The White Road

She began to move away, but I gripped her wrist gently and placed two more tens on the table. She stopped and waved to the bartender, who had begun to sense trouble and was moving to alert the gorilla at the door. He went back to polishing glasses but kept a discreet eye on our table.

“Wow, two dimes,” said Lorelei. “I be able to buy me a whole new outfit.”

“Two, if you stick with the kind you’re wearing.”

I said it without sarcasm and a small smile broke through the ice pack on her face. I showed her my license. She picked it up and examined it closely before tossing it back on the table.

“Maine. Looks like you the real deal. Congratulations.” She made a move for the bills but my hand was quicker.

“Uh-uh. Talk first, then the money.”

She glanced back at the bar then slid reluctantly into the chair. Her eyes bored a hole through the back of my hand to the notes beneath.

“I’m not here to cause trouble. I just want to ask some questions. I’m looking for a man named Tereus. You know if he’s here?”

“What you lookin’ him for?”

“He helped a client of mine. I wanted to thank him.”

She laughed humorlessly. “Yeah, right. You got a reward, you give it to me. I’ll pass it on. Don’t fuck with me, mister. I may be sittin’ here with my titties hangin’ out, but don’t mistake me for no fool.”

I leaned back. “I don’t think you’re a fool, and Tereus did help a client of mine. He spoke to him in jail. I just want to know why.”

“He found the Lord, that’s why. He even tried to convert some of the johns who come in here, till Handy Andy threatened to beat him upside the head.”

“Handy Andy?”

“He runs this place.” She made a gesture with her hand as of a man slapping someone across the back of the head. “You get me?”

“I get you.”

“You gonna cause that man more trouble? He done had his share. He don’t need no more.”

“No trouble. I just want to talk.”

“Then give me the twenty. Go outside and wait around back. He’ll be out soon enough.”

For a moment I held her eyes and tried to find out if she was lying. I couldn’t be sure but I still released the bills. She grabbed them, slipped them into her bra and walked away. I saw her exchange a few words with the bartender then pass through a door marked DANCERS AND

GUESTS ONLY. I knew what was behind it: a dingy dressing room, a bathroom with a busted lock, and a couple of rooms equipped with nothing more than chairs, some rubbers, and a box of tissues. Maybe she wasn’t so intelligent after all.

The dancer on stage finished her set, then picked up her discarded underwear and headed for the bar. The barman announced the next dancer and her place was taken by a small, dark-haired girl with sallow skin. She looked about sixteen. One of the drunks whooped with delight as Britney begged to be hit one more time.

Outside, it was beginning to rain, droplets distorting the shapes of the cars and the colors of the sky reflected in the puddles on the ground. I followed the wall around to where a Dumpster stood half-full of trash next to some empty beer kegs and stacks of crated bottles. I heard footsteps behind me and turned to find a man who most certainly wasn’t Tereus. This guy was six-four and built like a quarterback, with a domed, shaved head and small eyes. He was probably in his late twenties. A single gold ring glittered in his left ear, and he had a wedding band on one of his huge fingers. The rest of him was lost beneath a baggy blue sweatshirt and a pair of gray sweatpants.

“Whoever you are, you got ten seconds to get the fuck off my property,” he said. I sighed. It was raining and I didn’t have an umbrella. I didn’t even have a coat. I was standing in the parking lot of a third-rate strip joint being threatened by a woman beater. Under the circumstances, there was only one thing to do.

“Andy,” I said. “You don’t remember me?”

His brow furrowed. I took one step forward, my hands open, and drove the toe of my right foot as hard as I could between his legs. He didn’t let out a sound, apart from the rush of air and spittle that shot from his lips as he collapsed to the ground. His head touched the gravel and he started to retch.

“You won’t forget me again.”

There was the bulge of a gun at his back and I removed it from his waistband. It was a stainless steel Beretta. It looked like it had never been used. I tossed it in the Dumpster then helped Handy Andy to his feet and left him leaning against the wall, his bald head speckled with raindrops and the knees and shins of his sweatpants soaked with filthy water. When he had recovered a little, he placed his hands on his knees and glared at me.

“You want to try that one more time?” he whispered.

“Nope,” I answered. “It only works once.”

“What do you do for an encore?”

I removed the big Smith 10 from its holster and let him take a good look at it.

“Encore. Curtain down. Theater closed.”

“Big man with a gun.”

