3

THERE WERE TWO messages waiting for Sam at the hotel desk. The first one said, Call Harry. That was a laugh. What did he want, to fill her in on a forgotten detail of his trysts with Barbie? And how’d he know where she was, anyway? She handed the yellow slip of paper back to the desk clerk and said, “Could you burn this, please?”

The second message was from Kitty telling her to get herself down to the baths. Now! So she dumped her bags in her room, stripped, grabbed up the monogrammed terry cloth robe and paper slippers the hotel had so graciously provided, and rang for the cute little gilded elevator, which took her to the spa on the Palace’s second floor.

The reception area was a Moorish temple done in tiles of turquoise and maroon. Behind the desk the receptionist wore a platinum beehive and rhinestone cat eye glasses and called her Honey. She took Sam’s room number and pointed her through the pink curtains, straight back to the twenties. The waiting room sported wooden ceiling fans, walls of spanky clean white tile and gray marble, and mazelike floors of pink and white octagons.

Kitty threw herself at Sam from a scalloped green metal lawn chair. “Oooooooh, I am so glad to see you!”

The two old friends kissed cheeks and hugged. The top of the five-foot-two Kitty’s strawberry blond head tucked neatly under Sam’s chin. She said, “I know. I almost died without your smart mouth running in my ear the past twenty-four hours.” And that was true. The visit with Olive had been great, but nothing beat old friends.

“Speaking of dying. I don’t know why you didn’t fly. Did it rain all the way? I was just sure you were roadkill by now. You all agitated, driving eighty miles an hour.”

“I never topped seventy-five,” Sam lied. She was famous for her speeding tickets, and her impatience. “The driving was good, I needed to work off some nervous energy.”

“Well, sit right down here and tell all.” Kitty patted the chair beside hers.

So Sam repeated the tale of woe she’d shared with Olive and had already told Kitty the night before on the telephone, filling in more details. But woe was like that. You needed to twist it around and chew on it several times before you could begin to get the hurt out.

Kitty fell back in her chair, her robe flapping. “I say shoot both the sons of bitches. Him and her.”

“Oh, you always say that. But you don’t mean it.”

“What the hell are you talking about? I never say things I don’t mean.” Which was a joke. Kitty was in the public relations business in New Orleans. She lied for a living.

Sam said, “Let me remind you that twenty-odd years ago, back in school, when Jinx, this very same Jinx whose third engagement party you’re here for”—she held up three fingers—“ran off with Frank, my very best boyfriend in the whole world up until that time, you said the same thing. Shoot ’em. Moi, I agreed it was a superlative idea. Then, I start chatting up our friends in the Panthers about a gun, what did you do?”

“I said you were nuts. Locked you in our dorm room. Reminded you that all that bourbon you used to consume made you forget the difference between Southern hyperbole and reality.”

“So what does that say about my killing Harry and this blonde now?”

“Says you’re sober, which means you’d know more about what you were doing, plus you have all that crime-reporting business under your belt. I’d say you could probably get away with it.”

Sam laughed. “While I’m at it, you think I could get away with doing Jinx, too? Since I missed my chance the first time around?”

Kitty got that prim look on her face that meant she was going to say something that would make Sam want to slap her. And sure enough she did.

“Now, you know you don’t still hate Jinx.”

Sam slammed a hand on her forehead. “By God, you’re right. How could I forget that? We went over the same ground when you first tried to drag me up here for this stupid party. You feel sorry for her—which, of course, is akin to feeling sorry for Attila the Hun because his momma wasn’t nice to him. And I let go of all my mean, ugly, and vicious feelings about her eons ago. I don’t think about her any more often than I think about—oh, say rattlesnake bellies.”

Kitty’s eyes narrowed. “You’re lying through those pearly teeth, and you know it. Otherwise why wouldn’t you come to her party? She invited you. I know the invitation came in the mail the same day as mine.”

“Jinx probably invited the entire South. And Texas. Especially Texas, since she made off with their lottery.”

