Stealing Sturgis Read online

  “Hope so.”

  “That Raylene, she’s something else,” Randy continued. “Fiery temper or not, you’re one lucky man. I bet she’s dynamite in the sack. Don’t look at me like that, I’m just funning you. I never had a woman that good looking, though some of those college girls could give Raylene a run for her money.”

  “College?” Lee said, surprised. “Randy, when’d you ever go to college?”

  “Not attended, just went. It was after I got busted on that construction rap. Graduated from the JD club and didn’t want to go back to humping two-by-fours all day. A buddy of mine in lockup told me his sister went to JMU and partied all the time, never went to classes or took a job, showed for exams if she felt like it. He asked me if I wanted to give it a try, stay with his sister awhile. Hell, yes, I did. Girls, booze, and I don’t got to pay? Count me in.”

  Lee took the truck to Route 3 and headed away from Brumley. He kept looking over at Randy as he drove. “How was that?”

  Randy leaned back and cracked his knuckles over his head. “God, it was awesome. More young booty than you could shake a stick at. Beer, dope, music. University cops are a bunch of chumps, so there was hardly ever any trouble. Those college kids live in la-la land, don’t know what real life is like.”

  “How’d you make any money?”

  Randy shrugged. “Two weeks in, my buddy’s sister wants us to pay something or leave. Says her roommates are bitching about us living there for free, sleeping on the couch and eating their food. So I tell my buddy, look, go ask your sister if you can borrow her car, just for an afternoon. So we get the car and drive over to this one house that always had parties. People coming and going all the time. No one even knew who lived there half the time.

  “So we go over to this house in the middle of the day. Everyone’s either hungover in their rooms or at class. We walk in and look around. Big-screen TV, stereo, and about two hundred CDs lying around. We just start unhooking the stuff and loading it into the car.”

  “You’re kidding me,” Lee said.

  “I shit you not. Best part? Kid comes down from upstairs, wearing a pair of boxers, nothing else. Just got out of bed—it’s like two in the afternoon. He says, ‘Hey, what’s going on?’ I just said, ‘Jerry told us to pick this stuff up. There’s a big party tonight at Kappa Sig.’ I’m hoping to hell that none of this stuff is this kid’s, y’know? He just look at me and says, ‘Okay, cool,’ and goes into the kitchen. Grabs a bowl of cornflakes and heads back upstairs.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it. My buddy and I just took it all to a pawnshop. Every college town has them—those kids would sell anything for beer—and sold the whole load.”

  “You check for names on the back this time? Make sure nothing was stenciled there, like please arrest me, I just stole this?”

  “Ha, ha, ha. Yes, I did, as a matter of fact. Plus, I had my buddy go in to sell the stuff. No sense in taking chances. We had fun doing that for a while ’til we were afraid somebody would see us at a party and put two and two together. So we took the show on the road, and headed to UVa, Virginia Tech, Mary Washington. You name the school, we’ve probably been there. You can make a hell of a living lifting stuff off of college kids. It’s like a never-ending source of income. Every four years, a new batch comes in with their computers and credit cards.”

  “Why’d you quit?”

  Randy sighed and pushed back in his seat. “It got boring. And the girls started to notice we weren’t exactly nineteen anymore. They spook easy, get all weirded out if you aren’t their exact age. Also, I slipped up. Went off on my own one day, tossed this one kid’s apartment near VCU, down in Richmond. Boosted a laptop computer, about three hundred in cash, and—lo and behold—about a pound of weed in a ziplock bag. I walked outside and straight into the arms of Richmond’s finest.”

  Randy shook his head, remembering. “Get this. They’d gotten a tip about the kid, the one I was robbing, not me. Apparently he was some kind of major dope dealer on campus. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Again. First time I ever got ahead copping to B and E. Otherwise they’d have had me on all this punk’s drug charges. Took me two days to convince them I wasn’t the other guy.”

  “Not all fun and games, then,” Lee said, looking over.

  Slouched back in the seat, Randy said, “Nope. Fun while it lasted, but that’s the one they sent me to Green Rock for, where I was before I came back to Brumley.”

