The Devil All the Time - Donald Ray Pollock [62]
“Jesus Christ, did you take any of it?”
“You gotta be kidding me, right? These ain’t the kind of people you steal from.” She picked up one of the french fries from the greasy cardboard container sitting in front of Carl, dabbed it into a glob of ketchup. All evening, she had thought about hopping in the car and taking off with the envelope.
“But he’s your brother, goddamn it. He ain’t gonna do nothing to you.”
“Shit, Carl, the way Lee is now, I doubt if he would think twice about getting rid of us. At least not you anyway.”
“Well, what did you do with it then? You still got it on you?”
“Hell no. When he came in I just gave it to him and played dumb.” She looked at the french fry in her hand, dropped it in the ashtray. “He still didn’t seem none too happy, though,” she said.
Still thinking about his brother-in-law, Carl turned onto Vine Street. Every time he ran into Lee, which, thank God, wasn’t that often, the sonofabitch asked him, “So where you working, Carl?” He’d give anything to see his ass caught in a jam he couldn’t get out of by flashing that big fucking badge around. Up ahead, he saw two boys, maybe fifteen or sixteen years old, moving slowly along the sidewalk. He pulled over and shut off the engine, rolled down the window and took several gulps of the cold air. He watched them split up at the end of the block, one going east, the other west. He rolled down the passenger’s-side window and started the car, drove to the stop sign and made a right.
“Hey,” Carl said, when he pulled up beside the skinny boy wearing a dark blue jacket with Meade High School stitched on the back of it in white. “You need a ride?”
The boy stopped and looked at the driver behind the wheel of the dumpy station wagon. The man’s sweaty face was shiny in the glare from the streetlight. A brown stubble covered his fat jowls and neck. His eyes were beady and cruel, like a rodent’s. “What’d you say?” the boy asked.
“I’m just riding around,” Carl said. “Maybe we could go get some beer.” He swallowed and caught himself before he started begging.
The boy smirked. “You got the wrong guy, mister,” he said. “I ain’t built that way.” Then he started walking again, faster this time.
“Fuck you then,” Carl said under his breath. He sat in the car and watched the boy disappear into a house a few doors down. Though a little disappointed, he was mostly relieved. He knew he wouldn’t have been able to stop himself if he got the punk in the car. He could almost picture it, the little bastard lying in the snow turned inside out. Someday, he thought, he was going to have to do a winter scene.
He drove back to the White Cow Diner, saw that Bodecker was gone now. He parked the car and went inside, sat at the counter and ordered a cup of coffee. His hands were still shaking. “Damn, it’s cold out,” he said to the waitress, a tall, skinny girl with a red nose.
“That’s Ohio for you,” she said.
“I’m not used to it,” Carl said.
“Oh, so you ain’t from around here?”
“No,” Carl said, taking a sip of the coffee and pulling out one of his dog dicks. “I’m passing through from California.” Then he frowned and looked down at the cigar. He wasn’t sure why he said that, unless maybe he wanted to impress the girl. The mere mention of the state usually made him sick. He and Sandy had moved out there just a few weeks after they got married. Carl had thought he would find success there, taking photographs of movie stars and beautiful people, getting Sandy some work as a model, but instead they ended up broke and hungry, and he finally sold her to two men he met outside a fly-by-night talent agency who wanted to make a dirty movie. She had refused at first, but that night, after he plied her with vodka and promises, they drove their old beater up into the foggy Hollywood Hills, came to a small, dark cottage with newspapers taped over the windows. “This might be our big break,” Carl said as he led her to the door. “Make some connections.”
Besides the two men he’d made the deal with, there were