Lucky You (33 page)

“Smart-ass!” she said, and poked him with her big toe in quite a sensitive area. They wolfed their steaks, skipped dessert and hurried back to the room to make love.

Judge Arthur Battenkill Jr. came home to an empty house. Katie was probably at the supermarket or the hairdresser. The judge put on the television and sat down to savor a martini, in celebration of his retirement. The early news came on but he didn’t pay much attention. Instead he absorbed himself with the challenge of selecting a Caribbean wardrobe. Nassau would be the logical place to shop; Bay Street, where he’d once bought Willow a hand-dyed linen blouse and a neon thong bikini, which he’d brutishly gnawed off in the cabana.

Arthur Battenkill tried to imagine himself in vivid teal walking shorts and woven beach sandals; him with his hairy feet and chalky, birdlike legs. He resolved to do whatever was needed to be a respectable exile, to blend in. He looked forward to learning the island life.

The name Tom Krome jarred him from the reverie. It came from the television.

The judge grabbed for the remote and turned up the volume. As he watched the footage, he stirred the gin with a manicured pinkie. Some sort of press conference at
The Register.
A good-looking woman in a short black dress; Krome’s wife, according to the TV anchor. Picking up a journalism plaque on behalf of her dead husband. Then: chaos.

Arthur Battenkill rocked forward, clutching his martini with both hands. God, it was official—Krome was indeed alive!

There was the man’s lawyer on television, saying so. He’d just served the astonished and now flustered Mrs. Krome with divorce papers.

Ordinarily the judge would’ve smiled in admiration at the attorney’s cold-blooded ambush, but Arthur Battenkill wasn’t enjoying the moment even slightly. He was climbing the stairs, taking three at time, anticipating what he’d find when he reached the bedroom; preparing himself for the catastrophic fact that Katie wasn’t at the grocery or the salon. She was gone.

Her drawers in the bureau were empty; her side of the bathroom vanity was cleaned out. A suitcase was also missing, the big brown one with foldaway casters. A lavender note in Katie’s frilly handwriting was Scotch-taped to the headboard of their bed, and for several moments it paralyzed the judge:

Honesty, Arthur. Remember?

Which meant, of course, that his wife, Katherine Battenkill, had been to the police.

The judge began packing like the frantic fugitive he was about to become. Tomorrow’s front-page newspaper headline would exhume Tom Krome but, more important, rekindle the mystery of the corpse found in the burned house. Detectives who might otherwise have dismissed Katie’s yarn as spousal bile (and done so without a nudge, being longtime courthouse acquaintances of Arthur Battenkill) would be impelled in the scorching glare of the media to take her seriously.

Which meant a full-blown search would begin for Champ Powell, the absent law clerk.

I could be fucked, thought Arthur Battenkill. Seriously fucked.

He filled their second-string suitcase, a gunmetal Samsonite, with underwear, toiletries, every short-sleeved shirt he owned, jeans and khakis, a windbreaker, PABA-free sunscreen, swim trunks, a stack of traveler’s checks (which he’d purchased that morning at the bank) and a few items of sentimental value (engraved cufflinks, an ivory gavel and two boxes of personalized Titleists). He concealed five thousand in cash (withdrawn during the same sortie to the bank) inside random pairs of nylon socks. He packed a single blue suit (though not the vest) and one of his judge’s robes, in case he needed to make an impression on some recalcitrant Bahamian immigration man.

One thing Arthur Battenkill found missing from the marital bureau was his passport, which Katie undoubtedly had swiped to thwart his escape.

Clever girl, the judge said to himself.

What his wife did not know (and Arthur Battenkill did, from his illicit travels with Willow and Dana) was that U.S. citizens didn’t need a passport for entry into the Commonwealth of the Bahamas. A birth certificate sufficed, and the judge had one in his billfold.

He latched the suitcase and dragged it to the living room, where he got on the phone to a small air-charter service in Satellite Beach. The owners owed him a favor, as he’d once saved them a bundle by overruling a catastrophic jury verdict. The case involved a 323-pound passenger who’d been injured by a sliding crate of roosters on a flight to Andros. Jurors blamed the air-charter service for the mishap and awarded the passenger $100,000 for each of her fractured toes, which numbered exactly four. However, it was Arthur Battenkill’s view, based on the expert testimony, that the woman herself shared much of the blame since it was her jumbo presence in the rear of the aircraft that had caused the cargo to shift so precipitously upon takeoff. The judge sliced the jury award by seventy-five percent, a decision upheld on appeal and received buoyantly by the air-charter firm.

