Part 12 (2/2)

The meeting went badly, and both he and Desiree didn't like the Georgia guy, didn't feel they could trust him. Desiree felt relieved, and she suspected B.B. did as well. It was almost as though he were looking for a way to celebrate, and when they saw a kid walking along the beach, something s.h.i.+fted visibly in B.B.'s face.

The boy looked maybe eleven, cute, clean-cut but staggering. As if he were drunk-maybe for the first time. He had a stupid, happy grin on his face, and he sang something boisterous to himself, occasionally breaking into air guitar as he walked.

”Why don't you stop the car,” B.B. said. ”Let's give that boy a lift.”

Desiree didn't want to stop, but the light turned red and there was no choice. ”Where do you want to give him a lift to?”

B.B. grinned at her, like whatever had broken in him must have broken in her. ”Our house.”

Desiree kept her eyes straight ahead. ”No.”

”No?”

”No. I'm not going to let it happen.”

B.B. bit on his lip. ”What exactly are you not going to let happen?”

”B.B., let's just forget it. Go home.”

”If I say we give the kid a lift, then that's what we do.” His voice had turned loud. ”You don't tell me no, and he doesn't tell me no. No one tells me no. Stop the car and sweet-talk that kid into the car, or you'll be on the street tomorrow and whoring for crank in a week.”

”All right,” she said softly. She chose her words deliberately, because his cruelty demanded treatment in kind, and she wanted him to think, if only for a second, that he had won. ”Okay, fine.” The light turned green, and she sped past the boy.

The next morning, her packed suitcase and gym bag were met with flowers and chocolates and an envelope with cash. He didn't apologize, didn't say he was sorry he'd tried to turn her into a pimp, but she knew he was sorry. For all it mattered. She knew she would stay, but as she unpacked, Aphrodite made it clear that this was a reprieve, not a stay. Desiree didn't resist or disagree or shrug it off, because it wasn't a suggestion. It was fact.

They both saw it. The urge inside B.B. was coming out, and sooner or later bad things were going to be happening under her roof. Maybe she could keep him in check, but for how long? Forever? It seemed unlikely. What frightened her, however, was not the thought that B.B. would give in to his worst self, that he would become the monster he had resisted; it was that she would lack the strength to fight him. She would convince herself that it would be worse if she wasn't around, that she helped him from hurting even more boys. She would help him with this, like she helped him with his business. How long could a person partic.i.p.ate in evil without becoming evil herself? Or had she been guilty the moment she'd accepted B.B.'s charity, the moment she'd chosen to stay after learning who and what he was?

She had to get out. She had to move on. Aphrodite whispered it to her in a mantra so perpetual, it was like the sound of breath. Even the I Ching I Ching couldn't stop telling her so. couldn't stop telling her so.

That B.B. would panic if she left hardly mattered. That she had nowhere to go hardly mattered. She had what she needed. She had money she'd saved-enough money that she could live for a year or two while she figured things out. And she had information on B.B.'s trade. Not that she wanted to extort him or threaten him, but she had a feeling that once he realized she wasn't coming back, once he realized she was gone for good, B.B. was going to be very, very angry.

And when a man is very angry, and he has a bunch of people like Jim Doe and the Gambler working for him, things can get tricky.

Chapter 14.

THE PHONE CALL came in the middle of the night. B.B. never answered the phone himself; that wasn't his thing. But he liked to keep the phone near his bed. It was one of those office phones with a shrill office phone ring and the multiple b.u.t.tons so you could see which line was in use. They had only one line, but he liked the idea of having several. came in the middle of the night. B.B. never answered the phone himself; that wasn't his thing. But he liked to keep the phone near his bed. It was one of those office phones with a shrill office phone ring and the multiple b.u.t.tons so you could see which line was in use. They had only one line, but he liked the idea of having several.

And he liked to keep an eye on when the line was in use. It wasn't that he didn't trust Desiree. Of course he did. He trusted her more than anyone, but why take chances?

The TV was on, but there was only snow. B.B. looked over at the digital clock: 4:32. A phone call at that hour couldn't be anything good. He sat up and turned on the bedside lamp, which was shaped like a giraffe reaching up to eat leaves. The shade was over the tree. B.B. sat still, staring at the blue and pink of the rococo wallpaper until he heard the light tap at the door.

”Who is it?”

The door opened a crack. ”It's the Gambler.”