  “I hope I got better luck than that,” Lee said.

  “Me, too, bud,” Randy said, pulling his baseball cap over his eyes.

  Raylene glared as she watched Lee and Randy pull away in the truck. Damn that Lee Baylor. He’d hardly said a word to her. She’d wanted to give him a real hiding about this stupid idea. Instead, she got to stand at the door and get undressed by that creep, Randy. God, he wasn’t any different than he had been in high school. When he wasn’t punching other guys, or lighting lockers on fire, he was trying to cop a feel every chance he could get. Not much different than every other guy in the place, including the teachers, really, but Randy had been especially repulsive.

  She slammed the door shut and threw herself down on the couch. She should clear the place out and go back to her mom and dad’s—wouldn’t that be a surprise for Lee when he got back from his little trip. If she could stand listening to her mama talk for more than half an hour, it wouldn’t be such a bad idea. But she’d have to hear it from her, all that crap about bad life decisions and preserving herself for the right man. What did that mean? Did her mama think she was still a virgin? Daddy, at least, was a little more to the point, telling her to drop Lee and go find herself somebody with a future and some money. If it wouldn’t mean proving her parents right, she’d be in the car now, heading back home.

  Maybe she’d call some of her old flames, see how that sat with Mr. Baylor. He’d come back from his trip and say, “Honey, what’re you doing?” And she’d hold up her hand and say, “I don’t see no ring on this finger.” That’d burn him good. It made her feel a little guilty, but there was no way he and Randy were just off to sell bikes. Her mama hadn’t dropped her down the cellar steps when she was born. Thousands of bikers meant booze and broads and zero inhibitions. And with Randy Watson, of all people, as his guiding angel, Lee was as good as gone.

  The more she thought about it, the angrier she got. She was just supposed to sit here in a damn white-trash trailer, answering calls from the bank, like a good little wifey when they weren’t even married, and Lee was off living large and screwing anything that moved. She couldn’t call any of her girlfriends—hell, their husbands and boyfriends were doing the same thing or worse. They’d all just bitch about it together, but it wouldn’t change anything. She sure couldn’t call her parents. They’d either talk her into coming home or, worse, come down and make her life hell.

  Raylene thought about it some more, then grabbed her phone. Her brother was about the only one she could trust to talk about something like this. He did some scary things for some scary people down in Roanoke and elsewhere. He was never very clear about what his work was the few times he’d come home to visit. But he’d do just about anything for her. She was the one that gave him his name. His parents had named him Russell, but Raylene had called him Baby Boy since he’d been born and the name had stuck. Now, when you’d think a man would punch someone for calling him Baby, he’d twist their nose off for calling him Russell.

  He picked up on the third ring, his voice low and gravelly. It was the way Frankenstein would answer the phone if he could. “Yeah?”

  “Baby Boy, it’s your sweet sister, Raylene.”

  “Hey, Ray,” he said, like he always did. “How’re you?”

  “Not so good, hon. I need your advice.”

  “You need my advice? This must be serious.”

  “Oh, it is,” she said, and proceeded to tell him about Lee and Randy. With certain embellishments, of course. He was quiet as she talked about it. S
o quiet, in fact, that it scared her a little, like what had started as a fun phone call was, well, business. She was so taken with her own telling of it, though, that she was sniffling by the end.

  “They think they’re going to sell Lee’s old Harley for cash?”

  “That’s what they said. Not that I believe it. They’re just going to get themselves some hookers and booze and get lost for a week.”

  “How much does he think he’s going to get for that thing?”

  “The bike?” Raylene asked. “How should I know? If he thinks it’s going to get him out from under the trailer and the garage it’s gotta be a bundle. That bank man said he owed eighty, ninety thousand dollars.”

  When she was done, Baby Boy was quiet for a second, then said, “You want me to go after them?”

  That startled her. “What?”

  “I said, hon, you want me to go after them? Bring ’em back, teach Lee a lesson about staying home, taking care of you.”

  “What about Randy?”

  “Bring him back, too, you want. Or part of him. Whatever you want me to do to the fucker.”

