Carl Hiaasen (13 page)

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 squash. 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 crafting 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 discreedy 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 going 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-15 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-15 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.

Chub went through a half dozen clips before he got bored and offered the rifle to Bode, who declined to shoot. The blasts of gunfire had reignited the killer migraine from Bode’s morning hangover, and now all he craved was silence. He and Chub sat down at the edge of the lake and worked on the beer.

After a while, Chub asked, “So when can we cash out our tickets?”

“Pretty soon. But we gotta be careful.”

“That nigger girl, she ain’t gonna say a word.”

“Probably not,” Bode said. Yet, thinking back on the beating, he recalled that the Lucks woman never seemed as scared as she should’ve been. Mad as a hornet, for sure, and crying like a baby when Chub shot her turtle—but there was no quivering animal panic from the woman, despite all the pain. They’d worked extra hard to make her think they’d return to murder her if she didn’t keep quiet. Bode hoped she believed it. He hoped she cared.

Chub said, “Let’s tomorrow me and you go straight up to Tal’hassee and git our money.”

Bode laughed sourly. “You checked in the mirror lately?”

“Tell ’em we’s in a car accident.”

“With what—bobcats?”

“Anyways, they gotta pay us no matter how bad we look. We had leprosy, the motherfuckers still gotta pay us.”

Patiently Bode Gazzer explained how suspicious it would be for two best friends to claim equal shares of the same Lotto jackpot, with tickets purchased three hundred miles apart.

“It’s better,” Bode said, “if we don’t know each other. We ain’t never met, you and me, far as the lottery bureau is concerned.”

“’Kay.”

“Anybody asks, I bought my fourteen-million-dollar ticket in Florida City, you got yours in Grange. And we never once laid eyes on each other before.”

“No problem,” Chub said.

“And listen here, we can’t show up in Tallahassee together. One of us goes on a Tuesday, the other one maybe a week later. Just to play it safe.”

“Then afterwards,” said Chub, “we put the money all together.”

“You got it.”

Chub did the arithmetic aloud. “If those first checks is seven hundred grand, times two is like one million four hunnert thousand bucks.”

Bodean Gazzer said, “Before taxes, don’t forget.” It felt like his skull was cleaving down the middle, an agony made worse by his partner’s greasy persistence.

“But what I wanna ast,” Chub said, “is who goes first. Cashes out, I mean.”

“Difference does it make?”

“I guess none.”

They got in the truck and headed down the gravel road toward the Stretch. Chub stared out the window as Bode went on: “I don’t like the wait no better’n you. Sooner we get the cash, sooner we get the White Clarion Aryans together. Start serious recruitment. Build us a bomb shelter and whatnot.”

Chub lit a cigaret. “So meantime what do we do for money?”

“Good question,” Bode Gazzer said. “I wonder if the Negro girl’s canceled out her credit card yet.”

“Likely so.”

“One way to find out.”

Chub blew a smoke ring. “I s’pose.”

“We’re down to a quarter tank,” Bode said. “Tell you what.
The Shell station up the highway, let’s try the self-serve pump. If it spits her Visa, we’ll take off.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. No harm done.”

Chub said, “And if it takes the card?”

“Then we’re golden for one more day.”

“Sounds good to me.” Chub dragged contentedly. Already he was daydreaming about barbecued chicken wings and a certain blond-haired beauty in satiny orange shorts.

The bank’s computer indicated JoLayne’s Visa card hadn’t been used since the previous afternoon at Hooters.

“Now what?” she asked, waving the receiver.

“Order a pizza,” said Tom Krome, “and wait for them to get stupid again.”

“What if they don’t?”

“They will,” he said. “They can’t resist.”

The pizza was vegetarian, delivered cold. They ate it anyway. Afterwards JoLayne stretched out on her back, locked her arms behind her neck and bent her knees.

“Sit-ups?” Tom Krome asked.

“Crunches,” she said. “Wanna help?”

He knelt on the floor and held her ankles. JoLayne winked and said, “You’ve done this before.”

He counted along in his head. After a hundred easy ones, she closed her eyes tight and did a hundred more. He gave her a minute to rest, then said: “That was a little scary.”

JoLayne winced as she sat up. She pressed her knuckles to her tummy and said, “Bastards really did a job on me. Normally I can do three-fifty or four.”

“I think you should take it easy.”

“Your turn,” she said.

“JoLayne, please.”

Then suddenly Krome was on his back, except she wasn’t holding his ankles as a proper sit-up partner would do. Instead she was straddling his chest, pinning his arms.

“Know what I was thinking?” she said. “About what you said earlier, how white or black doesn’t matter.”

“Weren’t we talking about dreams and horses?”

“Maybe
you
were.”

Deliberately Tom Krome went limp. His goal was to minimize the frontal contact, which was indescribably wonderful. He was also trying to think of a distraction, something to make his blood go cold. Sinclair’s face was an obvious choice, but Krome couldn’t summon it.

JoLayne was saying, “It’s important we should have this discussion….”

“Later.”

“So it
does
matter. White and black.”

“JoLayne?”

Now she was nose-to-nose and pressing her body down harder. “Tom, you tell me the truth.”

He turned his head away. Total limpness was no longer sustainable.

“Tom?”

“What.”

“Are you mistaking this moment for some kind of clumsy seduction?”

“Call me crazy.”

JoLayne pulled away. By the time he sat up, she was perched on the bed, cutting him a look. “Back in the shower for you!”

“I thought we had a professional relationship,” he said. “I’m the reporter, you’re the story.”

“So you’re the only one who gets to ask questions? That’s really fair.”

“Ask away, but no more wrestling.” Krome, thinking: What a handful she is.

JoLayne cuffed him. “OK, how many black friends do you have? I mean
friend
friends.”

“I don’t have many close friends of any color. I am not what you’d call gregarious.”

“Ah.”

“There’s a black guy at work—Daniel, from Editorial. We play tennis every now and then. And Jim and Jeannie, they’re lawyers. We get together for dinner.”

“That’s your answer?”

Krome caved. “OK, the answer is none. Zero black
friend
friends.”

“Just like I thought.”

“But I’m working on it.”

“Yes, you are,” said JoLayne. “Let’s go for a ride.”

J
oLayne’s friend was twenty minutes late, the longest twenty minutes of Tom Krome’s life. They were waiting at a bar called Shiloh’s in Liberty City. JoLayne Lucks was drinking ginger ale and munching on beer nuts. She wore a big floppy hat and round peach-tinted sunglasses. It didn’t matter what Tom Krome was wearing; he was the only white person there. Several patrons remarked upon the fact, and not in a welcoming tone.

JoLayne told him to put his notebook on the bar and start writing. “So you look official.”

“Good idea,” Krome said, “except I left it back in the room.”

JoLayne clicked her tongue. “You men, you’d forget your weenies if they weren’t glued on.”

A gangly transvestite in a fantastic chromium wig approached Krome and offered to blow him for forty dollars.

Krome said, “No, thanks, I’ve got a date.”

“Then I do her fo’ free.”

“Tempting,” said JoLayne, “but I think we’ll pass.”

With a bony hand, the transvestite gripped one of Krome’s legs. “Dolly don’t take no for an answer. And Dolly gots a blade in her purse.”

JoLayne leaned close to Krome and whispered: “Give him a twenty.”