”f.u.c.k.” He picked up the handset and punched the b.u.t.ton to switch over to the right line. He always kept the phone on one of the dead lines, since he liked the feeling of pus.h.i.+ng the b.u.t.ton when he took a call. It made him feel like he was an executive. Which he basically was, just an unconventional sort of executive.

”So, what's the status?” he asked the Gambler. ”Everything in line?”

There was a pause. It was the sort of pause that B.B. did not much like.

”Not really.” The voice was flat. ”Wouldn't be calling now if it were.”

”What does that mean?” He looked over at Desiree, who was leaning against the door with her arms folded, studying him. She wore a white bathrobe and probably nothing else underneath. A lot of guys, scar or no, would find that pretty s.e.xy, he figured. And the fact that it might be kind of s.e.xy seemed, for an instant, kind of s.e.xy. Then the feeling pa.s.sed.

”It means,” the Gambler told him, ”that there's a serious problem, the sort I may not be able to get resolved.”

B.B. hated having to talk in code on the phone, but even though there was no evidence the feds gave the slightest s.h.i.+t about his dealings, you had to a.s.sume they were listening, which meant you had to spend a lot of time talking around the issue, and that got awkward when you didn't even know what the issue was.

Who needed these ha.s.sles? Wasn't all of this supposed to be ha.s.sle free? Not really, but it was supposed to be easy, and he guessed it was. B.B. had inherited his hog lot outside Gainesville from his father's father, a red-faced old man with wisps of white hair that stuck out of his head as though they'd been rammed in by a vengeful enemy. He was so ornery that he was like a parody of an ornery old man, cursing and spitting tobacco in a rage and slapping away kind hands, grandchildish hugs, bologna sandwiches-anything anyone might offer. Visits to the farm had been an unrelenting torment. The old man would put him to work shoveling hog s.h.i.+t, mopping up pools of hog p.i.s.s, dragging dead hog carca.s.ses by their hooves.

If he even gestured toward an expression of complaint, his grandfather would tell him to shut the f.u.c.k up and smack him in the head, sometimes with his hand, a few times with a mostly empty sack of feed, once with an old-fas.h.i.+oned metal lunchbox. There were other punishments, too, in the empty barn, when B.B. broke ”the farmer's code,” a fluid list of regulations that had been omitted from the Poor Richard's Almanac. Poor Richard's Almanac. B.B. never learned the code, understood its rules or parameters, but a few times a year his grandfather would come up on him, looking especially tall and dirty. He'd spit a wad of dip in B.B.'s direction and tell him he'd broken the farmer's code and he needed to be mentored in the old barn. He had no idea what the word meant, had no idea what it was to mentor a boy. He was a monster, and by the time B.B. became old enough to make decisions for himself, he vowed never to see the old man again. B.B. never learned the code, understood its rules or parameters, but a few times a year his grandfather would come up on him, looking especially tall and dirty. He'd spit a wad of dip in B.B.'s direction and tell him he'd broken the farmer's code and he needed to be mentored in the old barn. He had no idea what the word meant, had no idea what it was to mentor a boy. He was a monster, and by the time B.B. became old enough to make decisions for himself, he vowed never to see the old man again.

Then, ten years ago, the old man died. He'd reached ninety-seven, kept alive by free-floating Achilles-like wrath and a similarly quasi-divine hatred of do-gooders, women, television, politicians, corporations, changing fas.h.i.+ons, and a world turning ever more youthful while he turned ever older. B.B.'s own father had died long before in a drunken and c.o.ke-fueled motorcycle accident, the helmetlessness of which smacked of suicide. After his grandfather's death came the registered letter from the lawyer telling him he'd inherited the farm, and at just the right time, too, since things had not been going so well for B.B. in some of the various careers he'd been trying on, including car salesman, unlicensed real estate agent, landscaper, security guard, and a stint as a Las Vegas poker player.

This last had involved long and delirious runs under casino lights that obscured the difference between night and day, drunkenness and sobriety, winning and losing. He now remembered hyperbolic laughing, raking piles of chips toward his chest, and he remembered that the next day he'd mysteriously have no money. But those weren't the memories that came to him most often. When he thought of Vegas, he thought of the s.h.i.+rtless Greek he owed (and still owed) $16,000 sending a thug to beat him so hard with a broom handle that his ribs still ached when he sneezed more than ten years later. He thought of his shameful retreat from town, sitting on a bus and disguised as an Eastern Orthodox priest, the only plausible costume he could get on short notice. It was that or flee town as a pirate or a mummy.

