Psycho Save Us (32 page)

“While I’m doing
this, Mr. Wagner,” the lady said robotically, “would you mind telling me what
this individual did?”

“Oh, certainly! 
You bet your
tukas
!” Spencer chuckled, doing his best impersonation of a
concerned citizen suffering righteous indignation.  “That son of a
you-know-what rear-ended me in the middle of the highway while movin’ through
Atlanta.  He was trucking at—oh, hell, I dunno, eighty, ninety miles an hour?”

“Mm.  My
goodness.”

“Yeah,” he
laughed bitterly.  The nausea was starting to lift from his body, returning
from whence it came.  “That’s what me an’ my wife said.  Then I saw the piece
of crap talkin’ on a damn cell phone.  He didn’t even know he’d rear-ended us. 
No, I take that back, he
had
to know, he just didn’t want to acknowledge
it.  He kept movin’ on, never even slowing down.  I sped up—I shouldn’t have, I
know, but I did—and I waved him over to the side of the road.  It took a minute
to get his damn mind off the phone, but when he pulled over we had an exchange
on the side o’ the road.  He threw the first punch.  My wife got out and he
slapped her to the ground!”

“Oh, my.”

“It was my own
fault, I guess—”

“Well, he was
driving dangerously,” she said cautiously.  “You had every right to file a
complaint.  Probably should’ve taken his license plate down and just called the
police on him.  Not wise to get out of the car and start shouting.”

“I know, I
know.  I was just…I was about to get into my car when he beat me down.  My wife
got out and he just…well, he took off and I got inside my car and followed
him.  Shouldn’t have done that either, I know, but I did.  I followed him to a
motel he was staying at in Downtown.  I got his name.  The clerk seemed to know
him, said he’d been staying there a few weeks, just gotten outta prison, might
be on parole.  I dunno.  The motel clerk said he’d kicked a pregnant woman in
the elevator at his motel a couple weeks before that, threatened to cut the
baby outta her.”

“Oh my God.” 
The woman was truly offended.

“Yeah, so, I
figured I’d call you guys, file a formal complaint with any parole officer he
has, let ’em know that this fucker’s crazy.  Sorry, ma’am, forgive my
language.  I’m just…what he did to my wife, and what the clerk said he did to
that pregnant woman…”  When he first made the call, he’d only had the outline
of his story.  But the colorful details and the extra surprise at the end about
the pregnant lady was all improv.  Brian, his oldest brother, had told him he
ought to go into acting, do some stuff on stage, improvisational comedy. 
You
think fast, bro
, he’d said many a time.

“I completely
understand,” said the woman.  More typing from her end.  “Yevgeny, you said? 
Maybe Yevgeny Tidov?”

“Hey, that
sounds about right,” Spencer said.  “You got him in your system?”

“I do.”

“White guy,
right?”  Yevgeny Tidov, whether Russian or Ukrainian, was almost certainly a
white man’s name.  Spencer would let her fill in the rest.

“Uh, yes.  Blonde
hair, blue eyes, heavyset, has several body tattoos?”

“Sounds like
him.”

“He lives in
Downtown Atlanta, too.  You said that’s where you encountered him?”

“Yes, ma’am.  Is
it okay to ask what he went to prison for?” he asked, knowing the answer was
yes because these things were a matter of public record for any concerned
citizen.  If a person was on parole, the average citizen could get them into a
lot of trouble.  Basically, the parole officer and John and Jane Q. Public owned
a parolee’s ass.

“Yes,” she
said.  “Double armed robbery six years ago.”

“So, I guess
he’s a U.S. citizen?”

“Yes, not born
here, though.  Earned his citizenship a year before he got arrested.”

“You’ve been
very helpful, ma’am.  Um, could you possibly get me contact information?”

“I’m not allowed
to give you his address,” she said, “but I
can
give you contact
information for his parole officer.”

“Yeah.  Hey, I
just need to report this guy.  I’d like to call the parole officer personally. 
Do you have his officer’s name and number?  Any way to get in touch with him?”

Of course she
did.  “His parole officer’s name is Eugene Evans.”

