He Was Her Man (15 page)

*

That’s what Mickey’d asked Doc when she got up to the house. What exactly the hell is going on?

Doc was sitting on a stool in the big yellow kitchen drinking a beer. He looked rested, wearing a baby blue shirt with his khakis and boots this morning. The truth was, Doc was a good-looking man, if you liked the dark, dangerous-looking type. He still had all his teeth and his hair—with only a little silver at the temples. But there were those long lines from his hawklike nose to the corners of his thin mouth that Mickey thought said something about his disposition—which was generally sour. Tall and sinewy, he was in good shape, for his age. His lanky body seemed to thrive on hot dogs, Cheez Whiz, cigarettes. Last night, when they’d run into Hot Springs, they’d stopped at a grocery store on the way. Mickey had bought two bags of vegetables and fruit, leaving behind the white bread so soft you could wad a whole slice up into something the size of a marble. Doc had stocked up on junk.

He didn’t answer her question now. Instead, he asked one of his own. “Where’ve you been?” As if he couldn’t tell looking at her in her running things. “I thought we agreed we’d stay put. You could have bumped into somebody.”

“I did.” Mickey smiled. “Ran into some very interesting people who were looking for an old black-and-gold Sunliner. They had a hound with them I’ve met before. Seems the hound is a very smart hound, tracked that car way over here from that convenience store where you picked it up. Hound thinks the Sunliner spent some time down the road up against a pine tree.”

She didn’t add that the woman named Sam had caught her act with a mark from Texas in the lobby of the Palace the night before. Because she wasn’t supposed to have sat down. That wasn’t in their game plan.

But for the first time in her whole professional career, Mickey had the jitters. Well, it wasn’t her usual routine, this kind of scam. It’d made her nervous, and she, who could lie with the best of them, stare down a boss gambler like a bull in a field, she’d gone all to pieces walking around the hotel until she’d spied the easy mark, Slim, near the piano bar. Running her game, an old standard even a baby could do, was like singing herself a lullaby. It had calmed her right down.

But it had exposed her more, too. She knew that. On the other hand, Doc wasn’t exactly following the original plan himself. They weren’t supposed to be stopping to bag any convenience stores. And something had happened there he wasn’t telling her about. She knew that. She just hoped it wasn’t something serious that was going to bring them both down. Bring
her
down, that’s what she was really worried about. The hell with him.

Mickey was concerned. She didn’t like the way things were going at all. As soon as this thing paid off, she was splitting for California. She’d had enough of Doc and his mysterioso routine. Besides, he was a mean drunk, and recently he was drunk more than he was sober. She didn’t need this. She had plenty of relatives who were drunks back in Savannah.

“Oh, yeah?” said Doc. “The hound thinks the car hit a tree?”

Mickey stared at him. He stared back. That was the thing about a man who’d been working the con as long as he had. You could wave a .38 in his face, he wouldn’t blink. He’d made a life’s work out of lying, fooling people, holding that smile, that grin, that firm handshake, how do you do, my name’s Jim, Bill, Bob, Mac, Slick, let me tell you a little story—he never gave up a thing.

Instead Doc cast another question out like it was a fancy fly on a line headed for a cool stream full of trout he’d spent the afternoon catching and releasing: “Hound say where the car is now?”

14

NOT FAR BACK down that mountain road, Pearl seemed to become discombobulated. Sam said, “Bobby, it looks like her nose is worn out. I think we ought to stop and put her in the car.”

They did, and Pearl stretched out in the back seat and immediately began to snore.

Then they took a shortcut Bobby remembered, and it wasn’t long before they were back at the Gas ’N Grub.

“Maybe I ought to reconnoiter for a while,” Bobby said when they pulled up in Sam’s BMW. “I haven’t had any sleep for a while now. Think I’ll take me a little nap up at Mamaw’s house, then get cleaned up, start looking again.”

And maybe take a little peek around the corner for Miss Cynthia Blackshears, the young woman he’d done two years’ time for, see if she’d changed her mind about speaking to him—that’s what Sam thought.

She said, “I’ll leave you then, but let me use the phone before I go and see if Loydell came up with anything.” Loydell wasn’t home. “Well, I guess I ought to get on back to my friends.”

