Alabama Noir Read online

  Romy flinched.

  "So Otis's mentioned Iv'ry Cole to you," Bubba realized. "I wish he hadn't."

  "His last appointment, he got a call. Clients usually ignore their phones, but Dr. O said he had to take it. He downplayed the call, claiming he was helping a former student—Iv'ry was all he said, no Cole—set up a computer network. But the conversation upset him. The rest of his hour he was twitchy."

  "Former student? Maybe Dr. O taught Iv'ry Cole basic microcomputing like he taught you. Probably didn't fuck Iv'ry like he fucked you, however."

  "Jealousy doesn't suit you, Bubs."

  "Nothing does anymore, honestly. But about Iv'ry: he runs black Montgomery. Loansharking, coke, punani. All are big moneymakers, but nothing close to Darknet profits. Iv'ry's wanted into cyber-scamming for a while, but he lacked technical know-how until Otis the computer wiz came calling . . . You buy this story so far, Romy?"

  She shrugged. "I buy that Iv'ry Cole's real, but only because I heard the name from Dr. O, not from you. Your motives remain suspect. Part of me thinks you're slandering Otis to make yourself look good."

  Bubba raised his final firecracker in a mock toast. "I'm just the storyteller," he assured her, downing the shot. "Now finish yours so we can roll."

  "Why? I like it here."

  "Because Club G's is Iv'ry Cole's front. He owns this place like he owns Dr. O's ass. The first time Iv'ry heard of Bitcoins was in this room. Dr. O pitched his scheme two tables from where we sit. For all we know, Iv'ry and Otis are here now, watching our every move."

  * * *

  They drove to Highway 231, where Bubba hit a RaceWay for vodka and OJ. He mixed screwdrivers in a jug and traded sips with Romy while an Emmylou Harris CD played. Three songs in Bubba realized he was lit. Five songs in Romy fell asleep, temple to the window. The farther south they drove and the drunker Bubba grew, the less he watched his rearview for headlights. Occasionally he plucked the pen off his shirt and pressed it against the dashboard speaker. Mostly his attention lingered over the landmarks along the two-lane blacktop. Highway 231 was littered with detritus from every Southern motel chain, service station, and diner to ever go bust. Bubba passed a collapsed Ponderosa, a demolished Gibson's Gas, skeletal remains of fruit and firecracker stands whose weather-warped planks looked like rib cages from rotted carcasses.

  "Where are we?" Romy asked when he woke her. Bubba's truck idled in a cul-de-sac of sparkling new McMansions.

  "In Troy."

  "What the fuck for? I'm an hour from home now!"

  Bubba circled the cul-de-sac, popping his high beams to spotlight each yard's freshly laid sod. In every verdant ocean bobbed the same customized landscaper flag. Meisel's Lawn Care, the flags read. Tim "Tiny" Meisel, Proprietor. Let Us Do Your Dirty Work.

  "You gotta be blotto." Romy held the jug to the moonlight. According to the translucence, the vodka was three-quarters gone. "We get pulled over, you'll blow a 0.15. That's mandatory jail."

  "I'm already doing hard time."

  He took them to a bar called the Double Branch Lounge. Its wood exterior and checkered awning made it look more country-western than it was. Once upon a time Hank Williams commanded its stage, but nowadays the DB was a Top 40 dive for students at a nearby university. In the lot the wobbly bartender searched for his sea legs before retrieving a throw pillow and belt from his truck bed.

  "Thirty-three years hoisting kegs . . ." Bubba stuffed the cushion into his back waistband. "Insurance covers steroid injections in my sacroiliac joints, only I don't have insurance. I treat sciatica with a goddamn pillow."

  He made Romy embrace him from behind and guided her hands tightening the belt under his shirt around the cushion. Then, as onlookers gawked, he wrapped her arms across his chest, hoarding the rub of her body.

  "That part about never taking advantage," Romy whispered. "You won't forget it, however shitfaced you get? I'm an hour from home without my own ride."

  "Naw. This bender's entirely platonic."

  Inside the Double Branch, Bubba ordered tomahawks—amaretto with cinnamon schnapps.

  "Where were we? Oh yeah . . . so Iv'ry installed Otis in a warehouse to train two dozen budding hackers, mostly high school dropouts. In time the operation loots maybe $30,000, but that's nothing compared to the millions newspapers tell Iv'ry cryptokleptos are heisting. Meanwhile, Otis's reading about Bitcoin thieves pulling ten-year sentences. Otis starts stressing. Ulcers, insomnia. For all I know his sacroiliac joints lock up. Eventually he begs Iv'ry to pull the plug, but Iv'ry's got an investment to recoup. You want out, Iv'ry tells Otis, pay me $100,000. Dr. O's already blown $80k gambling. No way he—what's wrong?"

