“Mr. Jenkins, we need to talk,” he said. He didn’t ask if he could come in, but instead just stepped up into the trailer. Buddy Lee took a step back. LaPlata was giving him the long stare. Buddy Lee knew what that meant.
He had fucked up and LaPlata wasn’t fucking around.
NINETEEN
Ike went over the work orders for the day while Jazzy clicked and clacked away at her computer, paying invoices and emailing clients their monthly bills. His crew would start trickling in within the hour. Soon the sounds of trucks loading up with mulch and planting soil and manure and fertilizer would be rumbling through the warehouse.
Ike tried not to think about the manure. Or more specifically, what was in the manure.
He heard the bell on the front door ring and then he heard Jazzy’s sunny greeting. A few seconds later she popped her head around the corner of his cubicle.
“Ike, these guys asking for you,” she said. Her eyes were wide and her breath was coming in ragged little bursts. Ike stood up from his desk.
“What’s wrong?”
Jazzy spoke in a low voice.
“’Bout five bikers out here asking about you,” she said. Ike sat up straight. It sounded like a bad joke. Five bikers walk into a landscaping office.… Ike rubbed his forehead. Last night he and Buddy Lee had run into a couple of boys that had that peckerwood look all over them. He’d busted one of them boys in the head, and he and Buddy Lee had killed the other. Now some bikers come strolling into his shop. The kid had said he had been hired to look for Tangerine. What if the bikers had been the ones that hired him? Ike had told Buddy Lee they weren’t detectives, but you didn’t have to be Easy Rawlins to put this together.
We should’ve took the other boy, too, Ike thought.
“Tell them I’ll be out in a minute,” he said.
“I can just tell ’em you ain’t here,” Jazzy said.
“No, that’s okay. Let’s see what they want,” Ike said. He walked around his cubicle and headed for the lobby. As he was on his way he grabbed a machete off the wall.
Five men in leather vests and various degrees of hirsuteness were standing in the lobby. A couple of them were reading the advertisements on the walls. Two more were standing near the door. A big blond man with a wicked scar on his cheek that cut through his beard was leaning against the soda machine with his heavily tattooed arms crossed.
Ike placed the machete on the counter.
“Can I help you?” Ike asked.
The blond biker pushed himself off the soda machine. He glanced at the machete, then smiled at Ike. His teeth were crooked and he was missing matching incisors.
“Well, that depends. We looking for a friend of ours, and I think you might know where he is,” the tall blond said. The pale scar on his face wound its way down to his chin like an EKG pattern. The vest he wore had a patch over the heart that said PRESIDENT. The other four men came up and stood next to him. The one to his left had a patch that said SERGEANT AT ARMS. He reached for the small of his back and pulled out a metal pipe. There was electrical tape around one end. The other three men pulled out their own homemade weapons. One had a chain with a padlock on the end. The other two had sawed-off pool cues with bright-green and red handles respectively. The one with the president patch leaned forward and put his hands on the counter. He was within an arm’s length of the machete.
“I don’t think you have any friends here,” Ike said. He stared into the man’s light-blue eyes. Behind him Jazzy continued to tap away at her computer.
Ike usually liked the way the shop smelled first thing in the morning. It was strange but it gave him a sense of tranquility. The scent of gasoline, oil, topsoil, even the goddamn manure. It all smelled of an honest day’s work. Of hours spent beautifying someone’s yard who wouldn’t spit on you if you were on fire but had to pay you because they wouldn’t or couldn’t be bothered to put down their own mulch or fertilize their own flower gardens. Their disdain was inconsequential to Ike. Those countless shovelfuls of dirt had paid for his house. Those untold rolls of sod had put food on his table. Those endless wheelbarrows full of mulch had put Isiah through college. As long as the checks cleared, they could think whatever they wanted.
But there was another scent that floated under the pungent odor of refined petroleum and pulverized lime. A bitter metallic fragrance that reminded you of pennies and old batteries. Did that smell register with the bikers? He’d cleaned up for hours, but it seemed like that coppery aroma had soaked into the walls.