The Longhorn Truck Stop is three miles west of the Cobblersville exit on Interstate 80. It didn’t have good food, or nice décor but it did have one thing going for it: it was open.
Harry spotted Harmony in a corner booth. She was not the painted stripper that he had first seen earlier in the week, she was just plain Sara with her hair pulled back into a ponytail and her face make-up free. Harry thought she looked so much prettier without all the accoutrements, but her make-up remover hadn’t washed away that lost look.
“Hi,” he said, sliding into the booth across from her. “You OK?”
She nodded then pulled her hands from her lap and inspected the business card that Harry had slipped to her along with his tip on their first meeting. “Promise you’re not a cop?”
“Promise.”
“You look like a cop.”
“I used to be one.”
“What happened?”
Harry smiled. “That story’s a bit of an epic. I don’t get the impression you’re looking to hang around that long.”
She shrugged as if he had a point.
“Are you running from someone?”
She didn’t look up. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“I’m not stupid.”
“I never said you were.”
“I’d be lying if I said I knew someone was out to hurt me,” she said, “but I can tell when things are going bad. I want out of here before it gets worse. In the past I’ve… I’ve seen things get worse.”
Harry nodded like he understood. “How did you meet Big Bill?”
One of those sad nostalgic smiles flitted across Sara’s eyes. “He used to come into the club on Mondays to watch the football game. The other girls that had been there for a couple of years used to call him One Buck Chuck. Girls would come and sit on his lap and he would look past them at the game. He’d give them a dollar if they would go away. Over the course of a night they would all get their buck. He was like a Monday night mascot.
“The first time I saw him, I sat on his lap and when I did he grunted in pain. I jumped up, thinking I had hurt him, but he laughed and pointed to the replay he had been watching on the screen. A huge linebacker had creamed a poor little tight end as he was flying down the field. When I saw the replay I made the same sound Billy did. That made him laugh – he had a great laugh.”
A waitress came to the table and Harry ordered coffee; Sara ordered a slice of pie.
“Might as well have pie. I won’t be taking my clothes off any time soon.”
Harry forced a polite smile. “So then what?”
“Oh yeah, well, I didn’t know shi— I mean, anything, about football. The hit was so brutal I asked if he was allowed to do that. Billy said he was and then proceeded to explain the rules to me. Mondays were usually slow so every Monday when I wasn’t dancing I sat with Billy and watched the game. I really got into it.”
“And you got into Billy?”
“No, no. I liked him but I know better than to date a punter. No, it was all just football.”
“Until?”
“I was in the supermarket up near Teaberry. You know it?”
Harry shook his head no.
“Oh, well, it’s not important – anyway, I was in the checkout and my bill was $20.34. I gave the checkout woman a twenty and then started rooting around in my purse for the change when a guy behind me put the thirty-four cents on the belt and says, ‘I’ll take it out of Monday’s dollar’. It was Billy and then he asked me if I drank coffee. If I’d been in my work mode I would have just said no right away but he caught me off guard. I made a weird sound that wasn’t neither a yes or a no and that made him laugh. He had such a great laugh.”
“You said.”
“Oh yeah.”
Harry noticed she rubbed the place on the finger of her left hand where an engagement ring should have been.
“Anyways, he was sweet and funny and he didn’t ask that stupid question that every punter asks. You know, ‘What’s a nice girl like you doing stripping?’ He knew the score.”
The waitress came and dropped the coffee and pie. Sara slid the whipped cream off the top as she spoke.
“He wasn’t perfect by no means. He didn’t have much of a job and was crap with money. I once pointed out to him that with what he paid to get into the club on Mondays, and the twenty ones he gave to the girls to stay away, he could afford cable. He said he didn’t like bills ’cause it made him feel like a grown-up. Stuff like that worried me. I’d been in a relationship where I became the mom – I didn’t need another.”
“So was it serious?”
“I didn’t want it to be but, like I said, he was nice and fun, ya know? But still I didn’t need another deadbeat in my life.”
“But he won you over?” Harry asked.
“Na, it wasn’t like that. One of the girls who used ta work at the club, she’s got a daughter at Pocono Mountain High School and she was in this play called Guys and Dolls. You ever heard of it?”
“Sure.”
“Well it was really, really good. There was a song in it… You know the story?”
“It’s been a long time.”
“Well, part of it is about this goody two shoes Salvation Army chick who falls in love with a gambler and is like upset ’cause the guy’s trouble. Well, her and this other girl, who is a dancer at a club, sings this song about dating losers and then fixing them after they marry them. It was funny but it stuck with me too; I guess I realized no handsome Wall Street guy was going to sweep me off my feet while I was stripping in the middle of the woods, so the best I could do was find a good guy, a kind guy and push him to improve himself. I already had a nice guy – Billy. He was crazy about me, and I saw how nice he was to his mom. So I started talking about the future with him. He’d been working for that mayor for so long, doing lots of the grunt work at the condos, and sometimes he even did the selling. There were times when his boss couldn’t be bothered and Billy would show people around houses. He even sold a couple. The mayor must’a made thousands on them sales and he didn’t even give Billy the price of a burger for it.”
“Did that make him mad?”
“No, nothing bothered Billy but it pissed me off. I went over to the mayor’s house and gave him an earful.”
