Unearthed, p.17
Unearthed, page 17
part #4 of Southern Watch Series
“Because we talked about it on the playground,” Molly quipped, “right after we discussed what happens when you ring the devil’s doorbell.”
Lauren just stared at her. “Devil’s doorbell?”
Molly got wide-eyed again, but this time with annoyance. “You know.” She looked downward. “The bean.”
“Oh.” Lauren finally got it. “Is that what kids nowadays call it? I feel old, because we just called it the clit—”
“Demons,” Molly said urgently.
“Actually, devil’s doorbell should have been the ‘d’ word—”
“That would have been the ‘d’ words, plural—”
“Or double D’s,” Lauren said, chuckling. “God, I’m as mature as a twelve-year-old boy.” She felt her face get stern again. “When the hell did you learn about demons in your school?”
“At lunch,” Molly said, “I was sitting at a table with Frank McKenna. You know him?”
“I know of his family,” Lauren said. The McKennas were a husband/wife real estate sales team that had their faces plastered on half the yard signs in Midian. “Why?”
“Well, he’s the local dealer—” Molly started.
“Why were you sitting with the local dealer?” Lauren asked, back to outrage.
“Because there are six lunch tables in my school and all the cool kids always sit with the guy who’s holding,” Molly said. “Go figure. Don’t get distracted.”
“Do they even bother with a ‘drugs are bad, m’kay?’ speech anymore?”
“Focus on the demons, Mom,” Molly said. “Certain death now, PSA on marijuana’s effects on the brain later. Anyway, Frank got a big request from some new guys in town—”
“I hope they’re DEA agents,” Lauren said. “Maybe he’ll sit at the cool kids’ table in prison.”
“—for a party tomorrow night,” Molly said, finally ignoring her disruptions. “You know where the Venus Plantation is?”
Lauren gave her a wary eye. “It’s out on Suffolk Lane. Hell, they renamed County Road 83 Suffolk Lane just to make it sound more stately for the Venus Plantation. Rich people get married there.”
“You’re a doctor, so you probably shouldn’t sneer about rich people like that,” Molly said. “Anyway, someone rented the plantation. The entire thing, not just for a wedding. They’re staying there, right now, and they’re throwing a party tomorrow night that’s going to have lots of drugs. Not just pot, either, more of the big-ticket drugs—meth, cocaine, heroin—”
“I wonder if Mr. and Mrs. McKenna know that their son is in sales, too?”
“Frank’s not handling the heavy stuff,” Molly said, “he’s outsourcing it.”
“It worries me that you’re talking about narcotics like this, like it’s a totally normal business to get into. It’s not. It’s illegal in Tennessee. It’s a criminal enterprise, like running a protection racket or being Suge Knight’s driver.”
“Anyway,” Molly said, “big party. Frank said no one’s been invited from around town.”
“So?” Lauren asked, shrugging her shoulders. “Maybe a bunch of stockbrokers from Atlanta are driving up for a company retreat and want to paint the town red, the air green, and their noses white.”
“Well, see, I thought of that,” Molly said, “so I stopped by Melina Cherry’s place on the way home—”
Lauren’s eyes almost popped out of her head and her jaw dropped. “You stopped by a brothel on the way home? You cheeky goddamned latchkey kid!”
“I didn’t go there for the service,” Molly said.
Lauren pulled her hair back and just barely kept from ripping it out in clumps. “You have got to be kidding me. Is that where you picked up the phrase ‘devil’s doorbell’?”
“No, I got that from the internet,” Molly said like it was nothing. “Anyway, Ms. Cherry invited me in for tea with her and the other girl—”
“I’m living a fucking nightmare,” Lauren muttered to herself. “My daughter lunches with drug dealers and then has afternoon tea with a hooker and a madam. Who are you meeting for dinner, Whitey Bulger?”
“Roman Polanski,” Molly said. “Don’t wait up. Anyway, Ms. Cherry hadn’t heard anything about this party.”
