The Rabbit Factory: A Novel

  54

  Anjalee moved her Camry down the street from the Peabody and took a cab over to Gigi’s Angels. She thought that would be safer. She asked the cabdriver to wait and went inside and there were only three people sitting at the bar. Nobody was dancing and there wasn’t even any music playing. The whole place looked like it was about ready to shut down. That made her feel like she was making the right move. Get off a sinking ship before it went down. And she had to get her good leather coat from upstairs.

  “Hey, Moe!” she said. He stuck his head out from the back almost instantly. He was chewing something rapidly and he walked to the beer cooler.

  “Well,” he said, swallowing, looking her up and down. “I didn’t know if you’d be back or not.”

  “Just for a minute. Has Frankie called? Left a message or anything?”

  “Nope. Lots of people were asking were you coming back after you left. Some more of those fire boys came back later. Jesus, can they drink some beer. You coming back tonight?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I may have gotten a better offer.”

  He looked at her with a puzzled face and pulled a beer from the cooler.

  “I’ve got a few things upstairs,” she said. “Some clothes and my good coat. Can I go get ’em?”

  “Yeah, sure. Or leave ’em here with me, either one. What’s going on?”

  “It’s nothing, it’s just…” She didn’t want to ask him if police had been around because he’d know she was in some kind of shit, and she’d just as soon he not know that about her right now in case she needed him later. So she put on her sweet face.

  “I’ll come back in sometime and have a drink and we’ll talk about it. Okay? It’s just a lot of stuff going on right now.”

  “Okay,” he said, and then he opened the beer and went on back through the door.

  She went upstairs to the room where her things were hanging. She got her good leather coat. There were a few short dresses and a pair of shoes and a jean jacket and she got it all over one arm and hand and went back down. She went out to the waiting cab and it was gone. Her left arm was grabbed along with her right, and in just a moment there was one on either side of her, big ones in plainclothes and her stuff in a pile at her feet. People looking. Some of them just standing still, staring. The cops were actually pretty polite but they wouldn’t let her take her other clothes since she was going to jail. One of them went to the door and yelled for somebody to come outside and get her stuff. Moe came out and got the stuff but he didn’t say anything, just watched her with an awful look on his face, like he wished he could do something. They cuffed her and put her in the back seat and it didn’t have any door handles on the inside. One of the cops drove and the other cop smoked cigarettes and cussed the traffic and she was terrified because they had her ass good this time. And plus they wouldn’t talk to her.

  55

  Helen began getting hit on by men as soon as she walked into the lobby. A couple hit on her on her way to the bar and wanted to buy her a drink but she just gave them a smile and a head shake and kept on going.

  She liked the Peabody bar. It was usually filled with well-dressed working people in the late afternoons and she knew that some of them had come there straight from their jobs at banks or law firms or real estate offices downtown and within walking distance. She liked the idea of that. But she’d never brought Arthur to this place. He wouldn’t fit in, or he’d say something goofy and embarrass her. He might turn to a total stranger and start trying to talk to him about Randolph Scott. Or even Tim Holt. He was like a damn encyclopedia on those old westerns. Remembered movies he’d seen when he was a teenager in Tunica. She didn’t give a shit who Woody Strode was.

  She stopped in front of the bar and smiled as she waited for some people who were leaving to get their coats and keys. And how did he get it in his head that she was so crazy about animals? She liked them okay, sure, the way you like raisin bran once in a while, but she didn’t need that wild-ass cat. It probably had rabies or something. Parasites maybe. She didn’t know where he got some of the ideas he came up with. Like looking for tranquilizer guns in a pet shop. And look now what that had led to. Eric, out of the blue. The world had gotten a lot more interesting. Then she had a sudden, exhilarating thought: What if she took him with her? To Montana? Wouldn’t that be getting a brand-new start?

  The people got their stuff together and finally started getting out of the way. She pulled out a stool and took a seat. Eric seemed very innocent and she was excited by that. Ken smiled and waved while talking busily to another customer. Asshole. She found the Virginia Slim Lights she’d bought, in her purse, and lit one and looked at the row of bottles behind the bar. She didn’t know what she’d do if Eric didn’t come on over. But he’d come. She knew he would. She’d seen how he looked at her. There was no mistaking a look like that. They’d have to get a room here or go to his place. He never had said where he lived. She didn’t want to do it in the Jag in the parking lot anymore like she’d been doing with Ken. It was too risky. There were always cops walking around downtown or riding their bicycles.

  She slid an ashtray closer. Ken kept screwing around but that was temporarily okay because she hadn’t made up her mind what she wanted yet. She’d already had three draft beers and two shots of Rumpel Minze in another bar, but all that had been over the course of a good while. She could switch to whiskey, and she still wouldn’t be drunk when he came in a little after ten. If he came in. She was afraid he was scared of her. My God, honey, she said to herself. Don’t be scared of me. I just want to take a few minutes of your time to show you a few things your mother never did.

