The Big Ugly Read online

  He pulled out a staple. "Well, thanks for all that information. There's nothing I need to discuss with you now. You cleared it all up." He dropped the staple in the bucket.

  I opened my mouth, but everything that I could think to say was defensive and stupid. I just went out to the car and drove off.

  I felt like shit, but I'd have to wait to talk to him about it. It worried me, of course. I didn't want him to be mad at me, but it wouldn't do me any good to fret about it right then.

  Nate was like our father. In most ways, he was a better, stronger man than our father, but he inherited the old man's basic attitude toward life. He rarely wanted to make his feelings known, and he never wanted to tell you he was angry at you. When Nate was mad, he just went cold, like an engine that died.

  Me, I'm like the old woman. Mom's anger went off like a bomb—it was bad, and then it was over. Though the damage could linger, she generally tried to help you recover. What a broad. She was a go-getter and a multi-tasker before those terms had even been coined. If she'd been given more direction when she was younger, she probably could have gone to college and moved up the corporate ladder. She would have made a damn fine captain of industry. As it was, she was an office manager. She worked ten-hour days and spent her smoke breaks bitching about my old man's lack of ambition.

  Then, about the time I turned fifteen, one of the broads at her work talked her into going to a revival meeting. And that was it. My mother cooked dinner one Monday night, said goodbye, and four hours later a born again Christian came home in her place. After that, she made us go to church with her three times a week—Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night.

  None of us understood it at first. I was embarrassed that my tough old broad of a mother was suddenly a Bible-quoting, teetotaling Jesus freak. She hadn't lost any of her toughness, though—which was a problem once she started telling me I couldn't see R-rated movies or listen to secular music or hang out with my unsaved friends. She'd turned into a regular hardass for Christ, and I wasn't having any of it.

  In some ways, I guess our relationship never recovered from that. She was bossy, and I'm just like her, so we were probably always going to have problems when I hit my teens. We were always destined to fight over who got to be the voice of authority. But when she started quoting the Bible at me, it felt like she was cheating. The whole point of quoting the Bible is so you claim to be right about everything. At least that was the whole point for someone like my mom.

  Well, maybe not the whole point. I guess she'd always been looking for something else in her life. She'd always been insecure about my dad's lack of class, about our ratty house, about the fact she never had a decent car even though her husband was a mechanic. She felt pretty let down by life, I guess. When she got saved, I think it all finally made some kind of sense to her, like she'd finally figured out what she'd been doing wrong all those years.

  The old man and Nate went along with her. She got Nate saved pretty quick. It didn't take long for some preacher to convince him that he was going to go to hell. The old man was a longer term project, but when he finally came around to seeing it Mom's way, he came in hard. Pretty soon he was as religious as she was.

  I didn't really have an opinion about the religious stuff one way or another. I'd always figured that anyone claiming to speak for God was putting words in God's mouth. What I knew for sure was that my parents had pulled a fast one on me. Their big conversion felt like a betrayal, like they were suddenly switching to a whole new set of rules.

  If it had stopped there, maybe we would have been okay. Maybe we could have worked our way back to each other.

  Now it was too late to even try.

  * * *

  Downtown, I parked close to the old fire station and walked up the street to the Morgan building. It was six stories of gray brick and dirty windows. I walked up to the door, and the creep I'd seen that morning appeared at my side.

  It gave me a start.

  "Where the fuck did you come from?"

  Without acknowledging that I'd said anything, he opened the front door. He was only an inch or so taller than me and slightly built, but he gave me the creeps, anyway. With wide, hard cheeks that slanted down to a small chin, he looked like a snake. He held the door for me and finally turned to me and did something with his mouth that was like a parody of a smile—like he was mocking the whole idea of smiling and politeness and kindness. "After you."

  We walked inside, and as he took me to an elevator at the back of the darkened lobby I noticed brown stains bubbled up from spots in the linoleum. We waited for the elevator next to a dusty plaque on the wall that read: Walter H. Morgan, 1894-1969.

