Kathy Hogan Trocheck - Truman Kicklighter 01 - Lickety-Split (3 page)

“Yeah,” Truman said, taking the program. “Maybe I’ll marry Liz Taylor and move to Beverly Hills while I’m at it.”

Cookie Jeffcote stopped at the door to room 2711, fluffed her red hair out over the collar of the mink coat, then smoothed the shocking-pink minidress over her hips.

Michael liked her to look good. He didn’t like anything that didn’t look expensive or first class. The first time they’d met, at the bar in the clubhouse, she’d had on this mink, which was the only thing she’d gotten out of her last boyfriend, a married lawyer who handled the financial affairs of one of the residents at the Fountain of Youth. (The scumbag, he should take poison and die.)

She was standing there, waiting on her Rob Roy, when Michael turned around, his elbows propped on the counter like he owned the place. He gave her a good long look. “Feelin’ lucky?”

She’d giggled and shown him the fan of twenties she’d already won that night.

“Not talking about greyhounds,” he’d said coolly.

Cool. That was Michael all right.

She knocked the code. Shave-and-a-haircut. Two-bits.

He’d been in the shower. Drops of water glistened in his wavy dark hair and clung to the thick, matted hair on his bare chest. A towel was not so much wrapped as draped around his hips.

“Baby,” she cooed. He didn’t say a word, just grabbed her by the hand and pulled her into the room.

She’d just had time to rescue the mink from the floor before he was at her, tugging at the big zipper that ran down the front of the dress, pushing her toward the king- sized bed.

“Hello to you too.” She laughed.

It had taken some doing to get out of the office this time of day. The Reverend Jewell Newby liked to keep a close watch on the sheep in his flock. Since she was handling the new condo sales, he was keeping an especially tight rein on her. Wanted telephone reports on everything. Screw that. She’d called in this afternoon to inform Newby that she’d be out all afternoon having dental work done.

“I’ll pray for a healing,” he’d said, in that preacher voice he used when he was talking about God.

Jewell Newby didn’t give a rat’s ass about any healing. If he was praying, it was to get her in bed. Cookie Jeffcote had been around men long enough to know when one wanted her. And that one wanted her in a bad way.

Right now, Cookie had something else on her mind. Michael Streck. She’d always had a thing for Italian guys, even though Michael swore he wasn’t Italian at all.

Her first time had been with Frankie Lonardi, in the back of his mother’s Buick Regal, at the Sky-Vue drive-in. And when she’d first met Butch Goolsby, his hair was dark, even though he still had that crew cut he’d gotten in the marines. By the time she’d figured out Butch was nothing but Baptist white trash from Pinellas Park, she was sixteen years old and three months pregnant, and her mama was screaming about sending her to the Florence Crittenden Home.

If she never saw a pair of greasy jeans or a pickup truck full of tools again in her lifetime, it would be just fine with Cookie.

She ran her long pink fingernails down Michael’s back and let the big diamond solitaire dig into his nice firm buttocks. He was tan all over. She made a noise deep in her throat, like a tiger growling. She’d seen that in a movie once. “Ggrrrr,” she purred.

“Ow,” Michael said, looking up. “What the hell was that?”

“Three carats,” Cookie said. “Feels good, huh?”

Later, he ordered drinks and hors d’oeuvres from room service and they did a couple lines of coke together. Cookie felt all warm and melty inside, like a Hershey bar that had been left in the sun.

Then the phone rang. He picked it up, listened, then turned to her. “You mind?”

She did mind, but she knew that tone of voice. She went into the bathroom and ran the water and stood at the door, trying to hear.

After she heard him hang up, she waited a moment, flushed the commode and came out. Michael was standing in front of the mirror, buttoning his shirt, getting dressed.

“Party’s over, doll,” he said. “I got business.”

She plopped herself down on the bed. Michael never said what his business was, but she just assumed he was a member of the mob.

The first time she’d called it that, laughingly, he’d grabbed her wrist and twisted it angrily. “Don’t call it that,” he’d said. “It’s family.”

