Charmed and Dangerous (4 page)

“I’m sorta tied up right now,” Roy said, his voice husky and muffled.

Bobbie Faye pulled the phone from her ear, stared at it a second, then slapped it off for fear of what she might say to him. After all the times she’d bailed him out of trouble, hidden him from girlfriends, hidden him from armed and ticked-off girlfriends’ husbands . . . she wanted to kill him. No. Wait. She’d just take out an ad in the paper with a list of all his girlfriends and watch him run. Carmen might go after him with a meat cleaver again, but the idiot almost deserved it. In fact, she might just plan a surprise party for Roy and give all the girlfriends their choice of weapons at the door. As she tallied the list of his exes she could call, the phone rang again and Roy blurted, “Emergency! Don’t hang up!”

“You have got to be kidding me,” she said, gazing back at her trailer, which was now making grating, rumbling noises.

“I’m serious, Bobbie Faye, they’re gonna kill me.”

“Hmph. Like I’m buying that again.”

“I swear, it’s true.”

“Right. Ask ‘them’ if they need any help.”

With his left eye swelling, Roy could barely make out Eddie and The Mountain in the shadows of the room where they relaxed in deep leather chairs. The Mountain snored. There was a niggly part of Roy’s brain—the part that usually warned him to get his pants on and get the hell out of the window just in time—sending out bursts of alarms. Two knee breakers this casual might just be used to way more violence than Roy had first suspected. This could be a world of bad. Best not to think about that. He tried, instead, to stay focused on Vincent, now holding Roy’s own cell phone to Roy’s bleeding ear and leaning in close enough to listen to Bobbie Faye’s ranting.

“You,” Bobbie Faye was venting over the cell, “are the
lowest human scum, Roy Ellington Sumrall, so don’t even try to con me.”

Vincent eyed him and Roy shrugged, saying, “I’ve sort of used the old ‘life or death’ thing a couple of times before.”

“A couple of times!” Bobbie Faye shouted, mistaking the point as being directed to her. “Try a
couple of dozen
. Just get over here and help me.
Now
!”

The cell clicked off again, and Vincent drew it away from Roy’s ear, tut-tutting him the way he might a child who’d plunged his hand too often into a cookie jar.

“So much for sisterly love, dear boy,” Vincent said, and Roy shuddered at the finality in Vincent’s mock-sympathetic tone. “Maybe I should dispose of you and find someone she cares about.”

“No, really, she cares. I swear. She’s a good sister. You know, when she’s not all batshit crazy. Let me call her back. I’ll convince her. Really.”

Vincent considered Roy for a moment. Roy tuned up his most earnest expression, hoping the swollen lips and bruised eyes didn’t subtract from his attempt at charming Vincent. Vincent laughed and shook his head. At that, Eddie stood up and withdrew the largest blade from the largest sheath Roy had ever seen.

“I believe, dear boy, that you’re trying to stall. Truly, I admire your chutzpah, Roy. A few more years, and you might have managed to elevate it to the level of artistry.”

Vincent nodded to Eddie, who moved closer to Roy, turning the blade so that the light glinted off of it and into Roy’s eyes.

“In fact,” Vincent continued, “I like to think of myself as an artist, too. It takes a true ability to con the conmen when you deal in black market artifacts and expensive stolen art. And while I admire your attempt, dear Roy—and in another situation I might have even taken you under my wing and trained you—right now, I simply have too much money invested in this venture to waste any more time.”

Eddie moved forward and Roy strained to hop his chair
away from the men, but the deep plush pile of the rug beneath the tarp kept him from being able to actually hop.

Eddie chuckled. “You havin’ a hernia or something?”

“I promise,” Roy told Vincent, “she really loves me. She’ll give it to you. Easy. I have always been able to count on Bobbie Faye, even if she
is
certifiable.”

Roy gritted his teeth, trying to hold his “charming” smile. Vincent studied him, then surveyed the desk, the painting on the wall, and the nearby statue on a black granite pedestal, until his gaze rested on a yellowed, water-stained handwritten journal lying open in a glass box in the center of the desk. Then finally, slowly, he turned back to Roy.

“Last chance.” Vincent hit redial on the cell phone and held it to Roy’s ear. “No excuses.”

As soon as Bobbie Faye answered, Roy asked, “Have you got a newspaper somewhere around you?”

“Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick, Roy, you promised you wouldn’t drink before noon.”

“On Mom’s grave, Bobbie Faye, I swear, I have not been drinking. I need your help. Please . . . do you have a paper?”