“Did it occur to you that, being involved in an illegal trade, she might have lied to you?” Lauren felt the lightheaded weariness that came from feeling like her whole world had spun in rapid circles in the last few hours. Was she still standing? Probably shouldn’t be.
“Possibly,” Molly said. “But let’s assume for a moment she’s not—”
“Yes, let’s assume that she was totally frank about her dealings and not hiding the fact that she’s going to be there tomorrow night inserting countless Tab A’s into her Slot B for fat stacks of cash.”
“Calm down, Jesse Pinkman,” Molly said. “Let’s assume—maybe this party is outsourcing the hookers.”
“I don’t—” Lauren rubbed her forehead. Her hair was a mess from pulling it back in frustration. “Why do there have to be hookers at this party?” She looked up. “I’ll take ‘Things I Never Thought I’d Say to My Teenage Daughter for $1,000, Alex.’”
“The question is, if you’re throwing an alpha-male to the extreme drugs party so big you dry up the local dealer and make him ply his sources for heavier stuff,” Molly said, patiently connecting the dots, “why wouldn’t you want hookers at the party?”
“So maybe they’re outsourcing that, too,” Lauren said. She felt the sudden urge to curl up into the fetal position. “It sounds like Ms. Cherry has a shortage of available merchandise.” She froze. “Do you know what this conversation is doing to me? I just referred to people as merchandise. You’re a bad influence. You’re like the Corleones, dragging me into this with you.”
“So, maybe they are getting their hookers from Chattanooga,” Molly conceded. “Maybe. But then why go local for the drugs?”
“I would like to talk about dollies now, please. Remember when we used to talk about dollies?”
“When I was six? Yeah. Remember when we didn’t talk about how a demon tried to rape me in a Ferris wheel?”
“Just kill me,” Lauren said, finally sinking down to her haunches on the floor. “Kill me now.”
“I think the party is a demon party,” Molly said. “I think they need drugs because—I dunno, demons get high, I guess. But they don’t need hookers because maybe human women aren’t what they go for? Or because they’ve got a different source that meets their needs.”
Lauren looked up at her but kept her voice low. “Seems to me that we know demons go for human girls.”
“Well, then maybe they don’t go for the willing ones,” Molly said hoarsely. “Maybe it’s …” She sank to the bed.
“Maybe,” Lauren said, putting her head between her knees.
They sat like that for a while. “What are you gonna do?” Molly asked finally.
Lauren looked up at her. “I’m gonna lock you in a tower until you’re fifty, and make you grow your hair long so I can climb up it to visit you everyday. I’m going to buy you a chastity belt with the really spikey spikes, the kind that make a man’s Tab A quiver and withdraw to inchworm sized at the sight of it—”
“They do that?”
Lauren just stared daggers at her. “I’m locking you in a metal box in the basement until you develop superhuman powers.”
“Stranger things have happened around here lately.”
Lauren leaned back, slowly, until she was flat against the floor, staring up at the ceiling. She took a deep breath and let it out. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. I can’t exactly call Sheriff Reeve and ask him to bust the party. I just—”
“What?”
“I met a guy this afternoon,” Lauren said, thinking it over. Belzer might know something. “He … well, he knows. Maybe I’ll ask him.”
Molly was quiet for almost a minute. “Are you gonna … you know … go to the party?”
Lauren lifted her head to look at her daughter. “Am I going to go to a party that’s possibly filled to the brimming with demons who are high on cocaine and bereft of hookers? Gosh, that sounds like a ball.”
“A prison ball,” Molly snorted.
“More like two balls,” Lauren said, “times however many guys are in the room.” She looked at the white plaster ceiling. “Should I be worried that you know all these things?” She raised her head to look at her daughter. “That you’re out investigating demons via prostitutes and narco-businessmen? Are you planning to be Michelle Pfeiffer in the inevitable reboot of Scarface?”
“I’m just …” Molly said, and she looked troubled. “I can’t just sit in my room and watch everything go to shit.”
“Language,” Lauren said. “This is what happens when you hang out with hookers and dealers, you start cussing.”
