Chapter 1

 

The girl on stage stared out with the same empty expression as a bloated raccoon on the side of the road, only with more black around her eyes. She wrapped herself around the pole and slid her reed-thin body up and down the polished stainless steel a couple times before spinning and landing awkwardly on six-inch Lucite heels.

She wobbled atop the shoes as an Eminem song thumped from the club speakers, and she licked her lips the way someone had told her to, her tongue moving from one side to the other with slow, mechanical efficiency, before she strutted her way toward perverts’ row—that cluster of men next to the stage with stacks of singles piled next to their beers. “Tips” was etched into the platforms on her shoes with a slot cut underneath it. She was maybe nineteen.

There are things in the world more depressing than a strip club at two o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon, but those things usually have to do with a cancer prognosis. The whole affair was a sack full of sorrows tuned to classic rock and old rap. The dancers moved with the urgency of morgue attendants at an old folks’ home, hobbling along like drunk toddlers on borrowed heels, dressed in the discount store idea of sexy. The audience was as sparse as the hairlines, a mix of old guys away from the wife for a few hours or young guys exercising a new “over twenty-one” driver’s license. The bartenders understood they wouldn’t make tips off of eight-dollar bottles of Bud Light, so they watched the dancers with the nonchalant attitude of having seen the same tits every day for months. Even the DJ seemed bored, working through a playlist of moldy rock and new R&B that described sex like some mix of anatomy textbook and trashy romance novel.

Yeah, the Cherry Bomb sat on the bottom of places where I wanted to be on a good day, and being there was a hint the day wouldn’t be good. I leaned against the bar and drank a Diet Coke and kept my eye on the office door.

The Cherry Bomb was on the edge of Parker County, outside the Serenity city limits. From the outside, it looked like another corrugated metal building, but the neon sign on the roof, complete with a giant cherry as the o in “Bomb,” said this wasn’t a storage facility. The sign was visible from the interstate and advertised trucker parking.

The office door opened, and a brunette stepped out. With hair cut into a pixie and wearing glasses with chunky black frames, she looked back into the office before nodding and walking to the other end of the bar. She dropped a canvas purse the size of a compact car on the counter.

Wallace Bingham poked his head through the doorframe like a groundhog checking for his shadow. His eyes moved through the room until they met mine and he waved for me to come in.

The club part of the Cherry Bomb was nothing but flashing colored lights and despair. Go through that office door, though, and you might as well have been somewhere to get your taxes done, the room sporting wood paneling and bright fluorescents and a wall-mounted TV playing CNN. Oh, and a blonde dressed in spandex and sparkles across her tits and sliding up her ass cheeks. That part, H&R Block doesn’t have.

Bingham looked like a shaved bear in a button-down shirt, wide suspenders stretched across his shape, his gray hair receding and cut short, his beard trimmed tight to his face. He enveloped my hand with his own and squeezed and smiled with the sincerity of a preacher on Sunday morning.

“Thanks for coming by,” he said. He motioned me toward a chair and sat behind his desk.

“Not a problem,” I said. “I just got a tetanus shot last month anyway.”

I glanced back at the blonde. Inch-wide spandex covered all the best parts, with rhinestones on the bra and a length of thin chain hanging from one hip to the other. She set all her attention on the cell phone held in hands tipped with cotton candy pink nails that looked like murder weapons.

Bingham said, “Monica, give us a few minutes, you mind? Why don’t you talk to that new girl for a few, tell her when she starts?”

Monica slunk out of the chair and through the door without a glance toward us and nary a whisper of giving a fuck about wearing ribbons and rhinestones as a work uniform. Straps crossed her ass like rays of sunlight on her way out. It was one hell of an exit.

“Bet she gets interesting tan lines at the beach,” I said once the door was closed.

Bingham laughed. “An outfit like that should never see sunlight, much less salt water. Costs a buttload for these girls to look that cheap.”

“The crowd today doesn’t seem to be all that willing to pay that cost.”

“It’s the middle of the day. If you’re in a strip club at a time like this, there’s something the fuck wrong with you.”

