Carl Hiaasen (49 page)

Lugging the turtle tank, Tom Krome escorted the two women through the ebullient pilgrims, past the blood-weeping Virgin and the runny Jesus Omelette, and out to the street.

Katie Battenkill was delighted to learn what was planned for the baby reptiles. “That’s so lovely!” she said, kissing Tom on the nose. She primly scissored her long legs into the car and told him she’d see him at Arthur’s trial. Tom waved goodbye.

Mary Andrea stood there looking tickled; savoring the sight of her long-lost spouse trying to balance his swirling emotions and an exotic cargo. The only possible explanation for the turtle project was a new woman, but Mary Andrea didn’t pry. She didn’t want to know anything that might weaken the story in the retelling.

“Well,” Tom said, “I guess we’ll be seeing each other at a different trial, won’t we?”

“Not me. I don’t have time.”

She sounded sincere but Krome remained wary; Mary Andrea could be so smooth. “You mean it?” he said. “We can finally settle this thing?”

“Yes,
Tommy
. But only if I get a first edition of
The Estrangement
. Autographed personally by the author.”

“Christ, Mary Andrea, there’s no book. I was just ranting.”

“Good,” she said to her future ex-husband. “Then we’ve got a deal. Now put down that damn aquarium so I can give you a proper hug.”

Bernard Squires was a light drinker, but after supper he accepted one glass of sherry from Mrs. Hendricks at the bed-and-breakfast; then another, and one more after that. He wouldn’t
have drunk so much liquor in front of other guests, particularly the two attractive women who’d arrived the previous night. But they’d already checked out, so Squires felt that seemly comportment was no longer a priority.

The poor fellow was suffering, Mrs. Hendricks could see that. He told her the deal had fallen through, the whole reason he’d come all the way to Grange from Chicago, Illinois.

Kaput! Finished!

Mrs. Hendricks sympathized—“Oh dear, these things happen”—and tried to nudge the conversation toward cheerier topics such as the Dow Jones, but Mr. Squires clammed up. Slouched on the antique deacon’s bench, he stared dolefully at his shoe tops. After a while Mrs. Hendricks went upstairs, leaving him with the sherry bottle.

When it was empty, he snatched up his briefcase and went wandering. Crumpled in a pocket of his coat were three telephone messages in Mrs. Hendricks’ flawless penmanship. The messages had come from Mr. Richard Tarbone and were progressively more insistent. Bernard Squires could not summon the courage to call the hot-tempered gangster and tell him what had happened.

Squires himself wasn’t sure. He didn’t know who the black girl was, or where she’d gotten so much dough. He didn’t know how the hard-ass ATF agent got involved, or why. All Bernard Squires knew for certain was that neither the pension fund nor the Tarbone crime family could afford another front-page headline, and that meant the Simmons Wood deal was queered.

And it wasn’t his fault. None of it.

But that wouldn’t matter, because Richard the Icepick didn’t believe in explanations. He believed in slaying the messenger.

Each passing minute reduced the odds of Bernard Squires’ surviving the week. He knew this; drunk or sober, he knew.

In his career as a mob money launderer, Squires had faced few
predicaments that a quarter million dollars cash could not resolve. That was the amount he’d brought to Grange, to secure the Simmons Wood parcel. Afterwards, when the deal officially turned to dogshit, Clara Markham had made a special trip to the bank to retrieve the money and had even helped Squires count the bundles as he repacked the briefcase.

Which he now carried nonchalantly through the sleeping streets of Grange. It was a lovely, still autumn evening; so different from how he’d always pictured Florida. The air was cool, and it smelled earthy and sweet. He stepped around an orange tomcat, snoozing beneath a streetlamp, which barely favored him with a glance. Occasionally a dog barked in a backyard. Through the windows of the homes he could see the calming violet flicker of television.

Squires hoped the stroll might clear his muddled brain. Eventually he would figure out what to do—he always did. So he kept walking. Before long he found himself on the same street where he’d been two nights before, under the same oak in front of the same bland one-story house. From behind the drawn curtains he heard lively conversation. Several cars were parked in the driveway.

But Bernard Squires was alone at the glazed shrine of the Virgin Mary. No one attended the spotlit statue, its fiberglass hands frozen in benediction. From his distance it was impossible for Squires to see if there were teardrops in the statue’s eyes.

