“You think you can get the old letch to open up?”

“Reply hazy, ask again later. I’ll need to be alone with him.”

Cherry checked her watch, “Berlea’s been trying to get me to lunch or supper for eons. I know she wants to give me a good proselytizing. Maybe there’s still time tonight. That’s all you need … me to get her gone for a while?”

“I need pornography,” I said, building my plan on the fly. “Lots of porn.”

She shook her head. “You mean like movies? Pardon me if I’m naïve, but it’s not exactly my field of interest.”

“Movies. Magazines. Anything and everything. Magazines for sure. I need to flash them.”

“You mean Penthouse, Hustler, that kind of thing?”

“I need the ugly stuff. The kind of thing you can smell from across the room.”

“Jeez, Ryder, you’re making my stomach turn.”

I clapped my hands. “That’s exactly what I need. Got access to any?”

She tapped her chin with a delicate digit. “No local place would carry it, the church types would reach critical mass. I’ve found plenty porn in busts. Seems preferred reading at meth labs and among dope dealers. I carry the crap to the garbage bin with tongs, pitch it out. There’s an X-rated bookstore on Interstate 75, about an hour away. Or you can get it in Lexington.”

“No time. Not if we want to try today.”

I saw a light dawn in Donna Cherry’s eyes. She dialed her cellphone. “Hang tight, Ryder. If there’s any sleazy, greasy porno around, I know where it’s at.”

Cherry had planned to re-stock her fridge tonight until waylaid by new plans, so she ran off to do that while I scratched through the notes for the hundredth time. A half-hour later I heard a vehicle outside, opened the door. It was Caudill, carrying a paper shopping bag.

“Special delivery,” he said, looking embarrassed.

“What do you have for me, Judd?” I asked, rubbing my hands together.

Caudill pulled a six-inch stack of magazines from the bag, followed by a dozen DVD cases. “Sheriff Beale keeps a big batch of the porno we turn up. He goes through, selects out what he wants and hides it in an evidence box with a fake case number. Everyone knows it’s there, but the sheriff thinks it’s his big secret.”

“You have to get it back?”

“It’s a big evidence box. I don’t think he’ll miss a teensy bit like this.”

I looked at the material. On top was a DVD with a pair of leering women dressed as nurses, tight, low-cut uniforms overflowing with silicone breasts. The ladies appeared to be taking the air’s temperature with their tongues. The title was Oral Medication. The teaser proclaimed, Take as needed and as often as necessary! I shuffled through the rest, saw titles like Boob Madness. Anal Holiday. Pink Dreams. Spurtfest IV…

I shifted my attention to the magazines. Wet Candy. Bush Fever. Triple-X Panty Party …

“Pure hot raunch-a-roni,” I said, clapping Caudill on the shoulder. “Well done.”

42

We had a little luck for a change. Berlea Coggins was delighted to be asked to a restaurant by Cherry. We figured I had two clear hours with her daddy. I gave Cherry a bit of lead-time and showed up at the Cogginses’ house carrying a briefcase borrowed from Cherry. It bulged.

The old man opened the door and looked up, the oxygen hose dangling from his nose.

“Whatcha need?”

“I need to ask a couple more questions about Tandee Powers, Mr Coggins.”

He rolled backwards, invited me inside with a flap of his hand. “I told you ’bout Tandee. She loved this.” He drooped out the tongue again, let it flap against his collar.

“What woman wouldn’t,” I said. “Tell me more.”

“Ain’t nothing to tell. We got hot and we hooked up when we got the chance. In a car down a lonesome road, or a room in one of them gambling places on the river. We didn’t talk a whole lot, you get my drift.”

“Did you know any of her other friends? Zeke Tanner, maybe? Sonny Burton?”

His eyes flicked away. “I seen Burton a time or two. He was a big ol’ boy, mean in spite of all that toothy grinnin’. That’s all I knew. Tanner was a bigmouth preacher full of big talk. I know what ever’one else does cuz Tanner and Burton live around here. Or did. Listen, mister, I got my programs about to come on the TV. I gotta go watch.”

“Sure. Just one fast question before I go. Tandee was hot, right?”

Coggins did the open-close hand thing again. “That pussy loved to exercise.”

I leaned against the wall, crossed my arms and affected perplexed. “Did Tandee finally become too much for you to handle, Mr Coggins? You couldn’t satisfy the woman’s needs so you beat a retreat? I can understand how that might happen, you being older and—”

“Weren’t never no woman I couldn’t handle,” he snapped.

“I’m confused,” I said. “The other day you said Tandee had become too much for you. Those were your words. ”

“You need to get your ears cleaned out, mister. You missed half of what I said. I said she got too nasty for me. It ain’t the same as too much for me.”

“Too nasty for a man of the world like you?”

He frowned. “Some stuff ain’t right.”

“Gay stuff?”

He waved it away. “Tandee went both ways. I didn’t. But sometimes it put another woman in bed with us, y’know. Some mornings I’d get up and my tongue’d be too tired to talk. I’d have to point at things.”

“Tell me what Tandee Powers did. The stuff that wasn’t right.”

“I’m gonna go watch my TV,” he said, rolling away. “You gotta git.”

I stayed at his side. The TV remote, universal style, was lying on an overstuffed chair. I swept it into my pocket, followed Coggins.

“Mr Coggins, I think there were a lot of things going on back then. A closed little world with a few people who got deep into sex. Drugs maybe. Gambling. Were children involved in any way?”

“I’m a sick ol’ man. Go away an’ let me see my shows.”

“Yeah, sure,” I said, surrender in my voice. “Thanks for your time. Before I go, let me turn on the television for you.”

“Do that, wouldya? I can’t find the fucking remote. It was right here …”

While he patted beneath chair cushions I walked over to the equipment - monitor, DVD player, an old cassette player - stacked together on a shelf. Simple-looking gear, somewhat outdated, few buttons to figure out. Good.

I turned on the television while standing between Coggins and the equipment. I slipped a DVD from my jacket pocket, slid it into the player. I advanced the disk to an opening scene I found particularly artful. Hoping everything was set correctly, I pressed Play.

Wet sounds, moans, the hiss of flesh over sheets, low throbbing bass line marking time in heartbeat tempo …

Coggins’s head jolted toward the sounds pouring from his television.

“Holy shit,” he whispered.

On the screen a man with a tongue nearly as prominent as Coggins’s was using it in the service of a twentyish woman with a truly amazing body and an unruly mane of blonde hair that shivered with every overblown moan. As if harmonizing, Coggins loosed a groan.

I hit Pause.

“Hey, keep that thing playing!”

I moved between the old man and the frozen image. “Been a while since you’ve seen anything like this, I take it?”

“I tried to get some hot stuff from mail-order,” he panted, eyes unwavering from the stilled action. “Goddamn Berlea was right there when the mailman come. My name on the package and she’s openin’ it like it’s hers. Now she gits the mail sent to a post office box and checks through it. My own flesh-and-blood daughter an’ she’s got the sex drive of a tube of toothpaste. She cain’t understand what I’m goin’ through, stuck in this chair and this house.”

I made the jack-off motion. “You must have memories to work from.”

“I used ‘em up,” he hissed. “I been thinking about that sweet Cherry ass. Only thing I got that’s new, an’ I’m gettin’ wore out on it.” He strained sideways, trying to see past me at the screen. “Git that teevee started up again.”