Nowhere Nice (Nick Reid Novels) Read Free Page B

the auto auction on the back of his right hand. There were hounds all over the place—across his torso and down his legs—along with Peabo’s aunt Judy’s tabby cat, Buster, who occupied one entire calf.
    Peabo had come out with his usual brace of questions for K-Lo: Would he get overtime if he worked past five and why exactly not?
    K-Lo told him, like he always did, “No, dammit,” and, “Because.”
    Peabo raised his big pink hand and rubbed his shaved head with it. He said to K-Lo, “Well, all right,” which was what he always said.
    “Where’s Dale?” I asked Peabo. Since they were both big, hulking white guys, they kind of hung together.
    “He was out back yesterday.”
    “We’re sort of looking for him now.”
    Peabo shrugged and then asked K-Lo if he worked past five tomorrow could he maybe draw that overtime he wasn’t drawing today.
    Dale was in the toilet down the hall past K-Lo’s office. The room was barely big enough for the commode and the sink, and a well-fed cat could have walked under the door. Dale stayed constipated from supplements and muscle enhancers and usually just leafed through his latest copy of Muscle Pro for a quarter hour. Then he’d flush and come out to tell everybody in earshot, “Didn’t do no good.”
    I heard him flip a page over. “Hey, Dale,” I said.
    “Yeah.”
    “Got some news.”
    “All right.”
    “That Boudrot, the one you arrested…”
    “Who?”
    “Guy with the meth. You know.”
    “Oh, right.”
    “He ran off from a work crew. Still loose, as far as we know.”
    “So?”
    “Talk is he’s coming after folks. Everybody that did him wrong.” I let that sink in for a moment. “Running buddies mostly but probably you too.”
    “That little fucker?”
    “Killed one guy already.”
    “I guess I’m all right,” he told me. “Got an AK under the bed.”
    Then he slid his Muscle Pro under the door, opened to an oily veiny woman in a bikini. She had massive deltoids, purple eye shadow, and the neck of a lumberjack.
    “What would you do with something like that?”
    “Outrun it, I hope,” I told him.

 
    FOUR
    Tula already had plans to go see a cousin of hers in Baton Rouge, a guy with a couple of kids the age of Tula’s own son, C.J. I decided to swing by and try to make sure she took her boy and went.
    She poured us each a glass wine, brought out some cashews, and we parked together on her sofa.
    “So?” she said.
    “Hasn’t turned up?”
    Tula shook her head.
    “Kill anybody else?”
    “Not that I’ve heard.”
    Tula took a sip of wine and eyed me hard. “Tell me about the money.”
    Me and Desmond had never spoken to anybody about the money. I have to think now it was mostly because we’d been raised that in this world you needed to earn everything you got or it probably wasn’t worth having. We might have worked for that cash a little but not in any ordinary way.
    “He had this closet in the back of his house,” I told Tula. “That place down by Blue Hole. The cash was all in there. Three, maybe four hundred thousand.”
    She shook her head and invoked the Lord.
    “We’d promised all those boys they’d get a cut.”
    Tula shot me a sour look.
    “Not that I’m blaming them,” I assured her. “But the money wasn’t going to get left there, and what else were we going to do?”
    “Where’s yours?”
    “Pearl’s basement. Desmond’s too.”
    “How much?”
    “I think me and Desmond split about half. The rest went to Percy Dwayne Dubois, his nephew Luther, and a couple of swamp rats. They’ve all burned through it by now.”
    “Not you?”
    “You see how we live. I bought Pearl’s Ranchero. Desmond bought his Escalade. Got his mother to a doctor. We lend out a little every now and again.” I shrugged. “I’ve tried to feel bad about taking it, but…” I gave her a wince and a shrug.
    Another snort from Tula, but it was more contemplative than emphatic, like she couldn’t quite figure how she might feel about