Racing the Devil Read Online Free PDF Page A

only made the black depression worse.
    One day, a buddy from his old platoon called up and said he had a plan to make them rich. It involved guns and a liquor store.
    It was desperate and stupid, and Mean Billy knew it. But he was desperate himself. And besides, it served the commie-hippie-liberal assholes he’d gone to war for right.
    The best thing to be said was that nobody died.
    After six hard years at DeBerry Correctional Facility in Nashville, he got out with a Bachelor’s in Social Science, a handful of grant applications, and a vision . Within the year, he’d wrangled a warehouse down on Seventh Avenue and turned it into a shelter for homeless men, mostly ex-vets and ex-cons. He arranged jobs for them and provided transportation in a faded Chevy van on which one of his clients had painted a not-too-shabby replica of Van Gogh’s Starry Night . He called it the Dream-mobile.
    His clients called it the Mean Machine.
    Twenty minutes after I called him, he pulled up in it and honked the horn.
    I paid my tab and went outside to catch my ride.
    “Think you might announce us to the whole damn neighborhood?” I brushed a petrified French fry off the passenger seat and slid inside. After a few fruitless tugs at the seat belt, I gave up and consoled myself with the hope that he’d drive less like a bottle rocket than usual.
    “Aw. Nobody’s watchin’.” He peeled out of the parking lot, dispelling my misguided optimism. “Now, tell me what you’ve gotten yourself into.”
    “I wish I knew. Frank says they’ve got a boatload of evidence against me in this killing they had out at the Cedar Valley Motel night before last.” I told him about the hair, the prints, the tape, and the semen.
    “Jesus, buddy. That’s almost enough to make me think you did it.”
    “Don’t even joke around about that.” My tone was sharper than I’d intended.
    “Well, who have you been giving semen samples to?” He tugged at his grizzled beard and laughed at his own joke, his ruddy face reddening to the shade of a country ham.
    I shot him an annoyed look. “I know who planted the semen. I don’t know how they got the tape. I never met this woman, and I sure as hell never threatened to kill her.”
    “Which, if you was gonna do, you wouldn’t have announced on tape.”
    “Exactly.”
    “Nashville’s full of actors, buddy. Maybe they just found someone who sounds like you.”
    “Maybe.” It seemed unlikely, but if there was some other explanation, I had no idea what it might be.
    We drove to Billy’s place and I followed him up a narrow stairwell to the efficiency apartment he’d built above the shelter. He jiggled the key in the lock until it caught, then kicked the door open and made a sweeping gesture toward the living room—sagging brown leather couch, frayed tartan La-Z-boy, scuffed coffee table, and a twenty-nine inch TV way too heavy on the green. His battered maple desk was jammed into one corner, piled high with bulging manila folders. The room smelled stale, like sour socks beneath a veneer of Pine-Sol.
    “Welcome aboard, good buddy. Mi casa es su casa .”
    “Gracias,” I said, which was about the extent of my Spanish.
    “I’ve got a couple of appointments downstairs. Grab yourself a beer and make yourself at home. Stay as long as you need to.”
    He picked through the precariously balanced folders, eased out two fat files, and nudged the stacks back into place.
    “It won’t be long,” I said. “Don’t want them looking at you as an accessory after the fact.”
    “I’m already an accessory.”
    “They can’t prove you knew I was wanted when you picked me up. In a day or so, there won’t be any question.”
    His big shoulders hunched. “We’ll cross that river when we come to it. I owe you, boy, and I always pay my debts.”
    The debt he was referring to was one of my first cases: finding his daughter, Cambria, and arranging a reconciliation. The first part was a cakewalk; people who aren’t