LITMIR.BIZ

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There’s a tread mark on Curley’s pants leg and one cowboy boot is missing. It’s evident no brakes were applied either before or after the accident. Then again, maybe it wasn’t an accident. Maybe someone has it in for him. Who knows, maybe someone is out to get any cop who makes himself an easy target.

      “What were you doing outside of your car?” I ask.

      “Waving my arms to get the attention of that crazy driver,” ‘crazy’ being the operative word here. “A truck from Cooley’s was almost forced into the ditch.”

      “Get a description of the vehicle?”

      “Green sedan, driver so short only tufts of orangy hair were visible through the steering wheel. Could have been an adult or minor, male or female, a clown or an Irish setter for that matter.”

      “After he hit you, which way did he go?”

      “Don’t know. I was busy spitting gravel out of my teeth.”

      “You think you can finish this conversation at the hospital?” says the attendant, strapping Curley into the stretcher.

      Jim turns to me. “How about I follow them in and get a formal statement?” he says.

      “Good idea. I’ll bring Curley’s car in.”

      I climb behind the wheel of McDaniel’s black and white. There’s a pack of bubble gum, a candy bar and a comic book on the dash. I can’t help smiling. It looks like Curley has a little growing up to do. I spend the next hour scouring the highway and the back roads for the green car, but it was probably in the next county by now.

      You don’t have to look twice to see that the Central Valley is not the California of movie stars, swimming pools and gingerbread tans. That doesn’t mean there aren’t a few rich folk driving fancy cars. You just count them on one hand. Outside the feed store and local watering holes are battered pickup trucks, horse trailers and geriatric Model T’s driven by men with creased leather faces and dusty or mucky cowboy boots, depending on the season. We have the same stores and services you’ll find in any small town, a right side of the tracks, a wrong side of the tracks, a crumbling Chinatown and a Hooverville along the riverbank.

      In summer the valley is a red hot frying pan, in winter the cold freezes the snot to your face, but it’s still beautiful country that takes your breath away, with its fields of fat cattle, lion-brown hills and rocky outcroppings. In spring the valley blooms like the Garden of Eden and in autumn the season collapses with a sigh into a few short days of idyllic weather before the cold drops its relentless hammer.

      Our claim to fame is growing things and we grow them like nobody else. You name it, we grow it: grapes and olives, peaches, cherries, apples, almonds, oranges, apricots and plums. On the coast it’s lettuce, berries, artichokes and Brussels sprouts. If you grow it, someone has to pick it. Before the Dust Bowl migration it was the Mexicans. Now, it’s dog eat dog, Okies, Hispanics and a few Blacks escaping Jim Crow, all elbowing for a place at a table with too few plates.

      Since the cold weather hit, things have been slow at the station. In the last week I’ve gone out on a urinating in public, use of profanity in the presence of women and children, a housewife cracking her husband on the head with a turkey platter, a cockfight on Gonzales Road and a big dog in a red sweater humping a poodle on the courthouse steps. It doesn’t take a detective with 15 years in law enforcement to resolve these issues.

      I drive by the levy where a group of men are filling sandbags, make one more sweep of the highway as far as the Kingsolver’s apple sheds, then turn around and bounce back over the bridge into town. As I pass the auction barn, two men on ladders are hanging a banner over the door, another man on the ground shouting orders. In big red letters it reads:

      DEUTSCHLANDER SOCIAL CLUB

      Membership by Invitation Only.

      Lectures. Brats. Beer on tap.

      I look at my watch. As soon as I hit town I pull into the Tammany Hall Bar. It’s lunch time. I can use a beer myself.

      * * * *

      Angel steps through the double glass doors onto the sidewalk as the first tentative drops of rain tap the canopy of her umbrella. Across the street, a light burns in the window of the Bookworm, the green and white awning snapping in a rising wind. She walks to the corner and crosses at the intersection of Cork and Avalon. When she exits the store with Margaret Mitchell’s new novel, carefully double bagged, the temperature has fallen and the rain comes down more steadily.

      The air smells fresh and clean, wind fluttering her scarf and tugging at her umbrella. When she reaches the corner a big O’Hara delivery truck is parked in the crosswalk, the driver wheeling a few cases of whiskey into the Leprechaun Lounge.

      A man steps from the bar, takes a final drag from his cigarette and flicks the butt in the gutter where it dies with a hiss. Something familiar in his bearing causes ice to form in the pit of Angel’s stomach. She faces away from him as he walks in her direction. She squeezes her eyes shut. Please, please, please, God, make me invisible!

      “It is you, isn’t it?” he says, with a big friendly smile. “It’s been what, two maybe three years?” His hair is center-parted, white-blond, his eyes ice blue. He’d be a photographer’s dream if a black splotch in the iris of his left eye didn’t stand out like a horse fly on a blueberry tart. She ignores him until she feels his leather-gloved hand on her elbow. She shrugs him away. “Don’t touch me.”

      A stranger would look at this man and see wealth, education and elegant manners. Men would emulate him and women give up their virtue before noticing the unspeakable sins that crawl like tropical parasites beneath his skin. He raises an eyebrow, his smile revealing a row of straight white teeth. “Come on Angel, no use pretending you don’t know me.”

      “Please, go away. I don’t want to talk to you.”

      He looks surprised, perhaps a bit offended. “Why the cold shoulder? You were a lot friendlier when you hooked for Axel Teague.”

      “Not by choice,” she says, their eyes locking.

      He finds that amusing. “You were his lucky ticket back then, all blonde and delicious like a piece of candy in gold foil.” He licks his lips and she turns away. The delivery man gets back in his truck and pulls out of the crosswalk. As Angel steps from the curb his hand closes like a vice on her upper arm, his face an inch from hers. His cologne triggers memories that return with nauseating clarity.

      “Don’t rush off now that we’ve found one another again,” he says. “How about an encore for old time’s sake?”

      “That’s never going to happen.”

      “I bet you didn’t know that Teague was into me for fifteen big ones back then. I would have put a bullet in his head if he hadn’t handed you over that night. I almost believed him when he said it was your first time, but they all say that don’t they?” He laughs, unpleasantly.

      “I was thirteen years old. I don’t know how you can live with yourself.”

      “Oh, come on. It couldn’t have been that bad. It was sure good for me.” He smiles to himself, remembering. “If I could take one memory to my grave, that would be it.”

      “That day cannot come soon enough to please me.”

      He digs his fingers into her arm. “You’ve got one sharp tongue on you, kid. You better be careful how you use it.” She tries to pull free but he only tightens his grip.

      “Don’t underestimate me,” she says, but she trembles as she says it. “I’m not that helpless little girl anymore.”

      He laughs out loud and releases his grip. The light turns from green to red and there are too many cars to make a safe getaway. “What are you, a hundred pounds? I guess I should be shaking in my shoes. Since we’re on the subject, what ever happened to Teague? I haven’t seen him around lately.”

      “You can visit him in Oakwood Cemetery.”

      “Meaning

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