Free Bad Moon On The Rise by Katy Munger

well. And as soon as I realized who he was, I knew that
the beautiful black girl standing beside him had to be Tonya
Blackburn before the drugs took hold. And the man on the motorcycle
had to be Trey’s father. Trey had inherited his smile and his
eyes. 
    All of which explained why Corndog
Sally had come to me.
     
     “ Whew, girl. You
stink!” With his usual tact and charm, Bobby D. got right down to
it. “I hope the client paid up before he died.”
    “ It wasn’t the client. And
she’s paid up,” I said. “Have you seen my emergency overnight bag?
I have got to get out of these clothes.”
    “ Women say that to me all
the time.”
    “ Bobby.”
    “ Under the coffee table.”
He took a noisy slurp from his Pepsi. “But if you don’t mind my
saying so, you need more than a change of clothes.”
    “ I need a change of life,”
I said sourly as I rummaged through the bag, retrieving a pair of
jeans and a tee shirt. The tee shirt was left over from my brief
love affair with Bon Jovi in the 80’s, and the art on it was
downright embarrassing. Which meant I could either look like a fool
or stink like a hound that had rolled in the carcass of a dead cow.
I chose to look like a fool. Wouldn’t you?
    I peeled the smelly tee shirt off over
my head and tossed it into a trashcan. “Burn that when you get a
chance, would you?”
    “ Sorry babe.” He bent over
a legal pad filled with his scrawls. “I don’t do trash. How else
can I help?”
    “ You want to help? Tell me
what these are.” I tossed the bottle of pills I’d taken from
Tonya’s trailer onto his desk. For a man with hands the size of
catcher’s mitts, he had a surprisingly delicate touch. It took him
only seconds to have them in his hand and to make the
call.
    “ These are Happy Horse
pills,” he announced, staring down at the fat white pills. “Mr.
Ed’s, Jethro Downers, the big H-2-0, scourge of the Appalachians,
your friend and mine: Hillbilly Heroin. Also known as Oxycontin.
They go for over fifty bucks a pill on the street these days.
They’ve been cracking down on this stuff.” He smiled happily at
them. Hopefully, too, I noted.
    “ No shit. How did I miss
that?”
    “ I suspect you were too
busy stinking.” He stowed the pills away in his drawer. “Best let
me keep these for you,” he said.
    “ Best for who?” But I let
it go. I’d flirted enough with drugs in my life. When I got that
little feeling in my stomach, the one that cried, “Let’s experiment
with something new!” I tended to walk away as fast as I could. I’d
learned that walking away meant I could keep walking away. A few
Darvon during that time of the month was all my conscience would
let me justify.  “Be my guest,” I said magnanimously, just to
ensure I did not change my mind. “But you have to take out the
garbage in return. And call the body in for me.”
    Bobby raised his eyebrows but said
nothing. I knew what he was thinking: you didn’t even have the
decency to call someone about the body?
    “ Please? I didn’t have
time to deal with it and maybe there are just a few teensy things I
may have taken from the scene and, well, can’t you just do it
anonymously?”
    “ If the Perry County cops
find out you were there and didn’t call it in, you’re going to be
in deep shit,” he warned me.
    “ If the Perry County cops
find out I was there, they’ll keep me for days, questioning me, and
I just can’t afford the down time. Please, Bobby? Do it for me just
this once? A fifteen-year old boy is missing and I’ve got to find
him.”
    He pushed his notepad toward me. “Tell
me where the body is.” As I scribbled down the address, he was
already taking an untraceable trac phone from his bottom drawer and
looking up the number for Perry County’s emergency line.
    It was good to have
friends.
    I finished stripping down to my
skivvies. Being half-naked in front of Bobby D. had long since
ceased to be an embarrassment to either one of us. Besides,