29

DOC WAS WIPED. The damned closet was too deep for him to lean back against the wall, get some purchase for his feet. But too short for him to get any kind of running start. And whatever Mickey had pushed up to the door was jammed against it, so it was like he was trying to kick through the door and through the chest, trunk, whatever the hell it was, all at once.

Now he was sitting on the floor, sweating, a bunch of wire hangers poking him in the butt. He was too old for this shit.

Maybe Mickey was right. Maybe this was what came from making things too complicated.

Maybe he should never have gotten into this Speed rigamarole in the first place, just cruised into town, popped Jack Graham a couple of times, bebop bebeep, moved on down the road.

That’s what his ma had told him when he was a kid: Part of it’s knowing what to do, the other part’s knowing how to skidoo.

Part A, she’d let him sit behind the curtain in the ofisa and listen when she was working a bajour. Her favorite was the one with the egg. It worked every time with the kind of lonely sour middle-aged woman who’d already given up on life, was now on the lookout for which brand of cancer was going to eat her. Pearsa would find proof of the cancer in a devil’s head she’d plant in an egg the woman had brought from her own kitchen. The source of the cancer would be the woman’s money, which was cursed, of course. She’d bring the money to Pearsa to have the curse removed, and that is when Pearsa would do the switch.

Part B. “And then you move, little one,” said Pearsa. “You grab your bedroll, your tapestries, your zodiac, your candles, your hot plates, and you haul your sweet little ass down the road quick.”

See, he hadn’t done that. Things had gotten too complicated. The kidnapping, that scam was screwed from the beginning, he should have known better than to kick in with anything Speed McKay had his pudgy little fingers on. And that fat old broad pulling that gun, the car, then the car disappearing. He was still worried about that Sunliner. His prints were all over it. And there was the body in the trunk.

Just then, he heard somebody coming down the stairs.

Halleluiah! Mickey had changed her mind, come back to spring him. Now, what was he going to do about her? He wasn’t real thrilled, her knowing about the car, say things got sticky.…

“Hello? Hello? Anybody down here?”

Hell, that wasn’t Mickey. That was a black man, sounded like a big bass drum.

“Hel-loa? Looking for the folks own a gold-and-black Sunliner? Is that y’all?”

Shit. It was the cops. They’d found the car. Now they were looking to find him. Well, maybe they wouldn’t. Chances were they wouldn’t. He’d be perfectly still.

“Well, hell,” the big black voice was drawing closer. “I guess they ain’t here. Serves me right.” The man was talking to himself. “Taking that old Sunliner in the first place. I knew I shouldn’t of. I knew it. Took it home, my baby made me feel so bad, I was bringing it back, when—God, how am I gonna tell them that?”

Tell him what? What was the man talking about? Doc wanted to ask him, but he didn’t want to blow his cover. Not yet.

“Laronda says that it was the Lord put that hound in the road. Said it was my test, seeing if I was truly sorry that I’d done so wrong, stealing that car. Swerving like to miss that hound, me flying right off in the lake like I was driving one of God’s chariots, thought I was about to come face to face with the heavenly host. But God saved me to make amends. Yes, He did. Let me roll down that window, struggle on up out of that Sunliner done stuck itself in the bottom of that lake. Coming to the surface, I felt like I’d been baptized again, bathed in the holy waters. Now, is there anybody heah? Anybody heah? Anybody within the sound of my voice?”

Doc couldn’t believe it. The Sunliner was sunk to the bottom of a lake? God, he was one lucky sucker. “Over here,” he hollered.

*

Jinx had moved back to the Palace minisuite she’d occupied since she’d blown into Hot Springs for the races six weeks earlier, staying with her mother not being an option. When Sam and Mickey knocked on her door, she was giving herself a fresh manicure.

“I couldn’t just go around wearing that gold polish,” she said, waving nails that were now carmine. “People would think I was trash. And I’ve had just about enough humiliation for one weekend, thank you, without that. How do you do?” She nodded at Mickey, whom Sam had introduced as a friend of a friend she’d happened to run into in the lobby, she just happened to be a private eye. “Y’all just throw those clothes on the floor, make yourselves comfortable on the bed. A private eye? Sam!”

Sam said, “Now, Jinx, I’ve thought about it, and I know you’re right, everything you did was right, but wouldn’t you like to see those guys who were putting the muscle on you squirm just a little? I think it was so lucky, my running into Mickey. I told her how stressful this had been for you.…”

“You can say that again. I’ll tell you, it’s awful, you’ve got a whole town full of guests for your engagement party, and then you have to say something about why your fiancé just disappeared right in the middle of it. You can’t very well tell them he was kidnapped, if the kidnappers told you not to. Of course, things are different now, but…”

“Why, I think that’s just terrible, your having to face this alone,” said Mickey, sliding right into junior high school pajama party mode. Oh, she was good, thought Sam. Very good. “So what did you tell them?”

