“We heard about your fight,” the girl said, all sly smiles, her lips thin crescents. “And other bad stuff.”
Trey, his long slick black hair and chiseled face, was unreadable. He looked at the group on the floor, and at Ben squatting with them, and for once seemed unsure of how to play the situation.
“Yeah, what’s he been saying?” He kept his eyes on Ben and grabbed a beer from the girl without even looking at her. Ben wondered if they’d slept together, Trey had the same disdain Ben once saw him direct at an ex-girlfriend: I am not angry or sad or happy to see you. I could not give a shit. You don’t even ripple.
“Some shit about the Devil and what you guys do to … help him,” she said.
Trey got his grin going then, sat down across from Ben—Ben avoiding eye contact.
“Hey Trey?” Alex said. “You’re Indian aren’t you?”
“Yeah, you want me to scalp you?”
“You’re not full though, right?” the girl blurted.
“My mom’s white. I don’t date Indian chicks.”
“Why not?” she asked, running the roach clip feather in and out of her hair, the metal teeth tangling themselves in the waves.
“Because Satan likes white pussy.” He smiled and cocked his head at her, and she started to giggle, but then he kept the same expression and she shut down, her ugly boyfriend putting an arm back on her hip.
They’d liked Ben’s patter, but Trey was spookier. He sat there almost cross-legged, eyeing them in a way that seemed friendly on the surface, but was entirely without warmth. And while his body was folded in a casual way, every limb was held at a tense, sharp angle. There was something deeply unkind about him. No one offered to pass the joint again.
They all sat quietly for a few minutes, Trey’s mood unnerving everyone. Usually he was the loud, smart-ass, fight-starting beer swigger, but when he got upset it was like he sent out hundreds of invisible, insistent fingers to push everyone down by the shoulders. Sink everyone.
“So you want to go?” he suddenly asked Ben. “I got my truck. I got Diondra’s keys. We can go to her place til she gets home, she’s got cable. Better’n this freezing cold shithole.”
Ben nodded, gave a jittery wave to the crowd, and followed Trey who was already outside, tossing his beer can on the snow. Ben was definitely altered. Words clotted in the back of his throat, and as he climbed into the GMC he tried to stammer some excuse to Trey. Trey who’d just saved his ass, for unclear reasons. Why was he the one with Diondra’s keys? Probably because he’d asked for them. Ben didn’t think to ask enough.
“I hope you’re ready to back that shit up, what you were saying in there,” Trey said, putting the stick in reverse. The GMC was a tank, and Trey drove it straight across the farm property, bumping over old cornstalks and irrigation ditches, forcing Ben to grab on to the armrest to keep from biting his tongue off. Trey landed a meaningful glance on Ben’s tight grip.
“Yeah, of course.”
“Maybe tonight you become a man. Maybe.”
Trey flicked on his cassette player. Iron Maiden, midsong, hell yes, the words hissing at Ben: 666 … Satan … Sacrifice.
Ben worked the music in his head, his brain sizzling, feeling angry-frantic, the way he always did to metal, the guitar strum never letting up, bundling him tenser and tenser, bumping his head up and down, the drums shooting up his spine, the whole thing this rage-frenzy, not letting him think straight, just keeping him in a tight shake. His whole body felt like a cocked fist, ready for release.
Libby Day
NOW
The stretch of I-70 between Kansas City and St. Louis was hours and hours of pure ugly driving. Flat, dead-yellow, and littered with billboards: a fetus curled up like a kitten (Abortion Stops a Beating Heart); a living room turned red from the glare of ambulance lights (Take Care Crime-Scene Cleanup Specialists); a remarkably plain woman giving fuck-me eyes to passing motorists (Hot Jimmy’s Gentlemen’s Club). The billboards ominously advising love of Jesus were in direct proportion to those advertising porn liquidators, and the signs for local restaurants consistently misused quotation marks: Herb’s Highway Diner—The “Best” Meal in Town; Jolene’s Rib House—Come in for Our “Delicious” Baby Back Ribs.