  The elevator doors groaned open. I looked at the empty elevator and then back at him.

  His face did that smile parody again.

  I stepped on, and he followed me. He pushed the button for the sixth floor. I stared at the floor numbers tick upward. He stared at me.

  When we stepped into the deserted hallway of the sixth floor, my heart rate spiked. I made fists with both hands.

  If he noticed my trepidation, he didn't seem to care. He walked a little ahead of me without glancing back. "Last door," he said.

  A light shone from the door at one end of the hall. My new friend stopped just outside of it and leaned against the wall. "Inside," he said, smiling.

  I walked past him.

  Grimy old shades were pulled down over the windows in the office where an elderly man stood behind a desk with a single lamp.

  He motioned me forward. "Miss Bennett," he said.

  "Yes."

  "My name is Junius Kluge."

  I walked over to the desk, and he held out a hand, so I shook it.

  Kluge was as thin and hard as a railroad spike. Though he was an old man, he seemed to have aged differently than most people. His skin wasn't loose and saggy—it was tight and red, as if it had shrunk to his skull like melted plastic. His small blue eyes glinted like nails hammered deep into their sockets.

  "Would you like to have a seat?" he asked.

  "Sure."

  I sat down in the creaky wooden chair on my side of the desk.

  As Kluge settled into the chair on his side, he asked, "Forgive me for beginning with a question which will doubtless sound more than a little presumptuous, but do you know who I am?"

  "No, sir."

  He lowered his chin to his tie for a moment before he said, "I'm a small businessman who has dealings with various moneyed interests around the state. Not all of these moneyed interests are card carrying members of the chamber of commerce, you understand. Since you were in Eastgate, I almost certainly know some of the same people you know."

  "Okay."

  He nodded. "I understand that you've been looking for Alexis Kravitz."

  I folded my hands on my lap. "Okay."

  "Okay, yes-you-are?"

  "Okay. Yes, I am. You seem to know that. Do you mind if I ask how you know?"

  "Osotouy City is just a small town pretending to be a city, Miss Bennett. Word gets around. And I'm the sort of man that the word eventually gets around to."

  "Okay," I said. "I'm looking for Alexis."

  He nodded. "May I ask why?"

  I didn't have time to consider my options or to ask myself what the hell this man wanted from me, but there was a sickness in my gut that told me to keep my mouth shut.

  I just smiled politely.

  When he wasn't talking, Kluge's mouth hung open a bit. As he thought, the tip of his gray tongue darted out between his dentures.

  "May I speculate, then?" he asked.

  "Sure."

  "Someone hired you to find Miss Kravitz. You were chosen for the task because you were both a former guard and a former inmate of Eastgate Penitentiary. The person or persons who hired you for this job were connected, in some form or fashion, to Jerry Kingston. Am I chasing a wild goose here, or am I on to something?"

  "What can I do for you, Mr. Kluge?"

  He low
ered his chin to his tie again and regarded his yellowed fingernails. "I am prepared to pay you to tell me where Alexis Kravitz is. I'm prepared to pay you even more to take me to her."

  "Why do you want to find her?"

  "That's my concern, and I don't propose to pay you to ask me questions. Do you know where she is?"

  "No, sir, I don't."

  "Do you know how to find her?"

  "Maybe."

  "You are looking for her, then?"

  "You know I'm looking for her. I'm guessing it was either Mule or Hastings who contacted you. Your people had already been around to see them both, and when I showed up looking for Alexis, one of them probably called you up to see if you'd kick him a few dollars for the information."

  Kluge's tongue darted out twice before he said, "How much is Kingston paying you?"

  "Five thousand dollars."

  He smiled at that. He probably knew I was lying, but I had the strong hunch that Kluge spent most of his time talking to liars about money.

  "I'll give you ten thousand dollars to find this woman for me."

  I felt a lightness in my chest. I don't know if it was greed or fear. Maybe both.

  "Why do you want to find her, Mr. Kluge?"

