He Was Her Man (19 page)

“What?”

He was walking in a circle, shaking his big head. “We got our signals crossed. Jesus! I thought he was fingering, I thought
you
were the—oh, shit.”

She was beginning to get the drift.
“
You
were in the Palace lobby last night?”

He shook his head and nodded at the same time. “I can’t believe this.”

“Well, listen. If it makes you feel any better, I’ve had a difficult time with the concept, too. Being grabbed out of the parking lot, knocked out, tied up, battered, etc. It hasn’t exactly been a stroll through the park.”

He wheeled, reached over, and gave her a hand, pulling her up. “Jesus! This is a—” He was brushing off her shoulders.

“Fuckup. A fuckup of the first water, I’d say.”

He closed his eyes and pinched his forehead like he had a terrible headache. Then he opened them again, and there it was, that same brilliant blue. He said, “Who the hell
are
you?”

“I’ve been telling you for I don’t know how long. Sam. Samantha Adams. But more importantly, who are
you
?
And where the hell are we?”

“Oh, Christ.” He stuck out a big hand. “Jack Graham. This is the top floor of my restaurant, Bubbles, it’s in the old Quapaw Bathhouse, listen, I can’t tell you how
sorry
—Jesus, can I—I’ll make this up to you somehow.”

“Hey. Mistaken identity? Kidnapping the wrong woman? It happens to the best of us. But there’s one thing you can do.”

“Name it.”

“Close your eyes.”

He smiled uncertainly, then shuttered those china blues.

Sam rolled her neck and shoulders until she felt pretty loose. She softened her knees and danced back a step or two. Then, like he told her, hands up, she pulled back her right, rotating her hips through her swing, and threw all her power behind it. She was bare-handed, so her fist throbbed like crazy after she landed her punch.

But his nose hurt worse.

20

“WHAT?” SAID SPEED, when Doc got off the phone. You could never read the man’s face. He did that stony thing. But he knew Doc had to be fooling around with Mickey, pulling his leg. Or, Speed wondered, maybe they were jerking him off. Pretending something had screwed up, so they could do him out of his third. Well, they could fool around all they wanted to, they were nuts if they thought they were pulling his chain. “So, Doc? Something went wrong?”

“Nope. Everything’s just hunky-dory.”

Doc looked like he was figuring out something. Speed didn’t like that. He didn’t like it when Doc was figuring.

“It sure sounded like something was wrong. You don’t look happy.”

“I’m telling you it’s nothing. Mickey said the car keeps stalling on her. I tell her all the time, buy a Cadillac, if you want a good car. But, no, she’s got to drive that damned Mercedes.” He poured himself another cup of tea. “Women.”

“They’re all crazy,” Speed agreed.

Doc laid a hand on his shoulder. “Did you think I was talking about the deal? Nawh. The deal’s copasetic. Mickey said your girlfriend’s coming through.” Now all of a sudden, he’s wearing this big smile. “Piece of cake, Speed.”

Speed relaxed. “Right. Piece of cake. That’s what I said from the minute I ran into Mickey at the track, been two, three years since I saw her down in Sarasota, told her about Jinx and her lottery dough, how I’d flimflammed Jinx into thinking I was Mr. Gotrocks, marrying me, but the sticky part being the prenup she wouldn’t back off of.”

“I know, Speed.” Doc still smiling, but sounding a little impatient. Like he’d heard all this before.

Well, he had. But that didn’t mean that Speed didn’t like telling it over and over. He liked to talk. Talking helped calm his nerves. And he’d been real nervous since he’d left New Orleans. It hadn’t been pretty, that chapter. What was a guy supposed to do, his whole life he’d been connected, a first cousin to Joey the Horse, who’d given him odd jobs despite the fact that his dad was Irish from Magazine Street—just like Jack Graham. One little screwup, that Lush Life thing, which was all Doc’s fault anyway, and he’s out. Just like that. Like he wasn’t family.

Joey said it was Speed’s own fault, but Speed didn’t see how he figured it that way. Joey had told him to work with Jack, and Jack had told him to work with Doc, and he figured Doc knew what he was doing. Jesus!

He went back to his story. “Jinx’d get a
big
hunk, we divorced. That’s what that prenup paper said.”

Doc said, “Not that it made the least bit of difference, since you ain’t got the proverbial pot. A big hunk of zilch is zilch.”

