Mrs. Million (14 page)

André could not remember the last time he had vomited. He was surprised by the burning sensation, the feeling that his esophagus had been singed. Maybe it only burned when one vomited cognac. Maybe it was middle age. In either case, he did not like it. His throat was raw, his stomach hurt as if pummeled, and his hands—he held them out-were trembling. Cautiously, he lifted himself up onto the edge of the bathtub. He tossed the wad of tissue into the toilet and dropped the lid so that he would not have to look at it.

There is a metaphor here, he thought.

For his entire adult life André Gideon had lived within, even embraced, the strictures of higher education. He had placed himself in thrall to the university system, and had never questioned the limitations imposed upon him. Even as a student he had eagerly given himself to Academia. He had taken on its philosophies and taboos and had made its belief system a part of his core being. In an even larger sense he had lived his life within the arbitrary ethical structure of Western Civilization, a set of approved social behaviors that dated back to the ancient Greeks, and before. He did not steal, kill, or destroy that which belonged to others. He was a good citizen, a good person. He was homosexual, true, but even in this he remained true to the classical Greek ideal, devoting himself as he did to an appreciation of the arts, and to the enlightenment of younger men.

He had followed their rules, and now they had ejected him as surely as he had ejected his bellyful of spirits. There was the metaphor.

André felt something shift in his abdomen. His mind returned to the wild, drunken thoughts he had voiced to young Jayjay a few minutes earlier—it seemed like hours! Could he really collect the one-million-dollar reward? The woman had said nothing about the manner in which her husband was to be returned. Nevertheless, there would be repercussions. One could not kidnap and imprison a man without raising ethical and legal questions, and if he attempted to reap the reward he would be as culpable as Jayjay. But what of it? Was it really such a terrible thing to cause one man a day or two of discomfort in exchange for a fortune? Was not a good person such as himself permitted one questionable act?

The image of the duct-taped man swam into view. Silver tape. His two-century-old Windsor. André frowned, drawing a mental curtain across the disturbing tableau. He depressed the toilet handle. The sound of rushing liquid reactivated his nausea, though only momentarily. Sitting on the edge of the bathtub, tweed elbows on corduroy knees, he listened as the guttural flushing sound gave way to the hiss of the filling toilet tank. By the time the hissing ceased he felt much better. The perspiration had dried on his face and the feeling in his stomach now resembled hunger. He stood, enjoying the solidity of the tiles beneath his feet, and turned on the tap and threw cool water onto his face. He scrubbed his beard dry with a clean bath towel. He ran his fingers through his hair, gray now but still growing thick and low on his forehead. He took a good, hard look at his mirror image, at his rumpled beard, at cheeks ruddy from the towel, at his small, hazel eyes. Everything he saw was in sharp focus. He could see the individual whiskers and pores, and the minute, spidery veins beneath the surface of his skin. He felt alert and sober, as if his mind had been flushed clean, as if reality, for the first time since early childhood, was reaching him unfiltered. He did not now see the slight, precious, mannered, slightly pompous Humanities professor to whom he had become accustomed. He did not see the middle-aged homosexual academic with one foot in the closet and the other in Rudolph’s Red Nose seeking youthful companionship. He did not see a fearful man hiding behind a doctorate and a beard.

He saw a man who was going to do something with his life.

“
HELLO, MOTHER,” ANDRÉ SAID.

“Andrew? Why haven’t you called?”

“I am sorry, Mother.”

“The country is falling to wrack and ruin.”

“Yes, Mother.”

“Negroes and Chinamen are breeding like mink, while good women go without grandchildren.”

“Mother, I have good news. I am about to become a rich man.”

“Your father often said that very same thing, yet all he left me was you. I’m destitute.”

“You are not destitute, Mother. You have your pension.”

“My pension is a pittance.”

“You also have your Social Security, Mother.”

“Yes, but for how long?”

“That will not matter, mother. I will take care of you. It is true what I said. I am coming into a fortune.”

“That’s nice, dear. Women are drawn to a man with money. You will become very popular, Andrew.”

André sighed. “How is your gout, Mother?”

“I’m walking on it, dear. Pins and needles. You know, the daffodils are showing on the south side of the house.”

“Really!”

“If you came to visit your mother more often, you would know these things.”