  He pulled a cell phone from his pocket and texted something as he asked, "What reason did Jerry Kingston give you?"

  "I didn't talk to Jerry Kingston."

  "Then what reason did some associate of Jerry Kingston give you?"

  "They said she became a Christian and kicked drugs, but that she'd fallen back into her old life and run off."

  He put his cell phone back in his pocket. "Did you believe that?"

  "I believed the money."

  He nodded. "Only a fool would believe anything else."

  I stood up. "I'll need a retainer."

  "I've just taken care of that. Vin in the hallway will see you down and give you five thousand."

  I jerked my head at the doorway to indicate Vin in the hallway. "He cracked in the head or something?"

  Kluge smiled. "Well, I reckon he's got his own particular perspective on the world. Don't we all. Good bye, Miss Bennett."

  I left him sitting there flicking his tongue. Vin in the hallway saw me down. We didn't say anything until we got to the front door of the building. He pulled out hundred dollar bills in a roll as thick as toilet paper.

  "Hold out your hands."

  I held out my hands.

  He counted off ten bills. "One." Another ten bills. "Two."

  As he counted out the rest of the cash, I watched the stack get bigger in my hands. When Vin got to the last hundred, he waded up the bill and stuck it in his mouth. Then he chewed it into a wet ball, pulled it out, and dropped it on the stack.

  "And a cherry on top," he said.

  "What the fuck?"

  I shook the ball off. Vin only smiled and walked back to the elevators. After he was gone, I stood there, just staring at the damp wad of money on the ground.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Outside, I turned up the sidewalk and walked a few streets over to the river. At the base of a bridge—an old railway bridge that had been repurposed into a pedestrian bridge during the last downtown beautification—there was a little green park that sloped down to the water. I kicked off my shoes, sat down on the grass and thought things over.

  The logical place to look for Alexis was among our fellow ex-inmates at Eastgate. They were a rough bunch, but I knew one I could trust.

  Sholonda Effervescence Jackson was a career criminal, and the broads at Eastgate called her Effervescence, or Big F, or Jack. No one called her Sholonda. She was about thirty-five years old, and she'd spent five of those years at Eastgate. Although Jack was a cool operator, a serious thief who took her time, did the planning, and stayed clean in between jobs, we all have to work with somebody, and she'd knocked over a bank with a couple of partners. After the job was done and everyone was in the clear, one of her partners got pinched for breaking and entering and attempted rape. It only took him about five minutes to flip and give up his whole crew for the bank job. Without anything else to tie her to the heist, Jack dodged the robbery conviction, but they nabbed her for conspiracy to commit.

  She'd been my prisoner for three and a half years and then my block-mate for nine months. We'd always gotten along pretty well. I'd treated her fairly when I was a CO, and when I was an inmate, even though Eastgate divided up along racial lines, we'd done each other favors on the yard. When I heard that some pissed off white broad was planning to attack her in her bed one night, I tipped her off. Jack was waiting when she got jumped and she beat her attacker senseless with a piece of wood she'd snapped off a rake handle from the garden. I don't actually think the white chick intended to kill her, but Jack said I'd saved her life.

  She'd gotten out of Eastgate before me, and I wasn't sure if she'd stayed in town, but I did know how to find out where she was. It was a risk, but I decided to take it, anyway.

  As I watched a young father chase his two little girls around the park, I dug out my cell phone and called Eastgate.

  An automated operator gave me a list of options. I pressed 1 for a directory. When the number for Thaxter came up I punched it in.

  A crusty voice said, "Tony Thaxter."

  "Thax, it's Ellie Bennett."

  "Ellie … Hi. How are you?"

  "I'm okay. How about you?"

  "Oh, you know. This place is like a prison."

  Just to butter him up, I gave him an appreciative laugh.

  "How are you?" he asked again.

  "I'm doing pretty well. Working for my brother. Right now, I'm downtown at Riverside Park just watching the river go by."

  "Well, that sounds nice. I'm glad to hear everything is well with you …" He drifted into a silence that invited me to come to the point.