“You’re here.”

“It’s my job to be here.”

“And I’m here. And I know there’s something the fuck wrong with me.”

Eminem tired of telling his girl what to do with her ass, and the DJ said that Diamond was next up on stage. I heard the same enthusiasm in supermarket announcements that pork chops were on sale. I wondered if they required every strip club to have a dancer named Diamond on the roster.

“Pour Some Sugar on Me” by Def Leppard rattled the wood paneling as overproduced power chords and one-armed drumming threatened to make my fillings vibrate.

“Going with the classics,” I said. “Always a good call.” I crossed one leg over the other at the knee. “Let’s cut the pleasantries and you tell me why a guy who owns a titty bar thinks I should be sheriff.”

Bingham brought his chair back level and rested his forearms on the desk. A Rolex with a fat elasticized metal band wrapped itself around a left wrist thicker than a can of beans. Bingham himself had the build of someone who’d played sports when he was young and the future full of promise. I bet he never imagined growing up to own a strip club. Then again, I’d never imagined growing up to end up having nine fingers, a shit knee, and a one-year chip from AA staying warm inside the front pocket of my blue jeans. We’re rarely who we think we’ll be, and oftentimes we’re not even who we think we are.

He folded those two huge hands into one massive lump of flesh. “The county commission’s calling an election for sheriff, on account the last one, Simms, he retired. You familiar with him?”

“We’ve had business together. I know he had cancer, got a liver transplant.”

“Good for him. What that means for you and me is that the office is wide open.” He shrugged. “Guess that leads to asking what your thoughts would be on becoming sheriff.”

“My first thought is that I’d have to get elected, and I’ll tell you there’s no reason for anyone in Parker County to vote for me since I’m a gimpy ex-state trooper with a shitty attitude and no political acumen at all. I am not inclined to shake hands, kiss babies, kiss hands, or shake babies. Also, and I want to emphasize this point, you own a goddamn strip club, and there’s no way I can get elected on the back of whatever money you’ve got. All anyone running against me would have to say is ‘Hey, Malone’s backed by the guy who owns the titty bar,’ and the deal’s done.”

“You saying a man who works in the adult entertainment industry can’t be civic-minded?”

“I’m saying I don’t see this joint’s name on the back of Little League uniforms. More than a few people might say a place like this contributes to problems that the office of sheriff would deal with, and it sounds as though you’re trying to buy yourself a boy.”

“That how you feel, why’d you agree to meet me, then?”

“I’m a straight guy, and I can rut from the trough, same as the rest. If I had thought this through better, I should have agreed to meet late at night, when the A-team is playing.”

Bingham shifted his mass in his chair, and there was no shortage of him to shift. “I’ll tell you that you do not disappoint, Mr. Malone.”

“There’s a thing I’ve never heard before.”

“Everyone said you’re nothing but a smart-mouthed asshole whose lip gets him in trouble.” He gestured a finger toward me. “We’ll work on that attitude during the campaign.”

I stood up. “Seems years of listening to stripper anthems has fucked your hearing up beyond repair, so I’ll cut this short for both of our sakes, check out Diamond and what I’m sure are her Caesarian scars, and make my merry way back home.”

“Plant your ass back in that chair.” He said it in a harsher tone. It was the voice he used with customers who thought a dollar bill bought a feel of the world, or if a girl got out of line, forgot her place in the hierarchy. It was rough and no-nonsense, and designed to get your attention.

“You want to threaten me, up your game,” I said. “I get worse than that from people who like me.”

“That’s got to be a short fucking list. Besides, this ain’t just about you running for sheriff. I want to hire you for a job.”

That got my interest, and I sat back down. My bank account was as desolate as the landscape in a Mad Max movie, and money was money, even if it all came in sticky singles.

Bingham leaned into his desk and pushed his eyebrows together. “I called you about running for sheriff because you’ve got a reputation as a hot dog. You seem to like to put your nose in places where it doesn’t always belong, but you end up solving problems.”

“That’s me, a problem solver. I kick ass at word searches, too.”

