Free Beluga by Rick Gavin Page A

of hers. She told me back everything Desmond had just finished telling her in the clinic. Somehow the whole bloody business was our fault.
    â€œWe’ve got to sit Larry down,” I told her, “and figure out exactly who he pissed off.”
    â€œWho is this bitch?” Shawnica asked me. “She don’t want to be finding me.”
    â€œGot a gun?” I asked.
    Shawnica told me, “Ha!” She pulled a knife out of her pocket. Springloaded. A mother-of-pearl handle. It opened with a wicked metallic click. She whipped it around so close to my chin I could feel the air of the blade.
    â€œAll right” seemed appropriate, so that’s what I said. “How about Larry?”
    â€œHe’s got one of those little guns,” she told me.
    â€œA derringer?’
    Shawnica nodded. He didn’t even have that anymore.
    â€œDid they go to Belzoni this morning?”
    â€œHell,” she told me, “I don’t know.”
    â€œYou don’t want to stay somewhere else until we figure out what’s what?”
    Shawnica gave me one of her primal sneers, folded her knife shut, and went back inside.
    Me and Desmond just stood there and watched her go.
    â€œFiery,” Desmond told me like it was something he admired.
    â€œYour church girlfriend got any of that?”
    Desmond thought for a moment. “No.”

 
    SEVEN
    We rode all the way to Belzoni, found the trailer still untarped. There were tires gone from it. That was obvious to us, so we figured Larry and Skeeter were down Delta making sales calls.
    â€œThat ought to be enough,” I suggested to Desmond, “to keep them out of harm’s way for now.”
    â€œWho do you figure she is, a girl like that?”
    We’d been chewing on the matter in the car. Desmond couldn’t wrap his mind around that brand of sadistic violence from a woman. He was old-fashioned that way, I guess, and believed women were better than men. More honorable and decent, less likely to go off. Maybe even squeamish and retiring.
    â€œMight have been some guy in a wig,” he suggested.
    â€œAnd a skirt and knee socks?”
    â€œWhy the hell not. It’d be throwing us off. Here we are all looking for a girl.”
    We went riding around that catfish farm in search of Larry and Skeeter’s buddy, but there wasn’t any sign of him either, so we headed back toward home.
    â€œI’m just wondering who sent her,” I said to Desmond once we were back on 49. “Or him .”
    â€œIt’s not like we can say what kind of shit Beluga’s been up to,” Desmond allowed. “Maybe he pissed somebody off before we ever heard of those tires.”
    â€œMaybe. Why don’t you try him again?”
    Desmond had been dialing Larry all along and just getting the “mobile caller is unavailable” message.
    â€œRinging,” he told me. “Larry?”
    I could hear the squeak of a voice on the phone.
    â€œWhere are you?”
    More squeaky chatter.
    â€œYou’re breaking up.”
    No squeak.
    â€œLarry?” Desmond shook his head.
    â€œWhere is he?”
    â€œIn a fucking Chevy,” Desmond told me. “That’s all he got out before I lost him.”
    I dropped Desmond back at Kalil’s place so he could pick up his car. It was about quitting time by then, so Kalil was into the Armagnac.
    It never seemed to relax him much. His anger just got more scattershot and appreciably less coherent. He’d go from vilifying deadbeats to pitching a fit about crows in his yard. Then he’d complain about the dodgy components in Korean televisions. It was all bilious and hotheaded but didn’t really amount to much.
    This evening he came out into the lot to yammer at us. He was mad already before Desmond said we’d get to his invoices tomorrow. Desmond told him we’d been tied up with a buddy at the hospital and tried to leave it at that, but Kalil got