The Quintessence of Quick (The Jack Mason Saga) (10 page)

“Hi, Reba; how’s it going?”

She took a deep breath, making the red REBA sitting high on her right breast rise, then fall a fraction of an inch. “Pretty good for Monday, honey. Ain’t you freezin’ on that thang?”

“Nah. Feels good. And speaking of that, what’s good today?”

“You know durn right well we don’t have nothin’ but good around here, boy, but you look like you could do with summa Nelson’s roast chicken.”

Jack grinned as he completed the order; “Collards, field peas and mashed potatoes.”

“Coffee?”

“Large Coke.”

Looking toward the front of the cafe, he saw Lynne Browne and a couple of Browne & Browne salesladies at the table nearest the register. She returned his wave with a raised index finger, a promise- or a threat- of conversation when she and the ladies finished their lunch. Acknowledging the finger with a nod, he turned toward the flapping of the kitchen’s swinging doors, through which came Nelson Lord, preceded by half a roast chicken.

“How ‘bout it, lager-boy?” said Lord, setting the plate on the counter, the latest in a long line of masterpieces on which the Bisque Café’s not-inconsiderable reputation was founded.

Bringing his face close to the crinkly-brown skin of his entree, Jack inhaled deeply. “Perfect, Nels; only perfect. We gotta get the state to put up one of those landmark signs about you out front.”

“Shit,” snorted Lord. Still the image of Steve Cochran, b-movie charmer, Jack thought; thickened up a bit from years of eating his own cooking, but the black-Irish intensity hadn’t cooled down a single degree. “You better get my ass promoted to General first. Generals and politicians the only ones that get put on them roadside monstrosities, and I ain’t no goddamn politician.”

No, Jack thought, you certainly aren’t that. Genius, cradle-robber, cuckolder, incremental suicide-  some, probably all, of those, but no politician. Good thing for Reba that you aren’t. Seeing that Lord wasn’t about to move until he’d tasted the bird, Jack plunged his knife into the breast and sliced off a chunk of moist fragrance. “Jesus, man,” he said, chewing. “Don’t you let some pissed-off husband shoot yo’ ass. This is th’ best yardbird on th’ planet.”

“Done been tried, boy,” he said, moving aside as Reba approached, laden with vegetables. “No sale. Guess I’m just too much in demand.” Turning as he reached the kitchen door, he said, “Why’ncha bring that lady by for supper? Kielbasa, kraut’n rosti.” And another chance for me to charm her ass, he thought. She hasn’t had much of a chance to think about how good a little bitta ol’ Nels’d feel.

“I’ll see if I can twist her arm. She’s still talkin’ about that breakfast you put out the other day.”

“She ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” Lord assured him with a particularly Cochranesque grin.

“Git on wit yo’sef!” Reba admonished the flapping aluminum-skinned doors. “I swear, it’s a good thang he’gn cook. Little sawed-off Romeo. Everthang OK, honey?”

“Better’n that, Reba; way better.”

“Good. Don’t you pay no attention to that Nelson. Pore ol’ Mose gave ‘im an inch, just to be friendly, and of course he took a mile. Almost got ‘im shot, riitchere in the place. You remember.”

“Yes I do. But I’m sure Mose’s forgiven him, aren’t you?”

“I certainly am,” she said, her eyes rolling heavenward. “Mose had a mighty big heart. I reckon you do too, honey; that’s why I’m telling you. Enjoy ’is food, but don’t be takin’ ’im up on no after-hours socializin’. Most p’ticly, not with that lady friend of yours. Why hey, Miss Lynne.”

“Hey, Reba; you too, stranger.”

“Hey, Lynne. How you doin’?”

“I’m fine, and I’m curious,” she said, planting her ample posterior on the stool next to his. “Heard you were in here for breakfast the other day with some fine-lookin’ woman who’s got a big ol’ boat tied up over in
Augusta. Who, pray tell, is she, anyway?”

“Rich bitch from
Miami,” Jack said with a grin. “Thinkin’ about buyin’ my house.”

“Really!” Her eyes widened to their physical maximum. “Why would somebody like that ever want to live here?”