André lifted the lid from the Dutch oven and leaned over it, letting the curry-scented steam fill his sinuses. The odor was sublime. Feeling reckless, he crumbled three Saanam peppers into the curry, then set about measuring basmati rice and chicken stock into the rice steamer.

“Jayjay!” he called. “Where are you, Jayjay?” He locked the top on the rice steamer and turned it on.

Jayjay emerged from the basement stairwell.

“Ah! There you are! Dinner will be ready shortly. How is our guest?”

“He’s okay. He’s asleep.”

“You have removed him from my chair, I trust?”

Jayjay shrugged disinterestedly.

“Jonathan?”

“Don’t worry about it. He’s not sitting in your chair anymore.”

“Excellent.” André felt a lessening of the anxiety he had been gathering. The image of the man taped to his Windsor chair had been haunting him all afternoon. He removed several jars of Indian chutneys and pickles from the refrigerator and began spooning them into assorted bowls and plates. He liked a variety of colors and flavors on the table. “I have been thinking, Jonathan. I may have come up with a way we can collect that reward—without serving time in prison.”

“We?”

André nodded, spooning the last of the lime pickle into a pink Fiestaware bowl. “That is correct. You and me, Jonathan. Academia no longer commands my attention. Would you like to hear my plan?”

Jayjay sat down and nodded.

“All right. Now, the problem as I see it is that if we turn in the husband the reward will probably be in the form of a check, correct?”

“I s’pose.”

“And very shortly thereafter, the husband is likely to accuse us of kidnapping him. We will doubtless be arrested.”

“We could just take off.”

“Yes we could, and we will, but that is not enough. Once we receive the check, it must be cashed. They are likely to stop payment.” He pointed a forefinger toward the ceiling to emphasize his point.

Jayjay looked up. “So we cash it right away and just take off.”

André frowned. The boy was as obtuse as he was beautiful. “Jonathan, you cannot simply walk into a bank and cash a one-million-dollar check. In the first place, it is unlikely that any bank in Cold Rock would have that amount of currency on hand. In the second place, the husband will most likely be talking to the police within minutes of our releasing him into his wife’s custody. No, what we must do is open a local bank account under a fictitious name. Then we set up an offshore bank account, in the Grand Caymans, perhaps. We deposit the check to the local account, immediately have it wired to the offshore bank, then transfer the money to another account in, ah, Switzerland.”

“How do you open a bank account in a place you never been to?”

“I do not know,” admitted André. He had once seen something of the sort in a film. “But I am quite sure it can be worked out. We then board an airplane for Europe, spend a few months traveling, then perhaps rent a villa in Italy. I could write my book under a
nom de plume.”

“A what?” Jayjay was scratching his nose. “What about the cops? The way you’re saying, they’d be on us in, like, seconds. We wouldn’t even get to the airport.”

“As I said, Jonathan, I have a plan. The problem as I see it is one of time. If we could cause the husband to delay contacting the police for—let us say eight hours—then we would have time to make our move, correct? How, then, do we accomplish this?”

“We could superglue his mouth shut.”

“Yes, well, ah, he would still be able to communicate. He could still write.”

“We could break his fingers.”

“Good Lord!” André was genuinely shocked. It was one thing to kidnap a man and incarcerate him in one’s cellar, but breaking fingers? That was far too crude. Although if the man in the cellar were Malcolm Whitly, he might feel differently. “No, no, no, Jonathan! What I propose is that we give him a dose of sleeping pills, enough to render him unconscious for a few hours.”

Jayjay nodded. “I could get some good pills.”

“Excellent. You procure the pills, and I shall see to the banking arrangements.”

André carried the lime pickle and the mango chutney into the dining room. With uncharacteristic helpfulness, Jayjay began to set the table. “I still don’t get it about the bank stuff.”

André smiled tolerantly. “It is nothing you need worry about, Jonathan.”

“’Cause I was thinking that it might be easier if we just have her pay us cash.”

André began to object, but he could find nothing to object to. Cash. What a thought. He imagined himself on an airplane with an attaché case filled with cash and Jayjay in the window seat.

Jayjay pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket. “I got her phone number right here.”

The Mobil station manager who had identified Rodney Gent and Hugh Hulke did not know where either of them lived, but he offered Phlox the use of his Cold Rock telephone directory. Hugh Hulke was not listed, but Phlox found Rodney and Susan Gent with a five-digit address on Highway 23. The manager gave her directions. Phlox thanked him, got in her truck, and headed west.

