The Mortal Nuts (22 page)

But where was the money? He stepped into the pit, lifted the torn Hefty bag. Nothing. He kicked aside some dirt, thinking for a moment that perhaps this was some other doubled-up garbage bag and that the one with the money still lay beneath his feet. A corner of gray-green caught his eye. He bent down and tugged a twenty-dollar bill from the earth. Falling to his hands and knees, Axel shoveled aside handfuls of dirt, throwing some at the dogs, who had sauntered over to watch him.

The twenty was all he found. He stood up, distastefully regarding his dirt-caked fingernails. He hated that. Dirt under his nails.

One loose twenty. Where had it all gone? Had high wind passed through the neighborhood and blown it all away? Not likely. He threaded his way among the derelict vehicles, trying to follow the perimeter of the fence, keeping his eyes on the ground. After five minutes of searching, he found another twenty, stuck in the grille of the Dodge Charger. At the base of the fence, between the two VW Beetles, he discovered an entire roll, still held together with its rubber band, the bills slightly chewed but still spendable. The dogs? The dogs wouldn't be able to eat an entire quarter-million dollars, even if it did smell like Mexican food.

No, he knew who had his money. He just wasn't sure what he should do about it.

Chapter 34

The walk from the bus stop to the mall would normally take about three minutes. Carmen stretched it out to forty. She did not want to go to work. The tactile memory of the texture of a flour tortilla gave her the shudders.

Also, it had kind of bothered her, being fired by Sophie. Fired by her own mom.

It was getting so she couldn't count on anybody.

She stopped to watch a yellow Skyride capsule pass overhead. All day long, the Skyride ferried people, two to a capsule, from the Horticulture Building, at the head of the mall, to Heritage Square, at the far corner of the fairgrounds. Carmen had worked under the cable for five seasons and had yet to ride it herself. She didn't like the idea of being locked in a bobbing capsule, riding along an unchangeable route.

She couldn't count on any of them. Not Sophie, not Axel, and certainly not James Dean. Now that he was gone—gone for sure this time, she thought—she really needed to firm up her position with Axel. If he wanted her to work with Sophie, then that's what she'd have to do. At least for now. She opened her purse and took two more Valiums from the prescription bottle, swallowed them, and lit a cigarette. The two she had taken back at the motel didn't seem to be working. She decided to wait for these to kick in before giving herself up to the Taco Shop.

Carmen noticed that the Tiny Tot stand was boarded up, then remembered that Tommy Fabian had been killed. She'd forgotten all about it. She couldn't count on him, either. Next thing she knew, Axel would go and die on her too.

“How's this?” Sam O'Gara held up his latest effort at rolling a Bueno Burrito.

Sophie groaned. “Would you eat that?” she asked.

Sam frowned at the lumpy, leaking wad in his hand, shrugged, and tossed it into the trash. “I never claimed to be a goddamn cook,” he said. “Besides, those tortillas are like wet toilet paper. Don't take nothing to rip 'em.”

“Try again, only take your time with it. And be gentle. You're not changing a tire; you're making someone's dinner.”

“If you wasn't so goddamn picky, I'd be doing fine.” Sam was in an ugly mood. This was turning into one of the worst weeks of the first half, or two thirds, or fifteen sixteenths, or whatever the hell fraction of his life it was that he'd lived so far. First thing, Axel waking him up, then finding out that Tommy had finally got hisself killed, then the damned dogs dig up the yard and make the worst goddamn mess he'd ever seen. It had taken him near an hour to clean it up. And then his Chevy wouldn't start. Nor his truck. All those vehicles, and every last one of them a junker. What a guy ought to do, a guy ought to go buy himself a horse. He'd had to take the bus to get to the fairgrounds. Axel was going to owe him big for this one. Make no mistake, Axel would pay big time for this.

“I'm not picky,” Sophie said. “It's just that we have certain quality standards here. Kirsten doesn't seem to have any problems with it. At least not when she decides to show up for work.”

Kirsten wrinkled her brow. “I said I was sorry.”

“Sorry doesn't make up for lost business.”

“Now ladies,” Sam said. “Bitchin' ain't gonna get the people fed.”

Sophie threw up her hands. “Fine. Fine. Kirsten, will you please give Mr. O'Gara a lesson?”

Kirsten smiled at Sam. “It just takes practice is all.” She rapidly put together four Buenos, had them folded and wrapped within seconds. “I can do them as fast as Carmen now.”

“Faster,” Sophie amended.

Sam snorted, a flapping sound that made both women jump. He had to get out of there, and the only way he was going to do it would be to find himself a replacement. He pointed across the mall.

