First In Flight by T. R. Pearson

Author:T. R. Pearson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Barking Mad Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

19

Jo Jo proved ready to have a meal bought for him but not just any meal. He had quite a lot to say about sustainable agriculture. Pesticides and phosphates. The general plight of cod. None of it made much sense, but the man sure was armed with factoids.

We ended up eating organic pizza on a deck above the beach. A weathered shack between a motel and a craft shop where the pizza guy had made his name by putting any damn thing on a pie. Smoked herring. Cheez Doodles. Chutney. Duck bacon.

Since Hodges was far more familiar with Jo Jo than me and Meekins were, he knew to start out talking about Jo Jo’s beloved Davidson Wildcats. Jo Jo was a basketball fan like some people are Christians, which is to say only notionally.

Hodges had no specific information. Wasn’t aware of the games the team had played. What their prospects were for the season. Couldn’t even name the coach. But that didn’t matter to Jo Jo. He knew as little himself. He’d merely owned a Davidson sweatshirt once, had found it on the beach, and he liked to pass himself off as a fan and an alumnus.

“I like their chances,” Hodges told him.

Jo Jo nodded. He creased a slice of pizza and shoved the whole thing in his mouth. He might have been objecting to the shad roe when he fairly bellowed, “Like hell!”

“Shad’s a spring thing, isn’t it?” I said mostly to Meekins.

“Not if it’s pickled,” she told me.

“Artisanal fish roe?”

Meekins nodded. This in a run of country that couldn’t cook a hamburger rare.

I watched Jo Jo drip tomato sauce down the front of his ratty sweater. I decided to charge right in. “You sharpen a hatchet for a guy?”

Jo Jo gave me a slack-jawed once over. “Who’s he?” He seemed to be talking to Hodges.

“Works for the paper,” Hodges told him. “Going to blow the lid clear off.”

Jo Jo grinned. He had a nasty set of choppers. I’d rather have been bitten by a possum.

“Hatchet?” he said, speaking squarely to me now.

I nodded.

Jo Jo squinted and rubbed and head. He rolled up another slice and shoved it in.

“I’ll get it.” Meekins went off to the Tahoe. She brought the hatchet back in its plastic evidence bag. It was a grim thing. Still encrusted here and there with blood.

“Your work?” That from Meekins.

Jo Jo focused on the beveled business end and presently told us, “Uh huh.”

“Who for?” I asked him.

“Captain,” Jo Jo told me.

“What kind of captain?” Meekins asked. “Police? Army?”

“Yeah.”

“Uniform or he just tell you that?”

I got a “Yeah” as well.

“You put a fine edge on it.” I admired the gory hatchet as I talked. Some of the blood had flaked off and collected in the bottom of the bag. “What do you charge for something like this?”

“Five.”

“Is this all the captain wanted?”

I got the gimlet eye from Jo Jo. He looked like he wasn’t sure about me anymore.

Hodges leaned in and took up my cause. “He’s all right.

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