He Was Her Man (33 page)

“What’s the catch?”

“Oh, there is no catch, sir.” Her big brown eyes grew larger. “You are definitely the one-hundredth customer of our Diamond Jubilee. But if you don’t think you’d like the alligator boots, you just tell me what you want. By the way, my name’s Cynthia.”

Alligator Luccheses had to be worth seven, eight hundred, hell, maybe a thousand. Doc, who’d never even passed a tip left on a table for a waiter without palming it, couldn’t resist. “Well, sure. The boots’ll be fine. Thank you kindly.”

“I’ll sit right here beside you,” said Jinx, slipping in on his right. “And Samantha’ll sit on your left. How does that feel? Being bookended by a couple of pretty ladies?”

Now Doc was sure of it. Jinx had completely forgotten what they were doing in town. Well, let him grab these boots, slap some kind of shoes on her, he’d get her out on the street and remind her, quick.

A young salesman was approaching Jinx. He was a beanpole, tall and no bigger around than a pencil. He reminded Doc of a mobster in New Orleans who had one of those spaghetti names, but they called him Bennie Brown because of his brown hair, brown eyes, and he always dressed in tan: suit, shirt, tie. Just like this young civilian who was asking Jinx how he could help her. Do you have anything like these, she held up her broken sandal, seven-and-a-half B? Why, sure, he said and took off for the stockroom.

The woman named Sam was chatting on, telling Doc every last detail of a dinner party she had given the night before, describing each dessert down to the last lemon drop. Then Cynthia, the young brunette, was back and holding up the most beautiful pair of boots he’d ever seen. “I’ll take them,” said Doc. Then he punched Jinx in the arm. “We’d better get going, don’t you think?”

“I’ve got to try my shoes on.” She poked out her bottom lip. The woman had absolutely no sense of priorities. Like they didn’t need to get on to Loydell’s, down to the bank, over to Bubbles. She said, “Aren’t you going to try on your boots?”

“Nope,” said Doc. “Eleven A, they’ll do fine.”

“Oh, wait,” said Cynthia. “Actually, these are a half-size smaller, but sometimes that’ll do, you know, so why don’t you try them? If they don’t fit, I have some real pretty lizard ones I can show you.”

“We’re really in a hurry,” said Doc.

“Why, thank yeeeew,” Jinx was saying to the Man in Tan who’d just carried out a tower of shoeboxes. “You didn’t have to go to all that trouble.”

“Jinx,” said Doc. But she wasn’t listening. And Doc didn’t want to cause a scene. He was already making much more of an impression on the citizenry than he’d like.

“Here, sir, let me take those off for you.” Cynthia was sitting on a stool before him with that tiny strip of silver stretched tight across her thighs. It was impossible not to look.

“No, thanks. I’ll do it.” He pulled off his boots and placed them carefully under his chair. Then he tried to look at her face as she handed him the boots.

They were a bit short in the toe and a tad too tight in the arch.

“Now, let’s don’t give up hope,” said Cynthia. “We can do all kinds of tricks around here.”

“They are
so
clever,” Sam said, patting his arm. “I buy all my shoes here.”

“You don’t say,” said Doc, looking down at her brown woven-leather loafers. Huh. Shoes were the first thing you looked at, you wanted to judge a potential mark. One of Pearsa’s lessons. You take a man in a thousand-dollar suit, he’s wearing cheap shoes, and
lots
of them do, you’re not looking at a man with class. But a man wearing jeans and a blue denim shirt, a pair of Armani loafers, that’s the man you zero in on. The money’s all in the details.

So this broad had potential. Whereas Jinx, look at the flashy junk the woman was trying on. Catch-me-do-me stilettos. No wonder she didn’t have any money. She didn’t deserve any.

“So why don’t you just slip those off, and let me take them in the back”—Cynthia was saying about the alligator Luccheses, when all of a sudden, Jinx started screaming. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” She jumped up out of her chair.

And then she was chasing the Man in Tan, who was running hellbent for leather toward the front door.

Jesus! Did he have her bag? Had he stolen the boodle in her wallet? The payoff for the scam? Jeeeesus!