He tucked his shirt in, then came and sat down beside her on the bed, slipping his feet into soft leather loafers. He kissed her neck. “We’ll do it again, later this week? Right?”

Cookie pulled on her stockings one at a time, leaning back on the bed, arching her back and cocking her leg in the air, like she’d seen Susan Sarandon do in that Bull Durham movie. Slowly and deliberately, she snapped them to the garter belt, then pulled her dress on over her head and zipped it up. Michael was frowning at an imaginary speck of dust on his slacks.

“What about tonight?” she asked.

“Tonight?”

“The track. I thought we could go. You’ve already gotten lucky once today, right?”

He turned and took the zipper in his teeth and moved it down an inch, kissing between her breasts. “I can’t. I got a thing.”

Cookie went to the mirror. She took a lipstick out of her purse and touched up her face and combed her hair. It was a mess.

“What about our thing?” she said, pouting. “We never go anywhere when we’re together, Michael. Am I that awful, you can’t be seen in public with me?”

“Something wrong with this setup?” Michael asked, gesturing at the room around them, with its heavy damask draperies, the patio that overlooked the Gulf of Mexico. “A two-hundred-fifty-buck room isn’t good enough for you?”

“Nooo,” she said, “but—”

“This is work tonight, doll,” Michael said.

He wondered idly how old Cookie really was. She was older than the twenty-eight she had once claimed, that he was sure of.

“I guess,” she said, shrugging, acting disinterested.

Michael went to the closet, got out a dark blue sport coat and slipped it on. “Next time. Okay?”

Cookie picked up her purse, looked inside, and frowned. “Next time. You guys don’t seem to understand, a girl likes a little attention. I’m cooped up all day long in that dump downtown. And this new guy, the preacher who bought the place? He gives me the creeps.”

“So get another job,” he said, shrugging. “What’s the big deal?”

She smiled, catlike. “Not just yet.” Then she changed the subject. “So what’s this thing you have working at the track tonight? If you don’t mind my asking,” she said quickly.

He shrugged, trying to act nonchalant. “It’s just a thing I’m working on. This guy, he’s got a system. A system of picking dogs. Says it’s ninety percent accurate. So I’m gonna check it out.”

“So you’re going to the track after all?”

“I told you. It’s business.”

Cookie looked dubious. “He can pick winners ninety percent of the time? What is he, a Gypsy? Why’s he gonna sell it to you?”

Michael picked up the big diamond-studded gold watch from the dresser and slid it onto his wrist. He picked up the gold money clip, some change, and the room key and put it in his pocket. It was cute, the way Cookie was interested in business. She was a cute kid.

“He needs a backer, someone who can finance him,” he said. “That’s all. Hey, maybe if this thing pans out, we could work something out. I could set you up in your own place. How’d you like that?”

Cookie got out her car keys and glanced at her watch. She’d really have to go now, before all hell broke out down at the Fountain of Youth. “Maybe. That’s all I ever get, Michael. A lot of maybes.”

Curtis Goolsby ran the vacuum-cleaner nozzle over the front seat of the white Ford Escort for the third time. He’d already picked up one whole bag of trash from the front seat. Old newspapers, a half-full bottle of Sea & Ski, and a mildewed Holiday Inn bath mat.

But the sand. Jeez, that powder-fine white sand. It was everywhere. And it did not want to come up.

“These people must have slept on the beach, you know that, Dad?”

His old man, Butch, was not really listening. Butch sat in a wooden chair at his desk in the garage of Sun Bay Auto Rentals. He was reading. Butch was a great reader. He liked Harold Robbins and Louis L’Amour and Jacqueline Susann. Hell of a book,
Valley of the Dolls
. His specialty, though, was true-crime books. Had a shelf at the trailer with nothing but Ted Bundy books. Today he was reading the sports section.

The radio was on. Curtis could not work without music going. He was humming along to something, like always.

“What’s that, son?” Butch asked, looking up from the sports page.