“You did? What happened?”
“Have you met the mayor’s wife?”
“Unfortunately, I have.”
Sara smiled at that. The first proper smile since Harry had sat down.
“That cow dragged me out of her house by my hair.”
“Yeah, I can imagine her doing that.”
“So that’s when I convinced Billy that since he knew all the physical part of the real estate biz, all he had to do was learn all the paperwork shit. I mean, stuff. Sorry, I’m trying not to swear.”
“And you’re doing pretty well.”
“I bought him this book about getting a job called, Business Should Be Done in a Businesslike Manner and I read it to him in… well I read it to him.”
“So, you were the one that convinced him to get his real estate license?”
“Yeah, Billy wasn’t stupid either, you know? He was real good at real estate classes. He told me that he never did good at school ’cause he never saw the point, but this real estate thing he got and he worked hard.”
“That’s what his teacher said. She was surprised when he didn’t show up for the exam.”
“Man, we worked so hard on that exam. I bet I could pass it.”
“That doesn’t sound like a bad idea.”
She smiled to herself like she hadn’t thought about that before. “Maybe.”
The waitress came back and Harry said yes to a coffee refill.
“So, do you know anybody who would want to hurt Billy?”
“Pauly… maybe.”
“Pauly who?”
“The guy who runs the club.”
“Di Angelo?”
She nodded.
“He told me that Billy was hassling your clients.”
She shrugged as if she was reluctant to admit the truth. “There was this one guy.”
“It must have been tough for Billy to watch you flirting with customers at the club.”
“Occupational hazard. But if you think about it, no job is easy when your other half is hanging around.”
“True, but your job especially.”
“Yeah, but Billy knew the score. He knew I didn’t—”
“Didn’t what?”
“I don’t want to get any of the girls at the club in trouble.”
“What you say here is between you and me. I’m not here to get anybody in trouble, other than the guy that killed Big Bill.”
“Well, some of the girls do… extra stuff. Ya know?”
Harry thought he did but wasn’t sure. “Like?”
“You know,” she leaned in and whispered, “like, hand jobs and blow jobs.”
“Is that what happens in the VIP Room?”
“No, that goes on in the booths.”
“What? Like the booth I was in with you?”
She nodded.
“Really?”
“Yeah, but I don’t do any of that.”
“Did Di Angelo want you to?”
“No, he doesn’t make anybody do it. Most of the girls don’t but the ones that do was the ones that got to work the VIP Room.”
“And what goes on in there?”
“I don’t know. Nobody talked about it but you can imagine. Anyway, one night one of the water truck guys was in and he wanted some VIP treatment.”
“Water truck guys?”
“Yeah, this year there’s been lots of truck drivers from New York and New Jersey that drive to that gas well place.”
“You mean the fracking pod at the old stone quarry?”
“Yeah, Pauly calls ’um the ‘frackers’. I don’t like ’em. They got money but they are all hyped up on something. They think since they know Pauly they can do anything. Anyway, this guy got it into his head that he wanted to snort coke off my tits, and he wouldn’t take no for an answer. But no was the answer he got. The driver finally gave up and viped with someone else. ’Bout a half an hour later I was sitting with Billy watching the game when he comes back and asks Billy how he got me to sit with him. Then he called me the ‘C’ word and Billy popped him one.
“Pauly went nuts and had the bouncers drag Billy outside. He hit one of them and ran away into the woods before they could do anything to him. Pauly told me to tell Billy that he’d kill him if he saw him again.”
“Do you think he meant it?”
She covered her mouth as if she was afraid to speak. “You met Pauly, right?”
“I have,” Harry said.
“I never could read that guy, you know?”
“Yes,” Harry said. “I know exactly what you mean.”
“The driver was OK. And the girl that went with him to the VIP Room was glad he got popped. She said he was an asshole. Sorry, but that’s what she said.”
“That’s OK.”
“By the end of the night Pauly didn’t seem so mad. Before I left he said Billy wasn’t welcome back at the club. He wasn’t talking about killing him or anything anymore.”
“So you don’t think he did it?”
“I don’t know.” For the first time she began to water up. “Honestly, I can’t imagine anybody killing Billy.”
“Where were you Wednesday ’bout eleven?”
“Me? You think I did it?”
“I didn’t say that. I’m just asking where you were. If the cops catch up with you they’re gonna ask.”
“I was in Scranton having lunch with a friend.”
“He or she?”
“She.”
“In a restaurant or at her house?”
“In a restaurant.”
“What kind?”
“Thai.”
“Your friend got a name?”
“Do I have to get her involved?”
“If you have an alibi for when Big Bill was killed then the cops will probably leave you alone. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
She nodded and wrote a name and number on the pad Harry gave her. “You know, he never really liked it when people called him Big Bill.”
“I’ll remember that.” Harry looked at the pad and saw she had written down her number too. “What are you going to do now?”
“I don’t know. I just know I gotta get off this mountain. Like you said, maybe I’ll sell real estate.”
“I’d buy a house from you.”
“You’re cute.” She stood and then turned back. “You got a nice laugh too but you’re sweet on someone, ain’t you?”
“I kinda am.”
“Yeah, it shows.”
She walked away, and Harry hoped she’d never come back. She was right, things might just get worse around here.