Chapter Fourteen

  

After they finished their coffees, Blu followed Pelton out. To be honest, that Miss Dell scared him a little bit. A woman like that wouldn’t take “no” for an answer, and he could tell she so wanted him to say “yes.”

Patricia, on the other hand, would have been more his speed if their ages had been a bit closer. Smooth and sophisticated, he would have chased her to the moon. She had a good grasp of what was going on in Charleston and would be a good source. No wonder Pelton knew so much.

Blu saw a lot of himself in the kid. Boiled down, they both were what he referred to in his Ranger days as the “boots on the ground.” Army intelligence thought they ruled the world, but the real intel came from the soldiers on location—the grunts, as Pelton called it.

He and Pelton were the grunts. And Pelton had as much of a taste for it as he did, maybe a bit more. The way he took on both killers in his bar. The way he drew down on Blu when he walked into the mess.

From what Blu had gleaned from his research, and what Gladys had told him, Pelton did not back down from anything. He would take it all the way, a lot like Blu’s absent business partner, Crome. Crome would take it all the way, but right now he’d taken it out of Charleston and was on a two-year bender in only God knew where.

Pelton started the truck, but left it idling in park. He said, “I’ve got to make another phone call.”

Blu listened while Pelton talked to someone named Brother Thomas, telling him they were on their way to meet him. When Pelton hung up, Blu said, “Brother Thomas sounds like the pastor Billie is always talking about.”

“He told me she sings in his church.”

“How do you know him?”

Pelton put the truck in drive and exited the lot. “My uncle knew him. When he was murdered, Brother Thomas and I became friends. He helped me find the killer.”

“Billie says he’s a good man. Does a lot for the community.”

“She’s right.”

Something bothered Blu. He said, “Does the pastor have some information?”

“Not exactly.”

“What does that mean?”

Pelton smiled and looked over at Blu. “It means he’s not going to have anything definitive.”

“That clears it up.”

“It will.”

After a few minutes, they pulled into the crumbled lot in front of a church with a tall white steeple. The sign out front said Church of Redemption.

Pelton parked in a spot next to a fairly new Volvo and got out of the truck. A large black man in a black suit and minister’s collar stood in front of the entrance doors to the church. More like he took up most of the space in front of them, like an NFL defensive linebacker protecting the quarterback.

Blu got out of the truck.

Brother Thomas said, “Good to see you, Brother Brack. This the man Billie told me about?”

Pelton nodded.

Blu shook the pastor’s hand. “Any friend of Billie’s is a friend of mine.”

Pelton said, “Be careful. The good brother here is always looking for more volunteers.”

Blu made a point of looking around. “You sure have a fine church here, Brother.”

“Thank you for saying so, mm-hmm.”

Pelton said. “We’ve got a problem.”

“Of course you do, Brother Brack,” the pastor said. “You missed the last service. I can give you a recap if you want. It was on prayer.”

Pelton said, “I keep telling you to film your sermons. Paige will help you upload them.”

“And I appreciate the suggestion. The fine people what can’t physically make it out their house would appreciate it, too. But I wanna see your face more than just when you got a problem, which turn out to be a whole lot more often than would seem, what the word? Plaus-i-ble. That’s it.”

Pelton explained the situation, from the shootout in his bar to Abner keeling over dead, and then asked, “What should we be doing?”

The pastor said, “What you mean?”

“You know me,” the kid said. “I’ll go in blasting.”

“True that.”

“So what’s the right play here?”

Blu couldn’t figure out if the kid was asking for advice or permission.

The pastor looked at the younger man, almost as if with the eyes of a father. “I think you’re already in over your head. Patricia tol’ me you didn’t start this ball rollin’, but you ain’t got to go out and chase every one that come by.”

Pelton said, “Are you suggesting I sit this one out?”

The pastor said, “That ain’t my role, Brother Brack. You come here askin’ me for advice, but you don’t wanna hear what your own conscience tellin’ you.”

“What if it’s telling me to go in blasting?”

“Conscience and desire are not the same thing, Brother Brack. No sir.”

Blu’s first thought: this pastor was a dangerous man. People got caught off guard by his unassuming presence—the fat black man dressed sort of like a priest and speaking with uneducated words—until he dropped a twenty-pound sledgehammer like that on their heads.

His second thought was another affirmation on how similar he and Pelton were.

“Speaking of volunteerin’,” Brother Thomas said. “You gentlemen busy this evenin’?”

Pelton said, “I knew it.”

