“I don’t need any more leave time.”Too late, I added, “Sir.”
If my tone surprised him, it didn’t show on his face.He let that first, fraught moment pass, and then he said, “I was thinking maybe you might want to talk to someone.It doesn’t have to be me, of course.But, if you’ve got a minute, you could let me buy you a drink.”
And get myself put on leave again, I thought.Back in that house.Back in that house with nowhere to go and nothing to do.The weight of it on my chest made it hard to breathe.
I pushed back from the desk, snatched up my phone, and said, “Actually, I was just heading out.”
12
The sun was just beginning to set as I drove out of Wahredua.The first few miles felt like one long, extended heart attack.If he put me on leave again.Had Eddie Wheeler called and complained?Peterson hadn’t said anything about that, so maybe not.If he hadn’t, it was even worse.What had put me on Peterson’s radar?I’d slipped up before.Gotten careless.Forgotten.Do this, and do this, and do this, and everybody will still think you’re human.Darnell and that fucking sticker chart.But I’d showered.My clothes were presentable.Hell, I was drinking less.
Maybe, I considered, it really was what Peterson had said: he’d meant to say something about Tipearlier, that was all.I mean, Tip had gotten a face full of glass.He’d almost lost an eye.It didn’t take a genius to put two and two together.
As I drove, the tightness in my ribcage eased.It was that time of year, the days still getting longer and longer, the evenings stretched out and golden.Once I left the city, I drove past fields and farms.The pastures were still a rich green, and the new corn was just breaking through the soil.The ground rolled here, the road cutting over and around and through limestone bluffs, and when I crested a rise, I could see for miles.The air was hazy with humidity, but the low, oblique light made it feel like I could pick out everything, every detail rendered with perfect clarity.
The Beaver Trap was like all the other little sex shops and strip joints that studded I-70: it had corrugated panels for walls and a sheet metal roof, and when it rained, it must have sounded like you were getting a lap dance inside a maraca.The building had been painted a dusty pink, but along the base, you could see where it had once been tan, the color of an off-brand Fleshlight.The parking lot was gravel, and a billboard near the highway depicted female silhouettes—although no woman, ever,had possessed that tits-to-hips ratio.The background of the sign was the same faded pink as the building, and in swooping black letters that someone had probably thought looked elegant, it said, THE BEAVER TRAP – GENTLEMEN’S CLUB – FREE ENTRY – FREE FOOD – GET LUCKY TONIGHT!If you ate at the Beaver Trap, I thought, you’d be lucky if all you took away from the evening was chlamydia of the stomach.
In true Missouri fashion, about two hundred yards past the Beaver Trap was another billboard.This one said REPENT AND BELIEVE – JESUS IS COMING SOON.Some wiseacre had struck through COMING with spray paint and, below it, corrected the spelling to CUMMING.Below was printed KINGDOM CITY BIBLE CHURCH, and then a big arrow pointed to another post-frame building down the highway that had, until about six months ago, been a discount flooring warehouse.You saw stuff like that all over the place out here.About twenty miles outside Jeff City, there was a big sign that said something about tolerance, and then some jackass hadput up aConfederate flag next to it.
When I got out of the car, the sun was touching down between the trees, and the shadows raced past me so long and deep that it was almost night.Music pounded inside the building, the steady rhythm of the bass vibrating on blown speakers.A single door—steel, and looking more like a fire door than the entrance to a classy gentlemen’s club—had a small window reinforced with wire, and behind the glass hung a neon XXX sign.
I stepped into a vestibule.It was cramped—a coat rack, an umbrella holder, and one of those free newspaper stands had been crammed in there.The newspapers were all gone; I figured a lot of guys came for the reading material.Two doors led off the vestibule.One had a sign that had clearly been printed in a home office, and in black and white, it said bluntly, SEX SHOP.The door was glass, but blackout film made it impossible to see inside.You know, to preserve the innocence of youth.The other door didn’t have a sign.I guess they figured if you didn’t know why you were here, at this point, they couldn’t help you.
Inside, the thud of the music—and the buzz of the blown speaker—met me like a wall.It was a large, dark room, and I’d been right about the corrugated metal walls—I felt like I was standing inside a tin can with some asshole playing his boom box next to my ear.The stage took up one side of the room.At some point, the stage floor had been meant to look like a mirror, but they’d done it with some cheap application, apparently, because the reflective covering was chipped and peeling.A girl who might have been twenty, in nothing but a G-string, stood at the edge of the stage, leaning out to talk to a heavyset, bearded man who looked old enough to be her grandfather.From what I could pick up over the music, she was asking about his wife’s gout.
The bar—if you could still call it that—took up another large portion of the room.A few years back, the upstanding citizens of Missouri had finally scored a victory for morality, including new regulations for exotic dance parlors, strip joints, and your all-purpose titty bars.Among other things, these new regulations prohibited full nudity, the sale of alcohol, and touching—or even close proximity—between the dancers and the patrons.A lot of people thought that might kill off the industry, since the whole reason guys went to a place like the Beaver Trap was to see titties, get hammered, and hopefully have some fleeting moment of human contact.But it hadn’t.Behind the bar, neon signs for different beers hung dark and dusty, but the Beaver Trap was still open for business, and they even had a guy working the bar—white, in his thirties, his long dark hair slicked back and a silver chain glinting around his neck.He must have felt me watching him because he raised his head and caught my eye.The smell of pancake syrup and fried food made me glance around until I saw the buffet table set up under the red glow of warming lamps—fried chicken, it looked like, and French toast sticks.When I looked back, the guy behind the bar was still staring at me.
I made my way over to him.The music changed.Overhead, a disco ball began to spin.Snowflake light whirled and spun across the room.At one of the tables I passed, a man in overalls, who was tearing strips of meat off a chicken thigh with his teeth, wiped at the dancing flecks on his shirt until he realized what they were.
When I took a stool, the bartender gave me one of thosesupnods.He was bigger than he’d looked—part of that had been the distance, and part of it was the fact that he was dressed all in black.Big arms.Big hands.
“Lola Wheeler,” I said.
He shrugged.
“Lola Wheeler,” I shouted over the music.“She dances here.”
He shook his head.
“I need to talk to her.”
“Don’t know her,” he shouted back.“Sorry, buddy.”
The twentysomething girl on the stage had climbed down and was sitting on Granddad’s lap now, riding him like he was a rented mule.Her tits bounced in his face.No pasties, I noticed.Strikes one and two for the Beaver Trap.Of course, this wasn’t my jurisdiction, and even if it had been, coming in here like a swinging dick probably wasn’t the right move.I wondered whowassupposed to be regulating a place like this.
“Beer?”I called to the bartender.
“Bud, Bud Light, Michelob Ultra.”
“Bud Light,” I said.
He waited, so I dug out cash, and then he handed over the bottle.His fingers bumped mine, and it might have been an accident, but he looked me in the eye again, and I knew it wasn’t.
The beer was strike three.
I took out my badge.“You’re not supposed to be selling alcohol.”
His look turned sullen.He shrugged again.