With no other options, he took on hog farming. It paid the bills, though barely, but it stank and filled him with a vile repulsion toward animals, animals that stank and shat and demanded food and bellowed in pain and misery and deserved to die as punishment for being alive. And the land itself-that G.o.d-awful farm with its memories of his f.u.c.king grandfather, for whose sake alone he sincerely hoped there was such a place as h.e.l.l. The barn by its simple proximity so disturbed his sleep that he convinced a trio of potbellied and thick-forearmed locals to take it down for him. He paid them in beer and a whole roasted pig.

Going back to the farm, working his grandfather's lots, had been degrading, a waking nightmare, but he'd been broke, beyond broke, and the farm kept him afloat. There was money for food and a roof over his head and occasionally the wines he'd learned to love in Vegas.

Then this guy he almost knew-spoken to a few times in a local bar, a friend of one of the men who had taken down the barn-a biker in a gang called the DevilDogs, came to see him one night. How would he feel if a couple of the boys set up a small lab on the property? No one would know, since the smell of the pigs would hide the smell of cooking meth. B.B. wouldn't have to do anything except keep quiet, and he'd get $1,000 a month.

It was a good deal. After a month or so of not wanting to know about it, B.B. began to hang out with the meth cooks, learn how they did it, learn how easy it was to turn a few hundred dollars' worth of over-the-counter cold medicine into speed so potent that it made c.o.ke look like a watery cup of Maxwell House. Then the guys who worked the lab were busted while distributing. He figured they'd roll on him, but they never did. He figured other guys from the operation would come by and take over the lab, but they never did. There it was, a fully operational moneymaking machine on his property. He'd be crazy to ignore it.

The problem was, B.B. hadn't known the first thing about distributing drugs. Had no idea how to go about it. He couldn't see himself on the corner, wearing a trench coat, psst pssting to any skinny, trailer-trashy redneck with an oversize s.h.i.+rt and a dull look in his eyes. He continued to make the meth-not large quant.i.ties, only an ounce or two a month while he got the hang of it. It seemed like a good idea to keep the quant.i.ties small, since making meth when you didn't know what you were doing was like holding a jar of nitroglycerin on a roller coaster.

He made it and he stored it. Just a hobby, really, like putting s.h.i.+ps in a bottle. It took only a couple of days of work, and then there it was, this lovely yellow powder. He got better, more confident, made more, learned how to dispose of the waste, which was so toxic that it ate through the ground. Within a year, he had thousands of dollars' worth of stuff and no idea how to unload it.

When he read in the business section of a local newspaper that Champion Encyclopedias was looking for someone to run an operation in the state, it all began to come together for him. He convinced them he was an entrepreneur, that he could run the book business as well as he ran his ”agricultural concern”-his term. But enthusiasm was wasted on them. They cared no more for his ac.u.men than his crew chiefs cared for the ac.u.men of new bookmen. You hire everyone you can, you cast them to the waves, and you see who's still floating.

This happened three years after Vegas, and when B.B. met with the top crew chiefs in the state, he knew one of them. A guy by the name of Kenny Rogers, called himself the Gambler. He didn't recognize B.B., but B.B. recognized him. The Gambler was the thug who'd beaten B.B. with the broom handle in his Vegas apartment. B.B. down on the ground, hands over his head, the sounds of the neighbor's dog barking, the neighbor's TV turned up loud to pretend he couldn't hear, and B.B.'s own sobbing filling his ears.

B.B. had been thinking only of revenge, of exorcising his demons, when he'd hired the Gambler. Let him work for B.B. Let him think he was doing a great job, in on the deepest secrets of the organization, part of the whole planning process. B.B. was keeping the Gambler close, figuring out where and how he would get even, make things right in the universe. As time went by, however, the revenge never happened. The Gambler made B.B. money, way too much money to remove him so thoughtlessly, and the greater truth was that if B.B. did take revenge, then he would no longer have the pleasure of antic.i.p.ating the sweetness of payback. So B.B. had kept the Gambler where he was and occasionally thought about what he might do to him.

Things had gone so well for so long, he should have expected something like this.

”Can you get me the thing I asked for?” B.B. said. He tap tap tapped a pencil on the night table.

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