Whose owners now assured Arthur Battenkill Jr. that it would be no trouble flying him to Marsh Harbour, none whatsoever.

As the judge showered and shaved for the last time as an American resident, he imagined how it would be, his new life in the islands. It would have been better with Katie, for a single middle-aged man surely would attract more notice and even suspicion. Still, he could easily picture himself as the newly arrived gentleman divorce—no, a widower. Polite, educated, respectful of native ways. He’d have a small place on the water and live modestly off investments. Discreetly he would let it drop that he’d held a position of prominence in the States. Perhaps eventually he would take on some piecework, advising local attorneys who had business with the Florida courts. He also would learn how to snorkel, and would order some books to help him identify the reef fish. He would go barefoot and get a nut-brown tan. There would be time for painting, too (which he hadn’t done since his undergraduate days)—watercolors of passing sailboats and swaying palms, bright tropical scenes that would sell big with the tourists in Nassau or Freeport.

Leaning his forehead against the tiles in the steamy shower, the Honorable Arthur Battenkill Jr. could see it all. What he couldn’t see was the plain blue sedan pulling into his driveway. Inside were three men: an FBI agent and two county detectives. They’d come to ask the judge about his law clerk, whose name had been helpfully provided by the judge’s wife and secretaries, and whose toasted remains had been (less than one hour ago) positively identified by a series of DNA tests. If, as Mrs. Battenkill stated, the judge had assigned the late Champ Powell to the arson in which he’d perished, then the judge himself would stand trial for felony murder.

It was a topic that would arise soon enough, after Arthur Battenkill toweled off, got dressed, picked up his suitcase and—gaily humming the tune of “Yellow Bird”—walked out his front door, where the men stood in wait.

“What’ll happen to your husband?”

Katie Battenkill said, “Prison, I guess.”

“God.” Mary Andrea Finley Krome, thinking: This one’s tougher than she looks.

“There’s a Denny’s off the next exit. Are you hungry?”

Mary Andrea said, “Tell me again where we’re going. The name of the place.”

“Grange.”

“And you’re sure Tom’s there?”

“I think so. I’m pretty sure,” Katie replied.

“And how exactly do you know him? Or did you already say?”

Mary Andrea wasn’t in the habit of road-tripping with total strangers, but the woman had seemed trustworthy and Mary Andrea had been frantic—spooked by Tom’s divorce lawyer and rudely shouted at by the reporters. She would never forget the heat of the TV lights on her neck as she fled, nor the dread as she fought for a path through the crowd in the newspaper lobby. She’d even considered feigning another medical collapse but decided against it; the choreography would’ve been dicey amid the tumult.

All of a sudden a hand had gripped her elbow, and she’d spun to see this woman—a pretty strawberry blonde, who’d led her out the door and said: “Let’s get you away from all this nonsense.”

And Mary Andrea, stunned with defeat and weakened from humiliation, had accompanied the consoling stranger because it was the next best thing to running, which was what Mary Andrea felt most like doing. The woman introduced herself as Katie something-or-other and briskly took Mary Andrea to a car.

“I tried to get there sooner,” she’d said. “I wanted to tell you your husband was still alive—you deserved to know. But then I got tied up at the sheriffs office.”

Initially Mary Andrea had let pass the last part of the woman’s remark, but she brought it up later, as an icebreaker, when they were on the highway. Katie candidly stated that her husband was a local judge who’d committed a terrible crime, and that her conscience and religious beliefs required her to rat him out to the police. The story piqued Mary Andrea’s curiosity but she was eager to steer the conversation back to the topic of her scheming bastard husband. How else to describe a man so merciless that he’d burn down his own house to set up his own wife—even an estranged one—for publicly televised ridicule!

“You’re mistaken. It wasn’t like that,” said Katie Battenkill.

“You don’t know Tom.”

“Actually, I do. See, I was his lover.” Katie was adhering to her new-found doctrine of total honesty. “For about two weeks. Look in my purse, there’s a list of all the times we made love. It’s on lavender notepaper, folded in half.”

Mary Andrea said, “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Go ahead and look.”

“No, thanks.”

“Truth matters more than anything in the world. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

“And then some,” Mary Andrea said, under her breath. She considered putting on a show of being jealous, to discourage the woman from further elaboration.

But Katie caught her off guard by asking: “Aren’t you glad he’s alive? You don’t look all that thrilled.”

“I’m … I guess I’m still in shock.”

Katie seemed doubtful.

Mary Andrea said, “If I weren’t so damn mad at him, yes, I’d be glad.” Which possibly was true. Mary Andrea knew her peevishness didn’t fit the circumstances, but young Katie couldn’t know what the Krome marriage was, or had become. And as good a performer as Mary Andrea was, she wasn’t sure how an ex-widow ought to act. She’d never met one.

