Flowering Judas(38)

Krystal’s son Dwayne was a janitor at the police department. Krystal thought that was a big deal. Krystal thought any kind of regular job was a big deal. It didn’t matter to her that Dwayne was barely better than a moron.

“I don’t see what they’d want around here,” Patti Floyd said. “I mean, he didn’t die here, did he? He ran away. Not that I blame him. If I had that mother of his, I’d have been in Alaska before I was sixteen.”

“Yeah, well, he’s dead now,” Althy said.

“Exactly,” Krystal said. “He’s dead, and it’s been on all the television stations. It’s been on CNN. And they’ve brought this guy in, this consultant. They’re going to want to look at everything. Especially after today.”

“What happened today?” Althy said.

“Shit,” Patti said. “Don’t you ever get up in the morning? You look like crap.”

“I feel like crap,” Althy said.

“Dwayne,” Krystal said, “says the word at the police department is that this guy, the consultant, he figured out that Chester didn’t commit suicide on that billboard like we thought. He was killed someplace else and just hung out there later. So they’re going to want to find where the someplace else is. And that means here.”

“They think he was killed in the trailer?” Kasey Werl sounded like she was going to cry. Kasey always sounded like she was going to cry. Sometimes she sat out on the stoop of her trailer and cried for most of the day. “But he couldn’t have been killed in the trailer. The trailer is right there. It’s right across from me.”

“Yeah, well,” Althy said, “it’s right next to me. I could put my hand out my bathroom window and into the bathroom window over there, if it was open. And it’s not like I’ve been going anywhere. Somebody’d pulled shit like that right next to my head, I’d have heard something.”

“You could have been passed out,” Krystal said.

“Then Haydee would have heard something.”

“They’re going to come and search the trailer,” Krystal said. “That’s what Dwayne heard. They’re going to search the trailer, and then maybe they’re going to search the whole park. And they’re going to get somebody in, some lab people, special ones. The lab people can do a lot these days.”

“Like on CSI,” Patti said.

“They can’t do anything like on CSI,” Althy said. “Somebody told me.”

“If they search the park, they’re going to search the trailers,” Krystal said. “So I just thought. You know. The kind of shit that can come out of that. I don’t want any of that. And sometimes, you know, there are people.”

“Somebody ducking a fucking warrant again?” Althy said.

“How the fuck am I supposed to know?” Krystal said. “I don’t mind anybody’s business but my own. I’m just saying.”

“Fuck,” Patti said.

Althy sucked at her cigarette like it was a breath inhaler and she had asthma.

2

There was a point this morning when Penny London thought her head was going to explode. She’d called the automated service line at the bank first at four, then at five, then at six, and all those times there had been nothing. She’d been unhappy about waking up early. It was one of the real drawbacks of living in the car. She’d thought she’d be able to call the bank, and know everything was all right, and go back to sleep again. But everything had not been all right. She had her paychecks deposited directly into her bank by both her schools. The money usually showed up far earlier than four o’clock on the morning of the day. This morning, there had been nothing, and nothing, and nothing again. Penny had found herself sitting bolt upright behind the steering wheel, wondering what she was going to do if there had been some kind of screw up. Pelham University was her worst job as a job, but when they screwed up something like payroll they fixed it on the spot. The money this morning was supposed to come from Mattatuck–Harvey. That was the state of New York. If they’d screwed up, she’d have to wait another two week cycle before she got her money. Then the way the tax formula worked, they’d tax it as if she always made double the amount she usually did.

The money showed up at seven o’clock. Penny called the bank and listened to the run-through with her anxiety running so high, she almost didn’t catch it. She called back and listened again. It was there. It had just shown up like that, out of the blue. She only wished she would get back the ability to breathe. It wasn’t that she wouldn’t have had the money to get through the two weeks. She’d been squirreling away money for months, because winter was coming, and winter was no joke in Mattatuck, New York. She’d never get through it living in her car. She needed enough for the first and last month’s rent on a small apartment somewhere. It would be easier if she could rent the cheapest apartment around. The cheapest apartments were in neighborhoods that wouldn’t have her. She wondered if there was something ironic about that. When she was growing up, the issue was always whether or not black people could rent apartments in white neighborhoods. Now there were black neighborhoods no white person could rent an apartment in, and the landlords didn’t bother to pretend they were doing something other than what they were doing. They weren’t crazy enough to want a dead tenant and a lot of attention from the police.