PREVIEW
MONEY THE HARD WAY
(Coming 2022)
It’s weird—for lack of a better word—the number of fledgling couches and recliners that try to take flight from truck beds moving at expressway speeds. The downside is how, unlike Hippie Christmas, none of them are any good for the taking. There’s no nursing them back to health, no matter how many popsicle sticks you use.
I’ve seen crews picking up crows off the shoulder using pitchforks in the past. But I couldn’t imagine how many agencies play hot potato with the responsibility of cleaning up defunct furniture until it finally becomes part of the landscape, grows grass and other flora thanks to all the bird shit that gets splattered on it over the seasons. That’s my roundabout way of saying my extended-stay room had a freeway-facing catwalk that dead-ended at my door, which I took to calling my front porch once I’d taken note of the motel tan I’d acquired. I’d taken on an olive-y hue from my overnight poolside tanning sessions beneath the neon saguaro cactus sign the hotel’s proprietors hoisted over the pool. The pool looked green, whether it was between the hours of dusk and dawn or while the water was being warmed by the high-noon sun. If I were running things, I wouldn’t bother with a NO LIFEGUARD ON DUTY sign. I’d post a DUCKS UNLIMITED sign along the fence and save a nice chunk of change on the chlorine I dare speculate they were happy to cut with tricycle motor piss.
The olive-y hue made me unrecognizable to myself in the silver-flecked bathroom mirror. The look grew on me once it hit me how maybe somebody might mistake me for an Italian or some other sort of Mediterranean-looking gentleman rather than a coydog who wandered off the reservation.
“Checking out today, Mr. Kink—aid?” the maid said, stuttering over a Freudian slip once her eyes caught sight of the handcuffs and other bondage restraints piled atop the chest of drawers next to the leaning tower of pizza boxes from The Pie Hole.
“Not that I am aware,” I answered and knocked the half-empty bottle of Fentanyl and box of .45 ACP ammunition into the top drawer of the bedside table along with the good word from the Gideons and the old man’s 1911 itself, all of which I hoped to hide from her prying eyes. “Towels, though, please,” I said.
“I hope you’re not leaving us,” she said once more—not so much looking at me as trailing her eyes up the bedspread toward the hand that held the nightstand drawer closed while she distractedly set down a stack of clean towels on the foot of the bed. “You’re so quiet of a man.”
I could see the b-rated horror movie flicker behind her eyeballs with foreshadowed certainty she’d find me after I’d emptied the bottle and the contents of my intestinal tract onto the bedspread and down into the mattress, staining it so bad maintenance would have to drag it out to the dumpster. That or her having to sponge my dried brains and blood off the wallpaper and headboard with one part bleach and nine parts water, so they could rent the room again once it aired out.
She’d have to tip herself from whatever cash waited in my wallet, and she’d shit herself when she saw how much that was and didn’t have to take the bus back and forth to work any longer. If she were smart, though, she would sign the title of the Mirada over to herself and take a little vacation away from work until she could shake the image of my bloated corpus. Her theory was plausible but had one glaring plot twist of a hole in it, however.
I’d fallen for Oklahoma.
Four months passed since another former soldier came down to Oklahoma from Kansas. That motherfucker loaded a box truck down with forty bags of fertilizer, almost three hundred sticks of stolen water-gel explosives, and enough detonation cord to strangle the life out of one hundred and sixty-eight unsuspecting souls—nineteen of which were children. The nonstop updates of entered evidence and findings of the grand jury reported from outside the Perry courthouse proved more than I could take, so I took myself for a long romantic walk out into the tropical August afternoon.
On the far side of the interstate underpass, I spied with my little eye a business the size of a taco truck with the wheels taken off advertising notary and process service, private investigations, bail bonds. Some will go their entire life without as much as slowing their vehicle when they pass one; others come and go with such frequency they’d love it if revolving doors became standard in the construction like the gate at the city jail. Yet for me, the taqueria turned state-certified bail bond agent’s office looked a lot like an employment agency, except with everything advertised in that lettering you’d swear they’d trademarked for Louis L’Amour’s paperback novels.
The interior decorator didn’t miss a single detail. Upon pulling open the glass door, my doing so got announced by a cowbell dangling overhead. Immediately after that, I had to push my way through a pair of swinging saloon doors. Next to the horseshoes for hat racks and spurs drilled into the wall for coat hooks, hung a mirror framed with what looked like a wanted poster from the old west. A cowhide rug carpeted the sitting area, and a bench upholstered with a knockoff Pendleton blanket sat snug against the wall, bookended by two matching wooden ma and pa rocking chairs. Centered above that were a mounted electric blue Mexican sombrero, a beaver felt ten-gallon hat, and a spray-painted aluminum trail’s end silhouette still adorned with the HECHO EN MEXICO sticker. On the bond agent’s desk sat a pair of horns stolen from the hood of Boss Hogg’s Cadillac.
“Howdy, take a number, take a seat. I’ll be one minute,” came from behind the door with the hand-painted crescent moon and northern star, followed by a flush.
Scattered over the coffee table looked to be about two and a half–three years’ worth of Cowboys & Indians Magazine.
“I’m guessing you’re next,” he said, slamming his back into the bathroom door to get it to latch all the way. He flared his nostrils and sucked in a sharp whiff into his chest, “Coffee’s still hot,” he said, looking off toward the back corner of the building. “I wouldn’t say ‘no’ to a cup, too, if you’re pouring one for yourself.”
