I couldn’t hold him there long. The way he was squirming under me, it felt like sitting on a floor of rolling baseballs. Also I’d medicated between June’s house and now, so was not in top fighting form. The wily bastard went for the weakness, giving a savage backward yank on my bad knee, mother fuck. And scrambled away like a crab, out the door.
Outside in the dark I was blind, no porch lights on. Her Wrangler was in the drive. My Impala, blocking Coach’s Caddy, both still there. U-Haul’s precious Mustang also, with the man himself circling it, pounding on the windows. Angus had to be inside. They always left keys in the cars at home, it’s what we do, barring the methier necks of the woods or situations of outstanding debt. I saw a glint of light: Angus inside his car, shaking a bouquet of dangling metal at me. She’d collected up all the car keys and locked U-Haul out of his mothership.
I edged in close, decked him, and scooted around to the passenger side. She unlocked, I dived in and locked it behind me. The car was thick with the oily smell of him.
“Shit,” I said, trying to breathe. His screaming was damped down some through the glass. “He’ll get a tire iron and smash a window.”
She stared at me. “Not his sweet baby Mustang, surely.”
“No, you’re right. The love of his life.”
Her eyes got very wide. “Demon, he wants me.”
“What do you mean?”
“You tried to tell me. I didn’t want to hear it.”
He’d come on to her. Told her he’d been keeping things of hers ever since she was a little girl, underclothes. Watching her in the tub. He wasn’t waiting any longer. To have sex with her, he meant. Because now he could make her do it.
“What the hell kind of sick madness is that?” I felt like puking. My ears were ringing.
“Blackmail.” She got weirdly quiet. I watched her walking herself back from frantic to that place where she could go. Like this was happening to some other Angus. U-Haul had told her he could go to the school board and get Coach fired for drunkenness and worse. Embezzlement of school and booster funds. That would happen, unless she had sex with him.
He’d stopped banging on the car. We didn’t see him, and it was too quiet. My brain was having trouble turning over, like the fluids were cold. “Shit. He’s gone to get another key.”
“There’s no other key. He’s been pissed over that, he lost the other set.”
“You’re sure.”
“Yeah. But the tire iron is still in the running.”
“This is all bark and no bite,” I said. “He’s just making shit up. Jesus. Stealing from the boosters? That’s like taking out of the church collection plate, Coach would never.”
Wouldn’t, she said, but did. Without knowing it. U-Haul kept all the books. He’d been moving football funds into his mother’s bank account, for years evidently. I said if that was true, they’d have burned down their damn rat trap in Heeltown and gotten a life.
He was just waiting for the iron to strike, is what he’d told her. She’d been calling me for an hour, Jesus. How long was he chasing her around that table? She said not that long, it took a while to get to that point. She’d gone in Coach’s office that afternoon and found out he’d forged Coach’s signature all over a ton of things, power of attorney and such. Stealing from Miss Betsy also, altering her checks. U-Haul came into the office then, she shoved this stuff in his face and one thing led to another, the blackmail and such, before it blew up into him trying to back her into the bedroom.
It was a lot to follow. Why would she go poking in Coach’s office? Craziest thing. Some man had called the house saying U-Haul was putting a lot of Coach’s money in his so-called enterprise, and he needed to check this out with Coach himself. Angus had taken the call. And that’s how it came down. Damn. Mr. McCobb blows open another guy’s con.
We sat in the car forever, waiting for the next moves of a crazed mind. Tire iron to the Impala being among my concerns. The coward must have walked home. Around midnight we called the coast clear. Checked on Coach, who’d slept through the show. I offered to take Angus someplace, but she was pulling it together. We went in the office and unlocked the drawer where Coach kept his Smith & Wesson 40 to take to bed with her. I made sure it was loaded and showed her the safety, which is a little tricky, a grip safety that has to be palmed. She knew.
I sat with her a while in her room, even though I’d have hell to pay later on many fronts. I asked if Coach might have known this stealing was going on. She said no. He’d trusted U-Haul, then stayed too drunk for too long. “That part’s killing me,” she said. “U-Haul says I asked for this. I knew about Dad and didn’t speak up. That’s true, Demon. We knew.”