“What about the little princess? You gonna leave her stand there all day?”

Carmen, wearing her sunglasses, stood a hundred feet away, leaning against the white cinder-block wall of the Food Building, facing them, smoking a cigarette. “She's been holding up that wall half an hour now. And what about that little Mex gal was here? Where'd she take off to?”

Sophie said, “If you mean Juanita, she was only scheduled for the morning shift. As for my daughter—if she wants to work, all she has to do is ask.”

“Yeah? Well, maybe she's just sitting over there waiting for you to ask her.”

“Well, I do not intend to do any such thing.”

“You want me to go get her?” Anything to escape.

Sophie considered. “I suppose. Even Carmen is an improvement on you, Sam.”

“Thanks a hell of a lot” Sam untied his apron, let it fall to the floor, and stalked out of the stand.

Carmen watched Sam O'Gara walking toward her. His gait was smooth and rolling, almost as though he were on a ship. Other people on the mall, she noticed, were also walking that way.

She figured that meant she was coming on to the Valiums.

Suddenly he was there, in his bib overalls and V-neck T-shirt and green cap. “Hot one, isn't it?”

“Hi, Sam. Is it hot? I guess I didn't notice.”

“Well, actually it ain't the heat so much. It's the humidity. You want to work? Your mama could use you.”

Carmen looked past him at the taco stand, nine or ten people in line, Sophie and Kirsten moving around inside at dangerous velocities.

“You sure she wants me?”

“Sure she does. She told me to come and get you. She said you're the best burrito roller she's ever seen.”

“Really?” Carmen agreed with that, but she didn't think Sophie had ever noticed.

“Yeah. You help your mama out now, okay?”

Carmen nodded. Sam gave her a grin, buried his hands in his overalls, and turned away.

Carmen said, “Hey! Aren't you gonna be there?”

Sam looked over his shoulder. “Who, me? I'm gonna go eyeball the animules, honey. I hear they got a hog runs twelve hunnert pounds this year.”

Carmen said, “Yuck.”

Sam muttered, “Besides, another minute in that stand with your mom, I'm a goddamn basket case.”

Carmen laughed. “You just got to ignore her,” she said.

Five minutes later, she was finding Sophie impossible to ignore. She'd seen her mom in foul moods before, but never like this.

“Dammit, Carmen, did you forget everything you ever knew, girl? First I lose that fumble-fingered Sam O'Gara, then I get you. What do you call this?”

“That,” Carmen said, “is a beef tostada.”

“I asked for a beef taco!”

“Sorry! Jesus!” Carmen couldn't seem to do anything right. She tried not to let it bother her, relying on the Valium to buffer Sophie's flak. That worked for a while, until Kirsten had to make an emergency run to the restroom. As soon as she was out of the stand, Sophie turned up the volume on her complaints.

“Kirsten would never do that,” Sophie said. “When I ask for ‘two bean,' I mean tacos, not burritos.”

“How am I s'posed to know that? Do I look like a mind reader?” Carmen said.

“We've been doing it that way for five years now. What's wrong with you, girl?”

“Jesus, Sophie, would you just jack down?”

“Jack down? I have a business to run here. I need two bean tacos, pronto. Try to get it right this time, would you please?”

Carmen got it right that time, almost. Sophie yelled at her again for being too generous with the cheese. Carmen didn't understand why she was being so hyper. What Sophie needed, she thought, was a Valium. This idea took root in her mind and grew on its own for several minutes. The more she thought about it, the more Carmen liked the idea of a calm, benevolent Sophie Roman. She considered simply offering her a Valium—or maybe two—but rejected the idea. Sophie would never agree to take a pill from a prescription bottle without her name on it.

There was another possibility, however. Sophie kept a six-pack of Canada Dry seltzer under the front counter. She always had an open can going, from which she would sip at frequent intervals. All Carmen had to do to mellow her out was to drop a few Valiums in Sophie's seltzer. It made all kinds of sense. Everyone would benefit, even Sophie.

Carmen couldn't believe she'd never thought of this before. She only needed an opportunity, a few seconds when Sophie wasn't paying attention.

Axel remembered driving his old pickup back over the hole, shutting it down, and climbing the fence again. He remembered being in his new truck. He did not remember driving back across town, but he must have done so, because here he was, clutching his burlap shoulder bag, following a line of people through the gates into the fairgrounds.

Must have gone on autopilot, Axel thought. His mind on his missing money, trying to imagine what Sam would do if he came home to find his backyard full of cash. Would he guess where it had come from? Would he want to know? Or would he just squirrel it away. Just stash it and wait to see if anybody came looking.