“Sand,” Curtis hollered over the whine of the vacuum cleaner. All Butch could see of him was his butt sticking out of the front seat of the Escort. “The damn sand won’t come out.”

Butch glanced at the clock on the maintenance-bay wall.

“Just get the big chunks, son,” he said. “Check the trunk for money or luggage, dump out the ashtrays and make sure there’s no chewing gum on the seats.” Chewing gum was a rental car’s worst enemy.

Curtis switched off the vacuum reluctantly. He liked to do things right. He got out and flicked a rag on the hood of the car.

“You got anything doing tonight?” Butch asked, casual-like.

Curtis scrubbed at a spot on the hood that looked like seagull poop. “Me and Tammi were just gonna maybe go out to Sunshine Speedway. You wanna ride out there with us?”

“Might,” Butch said. He let Curtis get the windshield of the Escort covered with window spray before he spoke again.

“Say, you remember that boy come in here and rented the green Cutlass a couple weeks ago? Blond college-looking guy?”

Curtis straightened up and thought back. “Guy said some colored dude stole his Porsche. That the guy you mean?”

“Yeah. That’s him. He was supposed to come last Monday and bring the insurance money to pay for the Cutlass. When he didn’t show, I took a ride over to his place. You know what he does for a living?”

“No, what?”

“He’s kind of like a scientist. That’s what. Works on some secret NASA space program. What he does is, he works on computers.”

“Huh,” Curtis said. “Did the boy give you the money?”

“No,” Butch said slowly. “He said the insurance settlement ain’t come in yet. We got to talking, though, and after I told him I was gonna have to hook up the Cutlass to the towbar and take it back, he told me about this deal he’s got going. See, Wade—that’s his name, Wade Hardeson—old Wade has got this computer at his work rigged up to pick the Double Q out at the dog track.”

“That’s good?” Curtis asked.

“Yeah,” Butch said, trying to be patient. “That’s real good. They had a Double Q over in Tampa last season, woman won one hundred thousand dollars on a two-dollar ticket.”

“Cool,” Curtis said. He went over to the workbench, got a can of air freshener, and spritzed the spray around the interior of the Escort.

The fragrance of lilacs wafted through the garage.

Butch sniffed appreciatively. “You know, that stuff smells like the crap Cookie used to take a bath in. Not bad.”

“Now, like I was saying,” he continued, “Wade was telling me maybe he’d meet us at the track tonight, tell us which dogs to bet on in a couple of races.”

“And then we’ll be even,” Curtis said.

“I was thinking, though,” Butch said, “maybe he should give us this computer thingy. So we could bet all the races. Win big.”

Curtis looked doubtful. Frown lines crossed his grease- stained forehead.

“I don’t know, Dad,” he said. “That Cutlass has got about two hundred thousand miles on it and the transmission’s shot. I don’t think he’s gonna think that’s a fair trade.”

“Maybe he won’t,” Butch agreed. “That’s why I was thinking you could go with me tonight. You, me, and that .38 of yours.”

“Ah-he-e-em.”

It was an exaggerated throat-clearing. Both men looked in the direction it was coming from, from the doorway of the bay.

Tammi Stargell’s body was outlined by the sunlight streaming into the dim garage. She was tall and skinny, with long, stringy arms and legs. She’d cut her dishwater-colored hair short, bleached it blond, and she had these little strands hanging down over her eyes, like some kind of anorexic sheepdog. She wore dark brown eye shadow and pale pink lipstick. Butch thought she looked like something out of the late-night creature feature. Curtis thought she looked awesome.

“Somebody wants the Escort,” she said. “You about done, Curtis?”

“Let me just gas it up and pull it around to the front and it’ll be ready to roll,” Curtis said, sliding in behind the wheel.

“About time,” Tammi muttered.

After Curtis had backed the car out of the bay, she walked over to Butch, who was pretending to read the paper again.

“I heard that part about the gun,” she said. “What kind of trouble are you getting him into now?”

“No kind of trouble at all,” Butch said, not looking up.