Kitty had her forefinger ready to point. “That’s why you let that green-eyed monster get ahold of you again. You’re jealous because Jinx won that million dollars, tax-free.”

Sam, who had inherited that and more from her long-deceased parents, narrowed her eyes and sniffed. “An engagement party for your third time around, when you’re forty-one years old, is tacky, and you know it.”

“Since when did you become Miss Manners? You don’t give a rip about that kind of thing.”

Kitty was right, but Sam didn’t let that stop her from trashing Jinx. “I bet she’s going to have a long white gown, a four-tiered cake, and six bridesmaids, their shoes and dresses dyed lime or puce or whatever to match the punch. There’ll be a video of her getting her ring—four carats. No, six. Jinx wouldn’t marry anybody for fewer than six. And a cake at this party tonight with a music box inside playing a recording of Jinx and the groom—what’s his name?”

“Speed. Speed McKay.”

“Sounds like a pool hustler to me; anyway, a recording of Jinx and Speed, blathering about the day they met.”

“Sammy, you’re over the top. Your mind’s come unhinged over this Harry thing. What you’re saying about Jinx, I think this is called displacement. You’re furious with Harry, but you’re dumping on Jinx.”

It was maddening to have a friend who knew her so well. Sam absolutely was doing that very thing. She was losing it, big-time. She sounded like a jealous 16-year-old girl. And she hated the idea that she was so het up about Jinx’s wedding because of her own problems of the heart. Resenting Jinx because she was getting married again just when Harry had strayed. June, moon, croon, puke. She was bored with the whole concept. Maybe she’d find a nice nunnery to check into for a good long sulk, even if she wasn’t Catholic.

Just then a short middle-aged black woman all in white—T-shirt, shorts, socks, sneakers—sauntered up to the two women and patted Sam on the shoulder. “Hi, baby, I’m June, and I’m going to take care of you. Come on over here with me.” She nodded at Kitty. “Sweet thing, somebody’ll be along for you directly.”

*

Back at the Gas ’N Grub, Olive Adair was down on her hands and knees talking to herself. It’s here, I know it’s here. Wiping the sweat out of her eyes. It could get pretty hot in Arkansas in late April. Hot enough to make an old lady think maybe she was about to get sunstroke if she didn’t take a break from searching for that diamond ring.

Besides, Pearl was about to have a fit. Howling, Ooohuroo, ooohuroo, in front of the soda cooler as if Olive didn’t know how that felt, a woman left lonely, which was the title of her favorite song by Janis Joplin. It was on the album, Pearl, she’d named the dog after. Bobby, her grandbaby, hadn’t had time to name her before they dragged him off to the slammer.

“Momma understands, sugar.” Olive leaned over and gave Pearl a hug, then reached into the cooler and grabbed herself another Delaware Punch. Whew! There was nothing like an ice-cold pop to make an old lady feel better.

Unless it was a thousand-dollar reward. Olive rested back on the cooler and took another swig. “How would that be, Pearl? You and me, we’d throw ourselves in that Sunliner, drive into town, have ourselves a little vacation right here at home.” She glanced out at the old black-and-gold retractable hardtop convertible shrouded with a tarp. It was a classic, more than one young hotshot had offered her good money for it, but Olive wouldn’t let it go. It belonged to Bobby. He was supposed to be getting out any minute now, she’d been saving the Sunliner for him all this time. Kept it in A-l condition, too. “Then we’d drive into town and check into the Arlington. No, the Palace. I always favored the Palace, better class of clientele, and I ought to know, having entertained gentlemen from both plenty of times. Get ourselves freshened up, go downstairs, stroll through that pretty lobby, watch ourselves in all those gold mirrors, I bet they make us look slim, take ourselves a table on the veranda, order ourselves a shrimp salad and some real sweet iced tea. Watch the passing scene on Central Avenue. Ask the waiter to call and make us a reservation for a bath and massage a little later.”

Pearl barked.