Axel's biggest question was, why hadn't Sam mentioned it to him? They'd been friends going on forty years now. If a guy finds a quarter-million dollars cash in his backyard, wouldn't you think he'd want to tell his friends about it? A normal guy might, but what about Sam O'Gara?

Either someone else had found the money—could be anybody who'd had the good fortune to peek over the fence at the right moment—or Sam didn't want Axel to know he'd found it. But if Sam had wanted to conceal the fact that he'd found the money, you'd think he would have filled in the hole, made it look like nothing had happened.

Axel didn't know
what
Sam would do. He had always been like that, especially at the card table. Sam was harder to predict than Minnesota weather. He was a human randomizer, which was what had made him a great card- player. As far as Axel knew, Sam could have spent the money, binned it, given it to charity, or tossed it in a closet. Any, all, or none of the above seemed equally possible.

But the money was Axel's. Sam had to know that. It was under Axel's truck.

Thinking back over his friendship with Sam O'Gara, examining it in a way he never had before, Axel searched for chinks, flaws, misunderstandings, hidden resentments. They argued all the time, sure, but wasn't there an underlying trust between them? When it came right down to the nuts, couldn't he count on Sam? Of course he could.

On the other hand—how many hands was he up to now?—Sam had been pretty pissed at him the other day. What had that been about? Money. Sam had been telling him what to do with his money, and Axel had told Sam where to put his advice. He remembered telling Sam that he didn't need his interference, that he could take care of himself.

Well, shit, that had just been talk. They'd been arguing like that for forty years. They were still friends.

Axel caressed the rough exterior of his shoulder bag, felt the rolls of money pressing against the burlap. At least he still had this year's money. He reached into the bag and let his hand rest on the .45. He was passing a Pronto Pup joint. The concessionaire caught his eye, recognized him, gave a nod. Axel's grip tightened on the gun as he nodded back.

He tried to think of what to say when he saw Sam. He tried to simplify it, to reduce the problem to manageable proportions. He might say, “Suppose you lost, say, twenty bucks. Suppose you lost it in your friend's house and your friend finds it. Later you tell him you lost a twenty. He would say, ‘I found your twenty. Here it is!'”

Even though you couldn't prove the twenty was yours, he would give it back to you because, for one thing, twenty bucks isn't worth losing a friend over. And he wouldn't have to ask, because you would just give it to him.

Now, make that twenty dollars a larger amount—say a quarter million. Axel put himself in Sam's place. What would he do if he found that much cash buried on his property and, the next day, Sam O'Gara showed up and claimed it was his? How good a friend would he have to be to believe him?

“You wanna know what really pisses me off?”

“No.”

“What pisses me off is they made us pay to get back in. Don't that piss you off?”

“No, it doesn't,” Dean said.

“I mean, we already paid to get in once. You'd think that'd be enough.”

Dean lifted his cowboy hat and scratched the top of his head. His scalp felt odd, as if it were shrinking. Shrinking and itching. Before following Axel back into the fairgrounds, he and Tigger had done another line of Pork's crystal. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but now he was wondering whether they'd done one line too many. Every time he blinked, the world shifted about a quarter inch up and to the left.

Tigger said, “We shoulda just sneaked in. Just climbed over the fence is what we shoulda done.”

“You know what you should do?” Dean said. “You should shut the fuck up.”

“I'm just sayin',” Tigger said.

“Well, don't. Just keep an eye on the guy, okay? That four bucks you paid won't add up to nothing. Think of it like an investment. That's what you gotta do.”

“It just pisses me off is all.”

“Okay, it pisses you off. Hey. Where'd he go?”

“He's still there. He's talking to Carmen.”

When Axel stepped into the Taco Shop, Sophie grabbed him by the arm and pulled him back outside.

“She's acting awfully weird, Axel. I think you should take her back to the motel.”

“What? Who?” He didn't need this right now. He had more important stuff on his mind. “Where's Sam?” he asked.

Sophie, not about to be derailed, squeezed his arm and shook it, as if trying to wake him up. “Not Sam! Carmen! She told me I was a cartoon.”

“Really?” Axel looked through the door at Carmen. She was making burritos. “She looks okay to me.” He pulled his arm away from Sophie. “Wasn't Sam helping you out here?”

“If you can call it help. Listen to me, I'm trying to tell you something. There's something wrong with her. I think she's on drugs or something. Just watch her for a few minutes, okay? You'll see what I mean.”