“Eugene Evans?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Phone number?” 
She rattled it off.  “Thanks so much.  Hey, by any chance, does it say like how
often this guy has to visit his parole officer?  Or when his last visit was
supposed to be?  Maybe he missed it.  Boy, I’d
love
to get this guy in
bigger trouble than he already is.”

The woman’s
voice had a note of humor.  “Once a month,” she said.  “The fifth of every
month.  Mr. Tidov has made every single one of his meetings with Mr. Evans. 
Last update has him working a third-shift job, overnight stock at a Target.”

“Aw, dang it. 
Well, I had to try.  Thanks so much, ma’am.  You’ve been a great help.”

“No problem. 
Make sure to include everything you’ve told me in your report to Mr. Evans.”

“Oh, I will,
ma’am.  Trust me on that.”

“And try to be
more careful next time.  You never know whom you’re dealing with,” she added, blind
to the irony.

“Heh, yeah.  You
bet.  Thanks again.”

Spencer hung up,
and started dialing again at once.  Somewhere, a siren was blaring.  He was
aware of it but did not care.  Somehow, he understood that it wasn’t meant for
him.  On some level, he knew that he was meant for the fat orb of a belly, the
one that someone had branded in Cyrillic, proclaiming to anyone who cared
The
world hates us
.  He also knew that the passing nausea he’d felt while
making the phone call was from some outside source.  As insane as all of these
things sounded, he knew them to a certainty.

A dog barked
from somewhere up the street, past the squatters on the other side of the
chain-link fence.  A helicopter
whup-whup-whupped
somewhere close, but
not close enough to be a concern to him.

The phone rang
six times, and halfway through the seventh someone picked up and the voice of a
grizzled old man answered.  “Eugene Evans,” he said.

“Hello, Mr.
Evans?  Eugene Evans?”

“That’s what I
said.”  A not-so-stifled yawn.

“Hi, my name is
Stewart Wagner, I just got into contact with the Parole Commission’s office in
Valdosta concerning one of your parolees, Yevgeny Tidov.”

“Hm.  Yevgeny?”
he grunted.  He then gave a slight, painful moan.  “He done something?”

Spencer
laughed.  “You could say that.”  He then went through the exact same spiel as
he had with the woman at the Parole Commission.  It took several minutes of
repeating himself because this Evans wasn’t a sharp thumbtack.  He also seemed
to be hard of hearing.  An old fellow, but stern-sounding.  He demanded to know
the details again, and the more he listened, the more he seemed to awaken. 
Spencer could almost hear him writing all of it down.

Over the line,
Evans gave another grunt.  “Sorry, I move slowly.  Fibromyalgia.  It’s a
bitch.”  Another grunt.  “This isn’t like Yevgeny at all.  He keeps his nose
clean.  You’re
sure
it was Yevgeny?  You might be mistaking him…”

“Blonde hair,
blue eyes, heavyset, has a tattoo of a red bear, right?”  That last part was
improvisation, as well, and Spencer caught himself a second too late before
adding that little morsel.  But the woman at the Parole Commission’s office had
said he had a body covered in tattoos and it was a pretty safe bet that the red-bear
tattoo would be there because the name certainly sounded Russian and Pat had
said these
vory v zakone
were Russians, so—

“That’s him,”
Evans sighed.  “Well, I am sorry, Mr. Wagner.  I’ll have this checked out
immediately.  I can tell you that this is most unusual for Mr. Tidov but he’s
about to receive a stern lesson.”

Spencer didn’t
doubt it.  Oftentimes the people selected to be parole officers were judicious
sons o’ bitches who enjoyed keeping an eye out for misbehaviors and
indiscretions.  “Well, that’s good.  Is there an address where I can send a
formal letter?”

Another grunt of
pain.  “A what?”

“My father
always taught me that if you have a problem with a man, you tell him to his
face.  An’ if face-to-face won’t suit, then a finely-crafted letter will
suffice.”  Interesting fact: that was no lie.  Spencer’s father actually
had
granted him that piece of advice.

“Well,
it’s certainly not necessary to do that, Mr. Wagner—”

“All I need is a
mailing address.  P.O. Box will do if that’s the case.  I don’t just want him
to hear it from you, I want him to hear a personal account of what he did to
me, the fear he placed on my wife, all of it.  Do you understand?  I want him
to
know
.”

