Night kills

54

Tom Coulter stationed himself at the small wooden table where he'd sat drinking last night in Rodney's Roadhouse. The mingled odors of stale beer and stale sweat were in the air, along with tobacco smoke. Nobody in Rodney's was afraid to inhale.

The place was narrow but long, with a bar to the right of the entrance, tables to the left, a few of them back beyond the bar where the light wasn't so good. Most of the light was provided by illuminated signs advertising beer: a hunter holding up a bottle, label out, posed near a dead buck; a girl in a skimpy bikini casually sipping brew while water-skiing; a famous baseball player, retired and free of contractual constraints, regarding a half-empty frosty mug and grinning with a foam mustache. Mixed in with the beer signs were a few advertising cigarettes. Like Rodney's itself, most of the ads seemed to date back about twenty years.

Coulter's table had old initials carved in it, worn almost smooth with the grain. It was the farthest table from the bar, near a short hall leading to the back exit, which was a screen door poked full of holes. From where he sat he could sip his beer and observe everything going on in Rodney's, and at the same time get out in a hurry if it became necessary. Beyond the back entrance was the swamp, where Coulter had lost himself before and could again. City boy that he was, he had come to regard the swamp as a reliable friend on call to lend him shelter.

Rodney himself, a guy about fifty, built like a potato sack with a lumpy face to match, wandered back now and then to see that Coulter had enough beer in his bottle. It wasn't the kind of place that furnished glasses. It took two of those trips before Coulter noticed that Rodney had an artificial right eye that didn't match his left. Or was it the other way around?

It was getting to be evening, and the roadhouse regulars were filtering in. Half a dozen guys who looked like construction laborers were at the bar. Two homely women in jeans and sleeveless T-shirts perched on the last two stools at the end of the bar near the entrance. Coulter had figured it out on the first night that they were whores working the place. One of them, Cathy Lee, chunky and obviously proud of her generous cleavage, had approached him. She had a tangle of blond hair, wore way too much rose-scented perfume, and had a sweet twenty-year-old's face with forty-year-old eyes. He'd bought her a drink and strung her along, but not so much that she hadn't deserted him for a more likely prospect.

Cathy Lee sensed he was watching her and turned her head and nodded, smiling. She wasn't coming over, though. She figured sooner or later they'd get together. Coulter thought that under ordinary circumstances she'd be right. Cathy Lee might have been his going-away present to himself, only there wasn't the time. He had other ideas for tonight.

About half the tables had people sitting at them now. The air wasn't good. It was humid from the swamp, as well as heavy with the unpleasant smells trying to crowd one another out. Conversation and laughter were getting louder, and speakers mounted high on the walls were playing a lament by some country singer about a man who'd shot at his wife's lover and accidentally killed the wife. A guy with my kind of luck, Coulter thought.

He was particularly interested in two rough-looking guys at one of the tables. One was about Coulter's height but even skinnier and had a scraggly red beard, though the hair on his head was brown. The other guy was short but broad and had his head shaved. Had-guess what-a strand of barbed wire tattooed around both oversized biceps.

Swamp turkeys, Coulter thought. Every once in a while someone would approach the two men. What looked like money would change hands; backs would be slapped; high fives would be given; smiles would be exchanged. Coulter eared in and made out that the tall skinny guy's name was Joe Ray. The short, broad one was called Juan, though he didn't look as if he had a drop of Latin blood in him.

Coulter figured they were dealing drugs, most likely meth. He'd fallen behind lately on the news, but he knew this part of Looziana was meth country. There'd been an explosion that had killed two guys cooking the stuff in a house trailer not far down the state road, and the sheriff had promised action in shutting down meth labs. Coulter smiled. A sheriff. Wild West. And the hayseeds don't know the biggest desperado in the country's sitting right here among them drinking draft Bud.

They'd crap in their drawers if they did know, and that I'm sitting here with a plan.

Coulter hadn't been lounging around wasting time in Rodney's. He'd been watching and waiting, figuring things out.

He knew he wouldn't be safe around here much longer. He couldn't afford to stay anywhere very long. He'd stashed the big F-150 truck back in the swamp and had been more or less living out of it. He knew he shouldn't move it around much. Its description and plate number must have been broadcast all over the country.

Joe Ray and Juan, the meth guys, had a truck. A beat-to-shit old Dodge pickup nobody'd look twice at in swamp country, mostly rust and dents, but with a legal license. And they were bound to have drug money stashed wherever they lived.

Coulter had the F-150 out in the gravel parking lot tonight, parked way back near the trees. Black swamp mud was artfully packed on its license plate so you couldn't read most of the numbers and letters, in case anyone got curious. This model of truck, being so popular, was one of several F-150s on the lot, so Coulter felt pretty safe about leaving it there.

When the meth guys left Rodney's tonight, he'd follow them to wherever it was they slept, hold them up at gunpoint, and trade trucks with them. He'd have to explain to the dumb jerkoffs how things worked. They wouldn't report their truck being stolen, because if caught with it, Coulter would blow the whistle on their illegal meth operation. The F-100 they could paint, and then maybe arrange for a junkyard title and drive it as long as they wanted. Guys like them had the connections. Yokels were into trucks.

Coulter figured that when the two meth guys thought about it, they'd be glad for the deal. Sure they'd lose some cash, but they'd be gaining an expensive new truck in exchange for their rolling piece of crap. Some trading up.

The other thing about his plan, before he drove away in their junker and with all their cash, was that he would be sure to let them know they'd been held up by the most wanted fugitive in the country. Couple of hicks, it'd probably be the biggest thing in their lives. But they wouldn't tell anyone. They couldn't. They'd have an interest in him not being caught. Not with their rust-bucket truck, anyway. Also, they'd probably secretly be on his side. Underdogs stuck together tight, just like the smelly swamp mud around this place.

Pleased with himself, Coulter sipped his beer and through half-closed eyes observed money changing hands.

Money that would soon be in his hands.