“Said sump’m about openin’ up a high-fashion dress shop and lookin’ around for a rich man to marry,” Jack said, poker-faced. “Said she didn’t think she’d have much competition.”

Lynne Browne’s mouth dropped open as her eyes glazed over. To her credit, she recovered quickly. “Jack Mason, you lying son of a bitch. If you don’t want to tell me, just say so.”

Jack pushed collard greens onto his fork with a piece of cornbread. “I swear it’s the truth, Lynne. She said she felt like it was her duty to help the women of Bisque get out of the backwaters of fashion, while she looks around for some local boob with a lot of dough. Preferably unmarried, she said, but that part could be secondary, and she wasn’t worried about getting any man in Bisque to leave his wife for her.”

“You’ve been this way since grade school,” she said, getting to her feet. Everything’s a fucking joke to you. You just listen for a change; Terry saw y’all out at Don’s, and she said she didn’t think that girl was anything special; said she was thirty-five if she was a day.”

“Well, I guess Terry’s as good a judge of age as there is in Bisque; only thing about it is, the preferred measure of time in this town’s always been dog years. Well, please tell Terry when you see her that we enjoyed meeting Mr. Gump.”

“Who?”

“Mr. Gump. Wasn’t that Andy Gump with her the other night?”

“Goodbye, Jack,” Lynne Browne said through clenched teeth.

“So long,
Coco. Oh, by the way.”

“WHAT?”

“She said that if she buys my place, she might run for chairman of the
County
Commission.”

Lynne Browne turned to face him, arms akimbo. “Well, if she does Daddy’ll hand her her ass. And he won’t need any of your damned old beer money to do it.”

“Uh, Lynne?”

“WHAT?”

“Gotcha.”

A split-second of wide-eyed assimilation preceded the close-to-the-bodice finger that Lynne Browne flashed Jack as she flounced to the cash register. Reba took her money with ill-concealed mirth. Still huffy, she narrowly missed an exit collision with Lee Webster, who graciously backed his bulk out of the door to make way for hers. Raising his eyebrows in ironic greeting, he made his way past the café’s rapidly-filling tables to the stool next to Jack’s. “Greetings, bub; nice tan.”

“Hey, Lee. How they hangin’?”

“On Monday, they’re always right around street level, thanks. And yours?”

“Like Joe Page’s fastball, buddy; high and tight.”

“If that, and what I hear about your house guest, is even half-true, you oughta be walkin’ around in blue tights with an S on your chest.”

“And what, exactly, do you hear?” Jack asked him.

“Oh, just that you been ridin’ around all weekend with this Debra Paget look-alike from out of town.
Miami, is it?”

“Miami, it is. Ran into her at the jai-alai matches.”

Webster paused while Reba put his lunch down, then continued. “Well I’ll be damned. Is she Cuban, or sump’m?”

“Or sump’m.”

“C’mon, Jack, give. Don’t reduce me to rumor-mongering.”

“OK, newshawk. She’s the only female sportfishing skipper in
South Florida. Wanta snag half a ton of blue marlin, she’s your man. Might do a spot of smugglin’ now and then, when business gets slow.”

“Hmm. Some resume for starlet material,” Webster said as he scooped mashed potatoes. “Ol’ Mose’d be proud of you.”

Jack winked, oscillating his head a degree or two. “Let’s hope so. And how’s your lovely wife?”

“Still kickin’ my ass at the least opportunity,” Webster said with a smile. “Why doncha meet us over at the Bobwhite for supper one night? She’d love to see you, and we’d both like to get to know this Marlin-snagger of yours.”

“Yeah, that’d be fun. Didn’t y’all meet at the Bobwhite?”

“Yep. Best day of my life. Mose and I went over there one night, mostly to watch Lord in action. Jesus, I miss that fuckin’ Mose,” he said, his face going solemn. Recovering, he said, “Well, because it’s where we met’s one of the reasons I like going there. And Robbie don’t care that much about coming home from work and cooking every night. But by the time I sign off Sundown Serenade and drive over to
Augusta, it’s gettin’ on toward eight. Not too late for y’all, I hope.”

