Boogie House: A Rolson McKane Mystery by T. Blake Braddy Read Free Book Online

finger in the wind's gonna do much, but that won't stop me from driving up and talking to him."
    Red and Lyle passed a lighter between them to get the cigarettes going. The smell was dankly pleasant, something about smoke and beer mingling in a bar. "And he'd have no reason to admit boo to you. Like I said, he's looking to take up running for a U.S. senate seat in oh-ten. He'd probably offer you the whole Brickmeyer estate in hush money before he let something like this come to light."
    I finished off the beer and paid for two more for the pulpwooders. "Keep an ear out," I told them, and then I left. “Oh, and if you see any suspicious trucks around here, let me know.”
    Lyle said, “In my eyes, buddy, everybody’s suspicious.”
     
    *  *  *
     
    I put Screamin’ Jay Hawkins on as I drove home, turning the volume as loud as I could stand. He was a dude I listened to whenever I was out at night, riding the lightless backroads in search of something I might never find. For him, becoming a blues guy meant giving up on the dream of becoming an opera singer, putting his classical piano training aside. A guy who idolized Paul Robeson ended up performing “I Put a Spell on You” on television with a bone through his nose.
    Expectations and dreams don’t always match up with reality. But he seemed happy. I wonder if he was ultimately satisfied with the path his life took, or if he was just game for following it along until it ended. Kind of like the Frost poem where the guy thinks his choices made any sort of difference in how his life turned out.
    It wasn’t my intention to turn my inquiries into a reflection of my disdain for the Brickmeyers, but I had to start somewhere. Man had something to hide, if you asked me, and nobody had, but that was no matter. He’d have answers, or he wouldn’t, and then I could move on from there.
    Headlights appeared in my rearview a couple miles down the road. I had rolled down the windows to let in the smell of wet grass and honeysuckle. Once I saw I was being followed, I tapped the gas to give myself a few car lengths’ lead. If I couldn't avoid the situation, my .45 lay under the seat.
    I turned up “Whistlin’ Past the Graveyard” and straightened in my seat. This was threatening to become something, and I was anticipating nothing for the rest of the night.
    The truck stormed up, so close I thought it might ram me, and I tightened my knuckles over the steering wheel so I wouldn’t be tempted to do something drastic.
    Sometimes I have problems with impulse control. Or so I’m told.
    In that moment, I hoped for him - or them - to find a way to get me out of the truck. I damn near gave in. My foot twitched on the gas pedal, and I thought about letting go.
    I became acutely aware of what would happen if I just popped out of the driver’s side door, holding my pistol. I wouldn’t fire on them, not unless they wanted to get real nasty, but it wasn’t a stretch of the imagination that I might put a few in the dirt with a good, hard smack upside the head, with or without the butt of my .45.
    It would seal some kind of door for me forever, but the fire bubbling beneath the surface told me to go ahead and do it. Going over the cliff may be a bad fucking idea, but the view on the way down can be beautiful.
    It’s not worth it, I kept telling myself. I was trying to recall whatever cobbled together twelve-step language people had recited to me whenever I was at my worst. Make a fearless moral inventory and give your powerless self over to a misunderstood God and all of that.
    However.
    Just as I was about to lay out a case for letting this go, the truck reared up and nudged my back bumper, just enough to make me fishtail. It didn’t send me off the side of the road, but it pissed me off. That was it for me.
    Sometimes I can’t help but drop the whole jug of gasoline into the fire to see what happens. It’s not an attractive quality, and it’s something I wish I didn’t take a