Lucky You (14 page)

“Besides, it’s plain to see,” he added, “Amber’s white as Ivory Snow.”

“Yeah, but her boyfriend’s Meskin. That makes her Meskin by injection,” said Bode.

“You can shut up now.”

“Point is, we gotta be careful.”

The manager flicked the lights twice and the restaurant began to empty. Bode asked for a box of chicken wings to go, but a Negro busboy told him the kitchen had closed. Bode paid the dinner bill with the stolen Visa, leaving another ludicrous tip. Afterwards Chub insisted on hanging around the parking lot, in the remote likelihood Amber needed a lift. After fifteen minutes she appeared, brushing her hair as she came out the door. To Chub she looked almost as beautiful in faded jeans as she did in her skimpy work shorts. He told Bode to honk the horn, so she’d see them waiting in the truck. Bode refused.

Chub was rolling down the window to call her name when none other than Tony himself drove up in a new jet-black Mustang convertible. Amber got in, and the car sped away.

“What the fuck?” said Chub, despairingly.

“Forget about it.”

“Asshole must be loaded to ‘ford two cars.”

Bode Gazzer said, “For Christ’s sake, it’s probably a rental. Now forget about it.”

Half drunk, Bode struggled to back the pickup out of the handicapped slot. He paid no attention to the blue Honda on the other side of the lot, and failed to notice when the same car swung into traffic behind them, southbound on Highway One.

Before the two rednecks broke into her home and attacked her, JoLayne Lucks had in her entire adult life been struck by only two men. One was black, one was white. Both were boyfriends at the time.

The black man was Robert, the police officer. He’d slapped JoLayne across the face when, with ample evidence, she accused him of extorting sex from female motorists. The very next morning Robert found a live pygmy rattlesnake curled up in his underwear drawer, a discovery that impelled him to hop and screech about the bedroom. JoLayne Lucks gingerly collected the snake and released it in a nearby pasture. Later she teased Robert about his girlish reaction, noting that the bite of a pygmy rattler was seldom fatal to humans. That night he slept with his service revolver cocked on the bedstand, a practice he diligently maintained until he and JoLayne parted company.

The white man who hit her was, of all people, Neal the codependent chiropractor. It had happened one night when JoLayne was an hour late getting home from Jackson Memorial Hospital, a delay caused by a short-tempered cocaine importer with personnel problems. Four multiple-gunshot victims had arrived simultaneously in the emergency room, where JoLayne was on duty. Although the shooting spree was the lead story on the eleven o’clock news, Neal the chiropractor remained unconvinced. He preferred to believe JoLayne was late because she’d been dallying with a handsome thoracic surgeon, or possibly one of the new anesthesiologists. In a jealous tantrum, Neal threw a wild punch that glanced harmlessly off JoLayne’s handbag. She was upon him instantly, breaking his nose with two stiff jabs. Soon Neal the chiropractor was sniveling for forgiveness. He rushed out and bought JoLayne a diamond tennis bracelet, which she returned to him in mint condition on the night they broke up.

So she was not accustomed to being struck by men of any color; did not invite it, would not tolerate it, and believed with every fiber in swift, unmitigated retribution. Which is why she couldn’t get her mind off the shotgun in the trunk of Tom Krome’s Honda.

“You got a plan yet?” she said. “Because I’ve got one if you don’t.”

Krome said, “I’m sure you do.”

He’d dropped back to put some distance between them and the red pickup truck, which was weaving slightly and accelerating in unpredictable bursts. The driver was bombed—even a rookie patrolman could have spotted it. Krome didn’t want the rednecks to crash into anybody, but he also didn’t want them to get pulled over on a DUI. Who knew what they might do to a cop? And if they allowed themselves to be tossed in jail, it might be weeks before they got out, depending on how many felony warrants were outstanding. JoLayne Lucks didn’t have that much time.

Krome’s plan was to follow the two men to where they lived, and to case the place.

“In other words, we’re stalking,” JoLayne said.

Krome hoped her tone was one of impatience and not derision. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought the goal was to retrieve your Lotto ticket. If you’d rather just shoot these morons and go home, let me know so I can bail out.”

She raised her hands. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“You’re angry. I’d be angry, too.”

“Furious,” she said.

“Stay cool. We’re close.”

“You memorized the license tag?”

“I told you before. Yes,” Krome said.

“Hey, they’re speeding up again.”

“So I noticed.”

“Don’t lose ‘em.”

“JoLayne!”