Lyle was in the passenger seat. He’d debated the pros and cons of joining me (maybe I would have more rapport with Krissi alone, us both being women; on the other hand, he did know this part of the case better; but then again, he may get too excited, ask her too many questions, and then blow it, he sometimes got ahead of himself, if he had one flaw it was that he sometimes got ahead of himself; then again, $500 was a lot of money and he felt somewhat entitled, no offense, to come along). Finally I’d snapped into the phone that I’d swing by Sarah’s Pub in thirty minutes, and if he was out front, he could come. Click. Now he was fussing next to me, flicking the door lock up and down, fiddling with the radio, reading each sign out loud, like he was trying to reassure himself of something. We drove past a fireworks warehouse the size of a cathedral, and at least three bundles of fatality markers: small white crosses and plastic flowers gathering dust on the side of the road. Gas stations made themselves known with signs skinnier and taller than the wilting weather vanes of nearby farms.
On one ridge was a billboard with a familiar face: Lisette Stephens, with that joyful grin, a phone number below for information on her disappearance. I wondered how long til they took it down, drained of hope or money.
“Oh God, her,” Lyle said, as we passed Lisette. I bristled, but my feelings were similar. After a while it was almost rude to ask you to worry about someone who was clearly dead. Unless it was my family.
“So Lyle, can I ask you, what is it that makes you so obsessed with the … this case?” As I said it, the sky got just dark enough to switch the highway lights on, and all in a row, into the horizon, they blinked white, like my question had intrigued them.
Lyle was staring at his leg, listening sideways like he usually did. He had a habit of pushing one ear toward whoever was speaking, and then he’d wait a few seconds, like he was translating whatever was said into another language.
“It’s just a classic whodunit. There are a lot of viable theories, so it’s interesting to talk about,” he said, still not looking at me. “And there’s you. And Krissi. Children who … caused something. I’m interested in that.”
“Children who caused something?”
“Something to happen, something that got bigger than they were, something that had unintentionally major consequences. Ripples. That interests me.”
“Why?”
He paused. “Just does.”
We were the two unlikeliest people to charm information out of someone. Stunted human beings who got awkward every time we tried to express ourselves. I didn’t really care if we got much from Krissi, though, as the more I thought about Lyle’s theory, the more it seemed like bunk.
After another forty minutes of driving, the strip clubs started showing up: dismal, crouched blocks of cement, most without any real name, just neon signs shouting Live Girls! Live Girls! Which I guess is a better selling point than Dead Girls. I imagined Krissi Cates pulling into the gravel parking lot, getting ready to take off her clothes at a strip club that was so entirely generic. There’s something disturbing about not even bothering with a name. Whenever I see news stories about children who were killed by their parents, I think: But how could it be? They cared enough to give this kid a name, they had a moment—at least one moment—when they sifted through all the possibilities and picked one specific name for their child, decided what they would call their baby. How could you kill something you cared enough to name?
“This will be my first strip bar,” Lyle said, and gave his pert-lipped smile.
I pulled off the highway, to the left, as Krissi’s mother had advised—when I’d phoned the only club listed, a greasy man told me he thought Krissi was “around”—and rattled into a pasture-sized parking lot for three strip bars, all in a row. A ga
s station and trucker park sat at the far, far end: in the bright white glow, I saw the silhouettes of women scuttling like cats between the cabs, doors opening and shutting, bare legs kicking out as they leaned in to line up the next trick. I assumed most of the strippers ended up working the trucker park once the clubs were done with them.
I got out of the car and fumbled with the notes Lyle had given me, a neat, numbered list of questions to ask Krissi, if we found her. (Number One: Do you still maintain that you were molested by Ben Day when you were a child? If so, please explain.) I started to review the rest of the questions when a movement to my right caught my attention. Far down in the trucker park, a small shadow dislodged itself from the side of a cab and started toward me in an intensely straight line, the kind of straight you walk when you’re wasted and trying not to look it. I could see the shoulders pushed forward, far out ahead of the body, as if the girl had no choice but to keep moving toward me once she started. And she was a girl, I saw when she reached the other side of my car. She had a wide, doll-like face that glowed in the streetlight, light brown hair pulled back in a ponytail from a domed forehead.