“You familiar with the young lady who’s sheriff right now?”

“We’ve had interactions. Young woman, name of Landing. From everything I’ve heard, she’s very qualified.”

“She be as good in the office as you?”

“She’d be less cranky than me.”

“Not sure that’s one of those things that matter much in getting the job done. What you should know is I’m not just the guy who owns a titty bar, Malone. I own some restaurants, do entertainment promotion—”

“What’s more entertaining than naked women?”

“Damn few things, but I still like a diverse portfolio. I’m respectable enough they let me in at chamber of commerce meetings and don’t make me sit in the back row. So it wouldn’t just be me backing your horse in the race if you choose to run. There’s several of us who think you’d be the right choice for Parker County, which is why we want to back you in a run for office.” He reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a manila folder. “But while you’re thinking the offer over, I have a job I’m interested in hiring you for.”

He handed me the file. Inside were black-and-white security camera photos. The time-and-date stamp in the lower right corner indicated two nights ago. The photos showed three men in masks holding guns on a group of people.

“You didn’t go to the Wilson Hayes show at the field house the other night, did you?” Bingham said.

“No. I was busy washing my hair.”

Wilson Hayes was a two-hit wonder from the late nineties country music scene, when everyone wore cowboy hats and shirts louder than an AC/DC guitar solo, even if they sang with a New Jersey accent. He’d been swoon-worthy to the female crowd for a hot minute and knocked out a few albums before getting pushed aside by the next wave of pretty faces and white teeth. The cruelties of fame relegated him to the county fair circuit, where he showed up and did his songs and a lot of better-known songs by other people more famous than him.

“Hayes is touring, and an opening in his schedule showed up, so we booked him into the Parker County field house,” Bingham said. “It was last minute, cash only at the door. Between that and beer concessions, we made decent money. In the middle of the count, these guys busted into the money room and stole the till.”

I tossed the folder back onto Bingham’s desk. “Anyone hurt?”

“No. They waved guns around and pushed some people, but once they got the money, they split.”

“The police have anything on this? Who’s handling it, sheriff’s department or the state police?”

“Neither; we never reported it.”

I shot Bingham a look through thin eyes. “Masked men with shotguns held up a concert and you didn’t call the cops?” I shook my head. “Keep that and keep your offer for sheriff. Whatever business you’re working isn’t business that’ll make me smile.”

He stretched his hands out flat across the top of the desk. “I had partners in this concert, Malone. People who wouldn’t want the cops involved. That’s why I need you to find it.”

“What people?”

“People. That’s all you need to know. People who don’t take to money going missing.”

“You ever consider revisiting who you do business with?”

“It’s a messy world. We all do what we’ve got to do to eat. You find someone with an open wallet these days, you don’t always stop to ask where the cash came from.” He leaned back in the chair again. “You find the guys, you find the money, you get ten percent of what you recover.”

“How much money are we talking here?”

“Don’t know. Mid-five figures at least.”

“What about the robbers? You want them, too?”

“No one’s worried about them. The concern is about the money.”

I stared at Bingham from across the expanse of the desk. He maintained a flat, inexpressive face. I bet he played one hell of a hand of poker.

The whole situation stunk like roadkill in August, and I already liked none of it. Common sense told me to get up and walk out. But then again, someone told me once common sense isn’t that common of a thing, and I’ve never been that great of a listener.

“How’s this job jibe with the offer on the sheriff’s job?” I said.

“Those are separate entities. I need you to find the guys who robbed the money room, and I want you to run for sheriff. They live in different houses.”

“I’ll have to talk to the people from the money room.”

“Fine.”

“And I’ve got a partner who helps me out.”

“He a guy you trust? He’ll keep his mouth shut?”

“Took me years to find out his last name.”

“He doesn’t get his own ten percent. Whatever he gets comes out of your pocket.”

“Fair enough. And you understand that no matter what, you think you’re getting a boy out of this, you’re not. I don’t like to do what I’m told, and I don’t take instruction well.”

He smiled. He looked like a walrus who’d been struck by something funny. “Just get me back my goddamn money, Malone.”