Lucky You (9 page)

The tattoo artist worked out of a Harley joint in Vero Beach, Shiner’s first stop on his way south to Florida City, where he planned to hook up with his new white brothers. He had quit the Grab N’Go, leaving on a high note—Mr. Singh, the owner, demanding to know why Shiner’s Impala was moored in the store’s only handicap space. And Shiner, standing tall behind the counter: “I got me a permit.”

“Yes, but I do not understand.”

“Right there on the rearview. See?”

“Yes, yes, but you are not crippled. The police will come.”

Shiner, coughing theatrically: “I got a bad lung.”

“You are not crippled.”

“Disabled is what I am. They’s a difference. From the army is where I hurt my lung.”

And Mr. Singh, waving his slender brown arms, hurrying outside to more closely inspect the wheelchair insignia, piping: “Where you get that? How? Tell me right now please.”

Shiner beaming, the little man’s reaction being a testament to Chub’s skill as a forger.

Saying to Mr. Singh: “It’s the real deal, boss.”

“Yes, yes, but how? You are not crippled or disabled or nothing, and don’t lie to me nonsense. Now move the car.”

And Shiner replying: “That’s how you treat a handicap? Then I quit, raghead.”

Grabbing three hundred-dollar bills from the register, then elbowing his way past Mr. Singh, who was protesting: “You, boy, put the money back! Put the money back!”

Yammering about the videotape Shiner had swiped, on Bodean Gazzer’s instruction, from the store’s slow-speed security camera—in case (Bode explained) the cassette hadn’t yet rewound and taped over the surveillance video from November 25, the date JoLayne Lucks bought her lottery numbers.

Bode Gazzer had emphasized to Shiner the importance of the tape, should the authorities question how they’d come to possess the Grange ticket. The camera could prove they didn’t enter the store until the day
after
the Lotto drawing.

So, shortly after Chub and Bode had departed, Shiner obediently removed the incriminating video from Mr. Singh’s recorder and replaced it with a blank. Shiner wondered, as he gunned the Impala past the Grange city limits, how Mr. Singh learned about the switch. Normally the little hump didn’t check the VCR unless there’d been a robbery.

Shiner would have been more properly alarmed had he known that Mr. Singh had been visited by the same nosy man who’d accompanied JoLayne Lucks to Shiner’s house. The man named Tom. He’d persuaded Mr. Singh to check the Grab N’Go’s security camera, at which time they’d found that the surveillance tape from the weekend had been swapped for a new one.

Shiner’s misgivings about the video theft were fleeting, for soon he was absorbed in the tattooing process. It was performed by a bearded shirtless biker whose nipples were pierced with silver skull pins. When the last indigo turn of the
B
was completed, the biker put down the needle and jerked the cord out of the wall socket. Shiner couldn’t stop grinning, even when the biker roughly swabbed his arm with alcohol, which stung like a mother.

What a awesome eagle! Shiner marveled. He couldn’t wait to show Bode and Chub.

Pointing at the martial lettering, Shiner asked the biker: “Know what
WRB
stands for?”

“Shit, yeah. I got all their albums.”

“No,” said Shiner, “not the band.”

“Then what?”

“You’ll find out pretty soon.”

The biker didn’t like wise guys. “I can’t hardly wait.”

Shiner said: “Here’s a hint: It’s in the Second Amendment.”

The biker stood up and casually kicked the tattoo stool into a corner. “I got a hint for you, too, jackoff: Gimme my money and move your cherry white ass down the road.”

Demencio was tinkering with the weeping Madonna when the doorbell rang. There stood JoLayne Lucks with a tall, clean-cut white man. JoLayne carried one end of the aquarium, the white man had the other.

“Evening,” she said to Demencio, who could do nothing but invite them in.

“Trish is at the grocery,” he said, pointlessly.

They set the aquarium on the floor, next to Demencio’s golf clubs. The journey up the steps had tilted all the little turtles to one end of the tank. JoLayne Lucks said: “Meet my friend Tom Krome. Tom, this is Demencio.”

The men shook hands; Krome scrutinizing the decapitated Madonna, Demencio eyeing the agitated cooters.

“Whatcha up to?” JoLayne asked.

“No big deal. One of her eyeholes got clogged.” Demencio knew lying would be a waste of energy. It was all there, spread out on the living room carpet for any fool to see—the disassembled statue, the tubes, the rubber pump.

JoLayne said, “So that’s how you make her cry.”

“That’s how we do it.”

The man named Tom was curious about the bottle of perfume.

“Korean knockoff,” Demencio said, “but a good one. See, I try to make the tears smell nice. Pilgrims go for that.”

“That’s a fine idea,” said JoLayne, though her friend Tom looked doubtful. She told Demencio she had a proposition.