“You like that? Well, then we’d take us a little nap in our suite, get up and dress for the evening. You remember that dress I used to have of lemon yellow dotted swiss? It had the most beautiful collar trimmed in lace, I think that’s what Madeline’s suit reminded me of.”

Pearl said, “Ooooruha.”

“No, I guess you don’t. That was before your time. Anyway, we’d stroll down Central, go look at us some art. There’s all these new galleries now in the old buildings across from Bathhouse Row. Boy, have things changed. Back before air-conditioning, standing out on the sidewalk you could hear the results of the races at Santa Anita, Saratoga, Pimlico broadcast over the loudspeakers came right through the open windows of those same buildings in the hot weather. Pearl, would you hush up!”

Then Olive looked around and saw what had the hound so agitated. There was a tramp cutting across the edge of her property, a tall old man in a filthy long-sleeved undershirt and a pair of what looked like green fatigues belted with a rope. He had long white hair under a straw hat, a scraggly gray beard, and a sticky-looking handlebar mustache.

Well, God knows there were plenty of folks poorer than her these days, people who didn’t have the luxury of worrying about not meeting next month’s rent, worrying about bankruptcy, had already lost what little they had, including their homes, lots of which were pretty pitiful anyway. Things had gotten so bad under those damned Republicans, rich folks sucking off not only all the cream, but purt near down to the bottom of the bottle, you couldn’t drive more than five miles in any direction in this country anymore you didn’t see people living in shacks, in chicken coops, in that kind of cab-over trailer that’d fit on the back of a pickup truck, no matter what there was always a bunch of snot-nosed kids playing out in the dirt, old clothes flapping on a single line. It’d break your heart. Olive was about to reach back in the cooler, pull out a cold drink to take out to the old man, he looked so hot, when suddenly he stopped at the edge of the pavement, reached down, and picked up something, his mouth falling open like a black cave. He stuck whatever it was in his pocket in a godawful hurry, and looking behind him like a booger-bear might be after him, took off down the road.

Jesus H. Christ! He’d found the ring!

*

June led Sam off into a small room with a dressing area and a tub. “Take that robe off, honey, hang it up there.” Sam felt a little shy, standing there in the altogether—like maybe she ought to do more than fast-walking three miles a day, which wasn’t doing a thing for her upper arms, and what the heck was happening to her waist—but June, who handled naked ladies all day long, didn’t give her a second look.

She pointed Sam toward the deep long tub, sort of like a horse trough of ancient white porcelain with a contraption at the end that looked like an oversized egg beater. “Y’all friends, you and that women you talking to? Unh-huh. Mozelle’ll take care of her in a minute. Ain’t nothing like girlfriends. Where y’all from?”

While Sam talked, June gave her a hand into the tub, and the water was hot, not the kind of hot when you’ve overdone it filling the tub and you have to jump out again before your tootsies parboil, but good hot, and growing hotter as June opened the tap. “How’s that? Tell me if it’s too much.”

It was wonderful. Absolutely aces. She could already feel the tension of the long drive melting away.

Then June scrubbed Sam all over with a loofah and pink liquid soap out of a plastic jug, chatting away about what a small world it was. “Ladies run into each other in here all the time. Had a couple last week, had to be seventy years old, hadn’t seen each other since high school somewhere up in Ohio. You ain’t never heard so much hollering in your life. Liddy, that’s the old lady outside at the desk with the sparkly glasses, she called in here, had her fingers on the nine-one-one, thought we’d drowned somebody for sure.” June laughed, showing perfect white teeth in a chocolate face so clean and smooth Sam wanted to lick it, see if it’d taste as good as it looked.

She asked June, “Are all the bathhouses like this?”

“Well, strictly speaking, this ain’t a bathhouse. I mean, it’s a bath, but it’s in a hotel. The bathhouses are those eight buildings you see parading on down the hill from here on Central. Only one of them’s operating, the Buckstaff. And the Fordyce, it’s all fixed up as a museum. You go in there, you want to see yourself some glamorous. It’s got lobbies and verandas and ladies’ parlors and billiard rooms, a fountain, stained glass, treatment rooms, a gym. Joe Louis himself worked out there. ’Course, the Dallas Cowboys been here. Big old boys.” June laughed.