Friend, singular, was what she hoped. As in Kitty alone, as in, please God, let Jinx be off rustling up the ransom money, or, better yet, talking to the cops. She wrote her room number on the back of her card and handed it to Bobby. “Let me hear from you later today, even if you haven’t turned up anything.”

He said he would, and 15 minutes later Sam was standing in the Palace’s lobby staring at two messages.

The first was a fax from Harry. Damn his eyes! She scanned down the long page to his signature at the bottom. Love, Harry, indeed. If he’d loved her, he would have given her more room. Or less. Oh, hell. She jammed the sheet, unread, in her jeans pocket.

The second message was an invitation to join Kitty and Jinx for lunch at McClard’s Barbecue on Albert Pike Avenue, if she wasn’t too busy.

Olive, Harry, and now Jinx—what she was was oh for three. But she’d never in her life passed on a pork sandwich.

*

Given her familiarity with Harry’s barbecue business, Sam could tell from the driveway that McClard’s was the real thing. It looked right, a sort of funky 1920s low squat stucco building, both its parking lots jammed with a mix of Cadillacs, Chevrolets, and pickup trucks. Eleven-thirty in the morning, there was a line of folks waiting out the door. And most importantly, the air was sweet with a mix of pig and pepper and hickory smoke.

She peered through a big plate-glass window, and Kitty waved from a booth of red plastic, Formica, and fake wood.

It smelled even better inside. Sliding into the booth, she said to the waitress in khakis and a maroon jersey, “A sliced pork sandwich with beans and slaw, Diet Dr Pepper, thank you, ma’am.” That taken care of, she could concentrate on visiting with Kitty. And Jinx, if she had to.

“Where the hell have you been?” Kitty growled. She clearly didn’t feel as cute as she looked in her white slacks and the Elvis sweatshirt Sam had brought her back from Tupelo—where she and Harry had gone for a BBQ cook off, back in the good old days last year.

“Sweetheart,” Sam said to her, “maybe you need to have another cup of coffee.” But Kitty didn’t let up with the steely glare. Sam raised both hands to the heavens. “Okay, you really want to know, I was out running with a young man and a dog. What can I say? I can’t seem to stay away from either one.”

Flippant, she’d decided, was the right approach. They’d think she was joking, and she for sure didn’t want Jinx to know about Bobby Adair. The woman was perfectly capable of calling up the Hot Springs Police and turning him in for breaking parole, just to make Sam mad.

She turned to the former Miss Hot Springs—who was done up in an hour’s worth of big hair and makeup, a microscopic black skirt, teetery high-heeled black pumps, black stockings, and a bright blue silk blouse that made the most of her considerable cleavage—and patted Jinx’s hand. “What have you done with
your
morning, sugar pie, other than get yourself all pretty?”

Jinx didn’t say a word. She reached in the biggest black patent leather purse Sam had ever seen, pulled out a pair of movie-star sunglasses, and slapped them on. Then she turned back to her grilled cheese sandwich, which spoke volumes about her IQ, her taste, and her lack of qualification as a human being, as far as Sam was concerned. Anyone who would order grilled cheese in a place that smelled this good ought to be put out of her misery.

“I take it that you all did not have a very productive morning,” Sam offered.

“No, we did not,” Kitty sighed. “Though God knows we tried.”

“Well, do tell.”

Kitty looked at Jinx, who was otherwise engaged, staring back at a large young man in the next booth who was wearing a gimme hat that said Peterbilt across the front. He’d had a forkful of chili spaghetti halfway to his mouth when he’d spotted Jinx and frozen.

“I’d forgotten that she had that effect on men,” said Kitty. “You should have seen the look on Jinx’s friend Bo we went to visit this morning—like a deer caught in the headlights.”

“And who’s Bo?” asked Sam.

“President of the Hot Springs Amalgamated Savings Bank.”

“The bank’s open on Sunday?”

“It is if your name is Jinx and you went to high school with Bo.”

“I see.”

“I imagine he had a lot more hair and a lot less gut back in high school, but that didn’t keep him from being hot to trot, I’ll tell you that. He couldn’t wait to get Miss Jinx into that big old private office of his.”