“Hey, you got a cigarette I could bum?” she said, her head jittering like a Parkinson’s patient.
“You OK?” I asked, trying to get a better look at her, guess her age. Fifteen, sixteen. She was shivering in a thin sweatshirt over a miniskirt and boots that were supposed to look sexy but on her looked childish, a kindergartner playing cowgirl.
“You got a cigarette?” she repeated, brightening, her eyes wet. She gave a quick bounce on her heels, looked from me to Lyle, who was watching the pavement.
I had a pack somewhere in the back of my car, so I leaned in and rummaged through old fast-food wrappers, an assortment of tea bags I’d swiped from a restaurant (another thing no one should ever buy: tea bags), and a pile of cheap metal spoons (ditto). The cigarette pack had three cigs left, one of them broken. I doled out the other two, flicked a lighter, the girl leaning in crookedly, then finally hitting the flame, Sorry I can’t see a thing without my glasses. I lit my cigarette, let my head do its heat-wave dance after that first rush of nicotine.
“I’m Colleen,” she said, sucking on the cigarette. The temperature had dropped quickly with the sun, we stood across from each other bouncing up and down to keep warm.
Colleen. It was too sweet a name for a hooker. Someone had once had different plans for this girl.
“How old are you, Colleen?”
She glanced back toward the truck park and smiled, hunched down in her shoulders. “Oh, don’t worry, I’m not working there. I work over there.” She pointed to the middle strip club with her middle finger. “I’m legal. I don’t need to …” She nodded back toward the row of trucks, all of them immobile, despite what was happening inside. “We just try to keep an eye out for some of the girls that do work it. Sisterhood thing. You new?”
I’d worn a low-cut top, assuming it might make Krissi more comfortable when I found her, signal I wasn’t a prude. Colleen was looking at my cleavage now with the eyes of a jeweler, trying to match my tits to the correct club.
“Oh, no. We’re looking for a friend. Krissi Cates? You know her?”
“She may have a different last name now,” Lyle said, then looked away toward the highway.
“I know a Krissi. Older?”
“Mid-thirties or so.” Colleen’s whole body was humming. I assumed she was on uppers. Or maybe she was just cold.
“Right,” she said, finishing her cigarette in one aggressive pull. “She picks up some day shifts at Mike’s sometimes.” She pointed to the farthest club, where the neon said only G-R-S.
“That doesn’t sound good.”
“It’s not. But you gotta retire sometime, right? Still it sucks for her, because I guess she spent a lot of money on a boob job, but Mike still didn’t think she was primetime anymore. But at least the boob job was tax deductible.”
Colleen said all this with the perky ruthlessness of a teenager who knew she had decades before such humiliations touched her.
“So should we come back during the day shift?” Lyle asked.
“Mmm. You could wait here,” she said in a babyish voice. “She should be done soon.” She motioned back toward the line of trucks. “I need to get ready for work, thanks for the cigarette.”
She trotted, again with that push of the shoulders, toward the dark middle building, flung the door wide, and disappeared inside.
“I think we should go, this sounds like a dead end,” Lyle said. I was about to snap at him for going chickenshit on me, tell him to just wait in the car, when another shadow climbed out of a truck far back in the line, and began heading toward the parking lot. All the women here walked as if they were pushing against a monstrous headwind. My stomach lurched at a lonely image of me trapped here or somewhere like it. It wasn’t so unlikely, for a woman with no family, no money and no skills. A woman with a certain unwholesome pragmatism. I’d spread my legs for nice men I knew would be good for a few months of free meals. I’d done it and never felt guilty, so how much would it take to find me here? I felt my throat tighten for a second, and then snapped to. I had money coming now.
The figure was all shadow: I could make out a halo of ruined hair, the jutting edges of short shorts, an oversized purse, and thick, muscular legs. She came out of the dark to reveal a tanned face with eyes that were set slightly close together. Cute but canine. Lyle nudged me, gave me a searching look to see if I recognized her. I didn’t but I gave a quick wave just in case and she stopped jerkily. I asked if she was Krissi Cates.