  "Yeah, listen, Tony. I need to ask a favor."

  "I'll do it if I can," he said. They knew the if I can was a buffer against any possible illegal shenanigans.

  "I was wondering if you could give me Effervescence Jackson's address. I owe her some money, and I want to pay it back."

  There was a silence on the other end of the phone. Tony Thaxter had one of those fleshy, worried faces that always looked ready to get bad news. I could practically see him running his fingers through his cigarette-yellowed hair.

  "I don't know, Ellie."

  "Ah c'mon, Thax. I just need to pay her back. She did me a favor inside, and I want to I pay my debt."

  "This … We're not talking drugs here, are we?"

  "No. Of course not."

  "And we're not talking reprisals or anything? Some beef between you two."

  "Tony …"

  "I'm just," his voice lowered, although I was sure he was alone in his office, "I'm just saying, I could get fired if it was a deal like that."

  "It's nothing at all like any of that," I said. "Jack and I are friendly. No bad blood at all. And it's not drugs or anything like that. I've never touched drugs, and I'm pretty sure Jack doesn't have anything to do with them either."

  "But she's a criminal, Ellie. You know what I mean. You did time, but Effervescence Jackson is a straight up criminal. Not the kind of person you should—I'm not your PO—but she's not the sort of person you should be associating with now that you're out."

  "Thanks for the advice and thank you for the concern, Thaxter, but could you please just give me the fucking address?"

  I hadn't meant to snap at him, but he was starting to piss me off.

  He grumbled, but I heard him clacking on his computer.

  "537 Business Street. North Osotouy."

  "537 Business Street."

  "Yeah. North Osotouy."

  "Thanks, Thax."

  "Yeah. Bennett?"

  "Yeah."

  "Don't fuck me on this."

  * * *

  North Osotouy City spread out across the river. Business Street was a long road that ran from the baseball park to the big Phillips-Anderson Cookie Fact
ory, which had been churning out cookies as long as I'd been alive. In between, there were some little shops and restaurants, but I didn't see any housing.

  I couldn't find 537 for a while. The numbers alternated odd and even across the street. So 537 should have been between 535 and 539. 535 Business was a black barbershop. 539 was a head shop that was closed for the day. No 537.

  I parked along the street and went into the barber shop.

  Four men of varying ages sat in chairs along the wall watching a football game on an old television on top of a filing cabinet. The barber was a tall, thin man with big eyes. He wasn't dressed like any barber I'd ever known—he wore a yellow silk shirt over a green T-shirt and baggy yellow jeans. He stopped what he was doing when I came in, but for that matter so did everyone else.

  "Hello," I said.

  With a nod he said, "Hello."

  "I was wondering if you could help me. I'm looking for 537 Business?"

  I couldn't help but glance at myself in the mirror that covered the entire wall over the barber's station. Ellie Bennett, hell of a gal.

  "How come you looking for it?" the barber asked. He didn't seem hostile, but he didn't seem in a hurry to answer my question, either.

  The men along the wall waited for my answer. No one seemed to care one way or the other, but no one was watching the game anymore, either.

  "I'm looking for Effervescence Jackson. I'm a friend of her's."

  The man in the barber's chair was a large, older guy with weary eyes. He turned around in the chair to look at the barber.

  The barber asked, "You ain't got her number? You can't call her?"

  "No."

  He thought about it. I glanced at myself in the mirror again. In my outfit I looked a little official.

  I said, "Me and Big F are friends. Really. She'll be happy to see me. I promise."

  He pointed his scissors at the ceiling. "537 up top. You go round back and up the stairs. She home."

  "Thanks," I said. I told the guy in the chair, "Looking good, sir. Gonna be a handsome cut."

  They all laughed at that, and I left.

  I went around back to a flight of unpainted, graying wooden steps that led up to a balcony with three doors. 537 was written on one door in magic marker. Beside the door was a short statue of a bulldog smoking a cigar.