“I need you and Trish to watch over the turtles until I get back. There’s a bag of fresh romaine in the car, and I’ll leave you money for more.”

Demencio said, “Where you goin’, JoLayne?”

“I’ve got some business in Miami.”

“Lottery business, I bet.”

Tom Krome spoke up: “What’ve you heard?”

“The ticket got lost, is what I heard,” said Demencio.

JoLayne Lucks promised to reveal the whole story when she returned to Grange. “And I sincerely apologize for being so mysterious, but you’ll understand when the time comes.”

“How long’ll you be gone?”

“Truly I don’t know,” JoLayne said, “but here’s what I propose: one thousand dollars to take care of my darlings. Whether it’s a day or a month.”

Tom Krome looked shocked. Demencio whistled at the number.

JoLayne said, “I’m quite serious.”

And quite nuts, thought Demencio. A grand to baby-sit a load of turtles?

“It’s more than fair,” he remarked, trying to avoid Krome’s eye.

“I think so, too,” JoLayne said. “Now … Trish mentioned you had a cat.”

“Screw the cat,” said Demencio. “Pardon my French.”

“Has it had its shots? I don’t remember seeing you folks at Doc Craw-ford’s.”

“Just some dumb stray. Trish leaves scraps on the porch.”

“All right,” JoLayne told him, “but the deal’s off if it kills even one of my babies.”

“Don’t you worry.”

“There’s forty-five even. I counted.”

“Forty-five,” Demencio repeated. “I’ll keep track.”

JoLayne handed him a hundred dollars as an advance, plus twenty for a lettuce fund. She said he’d receive the balance when she returned from the trip.

“What about Trish?” she asked. “How does she get on with reptiles?”

“Oh, she’s crazy for ‘em. Turtles especially.” Demencio could barely keep a straight face.

Krome took out a camera, one of those cardboard disposables. Demencio asked what it was for.

“Your Virgin Mary—can I get a picture? It’s for a friend.”

Demencio said, “I guess. Just give me a second to put her back together.”

“That’ll be terrific. Put her back together and make her cry.”

“Christ, you want tears, too?”

“Please,” said Tom Krome, “if it’s not too much trouble.”

8

It was past midnight when Tom Krome and JoLayne Lucks stopped at a Comfort Inn in South Miami, near the university. Fearing her nasty cuts and bruises would draw stares, JoLayne remained in the car while Krome registered them at the motel. They got separate rooms, adjoining.

Krome fell asleep easily—a wonder, considering he had no job, thirteen hundred dollars in the bank, and an estranged wife who was pretending to be a drug addict while refusing to grant him a divorce. If that wasn’t enough to cause brain fever, he’d also been marked for grievous harm by a jealous judge whose wife he’d been screwing for not even a month. All these weighty problems Krome had put aside in order to recklessly endanger himself pursuing two armed psychopaths who’d robbed and assaulted a woman Krome barely knew.

Yet he slept like a puppy. That according to JoLayne Lucks, who was sitting in the room when he awoke in bright daylight.

“Not a worry in the world,” he heard her say. “That’s one of the best things about my job—watching puppies and kittens sleep.”

Krome rose up on both elbows. JoLayne was wearing a sports halter and bicycle shorts. Her legs and arms were slender but tautly muscled; he wondered why he hadn’t noticed before.

“Babies sleep the same way,” she was saying, “but watching babies makes me sad. I’m not sure why.”

“Because you know what’s in store for them.” Krome started to roll out of bed, then remembered he was wearing only underwear.

JoLayne lobbed him a towel. “You are quite the shy one. Want me to turn around?”

“Not necessary.” After the bathtub episode, there was nothing to hide.

“Go take a shower,” she told him. “I promise not to peek.”

When Krome came out, she was asleep on his bed. For several moments he stood there listening to the sibilant rhythms of her breathing. It was alarming how comfortable he felt, considering the lunatic risks that lay ahead. This unfamiliar sense of mission was energizing, and he resolved not to overanalyze it. A woman had been hurt, the men who did it deserved to pay—and Krome had nothing better to do than help. Anyway, chasing gun nuts through South Florida was better than writing brainless newspaper features about Bachelorhood in the Nineties.

He slipped next door to JoLayne’s room, so he wouldn’t wake her by talking on the telephone. Two hours later she came in, puffy-eyed, to report: “I had quite a dream.”

“Bad or good?”

“You were in it.”

“Say no more.”

“In a hot-air balloon.”

“Is that right.”

“Canary yellow with an orange stripe.”

Krome said, “I’d have preferred to be on a handsome steed.”

“White or black?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Yeah, right.” JoLayne rolled her eyes.

“As long as it runs,” Krome said.

“Maybe next time.” She yawned and sat down on the floor, folding her long legs under her bottom. “You’ve been a busy bee, no?”

