Trailer Park Noir

Nine

Dressed in a dark blue suit with a red-and-black tie, Reznick left the trailer, locked the door, and carried his briefcase to his car. His father had always told him to wear a suit when he worked, no matter what he did. He should always look his best, the old man always said.

Reznick got in the car and started the engine. He started to back out but stepped on the brake because a white pickup truck was coming along the narrow road. It drove past him and around the loop to the other side. Reznick backed out and went around the loop. The pickup truck stopped at unit seventeen. Reznick left the trailer park.

He was in the Yellow Pages and the White Pages. He wondered if he should blow some money on advertising. Maybe in the newspaper. Things couldn’t go on like this much longer. Something had to change. He was actually putting reading material in his briefcase so he’d have something to do at the office. He had two novels in his briefcase – a Larry McMurtry and a Stephen King. He’d probably get through the McMurtry by lunch, if it was like most days. The King book was four times the size of McMurtry’s and would take more time.

On the northern end of North Street, Reznick pulled off the road into a small parking lot, and pulled up beside a tollbooth-like house with a sign on the front that read Java-Hut. It was painted pastel violet with pastel yellow trimming, like an Easter egg. He stopped with his car window just below the window in the side of the little house. The young woman who worked in there was a fresh-faced blonde with dreamy eyes and a bedroom smile that was an especially pleasant way to start the day.

“Hello, Marc,” she said.

“Good morning, Janine,” he said with a big smile. “I’ll have the usual, please.”

“Comin’ up.”

It was the only time he ever wished he drove a big pickup or an SUV – so he could be level with the window and look in there while Janine moved around making his frozen coffee drink. He imagined she wore faded denim shorts above long tan legs that looked as smooth as the coffee drinks she served. Probably a very tight, round ass. Nice, smallish breasts – those he’d glimpsed from his car as she bent forward. She looked like she had the whole world in front of her – and she was trapped in that little shack selling coffee drinks. He wondered what her dreams were, and how that job figured into them. She was twenty-two, twenty-three – where did she hope to be at thirty-three, at forty-three? Or did she think that far ahead? That was what worried Reznick about the young people he met – they seemed to go along with the flow of things, no ambitions, no particular hopes or dreams, seeking not knowledge but the next entertainment, the next diversion. He wondered if Janine was that way. And he wondered with whom she discussed those things – what lucky guy got to hear about Janine’s dreams? Or was she with a guy who didn’t care?

“Here ya go, Marc,” she said with a big smile.

She took his money with one hand and gave him the drink with the other. Their fingers briefly touched. As she made change, she said, “Any interesting cases?”

“I’m afraid not, Janine. Business has been very slow. I may just dump the whole thing and go raise alpacas, or something.”

Her laughter was a pleasant, youthful sound. She handed Reznick his change.

“Have a good one, Janine.”

“You, too.”

He drove away and headed for his office.

His frozen drink was already beginning to melt.

Sherry awakened suddenly and bit the inside of her cheek.

“Ow,” she said as she slowly raised a hand to the side of her face.

“What’s wrong?” Philpott said.

“I bit mythelf,” she said.

“Andy’s here.”

“What?” she said, her eyes suddenly open wide. She looked down at herself. She was lying on the bed, all the covers in a heap at the foot, in shorts and a yellow tube top – When did I put that on? she thought – and she sat up straight. She closed her eyes tightly when the bed whirled around. She flopped back down on the pillows.

Philpott said, “You wanna try that again a little slower?”

Sherry laughed humorlessly. She slowly sat up and moved her legs off the bed. She sat there for awhile, her elbows locked at her sides.

“What time is it?” she said.

“About quarter to ten.”

“When did he get here?”

“They been here a few minutes.”

“They?”

“David’s with him.”

She set her jaw and stood. “That son of a bitch had better – “ She stalked down the hall and shouted, “You son of a bitch, you’d better have a good story ready!” She stepped into the kitchen and saw him seated at the bar, smoking a cigarette and drinking a beer.

“I brought a buncha beer,” he said. “The fridge’s full of it. Now we gotta get some food in there.”

“Where the hell have you been?” she said. “You fuckin’ jerk, you know how worried I was?”

“Yeah, I noticed how worried you was when I got here. You was so worried, Philpott had to wake you up.”