  Romy was slumped in her chair, sullenly watching a band soundcheck. "If you don't get to the point, when the music starts I'll be dancing, not listening."

  "This part's the best. The love story starts now . . . Has Otis talked lately about a woman?"

  "He's mentioned in passing he's seeing someone. Her name's weird: Marcella."

  "That's her—Marcella Meisel."

  Romy turned toward Bubba. "Meisel? That's the name on those landscaper flags . . ."

  "So you are paying attention!" He scooted a tomahawk at her. They had to sip these shots because their stomachs felt oily. The vague nausea didn't keep Bubba from ordering kamikazes—vodka with triple sec and lime juice.

  "The Double Branch is Otis and Marcella's personal love shack. She first landed on him like a heat-seeking missile up in Montgomery, but she's from Troy, so once Otis's smitten he's burning rubber to Pike County every night. They party hard—Marcella's got a nose for coke. They fuck hard too. Otis hasn't made love in a long time. He's forgotten how wonderful women's bodies are, forgotten the pleasures of hands and holes, napes and crannies . . ."

  "You're scaring the sorority girls."

  "Dr. O's in love, but he's still Iv'ry Cole's bitch. Marcella can tell he's plagued. Takes her some time to coax the sad shebang from him. Then, in bed, right after a hot rut, she proposes a solution. Her ex-husband, this landscaper Tiny Meisel, inherited a coin collection worth $200k. Marcella won half in their divorce, but Tiny staged a bogus theft to avoid paying. He's buried the coins somewhere on his family's two-hundred-acre cotton farm. Marcella's bought a souped-up metal detector to find them. The thing's built like a rocket launcher, too heavy for her to lug. But if Otis can locate the coins, Marcella's willing to split the sale and buy his freedom from Iv'ry."

  "So now we've gone from Bitcoins to real coins?"

  "Not just any coins. We're talking Confederate half-dollars and nickels."

  "I feel like I read this in a book once."

  "For ten straight nights Otis humps this contraption over two hundred cotton acres. Guess what happens next."

  "Dr. O is abducted by aliens."

  Bubba laughed and celebrated by making Romy join him in shooting a kamikaze.

  "What happens is the gizmo pings. Otis uncovers genuine Johnny Reb silver and copper. He can taste his freedom. He rushes to tell Marcella, only something awful's happened to her—"

  "She's been abducted by aliens," suggested Romy.

  "This gets serious now. Otis finds Marcella beaten raw. Tiny Meisel's been trailing his ex-wife, peeping through her blinds when she and Otis knock boots. He knows they're stealing his coins, so he fractures Marcella's jaw and blacks both eyes. Otis wants to go to the police, but Marcella refuses. Now that Otis found the coins, she's got a better idea."

  "Take the money and run. Start a new life under a new name."

  "Nope . . . Marcella wants Otis to kill her ex."

  Romy pressed at her stomach. "I don't feel good. I need to eat."

  Bubba agreed. It was time to move on anyway. He ordered his tab, but when the barkeep broke his hundred-dollar bill she had to make change with four rolls of quarters. The Double Branch was fresh out of dead presidents. There are no accidents, Bubba decided. Only opportunities. He squeezed a roll in each fist; the quarters felt like brass knuckles.
r />   In the truck Romy asked if Bubba seriously expected her to believe that a prof she once banged would agree to kill somebody. "I have standards," she insisted.

  "And I don't meet them," Bubba replied. "But Otis did agree to shoot Tiny dead in his sleep. Marcella gave him a gun and a key to Tiny's house."

  It'd happened less than twenty-four hours earlier, Bubba insisted. Otis emptied seventeen rounds from a 9mm Smith & Wesson M&P into Tiny's bedroom until something thumped to the floor.

  "Guess what Otis discovered when he flipped on the light?"

  Romy played along, indifferently. "Tiny Meisel's body."

  "Nope . . . He discovered Iv'ry Cole's body."

  * * *

  From the DB they retraced seventeen miles on 231 to a greasy spoon called the BBQ House. Bubba's vision was fuzzy, but the shack couldn't be missed. Its driveway was marked with a pink neon pig in sunglasses kicking out a can-can leg over two flaming slices of Texas toast. "Nice tits," Romy said, observing the blinking ͼͽ on the sow's chest. Beside the pig sat a portable billboard with plastic letters: In All Things Give God Your Gratitude.