“So all the others are closed?”

“No, there’s a restaurant called Bubbles in one of them, on the main floor.” Then June sniffed, like there was more to be told, but her time with Sam was up. She slapped a hot white washcloth over Sam’s brow and plopped two paper cups full of hot water on the bathtub ledge. “You drink that, same water inside and out you, holler if you need anything, I’ll come back and get you in about fifteen minutes.” Then she flipped on the egg beater, and the water bubbled and surged.

Sam stretched out, sighed, and let go. She was tired of conversation anyway. Thank you, God, for hydrotherapy. Was there anything better than hot water pumping over your bare bod? Well, yes, there was. But she didn’t want to think about him or his damned brass bed.

“Sammy? Can you hear me?” So much for silence. That was Kitty, over in the next cubicle. “Listen, after the party’s over we can snuggle up in my bed, have a serious talk about Harry, what you ought to do. But in the meantime, don’t fall asleep, we’ve got to be downstairs at six-thirty sharp.”

“Whoowee!” June’s voice floated over the divider. “Y’all must be here for that McKay do.”

“I’d say Watson, because we’re friends of the bride-to-be.” Kitty spoke as if she were being asked which side of the church she wanted to sit on.

I myself am an enemy of the bride, thought Sam. An enemy of long standing.

“Ain’t that something,” said June. “Miz Loydell Watson’s daughter, the one that was on the TV talking about them lottery altars she builds. They work, too, unh-huh. She won that million down in Texas. They say her fiancé, that Speed McKay, he’s rich, too. Ain’t that the way it always is, them that gots gots. Them that nots nots. It don’t hardly seem fair.”

“You didn’t say he was rich,” Sam called to Kitty.

“Are you starting in again?”

“I’m just curious.”

“I bet.” Kitty wasn’t having any of it. “Jinx allowed as how he was comfortable. That’s all I know except that he’s lived in New Orleans. Not that I ever heard of him before, but I’m sure he’s very nice.”

Sam grinned. Not that I ever heard of him is the kiss of death in New Orleans society, where nobody cares how much money your family has or had, but their great-great-great-grandmother better have known yours, or, darlin’, socially speaking, you might as well move to Slidell.

“Unh-huh,” said June. “There’s lots of rich folks here in Arkansas nobody ever heard of. Like that Mr. Sam Walton, owned them Wal-Marts. Man owned half the United States, before anybody even knew his name. Mr. Don Tyson, the chicken man, Mr. Witt Stephens, natural gas, it’s the same thing. Arkansas white folks, they not like other Southern people. They kind of a mix of South and West, more West, some say, they just keep kind of close to themselves, doing business with their own, all of a sudden other peoples figures out they rich, you know what I mean?”

“So what does he do, this Speed McKay?” Sam asked, her tone innocent as a spring day.

“Lordy, I don’t know,” said June. “Breezed into town during the racing season out at Oaklawn. But makes an impression, you know what I mean? Comes in the hotel, big tipper. The kind belongs to the Oaklawn Club out at the track, fancy folks. Sugar,” June patted Sam on the arm, “your time’s up. Let’s get you out of there ’fore you pucker.” Then she leaned over the tub, gave Sam a hand, toweled her off, and wrapped her in a white cotton toga.

Next June led her out into a long room where a half-dozen mummies lay stretched out on tables. “Now, you want to go in the steam or you just want the wrap?” June was pointing over at an old-fashioned metal cabinet they’d open up and sit you down on a chair, then close it, you with only your neck sticking out. No, thank you. Once Sam had begun working a crime beat 15 years ago, she wanted her hands free and her back to the wall.

“Okay, then come lie down”—June patted one of the padded tables—“and tell June where it hurts.”