“I said he died,” said Jinx, not missing a stroke with her nail polish.

Sam slid Mickey a look. “He died? Don’t you think you might have to explain that later?”

“Well, the way I figure it, those kidnappers aren’t just going to turn him loose. It’s not like he’s going to show up in the next five minutes. They’ll probably try again to get some money from me, wouldn’t you think? And by that time, all the guests’ll be gone back home. Most of ’em are already gone anyway, the weekend being over and all.” She held her left hand out, appraising her work. “I’ve been getting calls of condolence ever since I got back from lunch. Which reminds me, Sam, what happened to you? I thought you were going to meet us back here, I had to drive Kitty to the airport.” She let that sink in for a minute. “I’m surprised you didn’t go with her, to tell you the truth. Can’t imagine that you’d hang around here. It couldn’t be because you gave two hoots what happened to me.”

“Well, I did find a thing or two that grabbed my interest. Which brings me to the—”

“Jinx,” Mickey jumped in. “Sam was telling me about you, and she mentioned your winning that million dollars with your lottery altar. And I couldn’t believe it! I mean, I saw you on TV! And here you are!”

“Did you? Really? Well, isn’t that nice?” Jinx was showing those dimples that came with the smug little grin that drove Sam wild.

“I would just love to hear how you got into making your altars.” Mickey’s voice was all breathy as if she’d just graduated from a crash course in Southern Belle Stupid. She shot a look at Sam that said, Let me do this.

Have at it, Sam shrugged.

Jinx settled importantly back into her chair as if she were a research scientist about to explain a new cure for cancer. “Well, right after my first divorce, I didn’t know what I was going to do, and I was visiting this girl in Houston who’d been a Miss Texas, and she got me a job modeling with Neiman’s. It wasn’t quite six months before I met Harlan, and we got married and moved to San Antonio. We moved into his family castle in the historic part of town, and I started remodeling.” Jinx’s scarlet lips began to tremble.

If Sam remembered correctly that was the same Harlan who had taken up with the Houston Oilers cheerleader, divorced Jinx, and then had the nerve to lose everything, including her alimony, in a scam that had to do with selling shares in his electronics business after it’d already gone down the tubes.

The way Jinx put it was, “And then Harlan and I split up, and he didn’t do right by me at all.”

Mickey reached over and patted Jinx on the arm as Jinx started to sniffle. Sam wondered if Mickey were going to blow her nose for her, too, since Jinx couldn’t, what with her wet polish.

“There I was, tossed like a dust mop out of that big old house I’d slaved over for years, making it perfectly precious for him.” Her eyes were still watering, but then she glanced down at the gigantic diamond in her engagement ring, and that seemed to cheer her. Sam had noticed Mickey eyeing the ring, too. She probably had it appraised to the nearest decimal point and was scheming to make off with it. “I didn’t know what I was going to do. I didn’t have a cent, I mean, I was practically on welfare, thank God, Harlan Jr. was off in school, and Harlan’s folks would see after him. Of course, I could have starved to death, for all they cared. And I couldn’t come home to Mother. She didn’t have any money, and she’s never liked me anyway. Always thought I put on airs.” Jinx paused, and then she laughed. “Which I did. How else would a poor little girl from Hot Springs ever get anywhere in the world?”

Give Jinx two points for insight, though getting a job would have been an interesting alternative.…

“Anyway,” Jinx said, “that was about the time New Age finally drifted down to Texas, and people were running around looking for their auras and sitting in sweat lodges, driving the local Native Americans absolutely nuts, and crystals were starting to come on big. Well, Jinx, girl, I said to myself. Crystals are what you grew up with, Arkansas being the largest producer of natural crystals in the entire world, and some of the very biggest crystal fields being right down the road from here.” Jinx waved that diamond again. “But all those crystal necklaces that you saw in New Age stores were so tacky. And one of the things I had kept from my art major days was making jewelry. I always did like pretty things. And, I thought, Jinx, you know how Texans love big. Texas women, they are fond of big men, big oil wells, big hair”—she patted her own—“and big earrings. So, I started making these Arkansas crystal earrings that’d jerk your lobes down to your shoulders and selling them only to the most expensive stores. I had that old Neiman’s contact, from when I’d modeled there.”

“And it took right off,” said Mickey.