“Sorry. I’ll shut up now.”

They tailed the truck all the way to Homestead. On the way, it stopped three times along the side of the highway, where one or both of the rednecks nonchalantly got out to urinate. Whenever that happened, Krome kept driving. Once he got ahead, he’d quickly pull over in an unlit spot and wait for the pickup to pass by again. Eventually the rednecks turned east off Highway One, then south on a dirt road that bisected a tomato farm. Here there was no other traffic—only a rolling dust cloud kicked up by the truck. The dust smelled faintly of pesticide.

JoLayne poked her head from the car and pretended to drink the air. “Green acres! Men of the soil!” she exclaimed.

Krome slowed and turned off the headlights, so the rednecks wouldn’t spot them in the rearview. After a few miles the tomato fields gave way to palmetto scrub and Dade County pines. Gradually the road turned and ran parallel to a wide drainage canal. Across the rippled water, JoLayne was able to make out the shapes of rough shacks, small house trailers and abandoned cars.

A half mile ahead on the dirt road, the pickup’s brake lights flashed brightly through the whorls of dust. Krome immediately stopped the Honda and killed the engine. The silence announced that the driver of the truck had done the same.

Krome said, “Nice neighborhood.”

“It’s not exactly Star Island.” JoLayne touched his arm. “Can we please open the trunk now?”

“In a second.”

They couldn’t see the red truck, but they heard the doors slam. Then came a man’s voice, booming down the canal through the darkness.

JoLayne whispered: “What’s that all about?”

Before Tom Krome could answer, the night was split open by gunfire.

Alone in the middle of nowhere, Shiner had wigged out. The noises were the same as those in the woods outside Grange—frogs, crickets, raccoons—but here every peep and rustle seemed louder and more ominous. Shiner couldn’t stop thinking about all those NATO troops bivouacked in the Bahamas.

Just eighty miles that away,
Bodean Gazzer had said, pointing,
acrost the Gulf Stream.

Stunted as it was, Shiner’s imagination had no difficulty conjuring a specter of blue-helmeted enemy soldiers poised on an advancing flotilla. He became consumed with the idea that the United States of America might be invaded at any minute, while Bode and Chub were off drinking beer.

Acting against orders, Shiner got the AR-15 out of Chub’s mobile home and climbed a trellis to the flimsy roof. There, in his moldy bush hat and new camouflage parka, he waited. And while he couldn’t see as far as the Bahama Islands, he had an excellent view of the dirt road and the farm canal.

By land or by sea, Shiner thought, let the fuckers try.

The rifle felt grand in his hands; it took the edge off his nerves. He wondered what types of guns the NATO communists were carrying. Russian, Bode Gazzer had speculated, or North Korean. Shiner decided to swipe one off the first soldier he shot, for a souvenir. Maybe he’d chop off an ear, too—he’d heard of such grisly customs during his three weeks in the army, from a drill sergeant who’tl been to Nam. Shiner didn’t know what he would do with a severed NATO ear, but he’d surely put it someplace where his Ma wouldn’t find it. Same with the guns. Ever since she’d found the Road-Stain Jesus, his mother had been down on guns.

After an hour on the roof, Shiner was overcome by a stabbing hunger. Stealthily he climbed down and foraged in Chub’s refrigerator, where he located two leathery slices of pepperoni pizza and a tin of boneless sardines. These Shiner carried back to his sentry post. He forced himself to eat slowly and savor each bite—once the invasion began there’d be no more pizza for a long, long time.

On two occasions Shiner fired the AR-15 at suspicious noises. The first turned out to be a clumsy opossum (not an enemy sapper) that knocked over Chub’s garbage can, just as the second turned out to be a mud hen (not a scuba-diving commando) splashing in the lily pads.

Better safe than sorry, Shiner thought.

After a while he drifted off, one cheek pressed against the cool stock of the rifle. He dreamed he was back in boot camp, trying to do push-ups while a brawny black sergeant stood over him, calling him a faggot, a pussy, a dickless wonder. In the dream, Shiner wasn’t much better at push-ups than he was in real life, so the sergeant’s yelling grew louder and louder. Suddenly he drew his sidearm and told Shiner he’d shoot him in the ass if his knees touched the ground once more, which of course happened on the very next push-up. In a rage, the sergeant simultaneously placed a heavy boot on Shiner’s back and the gun barrel against Shiner’s tremulous buttocks, and fired—

At the concussion, Shiner bolted awake, clutching the AR-15 to his chest. Then he heard it again—not a gunshot but more like a door slamming. He realized it wasn’t part of the dream; it was real. Somebody was out there, in the buzzing night. Maybe it was the NATO soldiers. Maybe what Shiner had heard slamming was the turret door of a Soviet tank.