Well, for starters, her neck, her shoulders, her knees. She wasn’t saying anything about her heart. June piled on the hot packs, then tucked another sheet around her tight, slapped an icy towel on her forehead. Sam felt like a big pink noodle, way beyond al dente. She said as much to Kitty on the next table, who grunted. Then June was talking to someone. “I don’t care what you say, they’s professionals. Gangsters! Friends of Mr. You Know Who. You see them men in them sharkskin suits up in the lobby the past two evenings? Wearing them big diamonds, gold rings? Who you think they are, Mozelle? Ice cream salesmens?”

Sam opened one eye to spy Mozelle, the short round light-skinned woman attending to Kitty. Mozelle snorted. “Them’s friends of Jinx Watson and Speed McKay come to town for the big party. That’s who.”

“Who’s Mr. You Know Who?” asked Sam, but no one answered.

June said to Mozelle, “You think what you want to, but I’m telling you, they’s stuff going down. They was a jockey riding a favorite, end of Derby week, his horse lost, and he died.”

“Girl,” said Mozelle, “everybody knows, it was in the paper, the trainer told that boy to ride that horse one way, that boy says Uh-huh, then he does just the opposite, which is because he is from one of those countries down in South America, he didn’t even speak good English, dudn’t understand what the trainer’s saying, that horse got mad, balked, went down, and fell on top of him, broke that boy’s neck. Sounds like you trying to make out gangsters had something to do with that. Ain’t even any of those trainers Italian, far as I know.”

“Gangsters ain’t all Italian,” June muttered. “Owney Madden, lived right here in Hot Springs, big-time gangster in New York during the Prohibition, he was Irish, born in England. Makes him Irish, just like Mr. You Know Who. And I know because my Aunt Odessie used to do their fine laundry, the Maddens.”

“Who’s Mr. You Know Who?” Sam tried again, but then from over the top of a massage cubicle came a high-pitched white country-woman voice. The nasal kind that can cut through steel saying, “It was the Lord’s will that jockey boy died, is what it was.”

June made a face and whispered, “That’s Ruby, she’s a Foot-washing Baptist.”

A fundamentalist sect. Sam had heard about them since she was a child, but she’d never known exactly what it was they did. If she could get Ruby to talk with her, would foot-washing make a chapter for her book, a collection of pieces called American Weird? Or would that be too irreligious?

Thwap thwap thwap. It sounded as if Ruby were handling a side of beef.

June gave Sam a little wink, then called, “You think the Lord killed that jockey, Miss Ruby?”

“One of His agents did. Nobody saw it, but from what I hear, it was a haint. Witch, warlock. But it all ends up the same thing, transmutation, reconfiguration.” Thwap thwap.

“How come the Lord did it, you think?” asked June.

“That horse betting. Lord don’t like betting. Don’t like anybody has anything to do with it. Gambling’s an abomination in the eyes of the Lord. That’s what I told Loydell Watson, right to her face, her daughter getting ready to marry that McKay man. What I heard, he was out at that track nearly every day betting money on them racehorses. He’ll come to no good. ’Course that Jinx Watson got the curse on her, too, taking that lottery money. It’s all the same thing.”

“Whoowee,” said June. “Witches out killing everybody got anything to do with gambling? They got themselves a row to hoe.”

“There’s no such thing as a witch,” mumbled Mozelle. “Even if there was, God ain’t got nothing to do with them. Woman’s crazy.”

“I heard that, Mozelle Williams.” Ruby delivered one last thump to her victim, then stepped outside her cubicle. She was pinch-faced with inky black hair, tall, pencil-thin, pushing 60, wearing what looked like a pink nylon nurse’s uniform zipped up to her chin. “And I’m here to tell you you are wrong. Wrong as a person can be, and I get down on my knees every night and pray for your eternal soul.”

Mozelle made a sour face. “I hope you don’t be setting no witches on me when you doing that.”

“I’m setting the Lord on you, Mozelle, that’s what. Witches, I told you, sometimes they be the Lord’s agents.”