Katie said, “Don’t be mad. Tom didn’t set you up. What happened was my husband’s fault—and mine, too, for sleeping with Tom. See, that’s why Arthur had the house torched—”

“Whoa. Who’s Arthur?”

“My husband. I told you about him. It’s a mess, I know,” said Katie, “but you’ve got to understand that Tommy didn’t arrange this. He had no clue. When it happened he was out of town, working on an article for the paper. That’s when Art sent a man to the house—”

“OK, time out!” Mary Andrea, making a T with her hands. “Is this why your husband’s going to jail?”

“That’s right.”

“My God.”

“I’m so glad you believe me.”

“Oh, I’m not sure I do,” said Mary Andrea. “But it’s quite a story, Katie. And if you
did
cook it up all by yourself, then you should think about a career in show business. Seriously.”

They were thirty minutes outside Grange before Katherine Battenkill spoke again.

“I’ve come to believe that everything happens for a reason, Mrs. Krome. There’s no coincidence or chance or luck. Everything that happens is meant to guide us. For example: Tom. If I hadn’t made love thirteen times with Tom, I would never have seen Arthur for what he truly is. And likewise he’d never have burned down that house, and you wouldn’t be here with me right now, riding to Grange to see your husband.”

For once Mary Andrea was unable to modulate her reaction. “Thirteen times in two weeks?”

Thinking: That breaks
our
old record.

“But that’s counting oral relations, too.” Katie, attempting to soften the impact. She rolled down the window. Cool air streamed through the car. “I don’t know about you, but I’m dying for a cheeseburger.”

“Well, I’m dying to speak to Mr. Tom Krome.”

“It won’t be long now,” Katie said lightly. “But we do need to make a couple of stops. One for gas.”

“And what else?”

“Something special. You’ll see.”

29

On the morning of December 6, Clara Markham drove to her real estate office to nail down a buyer for the property known as Simmons Wood. Waiting in the parking lot was Bernard Squires, investment manager for the Central Midwest Brotherhood of Grouters, Spacklers and Drywallers International. As Clara Markham unlocked the front door, JoLayne Lucks strolled up—jeans, sweatshirt, peach-tinted sunglasses and a baseball cap. She’d done her nails in glossy tangerine.

The dapper Squires looked uneasy; he shifted his eelskin briefcase from one fist to the other. Clara Markham made the introductions and started a pot of coffee.

She said, “So how was your trip, Jo? Where’d you go?”

“Camping.”

“In all that weather!”

“Listen, hon, it kept the bugs away.” JoLayne moved quickly to change the subject. “How’s my pal Kenny? How’s the diet coming?”

“We’ve lost two pounds! I switched him to dry food, like you suggested.” Clara Markham reported this proudly. She handed a cup of coffee to Bernard Squires, who thanked her in a reserved tone.

The real estate broker explained: “Kenny’s my Persian blue. Jo works at the vet.”

“Oh. My sister has a Siamese,” said Squires, exclusively out of politeness.

JoLayne Lucks whipped off her sunglasses and zapped him with a smile. He could scarcely mask his annoyance.
This
was his competition for a $3 million piece of commercial property—a black woman with orange fingernails who works at an animal hospital!

Clara Markham settled behind her desk, uncluttered and immaculate. JoLayne Lucks and Bernard Squires positioned themselves in straight-backed chairs, almost side by side. They set their coffee cups on cork-lined coasters.

“Shall we begin?” said Clara.

Without preamble Squires opened the briefcase across his lap, and handed to the real estate broker a sheaf of legal-sized papers. Clara skimmed the cover sheet.

For JoLayne’s benefit she said, “The union’s offer is three million even with twenty-five percent down. Mr. Squires already delivered a good-faith cash deposit, which we put in escrow.”

They jacked up the stakes, JoLayne brooded. Bastards.

“Jo?”

“I’ll offer three point one,” she said, “and thirty percent up front.” She’d been to the bank early. Tom Krome was right—a young vice president in designer suspenders had airily offered an open line of credit to cover any shortfall on the Simmons Wood down payment.

Squires said, “Ms. Markham, I’m not accustomed to this … informality. Purchase proposals on a tract this size are usually put into writing.”

“We’re a small town, Bernard. And you’re the one who’s in the big hurry.” Clara, with a saccharine smile.

“It’s my clients, you see.”

“Certainly.”

JoLayne Lucks was determined not to be intimidated. “Clara knows my word is good, Mr. Squires. Don’t you think things will move quicker this way, all three of us together?”

