He Was Her Man (30 page)

“Oh, she’ll hang all right. She’s having fun. And she’s afraid we’ll call the cops if she doesn’t.”

“We
are
calling the cops after we con the con man. Remember, Jack? That’s what we agreed. We spirit Bobby away safely, we sic the cops on Doc.”

“Yeah. For all the good it’ll do.”

“Why are you so certain that Archie’s going to get his way, pin Olive on Bobby?”

Right this minute the baby-faced ex-con was upstairs in the gym over Jack’s restaurant, snuggled into a sofa bed with Pearl for company. Bobby was oblivious to everything that had happened since they’d found Olive.

“You know, Sammy,” said Jack, “cops are a strange breed. You talk to any of them, they’ll tell you they do what they have to do to make their cases. Lie, cheat, steal, cook up evidence, kill—there’s a hell of a lot more honor among thieves. And you can take that to the bank.”

“You’re not saying Doc’s cleaner than Archie, are you?”

“No way. They’re two of a kind, even if we don’t know for sure if Archie’s killed anybody. But I’d lock ’em up together. They’d be great cell mates.”

“Wouldn’t that be wonderful?” Sam licked the last of the crème brûlée from its little round crock. “Listen, how’s Bobby doing? Did you see him? Poor thing. I know he’s destroyed over Olive.”

“I went up and talked with him right before I came over here. He’s taking it real hard. He truly loved the old lady. And he’d been looking forward to seeing her again after those two years in stir. She wrote him every week, kept him sane. Did you know that Cynthia hasn’t spoken to him or written to him, not a word since the day he conked Archie in the head?”

“Uh-huh.”

“But when I saw her at the cemetery, looking at him, I thought she had stars in her eyes.”

“So?”

“So? You’re saying this makes sense?”

“Uh-huh.”

Jack shrugged. “Well, of course it does. I’m just a big dumb man. Don’t know what a whole lot of nines are. Right?”

“Very funny, Jack.” She reached for the hot chocolate.

*

Doc couldn’t sleep. He’d drifted off, and then the next thing he knew, he was wide awake again. Sometimes the Scotch did that. Lately, in the mornings he’d been throwing up.

But this wasn’t Scotch. This was anticipation.

He’d been thinking about Jack for such a long time. And now the time had come.

He sat up and turned on the light. His mouth tasted like a garbage dump. He reached down, grabbed the bottle of Scotch, took a big swig, and gargled. That was better.

He leaned back, propped up against the headboard. He picked up the remote control and punched on the TV to a movie with Jeff Bridges playing like he was Mr. Suave, but Doc had seen this one before. Underneath that thousand-dollar suit the man was wearing black jersey like a cat burglar. Carrying a Buck knife.

Now, that was a possibility. There were all those knives downstairs. Good ones, too, look how that one had done the job on Speed’s pinkie. But then he’d have to get in real close. Jack had Early working for him now, guarding his butt. That could be a problem. He took another slug of Scotch.

There was always his gun. Hardballer .45, made a big old noise, and it’d blow a hell of a big hole in Jack, too. He wouldn’t have to get as close with it, but it’d still be too close if Early was packing.

He needed to think about this. Doc reached down, rooted around under the bed until he found Little Doc. He held him in first one hand and then the other, rubbed him against his brow, kissed him. Little Doc was what he called his diamond. You could name a big piece of ice anything you wanted to, just like a kid. Hope. Star of India. But he’d read once that Elvis called his penis Little Elvis because it was his favorite thing in the world, and if that concept worked for The King, who was he to argue? Little Doc it was, 15 carats of absolutely perfect, flawless stone. It had taken him years of buying smaller rocks, always trading up, until he had worked his way to Little Doc.

His ma, Pearsa, had taught him when he was a little kid never ever to put his money in banks, stocks, bonds, any kind of property the cops could get their hands on. You wanted something small, portable, and indestructible. Diamonds fit the bill.

And the bonus with Little Doc was that he came with his own magic.

Little Doc was better than a crystal ball, better than one of those Eight Balls, better than those phony crystals they dug up out of the ground around here, that was for sure.