Doc took off after them in the alligator boots.

The man in tan tore down the sidewalk past the Art Center, past a couple more galleries, and he was about to turn up the hill at the Chamber of Commerce when Jinx executed a flying tackle that was damned impressive.

“You filthy son of a bitch!” she screamed. She was sitting astraddle him in her little pink shorts suit.

“What did he take?” Doc grabbed the man by the neck and started throttling him. “What?”

“Nothing!” Jinx was breathing hard. She was red in the face. “He was sniffing my feet. He was getting off on sniffing my feet!”

“Christ on a crutch!” Doc flung the young man down on the pavement. “Jinx, what the hell is wrong with you?” And then he grabbed her by the arm and dragged her the two blocks down the street and back into Frank’s Shoes. The alligator boots were pinching the hell out of his toes.

He threw Jinx into a chair. “Just get some damned shoes, and let’s get going.”

Cynthia was wide-eyed. “I’m so sorry, sir. I’m so sorry,” she gulped. “Is there any way we can make this up to you?”

Doc was pulling off the alligator boots. He reached over and grabbed up a box beside Jinx that the Man in Tan hadn’t even opened yet. “She’ll take these, and we’ll be on our way.”

“I’m afraid that’ll be seventy dollars, sir. See,
she
wasn’t the hundredth customer. You were. Now, could I show you some lizard boots we have in your size?”

“I don’t think so,” Doc hissed. He turned to Jinx. “Put those shoes on now. Right now.” Then to Cynthia, he said, “I think, missy, you’ll consider her shoes the Diamond Jubilee door prize and count yourself lucky that I’m not calling the cops and reporting this pervert you have working in your store.”

“Yes, sir,” Cynthia said. “I guess you’re right. Thank you, sir. Thank you very much. And don’t forget your boots.” She was holding up Doc’s old pair. Suddenly he felt nauseous. How could he? How
could
he have gone off and left his boots?

Doc snatched the boots out of her hand, jerked them on, and pushed Jinx out of the store. Sam and Cynthia ran to the front and watched him drag her down the sidewalk, then stop and point her around the corner and up toward Exchange. Jinx flounced on up the hill, and Doc slouched back toward the Mercury.

“We did it!” They hugged each other. “We did it!” Cynthia said, “Weren’t we cool?”

And then Jethro the Iceman, Joey the Horse’s precious gems fence and all-purpose jeweler, stepped from the stockroom. He was a dapper little man wearing a white linen suit and a handmade pair of brown-and-white spectator lace-ups that would have given Doc pause. He was carrying a smooth brown calf attaché case with serious combination locks. Jethro grinned. “Mission accomplished,” he announced, then raised a hand adorned with four sparkling rings. He and the ladies slapped high fives.

35

THE WAY THE priest and the jeweler scam usually begins is the outside man—who sets up the mark, in this case a jeweler—plays a priest who comes into a jewelry store and buys something not too expensive, but of a value to make the scam worthwhile, let’s say a diamond bracelet for a thousand, maybe two thousand bucks. The inside man, who actually takes off the score, plays a cop who’ll appear after the purchase.

But that wouldn’t work in this particular situation. First, of all, Doc had to use Jinx because Mickey was dead and he didn’t have another partner, and besides, Jinx gave him the access to her mother, the mark. Jinx would be the outside man, but she obviously couldn’t play anyone other than herself.

And, if Loydell were cozy with the local cops, Doc couldn’t pretend to be one. However, he could be a U. S. Treasury agent, which is why he was wearing the cheap blazer and the ugly tie. Doc, like Mickey, had a whole wardrobe of costumes—which he’d be retiring very soon.

Now Doc was sitting in the Mercury on Central Avenue, right across from Bubbles, waiting for Jinx and Loydell to head for the bank. And here they were.

Jinx was mincing down the hill in her new navy high heels, which he had to admit, didn’t go with her pink and daisy shorts suit nearly as well as her pink and yellow sandals, but, hey, he wasn’t going to have to listen to her bitching about that very long, was he?

