“What do you want?” Katharine asked, leaving the chain in place.
A horn honked and Dinky glanced back over his shoulder, in the direction of the curb.
“Cab fare, to start,” he said. “You know it costs sixty bucks to get a cab out here from the airport? Man, that is fucked.”
“Wait here,” Katharine said, closing the door in his face. She turned to Mary Bliss. “Now what?”
Mary Bliss took another look through the peephole. Dinky was dressed in a loud orange Hawaiian shirt, dirty khaki-colored shorts, and a pair of worn rubber flip-flops. He clutched a wadded-up pillowcase in his left hand.
“He’s dead,” Mary Bliss said. “I saw him being thrown from the boat. He’s dead. He has to be.”
“He’s like a cockroach,” Katharine muttered. She’d gotten her billfold and was extracting twenties from it. “You ever try to kill a roach? You can’t do it. You hit one with a shoe, twenty minutes later it gets up and scuttles away.”
She opened the door again and thrust a wad of twenties at him. “Here, take it,” she said. “That’s two hundred dollars. Go away and don’t come back.”
Dinky nodded thoughtfully. He turned and walked toward the cab. A minute later the cab rolled away. And Dinky was back at the door.
“No,” Katharine said, furious. “That wasn’t the deal.”
Dinky looked sad. “Deal? What deal?” He pointed at his forehead, which bore a vivid scarlet scar that ran from his right eyebrow to his hairline. “Man, this wasn’t in the deal either. Come on, Katharine, just let me in. I just wanna talk. Okay?” He slapped at his bare calf. “You people got some vicious mosquitoes here, you know? Come on, now, I’m getting chewed alive out here.”
Katharine looked at Mary Bliss, who merely shrugged. She took the chain off the door. Dinky walked in, looked around at the marble-floored hall and the crystal chandelier. “Nice,” he said, nodding his head in approval. “Where’s the shitter? I been in a cab, for like, an hour.”
She showed him the maid’s bathroom, which was off the kitchen. When he emerged five minutes later, his hair and face were glistening with water, and he was toweling off with a wad of toilet paper.
“Just wanted to freshen up a little,” he explained.
Katharine waved him into the kitchen and shut the swinging door.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded. “We settled up with you in Cozumel. You can’t just show up here like this.”
“I came for a visit,” Dinky said. “That’s all.”
“How did you find me?” Katharine asked.
He smiled. One of his front teeth had a fresh chip. “I know the desk clerk at the Casa Blanca.”
“I registered under a fake name,” she reminded him.
“Yeah, but you used your real address. And you left a big tip. People remember a lot about big tippers. I looked in your mailbox when I got here. You got the new Victoria’s Secret catalog. Addressed to Katharine Weidman.”
Katharine sighed loudly. “All right. Let’s get down to business. What do you want?”
Dinky seated himself on one of the bar stools. “You got any beer?”
“No,” Katharine said firmly. “No beer. You can have a glass of water, and that’s it.”
“Water!” He looked insulted. “Man, that’s not very friendly.”
“We’re not in a friendly mood,” Mary Bliss put in. “State your business.”
“Geez,” he said, wounded. “I just want a new start. Is that too much to ask? After I got out of the hospital, I said to myself, ‘Dinky, you need to get the hell outta Dodge. You need some new scenery.’ And I thought about my friends up here in Atlanta. And I thought, what the hell? Why not?”
“The hospital?” Mary Bliss said, horrified.
“I had, like, a major concussion,” Dinky said. “My head was split open. I was all fucked up.”
“Don’t you dare feel sorry for him,” Katharine said fiercely. “That was his own fault. He was stoned, drunk, whatever. And he didn’t wear a life jacket. So that’s entirely his fault and not ours. We are not liable!”
“Oh, man!” Dinky winced. “I get these headaches now. I get dizzy, can’t see. Pretty soon I’m pukin’. I think I feel a headache coming on.”
“No puking!” Katharine said sternly. She found two aspirin, went to the refrigerator, got him a Coke. “Here. Take the aspirin. I’ll call you a cab.”
He looked at the white tablets. “Aspirin? You don’t got any Percocet? Dilaudid? Somethin’ like that?”
“Take them!” Katharine ordered. “Now. What else? Money? I’m not a rich woman, you know. This house belongs to my husband. He’s a cheap bastard.”
“Money?” Dinky rubbed his scar. “Is that what you think? That I’m blackmailing you?”
“Aren’t you?” Mary Bliss asked.
Dinky took a swig of the Coke. “Naw, man. Blackmail, that’s not cool. I just need a coupla favors. A job. A place to stay ’til I get my feet on the ground.”
Mary Bliss and Katharine looked down at his feet. Simultaneously. Dinky Davis’s feet were filthy, with long, curving yellow toenails.
“You can’t stay here,” Katharine said quickly.
“He can’t stay at my place,” Mary Bliss said. “What would Erin say? What would the neighbors say? Hayslip is already watching me like a hawk. And that insurance woman…”
“Hey, chill,” Dinky said. He got up and walked around the kitchen, running his fingertips over the white marble countertops. “Man, this is a nice place. Like a mansion, right? Big old house like this, you gotta have, what? Six, seven bedrooms?”
“It’s only four bedrooms,” Katharine said. “There’s a lot of wasted space. And my husband is here. He’s recuperating from a heart attack. So you can see, it’s impossible.”
“Husband?” Dinky looked interested. “I thought you were divorced.”
Katharine’s face flushed. “We’ve reconciled. He’s not a well man. He can’t have any stress.”
“No stress,” Dinky agreed. “You won’t even know I’m here.” He walked over to the basement door. “Hey. Is this a basement? Cool. I can sleep down there.”
“No,” Katharine said, closing the door and locking it. “My husband’s down there.”
“In the basement? Damn.” He looked at Katharine with new-found respect. “You’re a hard woman.”
“You don’t know how hard,” Katharine said, her eyes narrowing. “You can stay in my son’s bedroom. He’s away for the weekend. But he’ll be back Sunday. And then you’ve got to go.”
“Where am I gonna go?” Dinky whined. “I got no job, no money.”
“We’ll find you a job. But you’re out of here on Sunday,” Katharine said.
“Sunday,” Mary Bliss repeated.
“Fine. Whatever. Where did you say my crib was at?”
“Upstairs, last door on the right,” Katharine said, pointing toward the stairs. “And don’t come out until I tell you to. If my husband gets a look at you it could be fatal.”
Dinky picked up his pillowcase and headed up the stairs. He stopped on the top landing.
“Hey, Katharine,” he called.
“Quiet!” She glared at him.
“You guys got any rolling papers? ZigZags, something like that?”
“No smoking!” she yelled, taking the stairs two at a time. “No smoking. No drugs, no drinking.”
“Fuuuck,” Dinky said. “Forget Sunday. I’m outta here after tomorrow.”