“Honey,” said Jinx, “they were killing each other for my earbobs, and I was paying the rent on my tacky little two-bedroom townhouse, keeping gas in my car. But I had to do better than that. I knew I had to grow out or grow up, but not having a lick of business sense, I wasn’t sure which. Anyway, one day I was in one of those San Antone taco places having me a breakfast burrito and some coffee, when I looked up, and there behind the counter was this altar with all those milagros. You know, miracles. Like little tin legs and arms and hearts and whatever ailed you, you put it on the altar and it’d be healed. And I said to myself, Jinx, this is it. I went right home and stayed up for forty-eight hours straight, and when I came out, I drove to the Houston Neiman’s carrying my first crystal altar. Carried it in to the buyer and said, Honey, this the only one in the whole wide world, and you folks are lucky enough to have it on consignment.”

“And it worked?” Sam said.

“They sold it for ten thousand smackeroos before I got back to San Antone. Of which I got seventy-five percent.”

“Wow!” said Mickey. “So you went in and started mass production.”

“No, see, that was the thing about getting the top dollar, was the exclusivity. And the next thing I knew, that Houston rich bitch who’d bought that first one, well, she had a young singer friend who was busting to make it in the Austin music scene, and she’d told him about her altar, and the next thing I knew, she was paying for me to do a custom job for him. Word of mouth. That’s how it works for your really exclusive product.”

“Well, that was awfully generous of her,” said Sam.

Jinx smiled. “You don’t know how generous an old bored-to-tears Texas woman can be to a cute young man in a pair of tight jeans.”

“And he made it big, that singer?” said Mickey.

“Yep,” nodded Jinx. “Bless his precious heart, he did, made it mega-gold, one of those ten-years-and-one-night-of-singing-honky-tonks overnight success stories. And in the very first interview he gave, he said he owed it all to this altar I’d made him.”

“And your phone started ringing?” asked Sam. She was beginning to warm a little to this story. She’d always been a sucker for Horatio Alger, rags-to-riches tales, even though she’d bet that at Jinx’s lowest ebb she’d still had closets full of sequined frocks.

“You bet. And I was whipping out these custom altars as fast as I could, when all that hoopla started about the Texas lottery. How it was going to be bigger and better and—well, you know Texas. And the cute thing about the first one was that you didn’t have to wait twenty years for the payoff. It was going to be one million dollars, cash on the barrelhead, after taxes, one fell swoop. Overnight, you’d be a millionaire, guaran-damn-teed, as many folks as came up with the six numbers, no having to go divsies.”

“So you made yourself an altar.” Sam was remembering some of this from the Today Show.

“And I won.” Jinx almost snapped her scarlet fingertips, but caught herself in time. “Just like that. Me, little old me, and only me. The only one. It was the altar that got me on the TV, of course.”

“And then?” Mickey asked.

“I just kicked back. I mean, I would have felt awful if I was making these altars for people and they didn’t work. And it was a fluke, of course, that Austin cowboy singer and then me. I just couldn’t take people’s money in good conscience, especially when I didn’t need it. And to tell you the truth—” She held her hands out and stared at her nails, which were about dry now, her diamond sparkling. “I didn’t really like all that running around, dealing with taxes, all that stuff. I was never cut out for it.” She sighed heavily, the weight of the world on her shoulders. “Now, I’m busted, and I have no earthly idea what I’m going to do next. See if I can find me a really rich man, I guess.” And then she stared at her image in the dressing table mirror, did a little facelift with her palms, assessed the net worth of her goods.

“Well, darlin’,” said Mickey, “that is truly one of the most inspiring stories I’ve ever heard.” Sam stared at her. Mickey sounded like she really meant it. “And it tells me, for one thing, that you have what it takes to make those kidnappers squirm. Why, actually, now that I think about it, I think they ought to pay you something for all your trouble on this thing. They owe you.”

“Really?” breathed Jinx.

“Well, it makes perfect sense,” said Mickey. “If you had gone to the police, and they had been caught and arrested and found guilty, why, they most certainly would have gotten fines as well as jail sentences.”

“You don’t say,” said Jinx. Sam could see the wheels of larceny turning, turning.

“Why, sure. Sometimes the judge makes them pay a huge sum, that way, if they get any money from publishing their stories, well, it goes to the victims, which in this case would be you.”

“I’ll say.” Jinx stuck her bottom lip out.

“So, even though you didn’t go to the police, you’re entitled to something. A lot, actually. Why, even more, since they didn’t have to go to the pokey.” Mickey leaned forward. “We ought to go after it.”

“How do we do that?”

“Well, the first thing we need to do is have you set up a meeting with the kidnappers, and you tell them that you’ve changed your mind about ransoming your honey and you’d love to spring him, but you don’t have the jack. However, your mother does.”

“My mother wouldn’t give me ice water in hell,” said Jinx.

“Yes,” said Sam, “but would she give you that one flawless diamond she’s had squirreled away all these years?”

“She doesn’t have a flawless diamond.” Then Jinx frowned. “Does she?”

