Naked Prey

8

MARGERY SINGLETON LOOKED like a green heron-a sharp-billed stalking bird with a mouth like a rip in a piece of rawhide, an arrowhead nose, rattlesnake eyes; her eyebrows plucked naked and redrawn with a green pencil. She worked the first shift at Elysian Manor, pushing patients to and fro, cleaning up after them, rolling pills when a registered nurse wasn't available. Her best friend, Flo Anderson, was a registered nurse, having put in her two years at Fargo, and they'd worked out a system where, if somebody needed a shot or to get blood taken, Margery could do it and Flo could sign. The patients, most of whom had Alzheimer's, didn't know one way or the other.

Margery heard about the hanging of Warr and Cash from a breathless young nurse's aide who came back from lunch bright eyed with a tale she'd heard from a sheriff's deputy at the minimart.

"They're hanging down there, naked as jaybirds, all purple and frozen. The woman's tongue was sticking out like this:" She tilted her head, hung her tongue out of the side of her mouth and crossed her eyes. Straightening, she added in a lower voice, "They said that the black guy had a penis that was about ten inches long."

"That's bullshit," Margery said, her rattlesnake eyes fixing the young woman. "I seen two thousand dicks since I been in this place and there ain't been one of them more than seven."

"How many black men have been in here?" the nurse asked, an eyebrow going up. Had the old bat there.

"Hanged in a tree?"

"That's what they say. Do you think Loren might know more about it?"

"I'll find out," Margery said. She looked at her watch. She had another two hours before she could get off.

A supervisor named Burt stuck his head into the station where they were talking. "Old man Barrows got shit all over the couch. Clean it up, okay?"

Burt continued down the hall and Margery muttered, "Clean it up yourself, asshole." But she went to get her spray bottle and sponge, and the nurse's aide said, as she left, "If you hear anything from Loren, let me know. I mean, jeez."

LOREN SINGLETON FINALLY rolled out of bed at two o'clock. He'd been unable to sleep much, dozing off only to see, in his dreams, Deon and Jane hanging from a tree. He stretched, scratched, went into the bathroom. As he shaved, looking in the mirror, he started thinking about his latest Cadillac restoration. The car was at Calb's, and that could be inconvenient. The more he shaved, the more inconvenient it seemed. He finished shaving, showered, brushed his teeth, got dressed, and called Gene Calb.

Calb came on the phone and said, "Katina said you'd heard."

"Woke me up on the clock radio this morning," Singleton said. "I thought it might be a good idea to move the Caddy outa there, you know, until things quiet down."

Calb nodded. "Yes. Right away. Where do you want it?"

"My garage. You got somebody who could drive it down for me? I'll drive them back."

"I'll get Sherm, he isn't doing anything. So-what do you think?"

Singleton shook his head. "I don't know. I wonder if it has anything to do with Joe? You think they were fighting? I mean, Deon never said anything."

"I'm completely confused," Calb said. "If you told me shit was Shinola, I'd just nod my head and agree."

"Same with me. When can you move the car?"

"Right now. We're closing everything down, moving everything out. Sherm'll be there in fifteen minutes."

"I'll be outside waiting."

"Listen, Loren-we're really counting on you. You gotta keep an eye out. This is why you got the job."

"I understand. You can count on me."

THE CAR SHUFFLE took forty minutes. When it was done, Singleton went downtown, probed for information, got small pieces, and one essential fact: nobody knew anything. He called Calb, told him that. At three-thirty, he was back home. As he always did, when he first got home, he checked his money. He kept it in the basement, inside the holes in a row of concrete blocks. Maybe, he thought, he ought to move it. Get a bank box far away, maybe in Minot, or somewhere. If anybody looked at him seriously, the BCA people, they'd find the money and then the cat would be out of the bag.

The money. He didn't know what to do with it. He'd bought some expensive boots, another old Caddy, some good breather gear for painting his cars.

When he got his first lump-sum payment from Calb, he'd made the mistake of showing it to his mom. She'd claimed it, most of it, and had come back every week since, demanding more. Then he'd introduced her to Jane, and they'd gotten their heads together, and when the big money came in, she'd taken most of that.

Singleton had stood up to her-a little bit, anyway-and claimed fifty thousand. Fifty thousand would almost get him a small shop somewhere. A Morton building, maybe, with space to work on a couple of Caddys at once, and maybe even space to rig up a paint booth.

Big dreams…