“I am,” she said, her vulpine face surprisingly eager, helpful, like she thought something good might be about to happen. It was a strange expression to see, considering the direction she’d come from.
“I was hoping to talk to you.”
“OK.” She shrugged. “About what?” She couldn’t figure me out: not a cop, not a social worker, not a stripper, not her kid’s teacher, assuming she had a kid. Lyle she only glanced at, since he was taking turns gaping at her or turning almost entirely away from us. “About working here? You a reporter?”
“Well, to be frank, it’s about Ben Day.”
“Oh. OK. We can go inside Mike’s, you can buy me a drink?”
“Are you married? Is your name still Cates?” Lyle blurted.
Krissi frowned at him, then looked at me for explanation. I widened my eyes, grimaced: the look women give each other when they’re embarrassed of the men they’re with. “I got married, once,” she said. “Last name’s Quanto now. Only because I been too lazy to change it back. You know what a pain in the ass that is?”
I smiled as if I did, and then suddenly I was following her across the parking lot, trying to keep out of the way of the giant leather purse that bounced against her hip, giving Lyle a look to pull it together. Just before we got to the door, she ducked against the side of the club, murmuring, you mind? and snuffed something from a packet of foil she pulled from her rear pocket. Then she turned her back entirely to me and made a gargling sound that must have hurt.
Krissi turned back, a broad smile on. “Whatever gets you through the night …” she sang, waggling the foil packet, but partway through the verse she seemed to forget the tune. She snuffed her nose, which was so compact it reminded me of an outie belly button, the kind pregnant women get. “Mike’s a Nazi about this stuff,” she said, and flung the door open.
I’d been to strip clubs before—back in the ’90s when it was considered brazen, back when women were dumb enough to think it was sexy, standing around pretending to be hot for women because men thought it was hot if you were hot for women. I guess I hadn’t been to one this low-rent though. It was small and filmy, the walls and floors seemed to have an extra wax coating. A young girl was dancing gracelessly on a low stage. She marched in place, actually, her waist rolling over a thong two sizes too small, pasties waffling over nipples that pointed outward, walleyed. Every few beats she would turn her back
to the men, then bend over and peer at them through her spread legs, her face going quickly red from the flood of blood to her head. In response, the men—there were only three of them, all in flannel, hunched over beers at separate tables—would grunt or nod. A massive bouncer studied himself in the wall mirror, bored. We sat down, three in a row at the bar, me in the middle. Lyle had his arms folded, his hands in his armpits, trying not to touch anything, trying to look like he was looking at the dancer without really looking at her. I turned away from the stage, wrinkled my nose.
“I know, right?” Krissi said. “Goddam armpit of a place. This is on you, right? Because I have no cash.” Before I even nodded she was ordering herself a vodka and cranberry, and I just asked for the same. Lyle got carded, and as he was showing the bartender his ID, he started doing some uncomfortable impersonation, his voice going even more ducklike, a weird smile pasted to his face. He made no eye contact, and gave no real signal that he was doing an impersonation. The bartender stared at him, and Lyle said, The Graduate. You seen it? And the guy just turned away.
So did I.
“So, what do you want to know?” Krissi smiled, leaned toward me. I debated whether to tell her who I was, but she seemed so disinterested I decided to save myself the trouble. Here was a woman who just wanted company. I kept glancing at her breasts, which were even bigger than mine, tightly packed and well trussed so they poked straight out. I pictured them under there, shiny and globular like cellophaned chicken.
“You like ’em?” Krissi chirped, giving them a bounce. “They’re semi-new. Well, I guess they’re almost a year now. I should have a birthday party for them. Not that they’ve helped me here. Fuckin’ Mike keeps screwing me on shifts. It’s OK though, I always wanted bigger boobs. And now I have them. If I could only get rid of this, is what I need to get rid of.” She grabbed at a minimal fat roll, pretending it was much worse than it was. Just beneath it, the white glint of a caesarian scar snaked out.