Boogie House: A Rolson McKane Mystery by T. Blake Braddy

imagine someone offing a dude because he’s not white. And then you go and level that charge at a Brickmeyer? The Brickmeyer?”
    I said, "He is not out of touch with reality, but he has enough handlers to keep him, um, sort of distanced from it. Friends and family, they kiss his ass to the point they need Chapstick just to be around him."
    "So you want to rock the boat a little bit."
    "I want to tip the boat over, dump the young patriarch in the water and see if he swims-"
    "Or if he sinks."
    "Exactly," I said. "He's never really had anybody in his face, so this is my chance, before he can have a chance to really disappear into his own little burrow. He cannot have enough plausible deniability to avoid questioning."
    "This is all assuming that he has a part in this. Otherwise, you're ruining an innocent man."
    "Right. Okay."
    "Keep the blinders off is what I'm saying. I mean, the dude wouldn’t have the body dumped on his own land.”
    "But it makes it easy to deny."
    "Why not just get rid of the body completely?" he said.
    "Unless he wanted it to seem obvious."
    "Yeah, okay. I don't quite buy it, but if that's what you're working with, hey, whatever.”
    "He was defensive. I'm going to work under the assumption that he had something to do with it until I can no longer go down that road."
    "I'll take my chances."
    "If you do anything stupid, there's only so far out on the limb I can go, and not if I have to risk my own neck. Consider yourself warned."
    I drained the last of my beer, tasting something not unlike rancid dishwater. "Sure," I said. "Don't expect a call, then."
    "Hubris has ruined plenty of people, Rol,” Deuce warned. “Don't let yourself be one of them. Small towns are like small oceans, full of piranhas and sharks."
    "Piranhas are freshwater."
    "Don’t fuck with my logic, man. People like Brickmeyer, they're the sharks, and everybody else who wants to be anybody, they're the piranhas. Once the shark gets all chewed up and spit out, then one of those little piranhas starts growing. Gets bigger, and the cycle starts over."
    "I see what you're saying."
    "The key is, though it may seem like there's a lot going against you, there's also a lot going for you. People hiding around the edges, waiting for you to take down the shark. They'll help you, for sure, but don't be surprised if the same people who help you end up turning you into chum for everybody else to feed on."
    I took that last statement to heart.
    I got up, patted Deuce on the shoulder. "Be careful." He had his fingers steepled together and shook his head as I made my way toward the exit.
    "And show up for your court date," he said, just as I closed the door behind me. "I don't wanna have to come find you."
     
    *  *  *
     
    I drove down the street to the IGA and picked up a whole, uncooked chicken, a sack of potatoes, cigarettes and beer and then went home.
    I do sort of like to cook, but I’m not very good at it. I never could make food for groups of people or anything, or work in a restaurant, but I can fry up southern food so it's edible.
    It’s calming. There is something entrancing about the repetitive actions of preparing and cooking food - the constant cup-and-ball game of moving food and ingredients, only to have it end up on a plate - and it keeps me from thinking about all the things I’d fucked up. I can leave my mind in a suspended state. So I cook.
    I do make a pretty mean country fried steak. I can say that.
    The key is to drop whatever it is you're frying, from thinly sliced crookneck squash to cube steak, in the pan when the grease hits the right temperature. Cook it when the grease is too hot and you'll burn the flour; throw it in lukewarm grease you’ll end up with mushy food. You've got to burn plenty of drumsticks before you get it right.
    I rinsed the chicken and cut it up, dipping the sections into a mixture of egg yolks, salt, pepper, and Louisiana hot sauce before powdering them with flour and tossing them into the pan,