“Mom,” Molly said, and there was a plea in her eyes, “we have to do something.”
Lauren felt her throat get tight and her skin chill at the thought of her sixteen-year-old daughter—her baby, dammit—and all that was coming to town here. “Running seems like a good idea.”
“I don’t wanna run,” Molly said. “This is my home.”
Lauren took a ragged breath. “Yeah.” She looked out the window and saw birds in the tree beyond, frolicking like they didn’t have a care in the world. “I don’t want to run either.”
*
Sundown came and Bill appeared, truck rattling down the ruts in the driveway. Arch watched him from the window. The house had been quiet since the blowup that morning; Duncan had stayed out in the barn all day, and Alison had taken to going out to visit him every hour or so, to see how he was doing. Arch was a bit skeptical about how that’d go, but he didn’t say anything to her about it, of course.
The sun was hanging low, just above the trees when the truck came to a halt. It shot a glare across the hood of the truck, a blinding flash of light in Arch’s eyes that he felt compelled to look away from. He opened the door and stepped out onto the porch; if it had been up to him, he’d have kept the windows and doors open all day long. It wasn’t like they had air conditioning to waste, after all. Though he supposed the flies would drive them half mad.
“Got some news,” Bill said as he quietly closed the door and then used his rump to shut it the last inch. “Might want to get the team together.” He paused. “Feels like we ought to have a name, doesn’t it?”
Arch considered it. “Feels like we got more important things to worry about than voting on a team name. Besides, what would fit? The Cougars? Chargers? Swordsmen?”
“Leaves Alison out, and you know how that’d end,” Bill said. “How’d it go after I left?”
“Fourth of July,” Arch said. “Like a string of firecrackers, but with a little more oomph.”
“Everyone still got all their fingers?”
“For now,” Arch said. “Duncan’s out in the barn. You get him, I’ll get everyone else?”
“Sho ’nuff,” Bill said. It was something he said regularly, and Arch’s mind automatically translated it to “sure enough.” His father-in-law made for the barn while Arch headed back into the house.
“Bill’s here,” he said to Alison, who still had her rifle disassembled on the kitchen table. She didn’t look keen to start dinner and was tinkering with something in the receiver. Arch didn’t go in much for gunsmithing, tending to clean his piece quickly about every five hundred rounds or so. Alison did hers almost daily if it had been shot.
She looked up, and that reserve she’d had all day greeted him as he looked in her eyes. “He’s got news?”
“Yep.”
“You should get Hendricks.” She looked back down at her rifle. She had a toothbrush in hand, its once-white bristles turned grey and unusable, at least for its original purpose.
“Next item on my list of things to do,” Arch agreed and headed for the stairs. “Hendricks?” he called. “Got a meeting, cowboy.” He waited for a response and got none, so he ascended a few steps, listened to the protest of the stairs. “Hendricks?”
He waited for an answer and got none. He hesitated before going any further. As far as he knew, Hendricks didn’t get the room to himself very often, and the man could very well be up to anything up there. On the other hand, he could just be sound asleep. It was a back-and-forth, Arch trying to decide how much he wanted to bet that the cowboy wasn’t doing anything he didn’t want to know about.
He climbed a little higher, stopping a couple steps shy of the top of staircase. “Hendricks, you awake?” He raised his voice. “Hendricks!”
He waited maybe ten seconds and then went to just outside the door of the room. He looked to his left and saw the wreckage of the master bedroom. The walls were all destroyed in there, the studs exposed and the floors completely covered in wrecked plaster, destroyed sub-flooring and pried-up boards. Arch knocked on the wall to Hendricks’s room again, insistently. “We’re having a meeting, cowboy. Bill’s here, and he’s got news.”
Still no answer.
Arch closed his eyes and sighed. He listened, but couldn’t hear anything other than Bill’s voice and Duncan arriving downstairs. He eased with his back to the frame and turned the corner, keeping his eyes closed and spoke into the room. “Hendricks?”
“Yes?” The answer came from inches in front of his face and he opened his eyes to see Hendricks right in front of him, grinning.