One of the things Phlox had noticed as a dealer at the Desert Diamond Casino was that the winning poker players always projected an air of confidence. They acted aggressively, without hesitation. She wondered whether they were ever as scared as she felt now, alone in a strange town searching for her man.

She wished she felt just a bit more confident, more certain that if she did find Bobby that everything would be okay. The problem was that this whole plan had never sat quite right with her. She had no objection to the money, of course, nor of having it supplied by Bobby’s ex—which was how she thought of Barbaraannette. Her problem was that at bottom the million dollars seemed an abstraction, a dream. She feared that Bobby would stay in Cold Rock and she would wind up with nothing. No money. No Bobby. She loved the man to death but she didn’t trust him much.

But now she was in the middle of it and there was nothing for it but to go forward. If things worked out she would be rich and still have her man. Or maybe she would have one, or the other, and she could live with those options, too.

An air of confidence. Phlox took several deep, calming breaths as she pulled up in front of Rodney and Sue Gent’s small, moderately dilapidated two-story farmhouse. Without hesitating, she marched up and knocked on the screen door.

Sue Gent was a tall, large-bottomed, long-necked woman with a round head, a red face, and a cap of curly mustard-color hair. Her head bobbed like an angry jack-in-the-box as she told Phlox that as far as
she
was concerned Rodney was not home now or any other time and that she should take her little country ass back to whatever house of sin had spawned her and beg the Good Lord to forgive her for bringing shame and misery upon the households of good people such as herself.

“He’s not home then?”

Sue Gent’s narrow shoulders rose and her eyes seemed to emerge from their sockets.

“I guess not,” Phlox said, taking a step back. “Could you tell me where Hugh Hulke lives, then?”

When Sue Gent slammed the door, a confetti of paint chips flew from its crackled surface. Phlox brushed off the front of her denim jacket and returned to the truck. Now what? Aside from driving around aimlessly, she could not think how to proceed, confidently or otherwise. Maybe she should head back into town and start asking people at random—Cold Rock was small enough that sooner or later she would find someone who knew where to find Hugh and Rodney and, possibly, Bobby Quinn. It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was all she had. She started the truck and pulled out onto the flat, empty highway.

She had traveled less than a mile when she passed a mailbox with the name Hulke printed on the side. That was another way to go—she could get lucky.

Phlox made a U-turn and pulled into the dirt driveway. On either side were fields of turned-black earth, still spotted with patches of snow. She followed the drive for a quarter mile before arriving at a pale yellow, vinyl-sided ranch house surrounded by a motley collection of outbuildings: two collapsed silos, a long, dangerously leaning corn crib, and a pair of sheds held together with tarpaper and mismatched sections of roll roofing. The driveway continued another hundred yards to a newer-looking metal pole barn with a triple-wide twelve-foot-high rollup door. Several vehicles, including a rusted Camaro, a derelict snowmobile, and a faded green John Deere tractor, were parked in front. Phlox parked the truck and picked her way across forty feet of half-frozen, rutted mud, wishing she wasn’t wearing her good Justins, aiming for the small door at the corner of the building.

As she neared the door she heard voices. She turned the knob and eased the door open a crack. The first thing she saw was the rear end of a maroon van. She opened the door a few more inches until she could see the entire vehicle.

From the other side of the van came a whining protest. “You prick! I swear t’ God you are the luckiest summabitch I ever seen!”

A deeper, slower voice replied. “Yeah? I’m so lucky what the hell am I doing hanging out with you?”

“Like I said. You’re a lucky prick is what. It’s your goddamn deal, Hugh.”

Phlox slipped through the doorway, squatted down and looked through the van windows. She could see the bottom half of a wooden cable spool and two sets of winter boots. If Bobby was present, he was out of sight. She moved around the back of the van to get a better look at the two men, presumably Hugh Hulke and Rodney Gent. Several beer bottles studded the top of the spool table. Both men were on the plus side of hefty. The one on the left wore a camouflage down vest over a checked flannel shirt. An undersized Minnesota Vikings stocking cap perched atop his head as if to cover a bald spot. A small cigar jutted from his yellow grin. He was dealing cards, which made him Hugh Hulke.