  God, she hadn’t quite expected this. “I don’t know, Baby Boy. I just wanted to talk, you know—”

  He made a noise. “These two are driving to South Dakota doing Lord knows what to who while you’re at home alone. How much money did Lee leave you with?”

  “I—I don’t know,” she said, surprised. That hadn’t even occurred to her. “I haven’t checked.”

  “Maybe you should. I’ll bet it ain’t much. You think Randy’s paying for the trip?”

  It was her turn to be quiet. “Damn, you’re probably right,” she said.

  “I know I’m right,” he said. “Look, I can’t do it today—I’ve got some stuff to take care of—but I can take off tomorrow.”

  “What about your…boss?”

  “Dougie?” he asked. “He don’t need me every day. I’ll be back before the week’s done.”

  “You’d do that?”

  “Anything for my big sister. And the chance to twist Randy Watson’s neck. Always hated that piece of trash.”

  “You won’t hurt Lee,” she said, worried.

  “Nah. I don’t know what you see in him, but that ain’t my business. I’ll just talk him into coming back.”

  “All right, why don’t you do it, then,” Raylene said, amazing herself. She was sending her brother off like some kind of bounty hunter.

  Baby Boy grunted and she heard him click a pen. “Okay, sweetie, tell me what you know.”

  Chapter Seven

  This is how Baby Boy Jenkins came to work for Dougie Hughes.

  At thirteen, Baby Boy was six feet tall and mean as a bit dog. Some parents, their kids a foot shorter and scared, asked the school board to keep him from playing junior varsity. Two years later and three inches taller, he was playing football on the varsity team, when most kids were still finding their voice and getting Indian rubs from seniors in the hall between classes. At eighteen, he was topping out at six-seven, two hundred and ninety pounds, and was the starting left guard and nose tackle. He was better on defense for two simple reasons: he didn’t have to remember plays, and he got to hit people. Most quarterbacks would take a knee to end the play when they saw he’d gotten through the line, which was most of the time. But it didn’t matter to Baby Boy, who fell on them as hard as he could anyway.

  Which is what led to his throwing away what might’ve been a golden opportunity, a ticket to a Division I school after graduation, a first for anyone in the county. Towards the middle of his junior year season, during a night game, he busted through the line and squashed Dwayne McCready, quarterback for archrival Malcolm High. The play was long dead when Baby Boy landed on Dwayne, a kid half his size. Everyone heard the howling as Dwayne’s arm was snapped in two places. A penalty was called, Baby Boy was ejected, and Malcolm got the ball back.

  As he jogged off the field, coach Thomas, face purple and swollen with anger, grabbed Baby Boy’s face mask and began screaming at him. Baby Boy could overlook the spit flying onto his face, and even the constant yanking of his neck when Coach would give the face mask a tug to emphasize each point, but when Coach called him a stupid son of a bitch, Baby Boy came around with a ham-size open palm. It connected with the right side of Coach’s head, fracturing a cheekbone, damaging an optic nerve, and knocking out three teeth. This was in full display of most of Brumley’s police force, much of the school board, and the half dozen or so scouts from big-name colleges who’d come solely to watch the young behemoth play football, not sock his coach.

  To make matters worse, Thomas was also the school principal. Baby Boy was expelled for a year, got crossed off every college recruiting roster he was on (listed as “unworkable”), and narrowly missed jail time for assault and battery.

  College looked like it was nonstarter, which was a severe disappointment to the Jenkins family, not to mention the county, but was just all right with him. Not old enough to drink, he’d already been making a good five hundred a week as a bouncer at Bubba’s on Friday nights and Little Dick’s Dirt Shack on Saturdays, busting skulls and looking mean. It was good money and he had fun doing it. Bouncing reminded him of the football field, sometimes, when he broke through the line dancers at Little Dick’s, knocking them ass over tin cups as he went to clear a fight. More often than not, the whole thing was all over except for the crying by the time he got to the scrap. He’d loom over them—about six-nine in his Timberlands—though sometimes he’d drag one of them outside for the hell of it and slap them around, even if they’d stopped fighting already. Or hadn’t been fighting at all.