“I thought witches worked for the devil,” Kitty piped up.

Ruby narrowed her eyes. She knew an infidel when she heard one. Disbeliever. Fun-poker. Heathen. “Check your First Samuel, Twenty-eight, you want to see witches.”

“In the Bible?” said Mozelle. “I never saw no witches in my Bible.”

“Well, you didn’t know where to look.” Obviously Ruby did, as she marched smartly over to a desk of chipped green enamel, opened a drawer, reached in deep, and pulled out a white pebble-grain volume stamped in gold, flipped right to chapter and verse. Then she wet her thin lips, peered down her sharp nose, cleared her throat, and read the account of the witch of Endor summoning up the spirit of Samuel at the request of Saul.

“Well, I don’t care what you say,” said June. “No witch killed that jockey boy. And furthermore, nobody I know ever saw a witch in their whole lives, and I know some grannies who speak regularly with folks done passed over.”

“Well,” Ruby said. “You wouldn’t necessarily know one if you saw it. They take all forms.” Sam couldn’t wait to hear what they were.

“Unh-huh,” said June.

Ruby said, “I know you don’t believe me. But listen to this. There was this woman from over near Pine Bluff, her cat was a witch. And what the cat used to do, in the night it would swap spirits with the woman. So the woman would go out, walking in her sleep, and do all kinds of witchy things.”

“My Aunt Odessie, she walks in her sleep,” said June. “Mozelle, I told you about her. Poor thing.”

“Nobody wants to hear about your old auntie. Would you let me finish this story?” said Ruby with what Sam didn’t think was a very Christian attitude. “Anyway, one night this woman’s spirit is in the cat, and the cat’s spirit is in the woman, and lo and behold, the cat got out through a rip in the screen and got run over in the middle of the road. And that poor woman, to right this very day, is in a sanitorium over in Little Rock in an irreversible condition. Can’t speak a word. You ask her something, she just meows.”

“Ummmmhuh. Ain’t that something?” said Mozelle.

Then Kitty piped up. “What I want to know is, when she goes to the bathroom, does the woman use the toilet or the litter box?”

Sam watched Ruby’s face turn to vinegar. No doubt about it. Right now the odds of her interviewing this Foot-washing Baptist for American Weird stood about a million to one. If she wanted to do some work, she’d poke around, find out about Mr. You Know Who, see if what he was up to might fit the bill.

*

Back at the Gas ’N Grub, Olive’s heart was pounding. “Wait! Wait!” She ran out after the tramp who’d found her ring.

He wheeled with a wild look in his eye. “What do you want?” His voice sounded rusty, like a porch swing that had been out all winter.

“That’s mine, what you’ve got in your pocket.”

“I ain’t got nothing in my pocket.” He wiped at his nose.

“You do, too. You do, and I know what it is. It’s a ring! Show me it ain’t!”

He stepped back, his eyes slits. “So what if it is? What’s it to you?”

“It’s mine. It was on my property, and if you don’t hand it over, I’m calling the police.”

Olive stepped right up close to the bum expecting him to smell like a hog, but he didn’t. He was plenty shifty-eyed, though. Real pale gray eyes that didn’t give back any light, just like cold cement. She wished that Loydell was here to get a load of this sucker. Loydell had been the matron for almost 40 years for the women prisoners, when there was any, at the Garland County Jail. And Loydell knew a real criminal when she saw one. Olive was sure she’d say this fellow was the genuine article. She wasn’t going to spend another single solitary minute feeling sorry for him, especially since he was standing between her and a thousand bucks.

“Are you deaf, old man? I said if you don’t give me that ring, I’m calling the cops.”

He took the ring out of his pocket—it was the very one Madeline had dropped, big old emerald-cut diamond, bigger than any the tourists had ever picked up at the Crater of Diamonds over near Murfreesboro—and stared at it for a long minute. Then he said, “Can you prove it’s yours?”

