It was after eleven by now, but I figured Lonnie’d still be up. He kept pretty strange hours. The only way I’d miss him was if he’d gone on a repo run-either that or out working his latest line of business: bounty hunting. Lonnie’d gotten bored with repossessing cars the last few months and decided to expand his area of operations into snagging bail jumpers. When things got bad, money-wise, I’d make repo runs with him to pick up extra cash. So far, though, I’d resisted the temptation to join him in this new venture. After all, a Mercedes won’t pull a .357 on you when you try to take it back.
The side street off Gallatin Road that led to Lonnie’s place was crypt-black, cemetery-silent. What few streetlights there were had long since been shot out by the Death Rangers, the local East Nashville motorcycle gang. They sounded and looked ominous, but truth was they were largely just a bunch of aging, beer-drinking unemployables. Mostly harmless-as long as you didn’t mess with them-Jerry Garcia look-alikes … Their clubhouse was locked up tight, its windows cinder-blocked solid.
I pulled to a stop in front of the chain-link fence gate that was right on the street and maybe fifty feet from a pale green mobile home with rust streaks down the side. I hit the horn once, then climbed out of the van and rattled the gate. There were lights on inside the trailer, but the rest of the landscape was illuminated only by ambient light. The wrecked automobile hulks that filled Lonnie’s junkyard jutted into the night sky at twisted, bizarre angles.
I stood at the gate waiting for Shadow, Lonnie’s timber shepherd, who was absolute queen of everything inside that chain-link fence. I knew better than to go through the unlocked gate without getting her permission first.
No Shadow, though. Where was she? I rattled the chain-link fence again and whistled, then backed away and looked up. I knew there were security cameras mounted on the utility poles, some with night-vision capability. Lonnie was a freak on security. Nobody got near him without him knowing it first. I shook the gate again, the metallic noise abrupt and jarring in the night.
C’mon, damn it, Lonnie, where the hell are you?
The door to the mobile home opened. A lanky form in jeans and a white T-shirt stood in the doorway, shrouded by the blue, flickering light of a television. An arm raised, motioning me in.
I slid the gate aside, then hopped back in the van and pulled it inside. I shut the gate back and stepped through the door just in time to catch a bright silver can of beer that came sailing through the air toward me. I grabbed it quickly, smoothly.
Lonnie pushed the Frigidaire door shut and grinned. “You’re getting better.”
“Hell, I’ve had to. One of these days, you’re going to take my head off.” I looked around. “I need your phone, man. Quick …”
He tossed me a portable telephone. I pulled out the antenna and switched it on. “Where’s Shadow?” I said absentmindedly.
He didn’t answer. I looked up. Lonnie’s face darkened. “Vet’s.”
“Oh,” I said. “Bad?”
“Maybe. Won’t know till Monday.”
“Damn, man. I’m sorry,” I said, punching in the numbers.
He turned the beer up, his Adam’s apple bobbing in time to his swallowing. Then he uncocked his arm and stared at me a moment. “Yeah, I know. Me, too.”
“C’mon, babe,” I whispered into the phone. “Answer. Be home. Tell me you took a night off for once.” The phone rang four times, then the answering machine picked up.
“Aw, hell,” I muttered. When the message played through and the beep came, I said: “Marsha? You there? C’mon, lady. Pick up if you’re there.”
Nothing. I punched the hang-up button.
“How’d it go in Louisville?” Lonnie asked.
“Great,” I said. “Probably win a freaking Oscar or something. Got film of the guy slam-dunking a basketball about thirty times in an hour.”
“Jesus. What a moron. Hey, dude.” Lonnie sniffed. “You’re getting kind of gamy, you know that?”
“Why don’t you install a shower in that damn van of yours?”
“Well, pardon me, Sam Spade.…”
“I didn’t expect to find you here, anyway,” I said. “I figured you’d either be on a run or back at the apartment.”
“Just got in about an hour ago,” he answered. He raised the can to his lips and drained about half of it. “Pulled down a new Lincoln Town Car. Guy followed me in his pickup truck. Getting smart with me, I guess. I decided to stick around in case he tried to get it back.”
I popped the top on the beer can and downed a healthy third of it, then set it down next to a filthy, oil-covered gear of some kind that occupied a corner of Lonnie’s scarred coffee table. I don’t know why I even noticed it; the trailer was littered with loose auto parts, electronic components, tools. Lonnie saw me staring at the gear.
“CV joint off an ’85 Accord,” he said. “Ellis’s wife blew one out the other day.” Ellis was one of Lonnie’s freelance repo men: big guy, tobacco chewer, half a dozen teeth left if he’s lucky. Laughs a lot, gets on my nerves.
“What in the hell is going on down at the morgue?”
I asked, aware of how irritable I must have sounded.
“Has this whole damn city gone crazy?”
“What do you mean gone?” he asked. “Try already there.” Lonnie reached for the television clicker and started rotating through the channels. He stopped on the local NBC outlet.
“Look,” I said, “they’ve preempted Saturday Night Live.”
“Must be some real shit going down,” Lonnie commented, his voice a monotone.
The picture was mostly flashing lights: blues and reds and yellows and whites like I’d seen at the foot of the First Avenue hill. I recognized the curve in front of General Hospital where First Avenue becomes Hermitage Avenue. Police barricades were everywhere. Fire engines sat hunkered down on the sidewalk, their engines racing. The orange-and-white paramedic vans lined up one after the other all the way down the hill.
“As you can see,” an announcer’s voice narrated off-screen, “police have cordoned off the area and no one is getting through. We’re waiting for a police briefing, which is scheduled to begin momentarily.”
I sat down on the couch, then shifted around trying to get comfortable. I pulled my right hip up off the torn vinyl. My wallet, packed to the flaps with cards, licenses, and scraps of paper, was giving me a cramp in my butt. I pulled it out, then it hit me like the memory of a forgotten appointment. Tucked in a corner, scribbled on a cocktail napkin, was a telephone number that only a couple of people possessed.
I grabbed the phone off the coffee table and punched the numbers in, not knowing what to expect. I’d never used the number before. Never had to.
Marsha picked up on the first ring. “Yeah.”
“You okay?”
She let out a sigh that was as deep as it was long. “Yeah, I’m okay. Where are you?”
“Lonnie’s,” I said, trying to keep the alarm in my voice to a minimum. “I just got back in town tonight. What the hell’s going on down there.”
“You tell me,” she said. “All I know is one minute I’m checking in a fat dead lady, the next Kay’s in here screaming about a bunch of people with guns yelling about Jesus and Judgment Day and all kinds of crap.”
Kay Delacorte was the head administrator at the morgue, a real take-charge cowgirl. If Kay went into the cooler and yelled, “Jump,” you’d half expect the stiffs to say: “How high?”
“Are you okay? Is anybody hurt?”
“Oh, no,” she said. “They’ll never get in here. Plus we’ve got a generator that’ll give us limited backup power, as well as this cellular phone. But the cops won’t tell us much besides lay low and stay away from the windows.”
“I don’t know what they’re worried about,” I said. “The windows are all bulletproof.” The Nashville morgue had thick Plexiglas windows and doors like a bunker. Whoever designed the facility had a feeling that someday, somebody might want a body back bad enough to kill for it.
“Yeah, but nobody knows whether these guys are bluffing or not. They claim to have LAW 80s.”
“What’n the hell’s a LAW 80?” I asked.