  About two years after what should’ve been his high school graduation, Baby Boy was working the door at Bubba’s on a Friday evening. The few loggers left with jobs in the area liked to drink themselves cross-eyed on Bubba’s two-dollar Alabama Slammer night. They got paid in cash and there were exactly three places within twenty miles to spend it. Bubba’s was the cheapest.

  He could see two of them coming down the street, talking loud and laughing. He knew as soon as he saw them that they were going to make a run at him. It had happened before. Against all logic, some idiots with more guts than sense would go out of their way to pick a fight. Maybe to see if he was all size, with nothing behind it. Or maybe they didn’t care and just wanted to punch and get punched. They were tough, used to scrapping, and weren’t exactly undersized themselves. They had thick hands and deep barrel chests; modern logging was mostly running equipment, but it still put a set of shoulders on you.

  As they stopped in front of him, the one on the left looked Baby Boy up and down, his fists wedged on his hips and grinning. He wore scrubby jeans and a dirty Virginia Tech t-shirt, maroon with yellow lettering. His friend was wide around the waist and was wearing a once-white button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbow. He was grinning, too, showing a mouth missing four front teeth.

  It didn’t take much to get things started. The first one said, “Whistler here thinks you look like a big-city fag in that leather coat.”

  Baby Boy said, “I’ll give you one chance to turn around and walk away.”

  The logger smiled, said something about Baby Boy’s nighttime sleeping arrangements, and it was on.

  They both tried to jump him at once, which is what he expected. Without making a big show of it, he stuck his hand straight out, using his reach to catch the first logger just below the Adam’s apple with two stiff, sausage-size fingers. He staggered back, bent over and gagging. The one named Whistler moved in, aiming a huge kick at Baby Boy’s crotch. Baby Boy twisted a little to his right and caught most of the boot on his hip and butt. It hurt like hell and left a tread-shaped bruise for weeks, but it put Whistler off balance. Baby Boy moved in, smiling.

  With a nose tackle’s speed, he steamrolled Whistler, slamming his shoulder right into the guy’s sternum and gut, knocking the wind out of him. Baby Boy then grabbed the logger by the collar and, while the man made gaspi
ng and sucking noises that sounded like huck, huck, Baby Boy began punching him in the face with a fist the size and weight of a small sandbag. On the fourth blow, the man’s nose flattened against his cheek and he was down.

  He turned around to punish the first one, the mouthy one, when he felt a burning sensation in his back, just under his shoulder blade. What followed was more pain than he could ever remember experiencing, a feeling like someone had shoved a flaming stick into his shoulder and chest. Bellowing, he turned around to see the first logger backing away, looking like he was going to run. Bubba and the other bouncers told Baby Boy later that it took two of them to keep him from beating the logger to death. That’s when they’d found the five-inch shiv still stuck in Baby Boy’s back. Though only halfway in, it was enough to send him to intensive care.

  In the hospital afterwards, laid up with an IV tube strapped to his arm and a cast on his right hand, his parents and older sister, Raylene, came to visit him. His mother, in tears, begged him to find another job or go to a junior college somewhere. His father, looking tired, said nothing, knowing he didn’t have any influence with his son anyway. Raylene, eyes huge, just asked him what it felt like to bust a man’s nose with your fist. They left after an hour or so, to his relief.

  He dozed on and off throughout the afternoon, finally waking, hungry, around four. He was flipping through channels on the TV and waiting for dinner when a small man of about fifty stepped into the room. He had a hesitant look, like he’d picked the wrong room.

  “Russell Jenkins?” the man asked, coming all the way in. He wore a brown suit, with a cream-colored shirt, and a brown tie with a small diamond pattern on it. He held his hands together at the fingers, as if he wished he were holding a hat or a briefcase.

  Baby Boy stared at him. No one but his mother had called him Russell since he was a kid without getting their ass kicked. In his current state, that wasn’t going to happen, so he thought about saying some choice things to the man, but was feeling pretty loopy and strange from the pain medication they had him on. He just kept on staring.