Read Online Bad Country: A Novel by CB McKenzie - Free Book Online Page B

and then thrust it away from her and slammed the pen down on top of it. Alonzo and her rented a house close to here, she said. But I don’t know if they are even there. And I don’t know anything about their business or that kid’s business.
    Can I get in Samuel’s room, Mrs. Rocha?
    The woman gestured toward the darkened hallway of the little house. Down there on the right. The police were in there but I don’t think they took much out.
    So I need my day rate plus fifty up front for expenses right now, Mrs. Rocha. That’s the deal.
    How do I know you won’t just take my money?
    Because I am a professional, Mrs. Rocha. Like I said. I always do my job.
    I’ll pay you the fifty for expenses then, she said.
    It’s not going to work that way, Mrs. Rocha. I need three hundred and fifty dollars.
    A hundred.
    When Rodeo shook his head, the old woman put her face in her hands and rubbed her eyes with her big knuckles, pressed a hard little fist against her chest then rose so abruptly she knocked over her chair. She moved on swerving slippers to a kitchen drawer and pulled out a plastic shopping bag from Food City and carefully counted out from it one hundred dollars in small bills, her swollen hands sure with the cash. She seemed now totally drained, spent completely. She held out the partial payment in a clenched fist.
    Rodeo shrugged and shook his head but accepted the partial payment and put the money into his big billfold. That’s one hundred, he said.
    Katherine Rocha pressed a hand against her breastbone again.
    Are you feeling all right, Mrs. Rocha?
    Whoever cared about how I feel. This was a rhetorical question as she intoned it.
    Why don’t you go lay down while I look over Samuel’s room, said Rodeo. If I take anything from Samuel’s room I’ll leave a receipt for that.
    There’s nothing in that pack rat’s nest I want, the old woman said. Take it all. Cart all that kid’s junk off in the back of that trashy brown truck of yours. That’d be a way to earn all that money you’re charging me at least.
    Have a rest now, Mrs. Rocha.
    She did not resist as Rodeo took her elbow and steered her back into the living room, reestablished her in her Barcalounger. Rodeo stood stock still behind her chair and out of her sight. The old woman started snoring in less than three minutes. He went to work.
    *   *   *
    The carpet in Katherine Rocha’s house was a mixture of browns and reds that partly camouflaged many stains. The walls were painted and overpainted several shades of tan except for the ones in the bathroom that were faded rose, and in that room most objects were either pink or fuzzy or both. The walls of the short hallway seemed sagged by the weight of framed photographs, many of which were faded beyond recognition with but few recent, as if the promise of Katherine Rocha’s past had been unfulfilled by later generations. Dominating one wall of the hallway was an eight-by-ten studio glossy of Farrah, framed in faux weathered wood that was washed with pink paint. The child had regular features but was not especially pretty. Her eyes were cerulean and bright yellow hair was piled up on her head so high it could not be contained by the picture frame.
    There were also on the hallway walls candid and studio photos of brown-skinned people in cowboy and Indian outfits, ill-fitting suits and prom gowns and oversized basketball uniforms, though very few of people in graduation robes and mortarboards. Rodeo knew what Samuel looked like from newspaper images and there were no photos of Samuel on Katherine Rocha’s Walk of Family Fame, not of him as a kid or teenager at least. All the babies on the wall looked pretty much the same except for Farrah, who had been framed theatrically from her earliest days. There were several candid shots of the little beauty queen with what must have been her parents jointly holding her at different stages of her growth. Standing beside the parents of Farrah and Samuel in one large