Well. That made her step back a bit, catch her breath. But she knew whose it was, and she knew who was going to get that thousand-dollar reward for it, and if she didn’t, it’d be over her dead body. “I most certainly can,” she said.

He waggled a dirty finger in her face. “I don’t think so. I think if you could prove it, it wouldn’t have taken you so long to say. What I think is finders keepers, and I’m the finder.”

Olive could see the thousand-dollar reward slipping away. If she called the cops and they came, there was that thing about possession being nine-tenths of the law, and this son of a bitch definitely had the ring in his mitt.

Which probably meant he’d get the reward. The very idea made her chest hurt.

“Okay. I’ll give you fifty dollars for it. For that you can buy yourself a whole lot of Thunderbird.”

“Ha! You must think I’m a fool, I’d sell you a diamond like this for fifty bucks. It’s worth at least a thousand. Pawnshop’d give me a thousand, for sure. I’ll just walk on up the road, Hot Springs’s lousy with pawnshops.”

He was bluffing. Olive turned away.

“Okay, okay. Seven-fifty. I’ll take seven-fifty.”

“I wasn’t born yesterday.” She said that over her shoulder, walking back toward the store. Pearl was standing right inside the door, her tail wagging, her nose up against the glass. Every time Olive saw that sweet face, her heart turned over. They were right, what they said about dogs. Nobody’d ever loved her as much as Pearl. She turned back to the tramp. “A hundred’s my best offer.”

“Five.”

At that, she’d still clear another five hundred on the deal. But if she’d just looked harder a little while ago, she could have had the whole enchilada. At five hundred, the suite at the Palace would shrink to a single room. Her long weekend of at-home luxury telescope to a couple of days. She shook her head. “Two, and that’s my best offer.”

“Four.”

It looked like 300 was going to be it. Olive tried 225. 250. But three it was. Three once, three twice, three thrice, she had herself a genuine emerald-cut diamond ring for 300 dollars on which she could clear 700, after she got the reward.…

But wait a danged minute. Who said she had to call Madeline at the Arlington? If the ring was worth a quarter of a million, she could sell it herself, rake in God knows how much. Now she saw herself back at the Palace registration desk, Pearl loping along beside her, herself saying, Thank you kindly, a penthouse suite will be just fine. She was calling room service, inviting Loydell to join her, winning a high stakes poker game, chucking the Gas ’N Grub altogether.…

“Lady, you gonna give me the cash?” The tramp was waiting with his dirty hand on the counter, palm up.

“Oh, sure. Just a minute.” She didn’t have but about a hundred in the register, and she didn’t want him to see her reach down under for the cash box. Of course, she still had the revolver in her pocket, could feel the weight of it, if he tried anything funny. He smiled. He had nice teeth for a bum. Then he held the ring out in his right hand for Olive to see again, speed her up. Pearl barked, and he leaned over like he was going to pat her. It was then Pearl lunged at him, snapped right in his face.

“Oh, my God! I’m so sorry,” said Olive. Pearl, you bad dog, she was about to say, until she saw that Pearl had snatched the scraggly beard and mustache away. Underneath, the tramp was smooth and tan and clean and not nearly as old as she’d thought.

“You’re not a bum! You’re some kind of…fake. Some kind of phony.” And then as she said the words, Olive got it. No indeed, she wasn’t born yesterday. In fact, she was so old that she’d forgotten some of what she once knew, what she’d learned living the life. But now she remembered. Bait and switch. A con game, old as the hills. As old as human greed. And she’d been greedy. That’s how con games worked. You had to be greedy to get took. She reached for the phone. Now she really was calling the police.

“Put the phone down, lady.” His voice wasn’t creaky anymore. It wasn’t young, either, but it was strong. And mean.

Pearl growled, showing her teeth. She was a big powerful dog.