  “Hello,” a smooth, husky voice said close to her. She turned her head to see a man in his early forties, curly coal-black hair, dressed in trim tan slacks and a charcoal coat over a white shirt.

  “Hi,” she said, after a moment. After that moment Ken came over.

  “Helen,” he said. “Sorry to make you wait. Everybody wants to talk football. Only game in town.” He winked.

  “Don’t they, though,” she said. Winking at her like he owned her.

  “What can I get you?”

  “I wanted to see if I could maybe buy you a drink,” the guy butted in and said.

  Ken looked at him. Helen looked at him. He was a fairly decent-looking dude but he had a pocket-pen protector. She didn’t want him to be around when Eric got here. Some guys would buy you a drink and never leave. Some guys thought buying you a drink entitled them to some privileges, like sitting in a bar beside you all night boring you almost to tears over their old girlfriends and how much money they made and what kind of car they had and how they went to Cancun three times a year and blah blah blah and rah rah rah. He could buy her a drink. But she wasn’t going to let him tongue-kiss her or anything. She didn’t think. But who knew? Who would have thought she’d wind up fucking this loser behind the bar who had holes in his socks and his underwear, too? And all he had to listen to was Barry Manilow. Every time she went over there, it was the same thing. Fucking Barry Manilow. Over and over. Endlessly.

  “I don’t believe I know you,” she said.

  “That’s true,” he said, and he stepped forward with his hand out. Ken stood there watching, looked around at the other customers, and waited. “My name’s Tyrone Bradbury.”

  “Oh,” she said, and smiled. “Well. Are you any relation to Ray?”

  He laughed and shook his head. She liked the way he put his hands in his pockets.

  “No, but I get asked that sometimes.” He was clearly nervous. But he looked up. “I just saw you and wanted to introduce myself. I didn’t see a wedding ring on your finger.”

  Which was true. It was in her pocket and she’d put on a silver-filigree-mounted topaz to cover the white ring of skin.

  “I didn’t mean to bother you,” he said. “May I ask your name?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, and put out her hand. “I’m Helen.”

  He took it and
he had a warm and firm clasp.

  “It’s nice to meet you, Helen. So, can I buy you a drink?”

  “Well. I may be meeting somebody after a while,” she said.

  “Around ten or a little after.”

  She looked at Ken after she said that. She thought his eyes were going to cross.

  “That’s okay,” he said. “You don’t have to talk to me all night just because I buy you a drink.”

  “Oh. Well, okay.” She turned back to Tyrone. “Pull up a chair.” He did. Ken was waiting, and watching her. She leaned forward with her breasts up on top of the bar. He was sure watching then. “Ken, Ken. What do I want tonight? You’ve got all that stuff back there and I don’t know what I want.”

  Tyrone had gone back to his table for his drink and brought it over with a wet napkin because he’d sloshed some of it, looked like a scotch and water. She remembered that Eric liked scotch. She was aware of Tyrone sitting down next to her but she was looking at the bottles. They were rowed up back there and in a small pyramid at the bottom under blue neon glass. She could have one drink or two and get this guy to get a room and get it taken care of easy probably. Or she could wait for Eric and maybe get nothing. He was having a thing about Arthur. She could tell that already.

  “What do you want, Helen?” Tyrone said.

  “I don’t know. I don’t…freaking…know.”

  “It’s about quit snowing,” Tyrone offered. Nobody responded. He sipped at his drink and some ran off on his hand and he looked for another napkin and then reached way over for one and then almost toppled his chair and spilled about half his drink and righted the chair and muttered something. Some drunk in the back laughed pretty loud but Tyrone acted like he was deaf. Ken got some napkins and started mopping the bar with them.

  “I want a Crown and Coke,” she said, and Ken wadded the wet napkins and said: “Crown it is,” and, “I’ll get you another one, sir.”

  She swiveled around slightly toward Tyrone and he smiled.

  “Thanks,” he said to Ken. He’d spilled some on his coat, too.

  “I don’t think I’ve seen you in here before,” she said, as he dabbed with a handkerchief and muttered.

  “No,” he said, looking up. “I’m just here on business.”

  “What business are you in, Tyrone?”

  He scooted his seat closer, a smile on his face. Ken was making her drink back there and looking over his shoulder at her. Cars were passing on the street outside. She felt warm inside knowing that she was waiting here for Eric to come see her. She felt a way she hadn’t felt in a long time. It was something to look forward to, and she couldn’t think of many things she could look forward to. Going home sometime tonight sure wasn’t one of them. She was going to be nice to Tyrone. But she was going to hold out for Eric.