“Hey! I had my hot streaks. But the part that was the kicker, in the case of her death, all her money goes to her kid. That didn’t seem fair to me. Does it seem fair to you? Huh, Doc? I said to Jinx, it’s like you don’t trust me.”

“Why should she trust you, Speed? You’re only marrying her for the bucks.”

“Yeah, but I told you she doesn’t know that. I wined her and dined her and danced her and romanced her. Hey, the woman thinks my heart is doing flip-flops. And she’s nuts about me. You never saw a woman so nuts about anybody. She worships the ground beneath my feet. She’d do
anything
for me.”

That’s what she’d said. But then, he’d heard those words before. Joey used to slap him on the chops, just playing, and he’d say, Speed, I’d do anything for you. Then when he screwed up that one tiny thing, Joey said, Walk. Walk if you want to live. Just like that. The man was cold.

Doc said, “Yeah, uh-huh. The woman’d do anything for you except cancel the prenup.” Then he took a long swig of his tea.

“Yeah, but Mickey, she’s always been a smart girl, she came up with the plan, saw the way around it just like that.” Speed snapped his fingers. “The phony nab. Jinx, she loves my little butt, she’ll cough up the mill for ransom, we split it three ways, we’re outta here. So tell me, what exactly did Mickey say just now, about the money? Said she’s coming through with it, right? Just like we planned. Right? No problemo?”

“Why don’t you ask her yourself?”

Speed had been so busy talking, he hadn’t heard the car drive up. But there she was, Mickey, standing in the kitchen door. She wasn’t smiling. You’d think she’d be smiling. Speed turned back to Doc. Doc was smiling. So, it must be like he said, Mickey was on the rag because the Mercedes stalled on her.

He’d jolly her up. “Hey, I heard about your car. But you got back here all right, right? Bringing us some of the good news, right?”

“Wrong,” Mickey snapped, swinging into the room. Moving up on him, so close he had to look up to see her face. He hated that. He hated people making him feel short. She was saying, “Wrong, wrong, wrong, Speed. The lady you were so sure about? Your Jinx, the sure thing? Well, little buddy, Jinx said to tell you to go fuck yourself. And fuck Doc. And fuck me. We’re all fucked here, Speed. We went to a hell of a lot of trouble, and now we’re coming up with empty.” She flipped her hands palm up.

Speed turned back to Doc, who was still smiling, Doc, who was strolling over to the counter where Speed had made the chicken sandwiches. Doc, who was picking up the chef’s knife he’d used to chop. Doc, who was strolling back over to the table where the gin hands lay, face up. You could see Speed’s winning hand. He knew Doc didn’t like that.

But Doc was still smiling. A kind of sharky-looking smile. Not real pleasant. Not the kind that warmed your heart.

“She’s joking, right?” said Speed, backing away a little. Doc was making him nervous. “Mickey’s just joking.”

“No joke,” said Doc. Then quick as a wink, Doc reached over and pinned his right hand to the table, reared back with that chef’s knife and hacked off the first joint of his little finger so neatly the horseshoe diamond ring didn’t even fall off.

He stared down at his finger lying there on the table. He couldn’t believe it. He was spurting blood like a frigging fountain.

Then he looked up at Mickey. She’d screamed once. Then she’d gone all white around the mouth.

Now he heard himself yelling at Doc. “What? What the hell’d you do?” The room was moving. “It doesn’t even hurt. I can’t feel a thing.” He looked up at Doc, who was still smiling that awful smile. “Why’d you chop my damned finger off?”

The con man leaned into his face and crooned, “You know that old saying, don’t you, Speed? Never play cards with a man named Doc?”

21

“
FONTAINE FONTAINE, WHERE are you?” Lateesha couldn’t believe she was being so bold, standing right in that giant’s yard, hollering out his name. But if he was her cousin June’s husband, it wasn’t like he was going to bite off her arms. Was it?

From deep inside the house, somebody answered. “Whaddyou want?”

It didn’t sound like Fontaine. It didn’t sound like anybody she’d ever heard before. Probably the ghost of one of those people who’d died up in the tower. Lateesha shivered in the middle of the afternoon of a warm spring day.

“I want to see Fontaine. I need to talk to him about something important.”

“He ain’t here.”

“Well, where’s he gone?”

“Gone to his day job.”

“And where’s that?”