*

Shit, Doc Miller said to himself. Mickey’d warned they ought not to take this one last mark before they rolled into Hot Springs. So he’d gone ahead anyway, just to show her. He couldn’t stand it when she told him what to do. The lost ring was one he’d pulled a million times. And they’d done it together, the two of them, before. It always played like a charm. Mickey working outside, setting up the mark, pretending she’d dropped the ring, waiting up the road while he made the sting, pocketed the cash, left the 25-dollar paste imitation with the pigeon, the blowoff being “Madeline” wouldn’t be at the hotel, the mark would keep calling for the reward, then realizing the pretty lady never was going to be there, probably trying to sell the paste ring for a profit. By then, he and Mickey would be far away. Except, this time they wouldn’t. They’d just be up the road, in Hot Springs.

No way, Mickey’d said that. That’s how cons screw themselves, not being able to see that some chances weren’t worth it. Like stealing two newspapers out of the vending machine. The cops pick you up, some little crap like that, the next time you know, they’ve run your priors, you’re looking at a year in the county jail. For what? A 35-cent paper?

Awh, come on, he’d said after they’d driven by the little convenience store. You turning weird? It’s an old lady—and we’ll bag enough to help pay the rent. This setup could be expensive, Mick. We don’t know what all it’s going to take.

What he did know was that this was the one he was going out on. Doc’s retirement. His last job, not that he’d told Mickey that. He knew she’d be pissed, it’d queer the deal.

But if it went the way they’d planned, the boys’d talk about it for years. Of course, that wasn’t the important part. What was important was getting out, buying himself that new Cadillac, silver to match that new Airstream. Jesus. He’d be in gypsy heaven. His ma would be proud. Of course, she’d been dead these 20 years.

Even more important was doing Jack Graham. That was the icing on the cake. They could pull this deal off, Doc’d have this loot on top of his nest egg—and the place was here, Hot Springs, Arkansas. Adopted home of Jack Graham, who’d never been very far away from Doc’s mind since that afternoon Jack had called him out in New Orleans. Beat him up. Broke his nose. Whole bunch of Jack’s friends standing around, laughing their asses off. Big Jack, Smilin’ Jack, he was the one who queered the deal with that horse in the first place, if you asked Doc. Blamed it on him. Made him look small.

Well, Doc had gone to Jack’s house and left his calling card, hadn’t he? But it wasn’t enough. Whatever he’d done, it would never be enough until Jack couldn’t smile anymore. That’s why Doc wanted to do this now. Pull this job off and put an end to Jack all in one fell swoop.

It was like it was meant to be. That’s what Doc’s mama would say if she were here. She’d close her eyes, run her fingers through her gold coin necklaces. Not that gypsies believed in the phony magic they sold to the gaji, but they believed in signs. And this kind of symmetry was a sign. It was meant to be, marching right into the Jack’s territory to pull off this scam, grabbing the boodle while pissing in Jack’s yard. If he went ahead and took Jack out, Doc could begin his retirement relaxed.

But none of that was going to happen if he had to do a little sleepover in the county jail right now.

He grabbed Olive’s wrist.

“Owh!” she hollered. “Let go, you’re hurting me!”

At that, the dog locked onto his calf, just above his boot, her sharp teeth sinking deep. He reached over to a shelf and jerked up a quart bottle of apple juice, knocked the dog in the head with it, hard. The dog’s jaw released, and she tumbled to the floor.

“You son of a bitch!” the old woman screamed. His head snapped. She had his full attention now. Her face was bright red, her mouth trembling. He watched her hand slide down the front of her big purple-and-green muumuu, reach into her pocket and find what he was afraid she was going to find. It was a powerful gun, the Bulldog. It’d blow a man’s stomach out, splatter his brains all over the wall. He could see what would happen if he didn’t reach his hand out, grab her arm, she was holding it way out, too far from her body, asking for it practically, it wouldn’t be hard to twist the gun loose, that part was easy, she was an old woman. The part that he’d forgotten (for a similar scenario had happened before and would probably happen again, obstacles like this having a way of cluttering up the crooked streets of Doc’s life) was the sweet shock of release when he knocked her face down with one punch, grasped her fat neck from behind and squeezed. After that, it didn’t take long at all.