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"I don't think anybody is going to be talking about this guy a whole lot," she said. "You hear stories, you know what I mean? That this guy you're looking for is somebody you don't want mad at you, that he can be real hard on his chippies."
"Is it true?"
She set her empty bottle down on the shells and placed her hands loosely in her lap. For a moment the alcoholic shine left her eyes and her expression became strangely introverted, as though she were focusing on some forgotten image deep inside herself.
"When you're in the life, you hear a lot of bad stories, cutie. That's because there aren't many good ones," she said.
"The man I'm looking for may be a serial killer, Charlotte."
"That kind of guy is a john, not a pimp, Streak." She leaned on her forearms, puffing on her cigarette, staring at the hundreds of bottle caps pressed into the dirt at her feet. Her lacquered hair was wreathed in smoke. "Go on back home. You won't change anything here. Everybody out on this road signed up for it one way or another."
"Nobody signed up to be dead."
She didn't reply. She scratched a mosquito bite on her kneecap and looked at a car approaching the motel registration window.
"Who's the main man working the bus depot these days?" I said.
"That's Downtown Bobby Brown. He went up on a short-eyes once. Now he's a pro, a real piece of shit. Go back to your family, Streak, before you start to like your work."
She flipped her cigarette away backhandedly, got to her feet, straightened her dress on her elephantine hips, winked at me as though she might be leaving a burlesque stage, and walked delicately across the oyster shells toward her motel and the couple who waited impatiently for her in the heat and the dust and the snapping of an electric bug killer over the registration window.
YOU CAN FIND THE PREDATORS AT THE BUS DEPOT ALMOST ANY time during the twenty-four-hour period. But they operate best during the late hours. That's usually when the adventurers from Vidalia or De Ridder or Wiggins, Mississippi, have run out of money, energy, and hope of finding a place to sleep besides an empty building or an official shelter where they'll be reported as runaways. It's not hard to spot the adventurers, either. The corners of their mouths are downturned, their hair is limp and lies like moist string on their necks; often their hands and thin arms are flecked with home-grown tattoos; they wash under their arms with paper towels and brush their teeth in the depot restroom.
I watched him walk across the waiting room, a leather satchel slung on a strap over his shoulder, his eyes bright, a rain hat at an angle on his head, his tropical white shirt hanging outside his khakis. A gold cross was painted on the side of his satchel.
The two girls were white, both blond, dressed in shapeless jeans, tennis shoes without socks, blouses that looked salt-faded and stiff with dried perspiration. When he talked with them, his happy face made me think of a mythical goat-footed balloonman whistling far and wee to children in springtime. Then from his satchel he produced candy bars and ham sandwiches, a thermos of coffee, plums and red apples that would dwarf a child's hand.
The girls both bent into their sandwiches, then he was sitting next to them, talking without stop, the smile as wide as an ax blade, the eyes bright as an elf's, the gold cross on his satchel winking with light under his black arm.
I was tired, used up after the long day, wired with too many voices, too many people on the hustle, too many who bought and sold others or ruined themselves for money that you could make with a Fuller-brush route. There was grit in my clothes; my mouth tasted bad; I could smell my own odor. The inside of the depot reeked of cigar butts and the diesel exhaust that blew through the doors to the boarding foyer.
I took the receiver off a pay phone by the men's room and let it hang by its cord.
A minute later the ticket salesman stared down at my badge that I had slid across the counter.
"You want me to do what?" he said.
"Announce that there's a call at the pay phone for Mr. Bob Brown."
"We usually don't do that."
"Consider it an emergency."
"Yes, sir."
"Wait at least one minute before you do it. Okay, podna?"
"Yes, sir."
I bought a soft drink from a vending machine and looked casually out the glass doors while a bus marked "Miami" was being loaded underneath with luggage. The ticket salesman picked up his microphone, and Bob Brown's name echoed and resonated off the depot walls.
Downtown Bobby Brown's face became quizzical, impish, in front of the girls, then momentarily apologetic as he explained that he'd be right back, that somebody at his shelter probably needed advice about a situation.
I dropped my soda can into a trash bin and followed him to the pay phone. Downtown Bobby was streetwise, and he turned around and looked into my face. But my eyes never registered his glance, and I passed him and stopped in front of the USA Today machine.
He picked up the telephone receiver, leaning on one arm against the wall, and said, "This is Bobby. What's happenin'?"
"The end of your career," I said, and clenched the back of his neck, driving his face into the restroom door. Then I pushed him through the door and flung him inside the room. Blood drained from his nose over his lip; his eyes were wide, yellow-white—like a peeled egg—with shock.