Sherry turned around and reached out blindly. Her hand landed on a coffee mug on the counter. As she lifted it and pulled it back over her shoulder, Andy disappeared behind the bar. She threw it anyway, and it broke into two pieces when it hit the living room floor.

“Hey,” David said. He was seated in Andy’s recliner watching television. The mug fell at his feet.

“You fuckin’ asshole,” Sherry said. “I was worried all night. I called your cell phone, but it was turned off. Turned off! Since when do you turn off your phone?”

Andy cautiously raised his eyes above the edge of the bar. When he saw she was unarmed, he rose up and sat on the stool again. There were two stools at the bar, one on the living room side and one on the kitchen side, and they did not match.

“My battery’s dead,” he said. He reached into his pocket, took the small silver phone out and put it on the bar. “Look at it yourself.”

She crossed the kitchen and opened the phone. She tried to turn it on.

“No signal,” Andy said. “Nothing. Needs batteries.”

“Where the hell were you all night?” she said, putting the phone back down, not very carefully.

“David and I went over to Eddie’s to score some pot,” he said.

Sherry pulled back and put a fist on her hip, her elbow jutting out at her side. Her face seethed. “Was Karen there?” she said.

“Well, a course Karen was there, she’s married to him, isn’t she?”

Karen was a sore spot. Andy had slept with her once while Eddie was out of town. The only reason Eddie had anything to do with Andy was that Eddie didn’t know anything about it.

“You were there all night?” Sherry said.

“Well, Eddie had some weed that was… oh, man, it was some special shit, I tell ya, some stuff he’d grown himself.” Andy shook his head. “Ain’t nothin’ ever made me that stoned since the first time I got stoned.” He turned to David. “Wasn’t that some good shit?”

“Incredible shit,” David said. “It was amazing. At one point, I imagined I had a bunch of little holes in my forehead and a cold breeze was blowing in over my brain.”

Andy and David laughed.

“You were stoned all night?” Sherry said.

Andy said, “Too stoned to drive home.”

“And Eddie and Karen don’t have a fuckin’ phone?”

“Like I toldja, I was stoned, I didn’t think to call you. I wasn’t thinking, period.”

Sherry sighed. What made her just as angry as the fact that he hadn’t called all night was the fact that she was so glad to see him, she wanted to go to him and touch his face and put her fingers in his beautiful long hair. She stood there and looked at him for a while, and then she did. She went to the bar, bent over it, and kissed him with her hand on the side of his head.

“God, how I wish you’d been here last night,” she said. “It was so scary.” She pulled back and turned to David in the living room. “Who the hell was that guy you brought here?”

“Arnie?” David said. “Where is Arnie, anyway?”

“He’s dead,” Sherry said angrily. “He OD’d here last night.”

“Whuh… what?” David said, slowly sitting forward in the recliner. He gradually rose to his feet. “Did you say… Arnie is… dead?”

“Yes.”

“Then… where is he? What happened to him?”

She looked at Andy. “You’re not gonna believe it. These men – they claimed to be Secret Service. They came and took your friend away, David. They wrapped him up in blankets and just took him away. Two men dressed in black. As they left, one said this had never happened, and we’d never seen them, or somethin’ like that.”

David walked toward her, until he was standing at the end of the short bar. “Secret… Service?”

“Yeah,” Sherry said. “Who was he, anyway? How did they know he was here?”

“His dad’s a senator – haven’t you heard of him?” David said.

“We’re not like you, David,” Andy said. “We don’t watch the news unless they’re gonna show a train wreck, or somethin’, and we wouldn’t know a senator from a monkey on a rock. You’re a college boy, man,” Andy said good-naturedly, and not without a little envy. “You pay attention to that stuff.” He took a long drag on his cigarette. “We depend on you to tell us about it.” Andy chuckled smokily.

“Oh. Well, if you say so,” David said, but there was a flatness to his voice, and his eyes fixed on the end of the bar in a sad stare. “His dad’s Senator Wilson Garvis. From… uh… damn, I forget which state now, isn’t that funny? I’ve known Arnie all these years… and I can’t… remember… what state he’s from.”

David clutched the end of the bar hard, as if he would fall if he didn’t.