As they stepped toward the trailer, Bodean Gazzer and Chub were startled by the raw, strung-out cry that came from the roof: “Who goes! Who goes there!”

They were about to answer when the darkness exploded in orange and blue sparks. The spray of automatic rifle fire sent them diving under the pickup truck, where they cursed and cowered and covered their ears until Shiner was done.

Then Chub called out: “It’s us, dickface!”

“Us who?” demanded the voice from the roof. “Who goes?”

“Us!
Us!”

” ‘Dentify you selves!”

Bode Gazzer spoke up: “The White Clarion Aryans. Your brothers.”

After a significant pause, they heard: “Aw, fuck. Come on out.”

Squirming from beneath the truck, Chub said: “What we got here’s one brain-dead skinhead.”

“Hush,” Bode said. “You hear that?”

“Jesus Willy Christ.”

Another car on the dirt road—driving away, fast.

Chub groped for his pistol. “What do we do?”

“We chase after the bastards,” Bode said, “soon as we get John Wayne Jr. off the roof.”

12

Tom Krome’s chest tightened when the headlights appeared in the rearview. JoLayne Lucks turned to see. “Just like in the movies,” she said. Krome told her to hang on. Without touching the brakes, he guided the car off the farm road, over a dirt berm. They jounced and shimmied to a halt in a stand of thin Australian pines.

“Unlock your door,” he said, “but don’t get out till I tell you.”

They ducked in the front seat, their faces inches apart. They heard the pickup truck coming, the rumble of the oversized tires on the packed dirt.

Out of nowhere, JoLayne said, “I wonder what Martha Stewart would do in a spot like this.”

Krome thought: OK, she’s delirious.

“Seriously,” said JoLayne. “There’s a woman who’d be completely useless right about now, unless you were in a hurry for a macrame or a flower box. Ever see ole Martha on TV? Planting those bulbs and bakin’ them pies.”

Krome said, “Get a grip.” He lifted his head to peer out.

“Me, I’m all thumbs when it comes to crafts. A total klutz. However, I
can
use a gun—”

“Quiet,” Krome told her.

“—which we happen to have in our possession.”

“JoLayne, get ready!”

“A perfectly good shotgun.”

In the darkness Krome sensed her edging closer. Her cheek touched his, and he astonished himself by kissing her. No big deal; a light brotherly kiss meant only to calm. That’s what he told himself.

JoLayne turned her face but said nothing. The pickup truck was approaching rapidly. Krome felt her arm brush his shoulder, as if she were reaching out for him.

She wasn’t. She was going for his car keys, which she adroitly plucked from the ignition. In an instant she flung open her door and rolled out.

“No!” Krome shouted, but JoLayne was already at the trunk. By the time he got there, the Remington was in her hands.

Nearby, the roadbed brightened; insects swirled in the white beams of the truck’s lights. Hurriedly Krome pulled JoLayne Lucks behind a pine tree. He wrapped his arms around her, pinning the shotgun awkwardly between them.

“Lemme go,” she said.

“You got the safety on?”

“Don’t be a jerk, Tom.”

“Sshhh.”

As the pickup passed, they heard the sound of men’s voices raised in excitement. Tom Krome didn’t relax his hold on JoLayne until the truck was gone and the night was utterly still.

He said, “That was close.”

JoLayne laid the shotgun in the trunk, and not gently. “Macrame, my ass,” she said.

Demencio was still basking in the praise of the Reverend Joshua Moody, who before departing had turned to his curious flock and proclaimed:

“In thirty-three years of touring miracles, this is one of the most astounding things I’ve ever seen!”

He was speaking of the apostolic cooters.

Later, after the Christian pilgrims from West Virginia had keened and swooned and ultimately placed in Trish’s wicker collection basket the sum of $211 (not including what was spent on soft drinks, T-shirts, angel food snacks and sunblock), Reverend Moody had pulled Demencio aside: “You gotta tell me exactly where this came from.”

“It’s like I said.”

“Hey, I been doin’ this since before you were born.” The preacher, arching one of his snowy-white eyebrows. “Come on, son, I won’t give it away.”

Demencio had coolly stuck to his spiel. “One day the turtles are normal. The next day I look in the aquarium and there’s the apostles. All twelve of ‘em.”