Disdain flicked across the investment manager’s face. “All right, quicker it is. We’ll jump to 3.25 million.”

Clara Markham shifted slightly. “Don’t you need to call your people in Chicago?”

“That’s not necessary,” Squires replied with an icy pleasantness.

“Three three,” JoLayne said.

Squires closed the briefcase soundlessly. “This can go on for as long as you wish, Miss Lucks. The pension fund has given me tremendous latitude.”

“Three point four.” JoLayne slipped from worried to scared. The man was a shark; this was his job.

“Three five,” Bernard Squires shot back. Now it was his turn to smile.

The girl was caving fast. What was I so worried about? he wondered. It’s this creepy little hole of a town—I let it get to me.

He said, “You see, the union has come to rely upon my judgment in these matters. Real estate development, and so forth. They leave the negotiations to me. And the value of a parcel like this is defined hy the market on any given day. Today the market happens to be, quite frankly, pretty good.”

JoLayne glanced at her friend Clara, who appeared commendably unexcited by the bidding or the rising trajectory of her commission. What
was
evident in Clara’s soft hazel eyes was sympathy.

Gloomily JoLayne thought: If only the lottery paid the jackpots in one lump sum, I could afford to buy Simmons Wood outright. I could match Squires dollar for dollar until the sweat trickled down his pink midwestern cheeks.

“Excuse me, Clara, may I—”

“Three point seven!” Bernard Squires piped, from reflex.

“—borrow your phone?”

Clara Markham pretended not to have heard Squires. As she slid the telephone toward JoLayne, it rang. Clara simultaneously lifted the receiver and twirled her chair, so she could not be seen. Her voice dropped to a murmur.

JoLayne snuck a glance at Bernard Squires, who was flicking invisible dust off his briefcase. They both looked up inquisitively when they heard Clara Markham say: “No problem. Send him in.”

She hung up and swiveled to face them. “I’m afraid this is rather important,” she said.

Bernard Squires frowned. “Not another bidder?”

“Oh my, no.” The real estate agent chuckled.

When the door opened, she waved the visitor inside—a strong-looking black man wearing round glasses and a business suit tailored even more exquisitely than Squires’ own.

“Oh Lord,” said JoLayne Lucks. “I should’ve known.”

Moffitt pecked her on the crown of her cap. “Nice to see you, Jo.” Then, affably, to Squires: “Don’t get up.”

“Who’re you?”

Moffitt flipped out his badge. Bernard’s reaction, Clara Markham would tell her colleagues later, was so priceless that it was almost worth losing the extra commission.

When he hadn’t heard from JoLayne, Moffitt had driven to Grange, jimmied the back door of her house and (during a neat but thorough search) listened to the voice messages on her answering machine. That’s how he’d come across Clara Markham, a woman who (unlike some Florida real estate salespersons) wholeheartedly believed in cooperating with law enforcement authorities. Clara had informed Moffitt of JoLayne’s interest in Simmons Wood and brought him up to speed on the negotiations. Something ticked in the agent’s memory when he learned the competing buyer was the Central Midwest Brotherhood of Grouters, Spacklers and Dry-wallers International. Moffitt had spent the early part of the morning talking to the people in his business who talked to the computers. They were exceptionally helpful.

Clara Markham invited him to sit. Moffitt declined. His hovering made Bernard Squires anxious, which was for Moffitt’s purpose a desirable thing.

Squires examined the agent’s identification. He said: “Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms? I don’t understand.” Then, for added smoothness: “I hope you didn’t come all this way on government business, Mr. Moffitt, because I don’t drink, smoke or carry a gun.”

The agent laughed. “In Florida,” he said, “that puts you in a definite minority.”

Bernard Squires was compelled to laugh, too—brittle and unpersuasive. Already he could feel his undershirt clinging to the small of his back.

Moffitt said, “Do you know a man named Richard Tarbone?”

“I know who he is,” Squires said—the same answer he’d given to three separate grand juries.

“Do you know him as Richard or ‘Icepick’?”

“I know of him,” Squires replied carefully, “as Richard Tarbone. He is a legitimate businessman in the Chicago area.”

“Sure he is,” Moffitt said, “and I’m Little Richard’s love child.”

JoLayne Lucks covered her mouth to keep from exploding. Clara Markham pretended to be reading the fine print of the union’s purchase offer. When Moffitt asked to speak to Mr. Squires privately, the two women did not object. JoLayne vowed to hunt down some doughnuts.

Once he and Squires were alone in the office, Moffitt said: “You don’t really want to buy this property. Trust me.”

“The pension fund is very interested.”