“Mr. Wagner…” 
For a moment, Spencer thought he would get nowhere with this stalwart old
watchdog and he might have to resort to another tactic, but then Eugene Evans
surprised him.  “Sir, do I have your word, one man to another, that you are not
seeking personal retribution? 
Physical
retribution?”

“Mr. Evans, I’m
five-foot-five and barely a hundred fifty pounds.  I
don’t
have a
Napoleon complex, I’m a realist.  If I tried anything with this guy I’d have my
head caved in probably.”

Evans chuckled. 
“I dunno.  He’s actually not violent.  Well, not
usually
.  This is the
first I’m hearing of anything like this.  Anyways, his address is 42 Clayton
Road.  After I hang up with you, I’ll be calling him immediately.  This kind of
behavior is intolerable.  I’m going to check on this.”

“Thanks so much,
Mr. Evans.”

“All right,” he
grunted again, sounding thankful to be done.  “Bye-bye.”

“Bye.”

Spencer hung up
and used his phone to look up directions to Clayton Road.  It was just nine
miles away.  He found a bus route, and the schedule that the local buses stuck
to.  Spencer then switched off his phone and started to put it back in his
pocket.  Then he paused and looked at it.  He looked up at the sky, then all
around him.  He looked at the stacks of lumber and the flattened earth all
around him.  Then he looked at the phone.  He had a feeling…

“The phone,” he
said to no one in particular.  An image of the Yeti came to him.  Then he
thought about how much Basil knew, how much he might’ve given the cops.  He
looked at the phone again, put it between his teeth and bit it, thinking. 
After a few seconds, he took the phone out of his mouth, and tapped it against
his forehead.  “Yep, the phone.”  He walked around the pile of lumber and
hollered over to the squatters by their fire.  “Yo!  Who wants a free phone?” 
All three of them looked up, and all three slowly raised their hands.  Spencer
reared back and flung it at them.  “Draw straws for it, bitches!” he laughed.

Spencer left
them to decide who got it.  He moved through the construction zone, through the
trees at the other end and was enveloped.

“
Where are
they?!
” she demanded.  Jovita had walked out of the back room where they
had been keeping her and slammed her palms down on the front desk, where an
officer was busy assisting a man filing a complaint.  “Where—are—
they
?!”

“Ms. Dupré?” a
man called.

Jovita ignored
him and instead stared bloody daggers at the female officer running the phones
on the other side of the desk.  “I’m sick o’ this shit!  You got me waitin’
back there for three muthafuckin’ hours an’ ain’t nobody sayin’ shit!  Where
are my babies?  Who’s got ’em?  Huh?  Answer me you nappy-headed bitch!  Tell
me where they at, an’
I’ll
go fuckin’ get—”

“Ms. Dupré?”
someone called again.

The officer lady
had been on the phone, and now put the phone against her chest to smother it. 
Jovita stared at her, and the officer stared stoically right back at her.  “You
tell me, bitch,” she hissed.  “You tell me what the fuck’s goin’ on with my
babies—”

“Ms. Dupré?”

Hands seized
her.  She turned to slap the owner of those hands, but was restrained by another
set of hands, officers all.  Indignant, Jovita shouted at them all, declaring
things about their mothers, about their loyalty to their community, about their
lack of respect, and about many other things that she couldn’t possibly know
about them but somehow believed she was right about it all.

They pulled her
over to a chair in the lobby.  Other people who had been sitting and waiting
patiently to be seen hopped out of their foldout chairs and walked away from
her.  One of the officers was a black man with a familiar face.  “Ms. Dupré? 
Jovita?  It’s me.  Sam.  You remember me?  Sam Wentworth?” 

She looked at
him.  The man was tall, brown-skinned, with a military-style crew cut.  He had
a square jaw, with eyes and lips that looked like an old friend’s.  “Sam?” she
said.  It took a moment for her to bring the information out of the fog.  Her
mind was still addled from lack of sleep and lack of meth.  “You…you’re Patty
Wentworth’s son-in-law, ain’t’choo?”