At that Jinx turned and pulled the sunglasses down a tad on her perfect nose and said to Kitty, without stopping to breathe, “Bo begged me to go to the homecoming dance with him our senior year, but I didn’t. I already had a quarterback and a nose guard duking it out for the honor. Anyway, he’s called me at least once a year ever since then, no matter if I was married or not. He’s
always
been married, since he knocked that Darlynn Millsaps up his freshman year at U of A. But, anyway, I guess he’s still a little sweet on me. That’s why he was willing to do me a tiny little favor.”

“Which was?” Sam asked, knowing, a bank, it had to have something to do with the ransom money, but she wanted to hear the straight poop from Jinx.

Who was still giving her the freeze. As if Miss Beauty Queen herself hadn’t been the one who’d chunked the first Coke.

“Okay,” said Sam. “I’ll bite. He loaned you a million dollars on your signature alone, with your virginity as collateral.”

Jinx took a miniscule nibble of her grilled cheese and chewed it with rapt concentration, as if Sam weren’t in the room.

“But wait a minute,” Sam said, “I’m being so stupid. You
have
a million dollars you won in that lottery. Tax-free. So what were you doing at the bank?”

The silence was broken only by the waitress who arrived with Sam’s order. “Anything else I can get y’all, y’all just holler.”

Sam wasn’t letting any kidnapping or any ransom negotiations or any beauty queen stand in the way of food that smelled this good. She dug in. The white bun was warm, the meat was beautifully smoked tender white pork shoulder, the sauce an absolutely perfect blending of spicy sweet and piquant with a big hit of hot.

“Listen,” she said when she’d eaten enough to be sure she was going to live, “this Q was worth the trip, so if neither of you wants to talk with me, that’s okay. I’ll finish this, and then maybe another one, or maybe two, and then I’ll be on my way. Olive still hasn’t turned up, and I’ve got plenty to do looking for her.”

“Oh, hell,” Jinx said finally. “What difference does it make? You might as well know.”

Kitty gave Sam a look: Wait until you get a load of this.

But while Sam was curious, she remembered she really didn’t want to know too much. She certainly didn’t intend to get snookered into this kidnapping problem of Jinx’s. “Look, don’t do me any favors. It’s none of my business. You’re right. You should handle this the way you want to. Tell you what, I’ll get another couple of sandwiches to go, and I’m out of here. You carry on.”

“Oh, shut up,” said Jinx. “You’re dying to hear about how screwed up this whole thing is, and you know it. I swear to God, I wish I’d never come back to Hot Springs. I am so
mad
at Speed.”

An interesting attitude, thought Sam. Blame the victim. But she didn’t say it.

“He encouraged me, you know, to do this whole thing up right.
I
said I wanted to have this big blowout of an engagement party. He said, Go right on ahead. So I did. I already paid the caterer and the country club and the wedding planner and ordered my gown from Vera Wang, who does those to-die-for dresses up in New York. I flew up there to pick it out and for my fitting, and they’re doing a super rush-rush, which is twice as expensive, but Speed said, So what, sugar pie, you want it, go on ahead. No problemo. Speed says that all the time, no problemo.” Jinx wadded up a little piece of white bread and popped it in her mouth. “I used to think it was real cute, his saying that, No problemo, back when we met.”

“Which was how long ago?” asked Sam.

“A month. Thirty-two days, to be exact.”

“And what exactly is it that you’re mad at him about?”

Kitty’s look told her they were about to get to the good part.

“Well! He said, Go on ahead, do this, do that, and I did, writing checks left and right—”

The light dawned. “So
you
were paying for all this.”

“Speed had a little temporary liquidity problem. Something about the yen and German marks and the float. You know what I mean?”

What Sam knew was that she could smell fish in the air, and there was none on the menu.

“So I went ahead doing what I wanted to do, knowing that Speed was going to make it all good. After all, the man is rolling in it.”

“
Was
rolling in it. Maybe,” said Kitty. “Perhaps. We’re not sure.”

Sam said, “You ladies want to spell this out for me? I’m a little slow.”

“Oh, hell!” Jinx was exasperated, and more than a little embarrassed, Sam could tell, airing her dirty linen in front of Sam. “We went over to the Hot Springs Amalgamated because that’s the bank Speed said handled all his big-deal international financial transactions.”