*

“Getting you out of that closet, shoving that chifforobe away, it was just like rolling the stone away from the cave where they laid out our Lord,” said Fontaine, who’d introduced himself to Doc as Frank.

“Well, Frank, I was sure glad to see you,” said Doc, thinking what a stroke of luck this was. He could have starved to death in that fucking closet, but what was really great was that the Sunliner was at the bottom of the lake—and so was the fat old broad. Which is exactly what he’d thought he’d do with ’em in the first place. Now, he could get on with things. Except, he needed a car. And there was the matter of Mickey. Who knew what that bitch was up to?

“So,” Fontaine was saying, “my baby, that’s Laronda, she was right. ’Cause I can see, you’re not mad at all. She said you wouldn’t be. I don’t know how she knows that, but Laronda, sometimes I think she’s some kind of seer. You know what I mean?”

“I do,” said Doc, trying to keep the wolf out of his smile. Oh, yes, he knew about seers, all right. Did Laronda see that Doc was thinking about knocking this big sucker in the head, taking whatever wheels he might have, get him at least to where the automotive pickings were better?

“She said you wouldn’t mind one bit, ’specially since I brought you a replacement. She said, Just you wait and see. Said she bet you’d like it. Said she wanted to see the smile on your face, so that’s why I let her drive the car we brought you. Let’s go on out to the driveway, you want to see it?”

“You brought me a car?” Doc was shaking his head. Maybe there was something to this Laronda.

“We sure did. Got it off Miss Jinx Watson.” They were climbing the stairs, walking down the hall. “I work for her mother, Miss Loydell, some of the time, and Miss Loydell said Miss Jinx was going to give this car to her fiancé, Mr. Speed McKay, for a present, but Mr. Speed, he’s carried off by some ’nappers.”

Doc couldn’t believe what he was hearing, but he knew what his line was. “Are you saying this Speed McKay was kidnapped? My God!”

“Yes, sir, he was. It was a turrible thing, and Miss Jinx, she’s just lying and wailing in her bed, says Miss Loydell, saying over and over something about how she went and done the wrong thing, if she just had it to do over again, she’d do it right. I don’t exactly know what that means, but anyway, Miss Loydell said Miss Jinx couldn’t stand to hold on to this car that she was going to give to Mr. Speed, and so I made her an offer, and she took it.”

At that, Doc couldn’t keep from laughing aloud. Oh, this was so rich.

“And I guess Laronda’s right about the car making you happy,” said Fontaine. “Come on, let’s go let her hear you laugh.”

Then they rounded the comer of the carport, and there was a two-year-old dark blue Mercury Grand Marquis—which Jack Graham had bought from Fontaine’s body shop an hour ago. Lateesha was sitting up tall in it, looking real pleased with herself.

She stuck her head out the window. “Now, look at that face, isn’t that a happy man,” she said to Fontaine. “Didn’t I tell you? Why anybody’d be happy to have a nice car like this instead of that old hunk of junk, excuse me, sir, I’m sorry for casting aspersions on your car.”

“No harm done,” said Doc.

“Well, I ought to know better. God Almighty doesn’t like aspersions.” And then she leaned back in the Mercury to give a better listen to the gospel singing on the car’s radio.

Thank God, thought Doc, the song was ending, and an announcer was starting in with the local news. Doc couldn’t stand that religious caterwauling, though he had to admit this was something, repentant Holy Rollers bringing him wheels. Didn’t God work in mysterious ways? Praise the Lord. And, thank you, Jesus.

“Eight o’clock, that man says it is. We ought to be getting on home, don’t you think, Frank?” said Lateesha. “Quit bothering this nice—”

“Wait!” said Doc, craning his head toward the Mercury’s window to catch the announcer’s words.

“—tentatively identified as Michaela Steele of Savannah, Georgia, the woman was killed instantly. The truck driver said she was traveling at a high rate of speed and didn’t attempt to stop at the stop sign—”

“Jesus!” said Doc. He staggered back from the car. It was too good to be true, Mickey out of the way, but still, it was a shock.

“Oh, that was a turrible thing,” said Fontaine. “Happened late this afternoon, why, not that far down the road from here. They say there wasn’t hardly much left of her, smashed a big silver Mercury.”

Mercedes, Doc started to say. This is a Mercury, Mickey was driving a Mercedes. But he caught himself in time.

“Just goes to show you,” said Lateesha, ejecting the tape they’d made—Early doing the announcing part with a clothespin on his nose—from the tape player and slipping it in her purse, having first made sure that Doc wasn’t looking her way. “You just never can tell when the Lord’s gonna call you to be with him. Now, Daddy—”

“Yes, baby?”

“We’ve done what we came for. Now let’s be getting on home. Let this nice man here get his rest. We’ve caused him enough trouble.”