He’d picked up one of those crystals. It didn’t do a damn thing. You picked up Little Doc, you could feel it vibrating in your hand. The sucker had powers. You asked a question while you were holding it, it’s not like you
heard
it speak to you, Doc wasn’t stupid, but you did know the answer. You just knew it. It was like it was written in your head.

And what Little Doc was saying right now was, Wing this play. Go with the flow. Forget the knife. Forget the gun. You’ll know the tool when you see it, at that moment, and not before.

Okay, then. Doc turned his attention to Jeff Bridges sweet-talking that blonde. He was conning her into thinking he was her loverman instead of her killer. But, hey, could the man be both? Doc was too tired to think about stuff like that now. He flicked the movie off and pulled up the covers. He liked what Little Doc had had to say. He tucked the diamond under his pillow as if it were a tooth, and the Good Fairy was going to bring him a surprise. He was drunk enough to sleep now, but not too drunk to remember there’d been lots of happy surprises this evening, hadn’t there?

He switched off the lamp and said to the dark room, Enjoy your last night, Jack.

*

Jack had pulled off his black silk bow tie and draped it on the arm of his chair.

Sam had picked it up and played with it while they talked about New Orleans, about the people they knew in common, restaurants, jazz, restaurants, neighborhoods, restaurants, cemeteries, restaurants. Food was bigger than football in the Crescent City, and football was BIG.

Jack knew a lot more people than Sam, but then he had lived in New Orleans forever—until the recent unpleasantness with Joey the Horse. Sam had only been in her house over on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, close but not too close to the city and Harry, for about a year.

She smoothed the strip of black silk through her fingers. “Do you miss it?”

“I didn’t think so,” he said. “I thought the mountains were a nice change. It’s a lot cooler up here. Quieter.”

“What do you mean, didn’t? When did you change your mind?”

Jack looked at her, looked at his watch. “Oh, about twelve hours ago.”

She blushed. Then the blush climbed up her chest, out of the terry cloth up her throat. The more she blushed, the more she blushed. She hated giving herself away like a 16-year-old kid.

Smilin’ Jack just grinned.

He looped the black silk around her wrist and tied it in a bow. Then he took her hand and kissed her fingertips, and she felt all those feelings that sounded so clichéd when you tried to describe them. So she didn’t. She told herself to shut up. She relaxed back into her chair, her naked body inside her terry robe still damp from her bath, her belly full of chocolate and whipped cream and pecans. She felt Jack’s clean-shaven cheeks and his lips and his tongue and his silver hair against her chin as his mouth found a hollow in her throat and made itself at home.

Jack picked her up and flew her around the room. What a treat for a tall woman who was used to carrying not only her own suitcase but her own weight.

Way later, when he smoked his cigar, it smelled to her of incense. She fell into a dream of tented silks, bells, satin pillows, sweetmeats, and sweeter kisses. Jack played the sheik role. Sam got to be the purloined maiden.

31

“YOU
LOOK AWFULLY perky this morning,” Loydell
said to Sam.

“I’m feeling pretty perky, too. How are you feeling?”

“Well, not
too
bad.” Loydell poured herself a cup of coffee from the bottomless coffeepot that is a universal feature of AA meetings. “Considering that I just lost my best friend in the world.”

“I know,” Sam said and gave her a squeeze, then did a double-take. The little old lady was a lot wirier than she looked.

Loydell bowed up her right arm. “You felt that muscle? I keep in shape over at the Y. Got into that weight training couple of years ago when they brought in the machines, I never looked back.” Her smile faded. “Maybe if I’d been able to get Olive to join me, she’d been able to defend herself, wouldn’t be where she is today.”

“Maybe,” said Sam. Then she turned to say hello to that morning’s speaker. He’d talked about waking up in detox in Seattle only to be told he was wearing a red dress and a hat with a petunia when the medics found him. Everyone had laughed. Folks in AA laughed a lot. Sam was glad she’d made this meeting. It, like every meeting she’d ever been to, made her feel blessed to be alive and sober and able to laugh.