“The pension fund, as we both know, is a front for the Tarbone family. So cut the crap, Bernie.”

Squires moved his jaws as if he was working on a wad of taffy. He heard the door being locked. The agent was standing behind him now.

“That’s slander, Mr. Moffitt, unless you can prove it—which you cannot.”

He waited for a response: Nothing.

“What’s your interest in this?” Squires pressed. He couldn’t understand why the ATF was snooping around a commercial land deal that had no connection to illegal guns or booze. Gangsters bought and sold real estate in Florida every day. On the infrequent occasions when the government took notice, it was the FBI and Internal Revenue who came calling.

“My interest,” Moffitt said, “is purely personal.”

The agent sat down and scooted even closer to Bernard Squires. “However,” he said, “you should be aware that on May 10, 1993, one Stephen Eugene Tarbone, alias Stevie ‘Boy’ Wonder, was arrested near Gainesville for interstate transportation of illegal silencers, machine-gun parts and unlicensed firearms. These were found in the trunk of a rented Lincoln Mark IV during a routine traffic stop. Stephen Tarbone was the driver. He was accompanied by a convicted prostitute and another outstanding public citizen named Charles ‘The Gerbil’ Hindeman. The fact Stephen’s conviction was overturned on appeal in no way diminishes my interest in the current firearms trafficking activities of the young man, or of his father, Richard. So officially
that
is my jurisdiction, in case I need one. You with me?”

A metallic taste bubbled to Squires’ throat from places visceral and ripe. Somehow he mustered a stony-eyed demeanor for the ATF man.

“Nothing you’ve said interests me in the least or has any relevant bearing on this transaction.”

Moffitt jovially cupped his hands and clapped them once, loudly. Sinclair jumped.

“Transaction? Man, here’s the transaction,” the agent said with a grin. “If you don’t pack up your lizard valise and your cash deposit and go home to Chicago, your friend Richard the Icepick is going to be a frontpage headline in the newspaper:
‘alleged mob figure tied to local mall deal.’
I’m not a writer, Mr. Squires, but you get the gist. The article will be real thorough regarding Mr. Tarbone and his family enterprises, and also his connection to your union. In fact, I’ll bet Mr. Tarbone will be amazed at the accuracy of the information in the story. That’s because I intend to leak it myself.”

Bernard Squires struggled to remain cool and disdainful. “Bluffing is a waste of time,” he said.

“I couldn’t agree more.” From a breast pocket Moffitt took a business card, which he gave to Squires. “That’s the reporter who’ll be doing the story. He’ll probably be calling you in a few days.”

Squires’ hand was trembling, so he slapped the card flat on the table. It read:

Thomas P. Krome

Staff Writer

The Register

“A real prick,” Moffitt added. “You’ll like him.”

Bernard Squires picked up the reporter’s card and tore it in half. The gesture was meant to be contemptuous, but the ATF agent seemed vastly entertained.

“So Mr. Tarbone doesn’t mind reading about himself in the press? That’s good. Guy like him needs a thick hide.” Moffitt rose. “But you might want to warn him, Bernie, about Grange.”

“What about it?”

“Very conservative little place. Folks here seem pretty serious about their religion. Everywhere you go there’s a shrine to one holy thing or another—haven’t you noticed?”

Dismally Squires thought of the gimp with the bloody holes in his hands and the weird couple chanting among the turtles.

“People around here,” Moffitt went on, “they do not like sin. Not one damn bit. Which means they won’t be too wild about gangsters, Bernie. Gangsters from Chicago or anyplace else. When this story breaks in the paper, don’t expect a big ticker-tape parade for your man Richard the Icepick. Just like you shouldn’t expect the Grange town fathers to do backflips for your building permits and sewer rights and so forth. You follow what I’m saying?”

Bernard Squires held himself erect by pinching the chairback with both elbows. He sensed the agent shifting here and there behind him, then he heard the doorknob turn.

“Any questions?” came Moffitt’s voice.

“No questions.”

“Excellent. I’ll go find the ladies. It’s been nice chatting with you, Bernie.”

“Drop dead,” said Squires.

He heard the door open, and Moffitt’s laughter trailing down the hall.

Without rising, Demencio said: “You’re early. Where’s the lucky lady?”

“She’s got an appointment,” said Tom Krome.

“You bring the money?”

“Sure did.”

Trish invited him inside. It was a peculiar scene at the kitchen counter: she and her husband in yellow latex gloves, scrubbing the shells of JoLayne’s baby turtles.

Krome picked up one the cooters, upon which a bearded face had been painted.

“Don’t ask,” Demencio said.