  56

  The trouble with the land down behind the hospital and in the general area south of town, for an escaping criminal, was that it was all getting developed to the point where there weren’t many patches of bushes left in which to hide, and even roads that used to be made of dirt were now paved, some with curbs and streetlights. Contractors from out of town were working their way through the streets and building all the time, paving old cotton fields and pastures, running out the rabbits. Coons could live anywhere, still did, even in the oaks on the courthouse square, and jogging Ole Miss coeds knew there were deer raising their babies in the woods beside Fire Station no. 2.

  Probably the reason that Domino got away was that it probably took a while for Rico to call somebody, being hurt like he was, or maybe somebody from the hospital called for him because of his being hurt, and then it probably took some other police a few minutes to get down there, go inside the emergency room, see Rico bloody, get the lowdown on what was going on, maybe call for some backup, a matter of a few more minutes, and then actually get somebody on the ground down behind the hospital to start looking for Domino. And by that time he had already sprinted out the door and past the old sick-looking security guard who was sucking on another cigarette and across the parking lot and down the hill below the parking lot and across the lower parking lot and had jumped the ditch between there and Graceland old folks’ home and run behind that parking lot and around the end of a tall plank fence and down another hill to a big green-roofed building where Dr. Buddy Spencer had his family medical practice and behind that building and between the young trees that had been planted and mulched and across the far south end of South Eighteenth, took a chance and got on the street long enough to cross the bridge over Burney Branch, then jumped off the street and ran into the woods and sage grass that lined the steep sides of Highway 7.

  But he had better sense than to hide. A rabbit ran sometimes because he had to. One short-barreled revolver with no more bullets than the ones in it was no match for all the firepower they could train on him.

  He did stop on one knee and lower his head to catch his breath. He was behind some bushes that had turned brown from frost and there were some thick patches of stuff above him that he would have to climb through in order to cross the highway. And the traffic. The traffic was going to be the worst because the cops were coming and some of them would probably be in the traffic.

  His breath came out white in the cold air, and he had no plan. His only plan was to get across the highway and then try to get some distance from the road if it meant crossing a pasture or woods or fences. He had to lose them here. It was the only chance to get away.

  He wasn’t ready, but he made himself ready. He had his hand wrapped outside the trigger guard and he started forward at a fast clip, wading through the sage grass with his arms high. He bulled through a patch of briars and said nothing when they tore at his cheeks. He squinched his eyes almost shut and felt them tearing at his clothes and almost holding him back so that he had to lunge against them and flatten them down with his feet and turn and twist away from them like a drunk trying to dance and even then they kept trying to hold him. But he tore free and ran toward the foot of the bank. It was steep, and slick with mud from the melted snow. He had to put the gun in his pocket, and pull himself up from tree to tree, grasping at saplings and slipping and sliding in the mud. His breath was coming hard and he looked over his shoulder as a police car with blue lights flashing turned in from Highway 7 and screamed down the curve in front of the Pakistani fried chicken/gas station and he watched the car go across the bridge he’d crossed not three minutes before, and climb the hill toward the hospital.

  Another one took squalling the curve at the intersection of South Eighteenth and Belk Boulevard with its blue lights flashing and its siren screaming. It lost traction on the rear wheels and swung wide, and the rear tire peeled up smoke as it straightened and climbed the hill and went out of sight. He didn’t look anymore.

  He could see the top of the road, above him. He had to get down on his hands and knees and claw at the ground sometimes, but he kept pushing with his legs and holding on to the trees and in less than a minute his eyes were level with the road. He crawled up onto the shoulder and kneeled there. Cars were coming, but he couldn’t see any blue lights. They were coming at about sixty miles an hour. From the north two were coming side by side, with another one behind them maybe a few hundred feet back. He got up on one knee and waited for the two, and looked down the highway to the south, and he could see headlights coming that way, too. He couldn’t stop on the median. He’d have to go for it.

  The two cars got closer. One put on its brights and almost swerved. The other slowed and fell back.

  “Come on,” he said. “I ain’t got all night.”

  The first car passed him and the other one had slowed to less than thirty, which caused the car behind it to start out to pass.

  Domino went.

  The front car’s brakes slammed on and he heard a tire squeal and ran right in front of it, thought for a weak moment in his heart it was going to get him, even fancied that he felt the fender brush the back of his pants, but the car only blared its h
orn and went on up the road. He jumped down into the ditch and ran up the other side and the road was full of cars and trucks coming. There were bright lights on high poles all along the highway. He headed toward the traffic, trotting south down the shoulder, looking over his shoulder to see if blue lights were coming. They were. Fast. And he wasn’t going back to Parchman.

  He ran into the traffic and two cars slid wide toward the ditch on either side and another spun with its horn blaring BWAAAAAAAAA! and slammed into a pickup that was trying to avoid one of the cars in front and these last two were center-punched almost immediately from behind by a gravel truck that showered them with some of its load when the rear end lifted up and its headlights shattered into bits of flying glass. Tires were screeching all over the place.