  "When Southerners finally admit the contradictions splitting us down the middle," slurred Bubba, parking, "we won't call our impulses hell and heaven, or the agony and the ecstasy even. We'll call them pork and pray."

  "You're gonna tell me Tiny Meisel loves this place," Romy predicted.

  "Indeed. Tiny can eat the motherfucking love out of some pork."

  Bubba ambled to the highway's edge. There was no oncoming traffic, but the rolls of quarters in his pocket weighed him down anyway. "Bitcoin, Confederate coin," he mumbled. "Always the coin of somebody's realm. I want free of money and pain." He hurled the quarters into the woods across the blacktop.

  Inside he bought Romy a pulled pork platter and motioned her to a door that looked like a fire exit. "Not another one," she groaned as she crossed the threshold into a secluded bar. Bubba bought two final shots, straight Jack Daniel's.

  "One drawback to this place," he said when they found a table, "the can's out back. Just in case you get sick."

  "Can I get a side order of silence, please? I'm starving, but I'm fed up with your tall tale."

  "It's almost done . . . Here's the deal: Otis didn't kill Iv'ry. Grazed his temple, that's all. The affair with Marcella was a setup to rob Iv'ry. Landscaping is Tiny Meisel's front. He really deals coke for the Sinaloa cartel. The Sinaloa boys want Iv'ry out of business so they can take over the Montgomery trade. Tiny offs Iv'ry, he gets promoted out of Troy to run it. So Marcella seduced out of Otis the info Tiny needed about Iv'ry's operation, and while Dr. O hunted buried Confederate treasure the Meisels were in Montgomery casing it. They stole Iv'ry's blow and kidnapped him to that house, duping Otis into taking him out. The coin collection never existed, of course. During the Civil War the Confederacy minted exactly four silver half-dollars and twelve copper nickels total. Dr. O should've known that . . ."

  "I'm not listening," Romy said, tearing into her pulled pork.

  "Iv'ry's alive, but he's out $250k in product. All he knows is his coke's buried somewhere outside Troy until the Meisels can transport it out of Alabama. Iv'ry overheard Tiny and Marcella talking when they shanghaied him. The location of the coke's marked with a GPS tracker. Won't be easy for Iv'ry to get to that tracker. Tiny hides it in the knee socket of the prosthetic leg he's worn since an IED blasted his off during the Iraq War."

  Romy looked up from her plate of food. "A fake leg? That's it. Take me home. I can't take another word. Get a dog if you need someone to talk to."

  Bubba's sciatica was flaring. His discs and joints felt like tectonic plates firing off seismic jolts. "I know you wonder why I need you to scratch me till I bleed, Romy. Maybe you think I need pain so I don't go numb from booze. But it's not about feeling. Every time you scratch me I hope those scratches scar, that they don't fade, even though they always do. You're the closest my life's had to a constant. We're lucky we've had twenty-five years, but this friendship'll get fucked up in the end. Everything does. I'd just like a permanent mark of what you've meant to me, something I can carry, after one of us inevitably fails the other."

  He shot both Jack Daniel's and rose.

  "I'm gonna take a leak, then drive you home." He leaned over and stroked Romy's cheek. "As for the story, I don't believe half of it myself."

  * * *

  Outside, crossing ten feet of asphalt to the bathrooms, Bubba adjusted the pillow still belted to his back. He entered a stall without latching the door and stopped two careful feet short of the toilet to clear his head. He was ready when someone followed. An arm wound around his neck. He felt a knife tear into the pillow, but it couldn't penetrate the foam to more than nick his spine. He bent forward then launched backward, slamming his assailant into the stall pilaster, just like he'd imagined doing all night. He twisted and grabbed the man's knife hand. His other arm went across the attacker's throat, pressing his nape into the steel partition. He bent his knees until the man's neck rode the pilaster to the metal strike that stopped the stall door from swinging outward. Rising and sinking on the balls of his feet, Bubba sawed the base of the man's skull against the sharp protrusion. The skin ripped and blood splashed to the tile. The man screamed but was too stunned to fight. One punch and Bubba knocked him out.

  "Get him out of here."

  Tiny Meisel, all bald head and leather, stood in the doorway. Two Mexicans in overalls dragged Iv'ry Cole to an idling Audi A7.

  When Bubba stepped outside Tiny slapped him to the ground.

  "You told that bitch about me and the Sinaloa boys!"

  "I just told her a story . . . I had to tell her something to get her out to these bars!"

  "You tell her she's fine. You tell her you got money enough to treat her right. You tell her you gonna fuck her like no other man ever done. You don't tell her Tiny Meisel's taking over Iv'ry Cole's territory!"