“I ’spect we can hold out ’til then. Linda’s boat’s tied up over there; she may want to drop by the yard and see if they’ve gotten everything done.”

“OK. Let’s check with the women and see what a good day might be. Wanta call me at the station?”

“Sure.”

“Guess you’ll be closing the Zenith deal pretty soon; what’re your plans for after that?”

“Just to lock the bucks down where they’ll be safe and give myself a little time to think. I’m gonna ride back to
Miami
with Linda, and that’ll give me a coupla weeks. One possibility’s graduate school.”

“That’d be sure to make Mose and your mom happy, what with your dad being a Ph.D. Whad’dya think you might study?”

“Haven’t decided for sure; history’d be the natural choice, I guess, since it was my undergraduate major.”

“Well, be sure it’s something you enjoy, buddy. It’s not like you’d have to end up teaching anyway; not unless you wanted to.”

“One of the many things that I need to think about. Hell, I might get drafted; Rick did.”

Webster hastily swallowed what he was chewing. “TERRELL? Drafted? He was expecting to have a pretty good year with the Colts, wasn’t he?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Well, maybe he’ll fail the physical.”

“Right,” Jack snorted.

Pete picked up the phone, still half-expecting to hear Jack’s or Linda’s voice in spite of their “no-calls-’til-the-deal’s-made” agreement. “Pete Webber.”

“Mornin’, Mr. Webber, this’s Hank McDonald at TropicAir.”

“Oh, yes. Good morning.”

“Just got a call back from the owner of that Grumman amphibian you looked at a few days back. He’d sell it- for the right price.”

“And that would be?”

“One seventy-five.”

“That include gettin’ me type rated, land and water?”

“Just like we talked about; yes, sir.”

“Who’s the instructor?”

“It’d be his chief pilot. Szymanski, a local guy. Good, solid pilot.”

“I’d like to meet him. Would you ask him to give me a call?”

“Sure thing.”

Easing the Vincent over the curb and between two parked cars, Jack gunned the big V-twin into a break in the traffic and headed east on
Main, thinking he’d air it out for a few minutes before heading back to work. As he streaked away from the last traffic light, where
Main Street
became US1 again, a voice trickled through the helmet’s skirt and into his right ear. “Mind if I tag along, Mr. Curtiss?”

“Nick! What the fuck...”

“Not to worry, I won’t slow you down. Give ’er the gas, Glenn!”

Jack looked back and saw grey-spatted shoes resting on the Vincent’s passenger footpegs. Gripping the gas tank between his knees, he rolled the throttle wide open and watched the needle on the bike’s six-inch speedometer climb quickly to a hundred and twenty. “How’s that, Spats?”

“Just as exhilarating as I thought it’d be, my boy, and I thank you. Speed like this has a far different feel from quantum kinetics.”

6  PRIVATE RICKY

Easing off the throttle just enough to catch the next, and last, traffic light between him and the open highway, he took it to redline in second, holding the throttle open as he shifted to third and giving the bars a backward tug. The front wheel rose some eighteen inches off the ground; Jack held it there with microscopic movements of the twistgrip in a mock salute to
Bisque
High School
as it slid by on his right. 

“I could do that,” Nick said into his ear as the front wheel touched pavement again.  “Might require a bit of gravitational trickery, though.”

“Glad you enjoyed it. And I learned something else about you.”

“What’s that?”

“You don’t weigh a damn thing, do you?”

“Not so’s you’d notice it. You suspected as much all along, didn’t you?”

“Yeah; scooting through those walls the way you do, without doing ’em any damage, got me thinking that way. But I’ve also learned just how little I actually do know about you.”

“Never fear, more’s on the way in that regard. Actually, I wouldn’t have disturbed your illegal and digestive activities, but I thought that you’d like to know that Rick’s home.”

“He is? Damned if you don’t have all the hot news, buddy. When did he get in?”

“About an hour ago; I thought that you’d probably rather go see him than go back to work.”

“How can you stand being right all the time?”  Jack asked him, simultaneously laying the bike over in a U-turn to pick up the route to Rick’s.