“Gah!” Arch said, and took an abrupt step back. “You could have said something sooner!”
“You could have come right up,” Hendricks said. “What, did you think I was jerking off?”
Arch adopted a wary air. “I’ve learned with you that it’s best not to assume anything.”
“Dude, I’d let you know if I was going to beat it. I’m not completely without courtesy.”
“You slept in a room with a lot of guys for a long while,” Arch said with a shrug, “I don’t know what you do with your private time and I don’t want to know.”
“You sure? We could talk about technique if you want—”
“No.” Arch was firm.
“Come on, then,” Hendricks said. “Time’s a wasting, and apparently I’ve got some whacking to do later.” He grinned again and headed down the staircase. “Man, I’d put up a fap flap for y’all. I have that much decency, you know.”
Arch followed, grimacing.
“What took you so long?” Alison asked as they crossed into the kitchen. She had the rifle almost back together, but then she was pretty fast with that.
“Arch had to watch me finish rubbing one out,” Hendricks said.
Bill’s eyes narrowed in concentration. “Somehow I question the veracity of your story. Or at least part of it.”
“Great, why don’t you tell yours, and we’ll start questioning it instead?” Hendricks asked, settling in a chair and scooting it next to the table. He nudged a thin cylinder of metal. “Is this your firing pin?”
Alison glanced at it, then back to her rifle. “Shit,” she said simply and started to break the weapon down again.
“What’s the word, Bill?” Arch asked, leaning against the cabinets near where the fridge had been before someone had carted it off.
“The word is ‘party,’” Bill said.
“You’re changing my opinion of the Army,” Hendricks said. “I thought you sad sack motherfuckers just sat around on your off time and tried to decide who got to whack who off.”
“Get laid already,” Alison said again.
“Stick your firing pin in your bolt assembly,” Hendricks said.
“Demon party,” Bill said. “Tomorrow night. Katlin Elizabeth is throwing it at her house.”
There was a moment of silence, like no one wanted to speak. Then, it seemed like everyone spoke at once.
“Guess we should go to that, huh?” Duncan asked.
“Probably ought to avoid that,” Hendricks said.
“Do we have a rocket launcher?” Alison asked. “Because we should shoot one in and leave.”
Duncan and Hendricks looked at each other, both wary. Arch wondered what was gonna happen next.
“I don’t want to fight you, OOC,” Hendricks said.
“We can go,” Duncan said. “We go, we strike at any demons that are misbehaving, and we avoid the hell out of starting shit with Kitty herself. It’s doable.”
“How do you know she’s going to have people there misbehaving?” Hendricks asked.
“It’s a demon party,” Duncan said. “There’s always misbehavior. Drugs for certain. Probably more finger foods like you saw at the last one.”
“You said she was good at covering her tracks, though,” Arch said. “What if she covers them this time, too? And you end up walking into some legitimate party and get in trouble with your office?”
“Then I’ll get in trouble with my office,” Duncan said.
“You make it sound like no big deal,” Hendricks said.
“Oh, it’s a big deal.” Duncan stood, unmoving, his suit rumpled like he’d been fighting in it. “But it won’t land for a little while if I play it cool. And if we can get her in the middle of a party, doing untoward things that I witness, I can swear out a warrant against her. She’ll be done in this town, at least, have to flee for the hills and await trial, keep her activities really down low until then.”
“Or what?” Hendricks asked.
“You don’t even want to know,” Duncan said. “And neither does she, trust me.”
“Wait a minute,” Alison said. “We’re talking about attending a demon party? Not knocking in the door and killing them, but actually going like we’re invited guests?”
“Well, technically I do have an invite,” Bill said. “My source was more than willing to yield his invitation to us, and it’s not as though they were very formal about the things.”
“Who is this source of yours?” Hendricks asked.
“If I told you, I’d have to kill you,” Bill said.
“You could try, Army, but—”
“Please stop your pissing contest, you’re getting us all wet,” Alison said. Arch grimaced, but saw the leer from Hendricks. “Don’t,” Alison said in response to his look.