“In any case,” said Loydell, “that sucker idn’t doing the same thing to me. This time,
he’s
going to be the one hurting.”

“Now, Loydell. We’re not burning him at the stake, though we’d all like to. We’re just giving him a serious dose of his own medicine before we turn him over to the police.” Sam lowered her voice. The meeting room in the basement of St. Patrick’s Church was clearing out, but there were still people around. “Remember?”

“Whatever you say.”

“Loydell,” she warned.

“Just get on along. Shoo!” Loydell waved her hands as if Sam were a stubborn shoat hogging the trough. “You do your part. I’ll do mine. Me and my secret weapon.”

Loydell chewed on those last words like Hannibal Lecter savoring the memory of the big Amarone with which he’d washed down a dish of roasted human liver and fava beans. It was a thought that stripped away Sam’s morning-after glow, sent a chill up her spine—and got her moving.

This was a dangerous game they were playing. She needed to keep that in mind. Damned dangerous. If they screwed up, Doc could hurt someone bad. Kill someone. Deprive someone of the joy of one more night like the one she’d just spent, which would be a real pity.

*

When he’d talked with Jinx, Doc had kept it brief. He didn’t want any state troopers rolling up to the phone booth while he was still on the line.

“You want Speed back?”

“Oh, yes! Yes, yes, yes. Give me another chance, I’ll do anything, just tell me—”

“Shut up and listen.” Then he’d told her where and when to drop the cash. “Bargain basement price is half a million in unmarked twenties and hundreds.” She started up again, but he didn’t want to hear it. He wanted off the line, and he had a doozie of a hangover. “Anybody else shows at the drop, my partners’ll make sure Speed’s dead, you’re dead, your mother’s dead. And the dying won’t be easy. You got that?” Then he’d clanged down the receiver.

Now Doc was watching the drop spot. Was it safe? He closed his eyes and waited for the answer from Little Doc.

*

So far, so good. Doc had taken the bait. Seven minutes ago he’d rolled out of the carport in the dark blue Mercury.

“He’d be back by now if he’d forgotten something,” said Sam from the trees behind which she, Mickey, and Lateesha were watching. Lateesha had absolutely refused to go to school while this real-life adventure was still in progress.

And she did come in handy. They needed all the players they could get. Early was to be Doc’s tail. Fontaine was going about business as usual in case the cops came sniffing around his story. Cynthia was in place at Tate’s in case Archie got his wind up, thought she might know of Bobby’s whereabouts. Loydell was at home waiting to hear from Jinx what role she was to play. And Bobby was tucked away in the gym above Bubbles, oblivious to the identity of Olive’s killer, oblivious to everything that was going down. The best course, Jack and Sam had decided, if he was to stay out of harm’s way.

So here was Lateesha playing lookout. Sam said Go! and she took off on her bike armed with a cellular phone so she could call inside the big stone house on Lake Ouachita should Doc reappear. They didn’t want him to catch them searching for that sparkler that was his nest egg, his talisman, his deadly lodestone.

*

“What the hell?” Doc couldn’t believe it. He was staring into the gym bag Jinx had left in the dumpster behind the deserted Texaco station on 270 right before it branched off into 227. He’d liked the spot, the same one he and Mickey had picked out a couple of days ago, because the gas station was shut. So there was no one around, but it didn’t look
too
closed. If somebody saw you pulling in or out, it wouldn’t look suspicious.

But what difference did it make if anyone saw you or not, if all you ended up with was a gym bag full of cutup newspaper and a note, written in a loopy hand with little hearts for the dots over the i’s, that said, “I’m really sorry about this, but I just don’t have the money. Can we talk it over?”

Talk? What was there to talk about? Doc was fed up with this kidnapping scam. It had been snakebit from the get-go, and the longer he mucked around with it, the worse it got. Give it up, man, he said to himself. Move on to the Jack part. Then get the hell out of this godforsaken place, make tracks over to the coast, start shopping for your Caddy, your Airstream, your john boat.