Edging forward, he spotted a lone figure in the moat; the linen-clad man, his knees pulled up to his chest.

Hearing no chanting, Squires ventured closer.

“Hello, pilgrim,” the man said, as if he’d been watching the entire time. His face remained obscured by a shadow.

Squires said, “Oh. Am I interrupting?”

“No, you’re fine.”

“Are you all right in there?”

“Couldn’t be better.” The man lowered his knees and reclined slowly into the water. As he spread his arms, the white bedsheet billowed around him, an angelic effect.

“Isn’t it cold?” Squires said.

“Sah-kamam-slamasoon-noo-slah!”
came the reply, though it was more a melody than a chant.

SOCCER MOMS SLAM SUNUNU FOR SLUR
—another of Sinclair’s legendary headlines. He couldn’t help it; they kept repeating themselves, like baked beans.

Bernard Squires asked, “What language is that?”

“Into the water, brother.”

Sinclair welcomed any company. A noisy meeting was being held in the house—Demencio and his wife, Joan and Roddy, dear lusty Marva, the mayor and the plucky stigmata man. They were talking money; commissions and finder’s fees and profit points, secular matters for which Sinclair no longer cared.

“Come on in,” he coaxed the visitor, and the man obediently waded into the shallow moat. He did not remove his expensive suit jacket or roll up his pants or set aside his briefcase.

“Yes! Fantastic!” Sinclair exhorted.

As Bernard Squires drew closer, he noticed in the wash of the floodlights a small object poised on the floating man’s forehead. At first Squires believed it to be a stone or a seashell, but then he saw it scoot an inch or so.

The object was alive.

“What is it?” he asked, voice hushed.

“A sacred cooter, brother.”

From the shell a thimble-sized head emerged, as smooth as satin and striped exquisitely. Bernard Squires was awestruck.

“Can I touch it?”

“Careful. He’s all that’s left.”

“Can I?”

The next day, during the long flight to Rio de Janeiro,
Bernard Squires would fervidly describe the turtle handling to a willowy Reebok account executive sitting beside him in business class. He would recount how he’d experienced a soul soothing, a revelatory unburdening, an expurgation; how he’d known instantly what he was supposed to do with the rest of his life.

Like a cosmic window shade snapping up, letting the sunlight streak in—“blazing lucidity” is how Bernard Squires would (while sampling the in-flight sherry) describe it. He would tell the pretty saleswoman about the surrealistic little town—the weeping Madonna, the dreamy Turtle Boy, the entrepreneurial carpenter with the raw holes in his hands, the eccentric black millionaire who worked at the animal clinic.

And afterwards he would tell the woman a few personal things: where he was born, where he was educated, his hobbies, his tastes in music and even (sketchily) his line of work. He would under no circumstances, however, tell her the contents of the eelskin briefcase in the overhead compartment.

T
om Krome carried the turtle tank up the porch and backed it slowly through the front door. The house was warm and fragrant with cooking; spaghetti and meatballs.

JoLayne was sampling the sauce when he came in. She was barefoot and blue-jeaned, in a baggy checked shirt with the tails knotted at her midriff.

“Where’ve you been?” she sang out. “I’m in my Martha Stewart mode! Hurry or you’ll miss it.” She breezed over to check on the cooters.

“We’re one shy,” Tom said. He told her about Demencio’s “apostles” and the weirdness with Sinclair. “I felt so sorry for the guy,” he said, “I gave him a slider. He thinks it’s Bartholomew.”

JoLayne, with consternation: “What exactly does he do with them? Please tell me he doesn’t …”

“He just sort of touches them. And chants like a banshee, of course.”

She said, “You’ve gotta love this town.”

The remaining forty-four seemed perky and fit, although the
aquarium needed a hosing. To the turtles JoLayne crooned, “Don’t worry, troops. It won’t be long now.”

She felt Tom’s arms around her waist. He said, “Let’s hear the big news—are you a baroness, or still a wench?”

JoLayne knighted him grandly with the sauce spoon. He snatched her up and twirled with her around the floor. “Watch the babies! Watch out!” she said, giggling.

“It’s fantastic, Jo! You beat the bastards. You got Simmons Wood.”

They sat down, breathless. She pressed closer. “Mostly it was Moffitt,” she said.

Tom raised an eyebrow.

“He told the guy you were writing a big exposé on the shopping-mall deal,” JoLayne said. “Told him it was bound to make the front pages—Mafia invades Grange!”