“You okay, David?” Andy said, moving toward him. “Maybe you should sit down.”

“Sit here,” Sherry said, bringing the stool around to him.

David perched himself on the stool and leaned his elbows on the bar.

“You know the type,” David said. “He’s big on morals and family values and prayer in schools. He and Arnie never got along. He wanted Arnie to follow in his footsteps and go into politics. Arnie wanted to be a biologist. It infuriated his father. The man was constantly interfering in his life, even having him followed, and attaching homing devices to him, or using his cell phone signal to keep track of where he was at all times. That’s probably how they found him. They probably weren’t far away. They might’ve even had something on him that picked up blood pressure – you know, vital signs. They… they probably knew he was dead.”

“Are you serious?” Sherry said.

“Dead serious. The man was almost obsessive about keeping tabs on Arnie. He wanted to know what he was doing at all times. Now they’re probably going to arrange a more… wholesome death.”

“Whatta ya mean?” Andy said.

“They won’t want anyone to know that he duh-duh… “ David stopped and put his face in his hands. “That he died of a drug overdose. Couldn’t have that. They’ll come up with another kind of death for him. Something cleaner. More acceptable.” He lowered his hands and sat up straight, took in a deep breath and let it out in a long, sigh heavy with sadness. “Arnie had too many secrets,” he said. His eyes glistened and his cheeks were wet. “Drug use. The fact that he was gay.” He turned sad eyes to Sherry. “We were lovers. For a long time.”

Sherry took in a breath. “Oh, David, I’m so sorry.”

His head jerked up and down. “I know, you didn’t mean anything, and you couldn’t have known. But now… yeah, they’ll have a fake death. A car wreck, or a boating accident, or something. Anything but an overdose. And I won’t be able to go to his funeral. For me, he’s just… he’s… gone.”

“Those bastards,” Sherry said quietly. She went to David and took his right hand in both of hers. “What else are those people hiding?”

“Oh, lots of things. His mom is hooked on pills and his dad drinks and sees hookers. But they go to church every Sunday, so I guess it all… evens out.”

Nobody said anything for a long time. Sherry turned to the refrigerator and got a beer. She popped the can open and tipped it back, took a few big gulps. Then she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. She found herself facing Philpott, who had been standing the whole time in the entrance to the hallway. “You’ve been awful quiet, Philpott. Wanna beer?”

He shrugged. “Sure. I feel bad for David. And those guys… they’re a little scary.”

She got another beer from the fridge and handed it to him. “What do you mean?”

Philpott shrugged again as he opened the beer. “Who’s to say they won’t want to shut up the only people who know that Arnie Garvis really died of a drug overdose?”

A splash of cold filled Sherry’s chest, then slowly passed through her entire body, until she shivered in the heat. She turned to Andy and David.

“Did you hear that?” she said. “He’s right – who’s to say they won’t?” To David, she said, “What do you think? Will they come back? Or will they send someone else?”

Andy said, “Oh, c’mon, you’re bein’ paranoid now.”

“Oh, really?” Sherry said. She felt genuine fear in the pit of her stomach, and she turned to David again. “You’re not sayin’ anything, David.”

“Well… “ His mouth opened and closed a couple times, but nothing came out. “You… you probably don’t have anything to worry about,” he said without looking at her.

“Probably?” she said, her voice low and tremulous. “Whatta you mean, probably?”

“I-I-I don’t know,” David said as he dropped off the stool and began to pace the living room.

“So… there’s a chance,” Sherry said. “You’re sayin’ there’s a chance.”

“I-I just don’t, I don’t know, Sherry,” he said as he threw up his arms and let them slap at his sides. “I don’t know what to tell you.”

She went to Andy and clutched his forearm. “You hear that?”

“Don’t get yourself worked up,” Andy said. “Nobody’s comin’ to shut nobody up. And if they do, I gotta couple guns a my own that I’m not afraid a usin’, and I can use ‘em pretty damned good, too.” He wrapped his arms around her and smiled as he kissed her. “Don’t worry, hon, nobody’s comin’ to get ya.”

“Yeah, that’s what you think,” she said against his shoulder. “You didn’t see these guys. They gave me the creeps.”

“Don’t worry,” Andy said. “I’ll protect you from the bad guys.” Then he laughed.