“You don’t know that, girl, you ought not to be coming around here hollering out his name in the first place.” And then the door creaked open, and the tiniest little old man Lateesha had ever seen was standing there, his bottom lip all puffed out with snuff.

Lateesha had seen this little old brown apple doll before. She just didn’t know where.

“You that girl stays with Odessie?” said the old man, opening the screen door and spitting around Lateesha into the orange daylilies.

“Yes, sir, I am.”

“Then I’m your great-uncle, Sweet William.”

“Yes, sir.” So that meant she’d seen him at family reunions. Like last year when Aunt Odessie got to be the Big Momma and ride in the carriage with the white horses. Lateesha still had her family reunion T-shirt. She wondered if they’d given Uncle Sweet William a kid’s size, how’d he look in it?

“You want to see Fontaine, you just go on over to Greenwood Cemetery. You’ll find him.”

“Greenwood?” Lateesha didn’t like that idea one bit, even on this sunny day. Haints and goblins and who knew what? Besides, once when she was 10 and was up here visiting from New Orleans, she was over in that cemetery playing with her cousins, and one of them was running around, his foot went down into this hole in the ground, and when it came back out, it didn’t have a sock or a shoe, just these long scratches all around his ankle where this buried-alive person reached up and grabbed him. That’s what Aunt Odessie said. Said that’d teach ’em to be playing where they ought not to.

Lateesha asked, “What’s he do over to Greenwood?”

Sweet William leaned back his head and laughed this little old man silent laugh. He didn’t have a tooth in his head. “You’ll see. Now go on. You’re keeping me from my programs. I likes to watch my programs every day. Weekends I watch things got balls in ’em. Today I’m watching basketball. You like basketball, girl? No? I used to tell Fontaine he ought to go try out, he’s so tall, but the boy was too lazy. Now it’s too late. He’s too old. Not as old as me though. You know how old I am?”

No, Lateesha didn’t, and she didn’t mean to be rude, but she didn’t care either. What she cared about was telling Fontaine that she had first dibs on that Sunliner, she being the one who’d gone to all the trouble snatching it in the first place, and she didn’t appreciate Early, even if he was a stone bad killer, just stepping in and grabbing it all up. If there was anybody who was going to make the big bucks off that car, it ought to be her.

“Or you could talk with June,” Sweet William was saying. “June’s got more brains than Fontaine any day. She the one tells him what to do most of the time. If it’s important, ain’t that what you said, you ought to be talking with June anyhow.”

Lateesha thanked Sweet William kindly and walked on back around into the side yard to check on her Sunliner. She hadn’t noticed the sign over the garage door last night. FONTAINE BODY WORK. Well, it had been pretty late, and there’d been Fontaine and those dogs scaring her half to death. Now she could see the dogs, four huge black-and-tans, lunging at their fence, dying to get a piece of her.

She stuck her tongue out at them and opened a corrugated steel garage door that looked like somebody had just cut it out of the wall with a blowtorch and slapped a couple of hinges on it, which made her a little nervous about the quality of Fontaine’s work. She wasn’t sure she wanted him touching her Sunliner at all.

It was dark inside the garage. Dark and spooky, but not so dark that Lateesha couldn’t tell that Damn! That Sunliner had up and gone.

22

“GET OUT OF my way, please,” Sam said to Jack. “I don’t want you to walk me back to my hotel.” It was only a hop, skip, and a jump up Central Avenue, anyway, and if he thought he was getting off that easy, he was crazy.
“Go
soak your nose in some ice,” she said, grabbing up her jeans and stomping out the back door of the Quapaw toward the Promenade. She was wearing her jacket, her T-shirt, his red satin shorts, and carrying her jeans.

“Give me your keys, and I’ll have your car picked up and delivered,” he called as she climbed the steps to the red brick lane that wound its way along the mountainside behind the bathhouses toward the big hotels. He sounded awfully nasal. His nose was swelling. Good.

“Are you crazy? My keys? I’ll see you in court, mister.”

“Please, I’m so sorry.” He was halfway up the steps. “Listen, I’ll make this up to you. I’ll do anything. Anything.”

She paused. A marker from a big-time crook? She said stiffly, “I’ll think about it.”

“Great! Remember,
anything.
I mean it.”

She waved him off behind her. But now she couldn’t wait to get back to the Palace and tell Kitty about the latest Perils of Pauline. She knew what Kitty would say: And he tied you up? Jeetz, you have
all
the fun. She jogged all the way back to the hotel.