“Priceless.”

“Well, it worked. Squires bolted. But, Tom, what if they believe it? What if they come after you? Moffitt said they won’t dare, but—”

“He’s right. The mob doesn’t kill reporters anymore. Waste of ammo, and very bad for business.” Krome had to admire the agent’s guile. “It was a great bluff. Too bad …”

“What?”

“Too bad I didn’t think of it myself.”

JoLayne gave him a marinara kiss and headed for the kitchen. “Come along, Woodward, help me get the food on the table.”

Over dinner she went through the terms of the land sale. Tom worked the math and said: “You realize that even after taxes and interest payments, you’ll still have quite a comfortable income. Not that you care.”

“How comfortable?”

“About three hundred grand a year.”

“Well. That’ll be something new.”

OK, JoLayne thought, here’s the test. Here’s when we find out if Mr. Krome is truly different from Rick the mechanic or Lawrence the lawyer, or any of the other winners I’ve picked in this life.

Tom said, “You could actually afford a car.”

“Yeah? What else?” JoLayne, spearing a meatball.

“You could get that old piano fixed. And tuned.”

“Good. Go on.”

“Decent speakers for your stereo,” he said. “That should be a priority. And maybe a CD player, too, if you’re really feeling wild and reckless.”

“OK.”

“And don’t forget a new shotgun, to replace the one we tossed overboard.”

“OK, what else?”

“That’s about it. I’m out of ideas,” Tom said.

“You sure?”

JoLayne, hoping with all her heart he wouldn’t get a cagey glint in his eye and say something one of the others might’ve said. Colavito the stockbroker, for instance, would’ve offered to invest her windfall in red-hot biotechs, then watched the market dive. Likewise, Officer Robert would’ve advised her to deposit it all in the police credit union, so he could withdraw large sums secretly to spend on his girlfriends.

But Tom Krome had no schemes to troll, no gold mines to tout, no partnerships to propose. “Really, I’m the wrong person to give advice,” he said. “People who work for newspaper wages don’t get much experience at saving money.”

That was it. He didn’t ask for a penny.

And JoLayne knew better than to offer, because then he’d suspect she was setting him up to be dumped. Which was, now, the furthest thing from her mind.

Bottom line: From day one, the man had been true to his
word. The first I’ve ever picked who was, she thought. Maybe my luck
has
changed.

Tom said, “Come on—you must have your own wish list.”

“Doc Crawford needs a new X-ray machine for the animals.”

“Aw, go nuts, Jo. Get him an MRI.” He tugged on the knot of her shirttail. “You’re only going to win the lottery once.”

She hoped her smile didn’t give away the secret.

“Tom, who knows you’re staying here with me?”

“Am I?”

“Don’t be a smart ass. Who else knows?”

“Nobody. Why?”

“Look on top of the piano,” she said. “There’s a white envelope. It was in the mail when I got home.”

He examined it closely. His name was hand-printed in nondescript block letters. Had to be one of the locals—Demencio, maybe. Or the daffy Sinclair’s sister, pleading for an intervention.

“Aren’t you going to open it?” JoLayne tried not to appear overeager.

“Sure.” Tom brought the envelope to the table and meticulously cut the flap with the tines of a salad fork. The Lotto ticket fell out, landing in a mound of parmesan.

“What the hell?” He picked it up by a corner, as if it were forensic evidence.

JoLayne, watching innocently.

“Your numbers. What were they?” Tom was embarrassed because his hand was shaking. “I can’t remember, Jo—the six numbers you won with.”

“I do,” she said, and began reciting. “Seventeen …”

Krome, thinking: This isn’t possible.

“Nineteen, twenty-two …”

It’s a gag, he told himself. Must be.

“Twenty-four, twenty-seven …”

Moffitt, the sonofabitch! He’s one who could pull it off. Print up a fake ticket, as a joke.

“Thirty,” JoLayne said. “Those were my numbers.”

It looked too real to be a phony; water-stained and frayed, folded then unfolded. It looked as if someone had carried it a long way for a long time.

Then Krome remembered: There had been two winners that night.

“Tom?”

“I can’t… This is crazy.” He showed it to her. “Jo, I think it’s the real thing.”

“Tom!”

“And this was in your mail?”

She said, “Unbelievable.
Unbelievable.”

“That would be the word for it.”