"You're on speed?"
"I said I started out on it. One weekend I painted every room in the house without stopping, day and night till it was done. I knew you could get hooked, so I quit."
"Don't lose any more," Dennis said. "You look great."
She said, "I do?"
He watched her sit at the table sideways to face him and cross her legs, showing him the whitest thighs he had ever seen. Just about any time he looked at Vernice he'd try to picture her naked.
"So Charlie talked his way into the job?"
"He goes to see Mr. Darwin and starts bragging how he can still pitch. Mr. Darwin says, `Okay, if you can strike me out you got the job.' Charlie says he'll do it on three pitches. Mr. Darwin says he'll give him four. They get a kid to bring a ball and bat, meet at a field…" Vernice paused to light a cigarette.
"Charlie struck him out?"
"He threw one at him, trying to come inside? And Mr. Darwin had to hit the dirt to save his life." "He got the job anyway?"
"That's what I asked him. `He hired you even though you knocked him down?' You know what Charlie said? `Honey, it's part of the game.' He let Mr. Darwin hit one and got hired."
Dennis said, "He's a character."
Vernice said, "He's a pain in the butt. He comes in my bedroom asking can he use the treadmill you might've noticed in there? Before I know it he's sitting on the side of my bed with his beer gut. You're lucky, you have a nice trim body from swimming."
"Divers don't have to swim much."
"You still have a nice physique." She said, "Oh. I'll be there to see you-I forgot to tell you, I start working at Tishomingo next week. Charlie put in a good word with the human resources guy. Don't you hate that, calling personnel human resources?"
"I think of bodies laid out in a stockroom," Dennis said.
Vernice drew on her cigarette and blew out a stream of smoke. "I start as a cocktail waitress. The outfit's real skimpy-you've seen it-it looks like buckskin only it's polyester with fringe. And you wear the headband with the feather sticking up? It's cute."
Dennis said, "If you're gonna be there every day… I was thinking, how'd you like to be in my show?"
"You don't mean dive."
"Call the dives. You have a mike and you tell the audience what dive I'm gonna do next."
"I'd have them, like on a sheet of paper?"
"Yeah, and things you can say to the crowd. Like, `You have to clap real hard if you want Dennis to hear you, way up there eighty feet in the air.' "
"What do I wear?"
"Whatever you want."
"When would I start?"
"Tomorrow night. They're gonna televise it."
"Really?"
"It's in the local paper and there're posters around town."
"I know, `From the Cliffs of Acapulco to Tunica…' But tomorrow night, you're not giving me much time."
"Charlie said he'd do it if I don't find a goodlooking girl. You want to think about it?"
Vernice sipped her drink and smoked.
"I have to let Charlie know," Dennis said. "Give him time to look at the script. Shouldn't he be back pretty soon?"
"He sees any new faces in the bar, he'll hang around to tell baseball stories."
"I got a ride," Dennis said. "We pulled up, I saw a car drive away. I thought Charlie might've come and gone."
"No, it was that shitbird Arlen Novis stopped by to see Charlie."
"A friend of Charlie 's?"
"Maybe at one time. Arlen was a sheriff's deputy till he went to prison for extortion. He'd make bail bondsmen give him a cut of their fee or he wouldn't okay the bond. They also had him for accepting payoffs from drug dealers. I don't know, either they couldn't make a case or it was part of a deal he made. Plead guilty to the extortion and testify against the sheriff, he'd only do a couple years. The sheriff's doing thirty years on those same charges."
"What's Alvin do now?"
"Arlen. Walks around in his cowboy hat like he's a country-music star, Dwight Yoakam or somebody. Ask him what he does, he's head of security at Southern Living Village they're putting up over here. Mr. Kirkbride hires a criminal to see none of his building supplies get stolen."
Dennis said, "Yeah…?" knowing there was more.
"But what he really is, Arlen's a gangster. He got into disorganized crime with the Dixie Mafia and pretty soon he's in charge. Some call it the Cornbread Cosa Nostra, making it sound cute, but they're all dirty dogs."
"You get this from Charlie?"
"The talker."
"What's Arlen's name?"
"Arlen Novis. There was another Tunica deputy at Parchman the same time as Arlen. Jim Rein, he was in there for assaulting prisoners. He'd beat 'em with a nightstick for no reason other'n they were colored. You'd never think Jim Rein to look at him would do that. He's a good-looking young man with quite a nice physique on him. They call him Big Fish or just Fish, but I don't know why."
"He's in the Dixie Mafia, too?"
"Works for Arlen. They took over from the ones had the drug business. Charlie says just like in the regular Mafia. Arlen had Jim Rein shoot some of 'em and the rest they run off."
"That's where you get your speed?"
" Crystal meth-I told you, it was just for a while. They sell it to the casino crowd, people that stay up all night trying to win their money back. There's a honky-tonk called Junebug's? Down by Dubbs, just south of here. Arlen took it over along with the drug business. You go to Junebug's you can get all the uppers or downers you want. Speed, crack cocaine, marijuana. They have illegal gambling there, prostitutes, girls in trailers out back of the place."
"Why hasn't it been shut down?"
"Well, you know they're paying off somebody. There's a raid, Arlen gets word of it and they close for alterations. Honey, people come to Tunica for fun, all kinds of it, and spend their money. Like I read a billion dollars a year right in this county. That's what it's all about, money. Drugs are sold, casinos are robbed, people are shot… Last year a waitress from Harrah's was stabbed to death in her trailer, up in Robinsonville. I've thought seriously of moving back to Atlanta, but you know what? I love it here, something always going on."
Vernice took time to smoke. Dennis sipped his drink seeing Arlen Novis by the tank, looking up at him on the perch. He wondered who the other guy was.
"Has a nice taste, doesn't it?"
Dennis said yeah, looked at the glass and took another sip.
"I don't put sugar in mine no more, it's still a treat."
"Vernice, why would Kirkbride hire a guy for security who's a known criminal?"
"Arlen told Mr. Kirkbride it takes one to know one. Says he can spot anybody hanging around the property who's up to no good."
"According to Charlie?"
"Who else. He has the ear for all the dirty stuff that's going on. He talks and people talk to him. He says Arlen told Mr. Kirkbride he had been cleansed of his sins by his conscience beating on him and time served."
"He talks like that?"
"Arlen's a bullshitter."
"And Kirkbride believes him?"
"Not 'cause of anything Arlen has to offer, like drugs. The reason they're close, they both love to dress up and take part in those Civil War battle reenactments. They been doing it for years. I mean you wouldn't believe how serious they are. Mr. Kirkbride 's always the general. Arlen's under him and brings along his boys, Jim Rein, Junebug, all these gangsters in Confederate uniforms."
It reminded Dennis of the posters he had seen in the hotel and around town, big ones in color that announced the TUNICA CIVIL WAR MUSTER, the dates and the name of a battle they'd reenact.
He mentioned it to Vernice and she said, "Yeah, they're thinking of making it an annual affair. This year they're doing the Battle of Brice's Cross Roads. Not on the site, but just east of here a few miles. The actual site's way over by Tishomingo County. Charlie says Mr. Kirkbride 's grown a beard so he can be Nathan Bedford Forrest. He's the general won the battle."