Beside her marched a little old lady in a red-and-white polyester pants suit. In her sensible white shoes, Loydell was about four steps ahead of her daughter. Doc gathered Loydell had believed Jinx’s story about going back into the crystal altar business and wanting to buy Loydell’s Arkansas diamond to be the centerstone of an altar called Hope that was going to be her reentry piece. Jinx just knew that altars of Arkansas crystal were going to be all the rage, and that’s why she was willing to spend this last 10,000 dollars she’d tucked away. She’d won it at Oaklawn picking five out of six races in a Classix.

“What if she balks at the price?” Jinx had asked when they were rehearsing.

“What size
is
the rock? Show me again.”

Jinx had made a circle with her thumb and forefinger. “It’s about this big.”

“Jesus! I’ll be lucky if it’s worth five thousand. Are you sure that’s right? How long’s it been since you’ve seen it?”

“Oh, it’s been some time,” said Jinx, making it up as she went along. “Mother hardly ever brings it out. She’s kind of wacko about it. She thinks it has some kind of magical powers. I wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t sleep with it under her pillow.”

Doc had just grinned his wolfy grin. God, wasn’t life funny? But that’s why being on the grift was so easy: The infinite variety of humanity bent the envelope of possibilities in ways you just wouldn’t believe—until you tried it.

Then he said, “This is an awfully cheap price for your boyfriend—you realize that, don’t you? Your getting him back for a five-tops-ten-thousand-dollar piece of ice?”

“Oh, Doc,” she’d said then, pressing her chest up against his arm. “I’m so grateful that you’re letting me off so easy. I’ll do this right, I promise.”

“Remember to flash the cash in front of her. People see the green, they bite. Especially thousand-dollar denominations, they are
real
impressive. And then you remember that you recently heard that there were some counterfeit one-grand bills being passed at the track, and before you do anything to put your mom in jeopardy, you think they ought to take the money down to a bank and make sure it’s the real thing.”

“I insist on it—even if she’s willing to just take the cash.”

“Absolutely. You are determined that your mom gets the genuine jack.”

So that’s what they’d been doing, Jinx and Loydell, going to the bank. Doc had watched them march around the corner and down the sidewalk into the Hot Springs Amalgamated Savings, where an officer would swear on a stack of Bibles that the boodle was bona fide.

Because it was. A con man who worked any kind of scam involving currency always carried a stash of the real green.

Now here they were. Doc could hear them talking as they passed his car.

“Well, I feel a whole lot better that we did that, don’t you, Mother?”

“I don’t know. I’m sure Bo thought we were absolutely crazy.” She shook her head, and the little gray waves marching back from her forehead didn’t move an inch. Doc sure couldn’t see any family resemblance between the two of them.

“Oh, he did not,” said Jinx. “You know Bo’s always been sweet on me. He’d do anything.…” And then the conversation trailed off as the two women turned the corner and headed back up the hill to Loydell’s house.

Doc checked his watch. Jinx was doing swell. He’d give her 10 minutes to have a Coke, schmooze with her mother, and then he’d make his move. He reached down and tapped on the heel of his right boot. He shook his foot, and he could feel Little Doc move inside the hollow heel. “Gonna bring you a little brother real soon,” he said to the diamond.

Well, sort of a diamond.

*

Jack was sitting in his regular booth in Bubbles’s front room, the one where folks could find him if they needed him—or needed a favor. It was table number one with a view of the street. He was drinking a cup of café au lait made with Community Coffee he had shipped up fresh from New Orleans once a week. Sam, across from him, was already too fidgety without the java. She checked her watch for the hundredth time. “Doc’s been up at Loydell’s for five minutes. How much longer, do you think?”

“Long as it takes, I guess.”

“I hate it when you say things like that.”

“You don’t even know me well enough to know all the things you’re going to hate,
after
you dump that fool down in New Orleans, the one who was stupid enough to let you out of his sight for even a second.” Then he gave her a big wink.

Sam ignored that and drummed her fingers on the table. “I guess I ought to be pleased. It didn’t take Cynthia but two minutes to talk those nice people who own Frank’s Shoes into letting us use their store.”