I poured him a cup, brought it over to his desk, and then went back for one of my own. He sat behind his desk and beneath the stuffed buffalo head mounted on the wall. From the far corner of the office, I could see how the buffalo wore a cavalry Stetson. The theme was coming together nicely. “God gave you two hands, why don’t you use them?” he said, pointing his right hand at mine stuffed into the front pocket of my jeans.
“I was hoping to find a HELP WANTED sign in your window,” I said.
At that, he scooted his chair back and slid open the center drawer on his desk, and his hand disappeared inside, “You’re about as subtle as an auctioneer with Tourettes, now aren’t you?” I was still processing his analogy when he elaborated in plainer language, “I’ll be equally coy, what are you hiding in that hand you got stuck down inside your pocket there?”
I looked down at my right elbow and flopped it like a chicken wing, “I got into a car wreck a while back, and the sling got me too many questions from people I wasn’t wanting to converse with.”
“Makes sense,” he said. “Pull up a chair.” And I did, “You’re not left-handed, huh?”
“No, I am not,” I said, dragging the chair this way and then that.
“Work?” He mused, sounding skeptical. “There’s always work that needs doing, but you can’t be any geek off the street,” he said, loosely quoting a pal of Billy Bonney.
I stayed quiet, let him talk, chewed on my coffee that somehow thickened as it cooled.
“I don’t have applications for people to fill out,” he said. “This work boils down to your resume. Let’s start with your name.”
“Moses Kincaid.”
“Mmm…no, that sounds too starched. If I keep you around, I’ll call you ‘Kinky.’”
“Okay, and what do I call you, sir?”
“My name. Arlo Bice.”
“Bice?”
“Yeah, Bice like Miami Vice—just with more bass.”
“Okay, Mr. Bice.”
“Arlo.”
“Arlo then.”
“Mister Arlo.”
This Mister Arlo stood about six and a half feet tall—a whole head taller than me, at least—and Black as my shadow. The rodeo advert for the Bull-Dogger, Bill Pickett, and the Buck and the Preacher movie poster he’d framed, along with the Charlie Pride and Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown vinyl LP covers he’d tacked to the wall all said something so clearly there was no need for him to elaborate or reiterate a single word.
The comedy behind having an autographed photo of Leon “The Boogie Man,” Coffee standing between the creamer and percolator did dawn on me after a while but looked out of place at first glance. Short of getting caught up on his nickname, it was hard to tell there was a Black man inside that barrel, beneath the cowboy hat and all that clown makeup.
The long-sleeved, embroidered western shirt Mister Arlo wore cinched at the neck with a braided-leather bolo tie, tucked into his double-stitched, slim-fit Wranglers held up by a buckle commemorating the eightieth anniversary of the Oklahoma State Penitentiary Rodeo sent home the message how there are rednecks and hillbillies and coonasses, but then there are Okies who should never be confused with any of the aforementioned.
“Were, about the same age, I’m guessing,” he said, “I’m messing about the Mister Arlo thing. Don’t disrespect me, and I’ll do the same.”
“Can I call you ‘Tubbs?”
“You can view now as the appropriate time to dazzle me with your resume.”
“Former Army—”
“Calvary?” he said as he cut me off and stretched his pointer finger toward the taxidermy mount on the wall above his head.
“Nope. Custer had enough scouts.”
“Oh, Indian, huh? Wasn’t all that sure.”
“I was an MP, deployed to Haiti for a while, spent some time at Leavenworth, Kans—”
“Which side of the bars?”
“Outside.”
“Mmm, okay. What else?” Arlo said, looking bored, but bound to find something successfully eluding him in one of his desk drawers.
“Worked around Kansas City, collecting bail jumpers after that.”
“Finally,” he said, looking up from his desk drawer. Arlo took the time to lock eyes with me before he smiled and added, “Some relevant work experience.”
I didn’t want him to know that was it, so I stayed quiet like I was being polite and waiting for him to add something else to his appraisal of my CV.
“Haiti was last year, wasn’t it?” He said, searching the wall behind me for the calendar.
“It was,” I answered. “Got out a little before last Halloween.”
“It’s only August, so you’ve been at this for less than a year?”
“A little over six months,” I said, already seeing where things were headed.
“So, you’re not green, but you are not yellow, either, now are you?”
Again, I let him talk, squared my jar for some dumbass reason, like when a woman wraps her arm around yours, and you flex your bicep to try to impress her.
“You’re not going to pad your resume, tell me how you were a Ranger or Special Forces or any other kind of Billy Badass?”
“Nope,” I said. “I am what I am.”
He smiled at that, wet his lips, and said, “You’re a brokedick Popeye wanting to work as a bounty hunter? For me?”
“Time heals all wounds,” I said, not wanting the interview to be over because of a bum shoulder. “And freelance is fine. Private contractor, or however you want to phrase it.”
“No, that won’t be an allowable condition of your employment, Kinky. See, as an employer, I am a lot like a jealous girlfriend—I won’t share my men with anyone.”
“That’s fair. As long as work is steady.”
“That it is. Now, if we’re done feeling each other up, I think we know who is pitching and who is catching,” Arlo said and paused to clear his throat while closing the desk drawer. “Some guy put his Viper up as collateral. I did not think that ding-dong would let his trial date come and go without showing his face, but that is why business is plentiful.”
“Okay.”
“I’m going to give you an address,” he said, peeling a post-it away from the pad and handing it across the desk. I pocketed the paper and looked up in time to see him toss a key at my head.
“What’s this for?” I asked, running my thumb over the black plastic snake’s hissing mouth.
“Fetch.”