“Sure, sure.” With an impatient sigh, Reverend Moody had turned Demencio loose. “Of all the places for a holy apparition—on a cooter’s shell, I swear to God, boy.”

“Not an apparition,” Demencio had said coyly, “just a likeness.” The concept of using turtles is what had intrigued Reverend Moody—how had a mere layman such as Demencio dreamed up something so original? The man simply wouldn’t say. So, out of professional courtesy, the preacher had backed off. Amiably he’d pumped Demencio’s hand and told him: “You are one brilliant bastard.” Then he’d shepherded the pilgrims back onto the bus.

Demencio had stood waving on the sidewalk until they were out of sight. With a self-congratulatory smirk he’d turned toward his wife, who was sorting the tear-dampened clumps of cash. “We did it!” she said elatedly. “Un-fucking-believable.”

“You were right, honey. They’ll go for anything.” As a kid, Demencio had seen painted turtles for sale at an outdoor flea market in Hialeah. Some of them had roses or sunflowers lacquered on their shells; others had flags or hearts or Disney characters. Demencio had figured it would be no less absurd to decorate JoLayne’s cooters with the faces of religious figures. It had seemed Demencio’s only hope for salvaging a profit from Reverend Moody’s visitation, since the weeping Madonna was temporarily out of service.

After Trish had brought home the art supplies, Demencio had selected a dozen of the liveliest specimens from JoLayne’s big aquarium. The delicate process of painting had been preceded by a brief discussion about how the apostles could be most respectfully portrayed on the carapace of a mud-dwelling reptile. Neither Demencio nor his wife could name even half of the original disciples, so they’d consulted a Bible (which, unfortunately, had not provided a complete set of portraits). Trish then had fished through a box of her late father’s belongings and found a Time-Life volume about the world’s greatest masterpieces. In it was a photograph of Leonardo’s
The Last Supper,
which Trish had torn out and placed on the workbench in front of her husband.

“This is peachy,” he’d said, “but who’s who?”

Trish, pointing: “I believe that’s Judas. Or maybe Andrew.”

“Christ.”

“Right there,” Trish had said helpfully, “in the middle.”

Whereupon Demencio had expelled her and settled down with the cooters to paint. There was no sense getting fancy, because the animals’ corrugated shells were difficult to work with—as small as silver dollars. Beards was the way to go, he’d told himself. All the big shots in the Bible wore beards.

Soon Demencio had found a rhythm—restraining each baby turtle with his left hand, wielding the brush with his right. He’d been steady and precise, finishing the job in less than three hours. Although every apostle was given lush facial hair, Demencio had tried to make each one distinct.

Beholding the miniature visages, Trish had asked: “Which is which?”

“Beats the hell outta me.”

And, as Demencio had expected, it hadn’t mattered. One pilgrim’s Matthew was another pilgrim’s John.

Avidly Reverend Moody’s followers had clustered around the cooter corral that Trish had fashioned out of plastic gardening fence. Demencio had called out the names of each apostle as he pointed with deliberate ambiguity among the scrabbling swarm. The pilgrims hadn’t merely been persuaded, they’d been overwhelmed. In the center of the small enclosure Demencio had stationed the fiberglass Virgin Mary, who (he’d announced) would not be crying on this special day. The pilgrims had understood completely—the Holy Mother obviously was cheered by the unexpected arrival of her Son’s inner circle.

The apostolic turtles proved such a smash that Demencio decided to use them again the next morning. By noon the yard was jammed. Demencio was fixing a sandwich in the kitchen when Trish urgently reported that the cooters were dehydrating in the sun and that the paint on their shells was beginning to flake. Demencio solved the problem by digging a small moat around the fiberglass Madonna and filling it with a garden hose. Later a divinely inspired tourist from South Carolina asked if that was holy water in which the turtles were swimming. When Demencio assured him it was, the man asked to buy a cupful for four dollars. The other visitors rushed to queue up, and before long Demencio had to refill the moat.

He was aglow at his windfall. Turtle worship! Reverend Moody had been right—it was pure genius.

The visitation proceeded smoothly until midafternoon, when Dominick Amador showed up to hustle Demencio’s overflow, exhibiting his seeping stigmata in a most vulgar way. Trish chased him away with a rake. The altercation took place in full view of Mayor Jerry Wicks, who made no attempt to intervene on the shameless Dominick’s behalf.