He told her he’d lined up some money to finance the chase. Of course she wanted to know where he’d gotten it, but Krome fudged. The newspaper’s credit union, unaware of his resignation the day before, had been pleased to make the loan. JoLayne Lucks would’ve raised hell if he’d told her the truth.

“I already wired three thousand toward your Visa bill,” he said, “to keep the bastards going.”

“Your own money!”

“Not mine, the newspaper’s,” he said.

“Get outta here.”

“Ever heard of an expense account? I get reimbursed for hotels and gas, too.”

Krome, sounding like quite the big shot. He wasn’t sure if JoLayne Lucks was buying the lie. Her toes were wiggling, which could mean just about anything.

She said, “They must really want this story.”

“Hey, that’s the business we’re in.”

“The news biz, huh? Tell me more.”

“The men who beat you up,” Krome said, “they haven’t cashed your Lotto ticket yet. I checked with Tallahassee. They haven’t even left their names.”

“They’re waiting to make sure I don’t go to the police. Just like you predicted.”

“They’ll hold out a week, maybe ten days, before that ticket burns a crater in their pocket.”

“That isn’t much time.”

“I know. We’ll need some breaks to find them.”

“And then … ?”

She’d asked the same thing earlier, and Krome had no answer. Everything depended on who the creeps were, where they lived, what they’d bought at that gun show. That the men had remembered to steal the night videotape from the Grab N’Go showed they weren’t as stupid as Krome had first thought.

JoLayne reminded him that her Remington was in the trunk. “The nice thing about shotguns,” she said, “is the margin of error.”

“Oh, so you’ve shot people before.”

“No, Tom, but I do know the gun. Daddy made sure of that.”

Krome handed her the phone. “Call the nice folks at Visa. Let’s see what our party boys are up to.”

Sinclair had told no one at
The Register
that Tom Krome had resigned, in the hope it was a cheap bluff. Good reporters were temperamental and impulsive; this Sinclair remembered from newspaper management school.

Then the woman who covered the police beat came to Sinclair’s office with a xeroxed report he found highly disturbing. The windows of Krome’s house had been shot out by persons unknown, and there was no sign of the owner. In the absence of fresh blood or corpses, the cops were treating the incident as a random act of vandalism. Sinclair thought it sounded more serious than that.

He was pondering his options when his sister Joan phoned from Grange. Excitedly she told Sinclair the latest rumor: The Lotto woman, JoLayne Lucks, left town the night before with a white man, supposedly a newspaper writer.

“Is that your guy?” Joan asked.

Sinclair felt clammy as he fumbled for a pen and paper. Having never worked as a reporter, he had no experience taking notes.

“Start again,” he implored his sister, “and go slowly.”

But Joan was chattering on with more gossip: The clerk at the Grab N’Go had skipped out, too—the one who’d originally said he sold the winning lottery ticket to JoLayne Lucks and then later changed his mind.

“Whoa,” said Sinclair, scribbling spastically. “Run that by me again.”

The shaky store clerk was a new twist to the story. Joan briefed her brother on what was known locally about Shiner. Sinclair cut her off when she got to the business about the young man’s mother and the Road-Stain Jesus.

“Back up,” he said to Joan. “They’re traveling together—the clerk, this writer and the Lucks woman? Is that the word?”

His sister said: “Oh, there’s all sorts of crazy theories. Bermuda is my personal favorite.”

Sinclair solemnly jotted the word “Bermuda” on his notepad. He added a question mark, to denote his own doubts. He thanked Joan for the tip, and she gaily promised to call back if she heard anything new. After hanging up, Sinclair drew the blinds in his office—a signal (although he didn’t realize it) to his entire staff that an emergency was in progress.

In solitude, Sinclair grappled with his options. Tom Krome’s fate concerned him deeply, if only in a political context. An editor was expected to maintain the illusion of control over his writers, or at least have a sketchy idea of their whereabouts. The situation with Krome was complicated by the fact that he was regarded as a valuable talent by
The Register’s
managing editor, who in his lofty realm was spared the daily anxiety of working with the man. It was Sinclair’s cynical theory that Krome had won the managing editor’s admiration with a single feature story—a profile of a controversial performance artist who abused herself and occasionally audience members with zucchini, yams and frozen squab. With great effort Krome had managed to scavenge minor symbolism from the young woman’s histrionics, and his mildly sympathetic piece had inspired the National Endowment for the Arts to reinstate her annual grant of $14,000. The artist was so grateful she came to the newspaper to thank the reporter (who was, as always, out of town) and ended up chatting instead with the managing editor himself (who, of course, asked her out). A week later, Tom Krome was puzzled to find a seventy-five-dollar bonus in his paycheck.