  "I—I made the story so ridiculous that Romy doesn't believe any of it . . . I could never say that ooh, baby shit to her! She'd never talk to me again . . ."

  "'Ta repedo," one of the Mexicans said. Tiny agreed.

  "My friend believes you're drunk. Drunk as a fart, he actually just said. I believe that in your intoxicated state you told that woman about Otis to make your own sorry ass look good."

  Bubba trembled. "I told you that if he hid that tracker anywhere it'd be at her studio. I did what you made me do. I brought Romy to their bars. I used her as bait to smoke out Otis and Iv'ry."

  "Honestly, I never would'a thought Dr. Otis Owen had it in him to turn double agent. Like your woman said, he seems squishy as putty. So we thank you, bartender, for smoking them out for us."

  Tiny yanked Bubba to his feet and motioned for the Mexicans to pop the Audi's trunk. Two bodies lay inside, their gashed throats leaking red smiles.

  "This one," Tiny said, pointing at Otis Owen, "however Iv'ry convinced him to steal back that cocaine and bury it wherever he did—maybe money, maybe a threat—Otis should'a known better. But look at it this way, Bubba: I done you a favor. You don't have to compete with Otis anymore for that woman's attention."

  "You never said," Bubba gasped, "you never said . . ."

  "Now this one," Tiny pointed at the body of Marcella Meisel, "I didn't mind her screwing Otis. I just wished she hadn't enjoyed it so much."

  Bubba's legs went weak.

  "You know what part of your story I liked best, bartender? That last bit, about the fake leg. That was over the top! Far-fetched! Well, guess what?" Tiny whipped out a Glock with a silencer and fired three bullets into Iv'ry Cole's kneecap. "Now that part of the story's true! This boy gonna need a new leg!"

  The bullets brought Iv'ry roaring back to consciousness. He bolted upright and grabbed his spurting leg. What was left of his knee looked like spaghetti. As Iv'ry opened his mouth to scream Tiny shot him between the eyes. His dreadlocks fluttered as the bullet blew out the back of his head.

  "Now give me that godda
mn tracker," Tiny said.

  Bubba dug his hands into his empty pockets. Sobriety came over him like an instant eclipse. He remembered the rolls of quarters he'd heaved into the woods.

  "I—I didn't find it . . . I looked at Romy's place, but the tracker wasn't there."

  "What?" Tiny hurled Bubba against the Audi and pressed the silencer to his temple. "We heard you say, Got it!" He yanked the pen from Bubba's placket. Hidden inside was a microphone and transmitter. "We heard every word you said tonight! We even heard you hold the bug up to your speaker, smart ass, trying to blast us out of our socks! Don't lie: at the woman's studio you said, Got it!"

  "I said it, but you misheard . . . you misunderstood . . . Romy said she'd only come out for drinks if I didn't hit on her, if I kept things platonic, and I said, Got it . . ."

  The Mexicans began trading agitated whispers.

  Tiny staggered back and leaned against a hickory tree. "You just let me kill the only ones who know where that cocaine's buried . . ." He stiffened suddenly and aimed the Glock at Bubba, ordering him facedown.

  "Do it," the bartender begged. "Do me that favor."

  Tiny Meisel did something worse than shoot Bubba. With a knife he cut away the pillow strapped to his back. Then Tiny jumped up and down on Bubba's lumbar region, a half dozen times.

  "Three hours," Tiny said as the bartender curled in agony. "If that GPS tracker's not in my hand, three hours, you and I and probably these gentlemen, too, gonna sit that masseuse down, and she's gonna hear a true story. She's gonna hear why you ain't the best friend she's ever had, and why five dead bodies, not three, ended up in this trunk."

  * * *

  After the Mexicans heaped Iv'ry's body onto the other two and the Audi peeled away, Bubba limped like a hunchback across the highway, each step a detonation in his spine. At the woods' edge he lurched onto all fours and threw his hands into the brush where he thought the quarters should've landed. If he could find one roll, just one roll, the tracker couldn't be far.

  The more frantically he searched, the more impossible finding the device seemed, until finally Bubba wasn't searching at all. He was hobbling as fast as he could with his sciatica blazing, telling himself he wouldn't stop until he reached an ocean, a different country, another world. Instead he quickly reached the woods' end, where he tripped over a tree root and tumbled down a small hill, rolling upright in a subdivision of new McMansions. It wasn't the same cul-de-sac he'd driven Romy through, but each yard was decorated with the same message: Let Us Do Your Dirty Work.