“I know. Look at me.”

He tried to stand upright, thought better of it, and kept his head down instead.

“Look,” I said, “this doesn’t have to be difficult. I talk, I go away. End of story.”

He thought about what I’d said.

“Tereus?” He seemed to be having trouble speaking. I wondered if I’d kicked him too hard.

“Tereus,” I agreed.

“That’s all?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Then you go away and you never come back?”

“Probably.”

He staggered away from the wall and made for the back door. He opened it, the volume of the music immediately increasing, then seemed about to disappear inside. I stopped him by whistling at him and jogging the Smith.

“Just call him,” I said, “then take a walk.” I gestured to where Pittsburg disappeared into warehouses and green grass. “Over there.”

“It’s raining.”

“It’ll stop.”

Handy Andy shook his head, then called into the darkness.

“Tereus, get your ass out here.”

He held the door as a lean man appeared on the step beside him. He had a black man’s hair and dark olive skin. It was almost impossible to tell his race, but his striking features marked him out as a member of one of those strange ethnic groups that seemed to proliferate in the South: Brass Ankle, maybe, or an Appalachian Melungeon, a group of “free people of color” with a mixture of black, Native American, British, and even Portuguese blood, a dash of Turkish reputedly thrown in to confuse the issue even more. A white T-shirt hugged the long thin muscles on his arms and the curve of his pectorals. He was at least fifty years old and taller than I was, but there was no stoop to him, no sign of weakness or disintegration apart from the tinted glasses that he wore. The cuffs of his jeans had been turned up almost to the middle of his shins and he wore plastic sandals on his feet. In his hand was a mop, and I could smell it from where I stood. Even Handy Andy took a step back.

“Damn head again?”

Tereus nodded, looked from Andy to me then back to Andy again.

“Man wants to talk to you. Don’t take too long.” I stepped aside as Andy slowly walked toward me then proceeded onto the road. He took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lit one as he walked gingerly away, holding the glowing end toward his palm to shelter it from the rain. Tereus descended onto the pitted tarmac of the yard. He seemed composed, almost distant.

“My name’s Charlie Parker,” I said. “I’m a private detective.”

I reached out my hand but he didn’t take it. In explanation he pointed to the mop. “You don’t want to shake hands with me, suh, not now.”

I gestured to his feet. “Where’d you do your time?”

There were marks around his ankles, circular abrasions as if the skin had been rubbed away to such a degree that it could never be restored to its former smoothness. I knew what those marks were. Only leg irons could leave them.

“Limestone,” he said. His voice was soft.

“Alabama. Bad place to do time.”

Ron Jones, Alabama’s Commissioner of Corrections, had reintroduced chain gangs in 1996: ten hours breaking limestone in 100-degree heat, five days each week, the nights spent with four hundred other inmates in Dorm 16, an overcrowded cattle shed originally built for two hundred. The first thing an inmate on the chain gang did was to remove his laces from his boots and tie them around the irons to prevent the metal from rubbing against his ankles. But somebody had taken Tereus’s laces and kept them from him for a long time, long enough to leave permanent scarring on his flesh.

“Why’d they take away your laces?”

He gazed down at his feet. “I refused to work the gang,” he said. “I’ll be a prisoner, do prisoner’s work, but I won’t be no slave. They tied me to a hitching post in the sun from five A.M. to sunset. They had to drag me back to sixteen. I lasted five days. After that, I couldn’t take no more. To remind me of what I’d done, gunbull took away my laces. That was in ninety-six. I got paroled a few weeks back. I spent a lot of time without laces.”

He spoke matter-of-factly, but he fingered the cross around his neck as he spoke. It was a replica of the one that he had given to Atys Jones. I wondered if his cross contained a blade as well.

“I’ve been employed by a lawyer. His name is Elliot Norton. He’s representing a young man you met in Richland: Atys Jones.”

At the mention of Atys, Tereus’s attitude changed. It reminded me of the woman in the club when it became clear that I wasn’t going to pay for her services. Seemed like I had ended up paying anyway.

“You know Elliot Norton?” I asked.

“Know of him. You’re not from around here?”

“No, I’ve come from Maine.”

“That’s a long way to travel. How come you ended up working way down here?”

“Elliot Norton is a friend of mine, and nobody else seemed keen to get involved in this case.”

“You know where the boy at?”

“He’s safe.”

“No, he’s not.”