wish I could help.”
“How’s ten thousand sound? On top of your regular price.”
Try as he might, Avila couldn’t conceal his interest. The guy had a New York accent; they did things in a big way up there.
“That’s ten thousand cash,” Ira Jackson added. “See, it’s my grandmother, she lives with us. Ninety years old and suddenly it’s raining buckets on her head. The roof’s flat-out gone.”