  

Back in the pickup, driving nowhere in particular, Pelton asked the question Blu realized they should have been chasing all along. “So why did they kill Skip?”

“That’s what we have to find out.” Blu made another call to Gladys. Using the police report of the shooting at Pelton’s bar, he read off Skip’s full name, James Skip Romeo. “I need an address and anything else you can get.”

She called back thirty minutes later with everything she could dig up. Apparently Skip had lost his driver’s license over too many DUIs.

Blu relayed the information to Pelton, who said, “The chief said they impounded one of those liquor-cycle mopeds that the drunks with too many DUIs ride because they can’t legally drive anything else two doors down from my bar. It was unregistered. I’ll bet it was Skip’s.”

Pelton called Chief Bates and told him what they thought as he drove. If nothing else, it answered the question of how Skip got there.

Skip’s apartment was in Mount Pleasant and that’s where they headed. While there weren’t really any bad parts of the town, Skip had managed to find a cheap efficiency apartment behind a dingy strip mall.

Pelton parked at an open spot in front of a unit with faded brown paint and sagging shudders. Surprisingly, there wasn’t any police tape sealing the door.

Blu said, “I’ll find the super to get the key.”

Pelton took out a small black case from the center console in the truck. “Or I could just pick the lock.”

Before Blu could form an answer that explained the negative aspects of breaking and entering, the kid had the door open.

He waved a hand for Blu to enter.

The smell of cigarettes and stale beer escaped the place, but the AC must have been on frigid. The system’s compressor rattled and hummed in the background.

Blu considered all the reasons not to enter in this manner, and then ignored them and did just that. Inside, the smell didn’t get any better, but at least the place didn’t have the odor of death. He said, “Hello?”

There was no response.

Pelton drew his revolver.

Blu drew the Beretta, and they proceeded room by room, clearing the place just like the government had taught them. It took all of ten seconds, as there were only four rooms, including the bathroom.

They put their guns away and began to search through Skip’s belongings, talking as they went.

“Who was this guy that someone would want to kill him?” Pelton asked as he opened the closet door.

Blu checked the kitchen freezer. “Had you seen him in your bar before they shot him?”

“No. The guy didn’t even know he couldn’t smoke inside. So I’m betting he hadn’t been there before. Or at least since the smoking ban. How long had he been in town?”

Blu said, “My DMV source says he registered for a South Carolina identification card three months ago. His record shows he lost his license two years ago in Florida.”

“What else do you know about him?”

Blu said, “Skip was always a schemer. Back in the day, he was one of my problem children. But he wasn’t afraid to fight.”

Pelton smiled.

“What?”

“A Ranger not afraid to fight.”

Blu looked over at him. “You’re really asking for a beating, aren’t you, jarhead?”

“Wouldn’t be my first,” Pelton said.

He frowned. “I’ll bet not.”

They tore the place apart. Aside from the odor, it wasn’t in bad shape—squared away in a somewhat haphazard military fashion. By the time they finished, they knew quite a bit about Skip.

That he liked magazines and DVDs with naked Asian women.

That he had a large baggie of cannabis and a bong.

That he drank a lot of cheap beer.

That he smoked Winstons.

That he didn’t have a day job.

And that he had a calendar with a few dates starred every month.

It was that last part that piqued their interest.

Pelton said he’d see if his aunt had any information about the marked dates.

  

Later that day, they crashed at Blu’s island paradise home. At least the kid did. Blu had to do his daily chores. The horses had grown accustomed to the water and feed he provided, the spoiled brats.

When Blu had finished taking care of the animals and was relaxing on his porch with a glass of water, his phone rang in his pocket. He looked at the number, saw the Charleston area code, and answered.

“Mr. Carraway? This is Patricia Voyels.”

Pelton’s aunt.

He said, “Hello, and remember, you can call me Blu.”

“And you can call me Patricia.”

“Okay, Patricia, what can I do for you?”

“I’d like you to tell my nephew to check his phone as it’s going straight to voicemail.”

He looked through the window at the kid passed out on the couch. “Will do.”

“And,” she said, “when you two get the chance, swing by my office. We think we’ve found the Hollander brothers’ social media page.”

Blu went inside and flicked the sleeping Pelton on the ear.

The kid jolted awake and took a swing but missed, almost falling off the couch in the process.

Blu spoke into the phone, “We’re on our way,” and ended the call.

In a half-whiny, half-sleepy voice, Pelton said, “What was that for?”

“Time to get up. We gotta roll.”