Mayor Wicks had arrived at the shrine in the company of three persons who definitely weren’t pilgrims. Two of them Demencio recognized from around town; the third was a stranger. Demencio acknowledged the group with the air of a busy man on his way to the bank, which he was.

“Please,” the mayor said. “We won’t be long.”

“You caught me at a bad time.” Demencio, stuffing the last of three fat envelopes.

Jerry Wicks said, “It’s about JoLayne Lucks.”

“Yeah?” Demencio, thinking: Shit, I knew it was too good to be true. The damn turtles are probably stolen.

Trish popped her head in the front door: “More lettuce!”

Demencio locked the bank deposits in a drawer and headed for the refrigerator. “Have a seat,” he said indifferently to his visitors. “Be with you in a minute.”

Roddy and Joan were thrilled to assist Joan’s brother on such an important journalistic assignment; in fact, they’d have been ecstatic to help with the weekly crop report. Roddy worked for the state, inspecting gasoline pumps, while Joan taught third grade at the county elementary school. They didn’t get much company in Grange so they were delighted when Sinclair asked if he could come over for a few days, to work on the lottery story. Because it had been their tip to the newspaper that had gotten the ball rolling, Roddy and Joan felt duty-bound to help Sinclair locate his star reporter, missing with JoLayne Lucks. The Lotto mystery was the most commotion to sweep Grange in ages, and Roddy and Joan were pleased to be in the thick of it. Sinclair hadn’t been in town twenty minutes before they introduced him to the mayor, who listened to Sinclair’s account of Tom Krome’s disappearance with puzzlement and a trace of dismay.

“Whatever’s happened,” Jerry Wicks said, “rest assured it wasn’t Grangians who are responsible. We are the most hospitable folks in Florida!”

Sinclair balanced the notebook on his knees while writing down every word. Sinclair assumed that’s how real reporters worked; like a supercharged stenographer, preserving each article and preposition. He didn’t know any better, and was too proud to ask around the newsroom for guidance before he’d left on his trip.

One drawback to Sinclair’s exact note-taking technique was the extended silence between the moment a sentence was spoken and the moment Sinclair finished transcribing it. He was an uncommonly slow writer; years at the computer keyboard had left him unaccustomed to the feel of a pen in his hand. To make matters worse, he was a neat freak. Copying every trivial comment wasn’t enough; Sinclair painstakingly put in the punctuation, too.

Roddy and Joan loyally remained alert while Joan’s brother hunched for what seemed like an eternity over the notebook. The mayor, however, was growing antsy.

“I won’t mind,” he finally said, “if you want to use a tape recorder.”

Sinclair’s only response was a fresh burst of scribbling.

Jerry Wicks turned to Roddy: “Why’s he writing
that
down?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Who cares what I said about the tape recorder—”

“I don’t know, Mr. Mayor. He must have a reason.”

Sinclair reined himself, midsentence. Sheepishly he glanced up and capped the pen. Jerry Wicks seemed relieved. He suggested they all go visit the last person to see JoLayne Lucks before she left town. The man’s name was Demencio, the mayor said, and he had a popular religious shrine. Sinclair agreed that he should speak with the man as soon as possible. He tucked the notebook in his back pants pocket, like he’d often seen the male reporters at
The Register
do.

Sliding into the back seat of the mayor’s car, Joan murmured to her brother that she kept a portable Sony at the house.

“Thanks anyway,” Sinclair said stiffly, “but I’m fine.”

And upon meeting Demencio, he whipped out the notebook once again. “Could you spell your name for me?” he asked, pen poised.

“You a cop?” Demencio turned to the mayor. “Is he some kinda cop?”

Jerry Wicks explained who Sinclair was and why he’d come all the way to Grange. They were seated in Demencio’s living room—the mayor, Roddy, Joan and Sinclair. Demencio was in his favorite TV chair, nervously tossing a head of romaine lettuce from one hand to the other, like a softball. He was leery of the stranger but he didn’t want to blow a shot at free press coverage for the shrine.

Sinclair asked, “When’s the last time you saw JoLayne Lucks?”

“Other night,” Demencio said, “when she dropped off the cooters.” Roddy and Joan were very curious about the tank of baby turtles, as well as the painted ones in the moat outside, but for some reason Sinclair didn’t follow up. Meticulously he wrote down Demencio’s answer, then asked:

“Was there a man with Miss Lucks?”

“A white man?”

“Yes. Mid-thirties,” Sinclair said. “About six feet tall.”

“That’s the guy. He took pictures of my Virgin Mary statue. She cries real tears.”