Was life fair? Sinclair knew it didn’t matter. He was left to presume his own career would suffer if Krome turned up unexpectedly in a hospital, jail, morgue or scandal. Yet Sinclair was helpless to influence events, because of two crucial mistakes. The first was allowing Krome to quit; the second was not informing anybody else at the newspaper. So as far as Sinclair’s bosses were aware, Krome still worked for him.

Which meant Sinclair would be held accountable if Krome died or otherwise got in trouble. Because Sinclair had neither the resourcefulness nor the manpower to find his lost reporter, he energetically set about the task of covering his own ass. He spent two hours drafting a memorandum that recounted his last meeting with Tom Krome, describing at length the severe personal stress with which the man obviously had been burdened. Sinclair’s written account culminated with Krome’s shrieking that he was quitting, upending Sinclair’s desk and stomping from the newsroom. Naturally Sinclair had refused to accept his troubled friend’s resignation, and discreetly put him on excused medical leave, with pay. Out of deference to Krome’s privacy, Sinclair had chosen to tell no one, not even the managing editor.

Sinclair reread the memorandum half a dozen times. It was an adroit piece of management sophistry—casting doubt on an employee’s mental stability while simultaneously portraying oneself as the loyal, yet deeply worried, supervisor.

Perhaps Sinclair wouldn’t need the fable to bail himself out. Perhaps Tom Krome simply would forget about the nutty Lotto woman and return to work at
The Register,
as if nothing had happened.

But Sinclair doubted it. What little he could read of his own wormlike scribbles made his stomach churn.

Bermuda?

Chub couldn’t decide where to stash the stolen lottery ticket—few hiding places were as ingenious as Bode Gazzer’s condom. At first Chub tucked the prize inside one of his shoes; by nightfall it was sodden with perspiration. Bode warned him that the lottery bureau wouldn’t cash the ticket if it was “defaced,” a legal term Bode broadly interpreted to include wet and stinky. Dutifully Chub relocated the ticket in the box of hollowpoints that he carried with him at all times. Again Bode Gazzer objected. He pointed out that if Chub got trapped in a fire, the ammunition would explode in his trousers and the Lotto numbers would be destroyed.

The only other idea that occurred to Chub was a trick he’d seen in some foreign prison movie, where the inmate hero kept a secret diary hidden up his butthole. The guy scribbled everything in ant-sized letters on chewing gum wrappers, which he folded into tiny squares and stuck in his ass, so the prison guards wouldn’t get wise. Given Bode’s low regard for Chub’s personal hygiene, Chub was fairly sure his partner would object to the butthole scheme. He was right.

“What if first I wrap it in foil?” Chub offered.

“I don’t care if you pack it in fucking kryptonite, that lottery ticket ain’t goin’ up your ass.”

Instead they attached it with a jumbo Band-Aid to Chub’s right outer thigh, a hairless quadrant that (Bode conceded) seemed relatively untainted by Chub’s potent sweat. Bode firmly counseled Chub to remove the Lotto-ticket bandage when, and if, he ever felt like bathing.

Chub didn’t appreciate the insult, and said so. “You don’t watch your mouth,” he warned Bode Gazzer, “I’m gone do somethin’ so awful to your precious truck, you’ll need one a them moonsuits to go anywheres near it.”

“Jesus, take it easy.”

Later they went to the 7-Eleven for their customary breakfast of Orange Crush and Dolly Madisons. Bode swiped a newspaper and searched it for a mention of the Lotto robbery in Grange. He was relieved to find nothing. Chub declared himself in a mood for shooting, so they stopped by Bode’s apartment to grab the AR-I5 and a case of beer, and headed south down the Eighteen-Mile Stretch. They turned off on a gravel road that led to a small rock-pit lake, not far from a prison camp where Bode had once spent four months. At the rock pit they came upon a group of clean-shaven men wearing holsters and ear protectors. From the type of vehicles at the scene—late-model Cherokees, Explorers, Land Cruisers—and the orderliness with which they’d been parked, Bode concluded the shooters were suburban husbands brushing up on home-defense skills.

The men stood side by side, firing pistols and semiautomatics at paper silhouettes just like the ones cops used. Bode was disquieted to observe among the group a Negro, one or two possible Cubans, and a wiry bald fellow who was almost certainly Jewish.

“We gotta go. This place ain’t secure.” Bode, speaking in his role as militia leader.

Chub said, “You jest watch.” He peeled off his eye patch and sauntered to the firing line. There he nonchalantly raised the AR-I5 and, in a few deafening seconds, reduced all the paper targets to confetti. Then, for good measure, he opened up on a stray buzzard that was flying no less than a thousand feet straight up in the sky. Without a word, the husbands put away their handguns and departed. A few drove off without removing their ear cups, a sight that gave Bodean Gazzer a good laugh.