O
n Mom’s grave? He had better not be lying and then swearing on Mom’s grave
. Bobbie Faye, who had shrugged into a robe in between calls, peered out the door and saw a newspaper on Old Man Collier’s front steps next door, still rolled in a rubber band. She stomped over toward it.

“Yeah, I’ve got one,” she said, picking up the paper.

“Look on page A-five. Top right photo.”

Bobbie Faye wedged the cell phone between her ear and shoulder as she walked back toward her trailer, keeping an eye out for Stacey. The trailer made more worrisome groaning sounds, and as she opened to the right page, she pulled the phone away from her ear and shouted, “Stacey? Honey? Come out here where I can see you, okay?”

On the page in question, there was a photo which showed a blue tarp over a body, and judging from where the hands and feet stuck out from under it, the body had obviously been dismembered.

Bobby Faye recoiled and dropped the paper. “What
is
that? And what the hell are you showing me that for? Are you nuts?”

“Not ‘what,’ Bobbie Faye. Who.”

She recognized something in his voice she hadn’t noticed before: fear. Real fear; trying to be brave, but not doing so well.

“Remember cousin Alfonse?” he asked.

“The one who used to dress like a chicken mascot down at the Pluck & Fry or the one who used to grow moss for a living?”

“No, not them. The one in jail.”

“Roy, they’re all in jail.”

“Right. I mean Letta’s son. That’s him.”

“No way.”

“Way. He got out early.”

“Oh, bullshit, Roy. This could be anyone. I don’t have time for whatever game you’re playing—”

“I’m serious! Remember when he tried to set the alligators free at the zoo?”

“Oohh. He was missing half of . . .” She peeked down at the photo on the ground, at the arms and legs sticking out from under the tarp, with one foot definitely a stub. Bobbie Faye’s knees wobbled, a bit watery, and she leaned hard on the railing to her stairs.

“Roy. He’s dead! Oh, geez!” Her stomach flipped and seemed to want to do toe-touches. “What’s this got to do with you?”

“He got out a month ago. These . . . um . . . people here . . . Bobbie Faye, they wanted something and he said he could get it, but when he didn’t, well. You see?”

Bobbie Faye stood outside her creaking trailer, trying to breathe evenly, struggling to comprehend the reality of bright morning sun, water turning her living room into a lake, and now, murder. Nothing seemed to fit, as if someone had tossed hundreds of random jigsaw puzzles together, thrown five pieces at her, and expected her to make some sort of finished picture.

“God, Roy, I really don’t have any money,” she said.

“It’s not money, Bobbie Faye. They want . . .” She heard the pause, and her stomach knotted. “They want Mom’s tiara.”

Bobbie Faye stood dead still, her head echoing with his words, the normal sounds of the morning—the birds, alarm clocks from nearby trailers, a pick-up crunching up the gravel drive—all assaulted her senses, rendering her displaced, disoriented. Anger battled fear, and she wondered if she was being had again.

“You,” she said evenly, “had better be kidding. Mom gave that to me. It’s the only thing I have left of hers.”

“I swear to you, Bobbie Faye. I swear. I don’t know why, but they want it. Real bad.”

“Roy, the last time you conned me out of the tiara, it was so you could wear it to some stupid Mardi Gras parade and you damned near forgot it at a bar in the French Quarter!”

“It’s not like that!” His voice had risen, like he was in pain, and Bobbie Faye could hear him breathing faster. She could also hear the trailer now making bizarre moaning sounds. As she talked, she hurried to the doorway to scoop up Stacey, who was sitting on the threshold tying her wet shoelaces.

“Do they know that tiara’s not worth any actual money?”

“I don’t know. They just want it.”

“But it’s only an old silly thing of Mom’s. She used it for fun, for the Contraband Days parade.
I
use it for the parade. Anybody could’ve taken it during the parade, easy. Why do this now?

“Besides, it’s not even worth the cost of the safe-deposit box. Hell,” she said, moving away from the trailer with Stacey on her hip, “if Lori Ann hadn’t been drinking again and stealing everything Contraband Days-related to sell on eBay, I would have just kept it here.”

Stacey’s face screwed into a concentrated frown, absorbing the insult to her mom.

“Sorry, kid.” She hugged her niece.

There was a scraping metal-on-metal sound behind her, and Bobbie Faye whipped around in time to see the front
half of her trailer’s floor sag from the enormity of the water weight. The trailer burst open and the piers pierced through the floor until the front half rested on the ground. It knelt there like a dying behemoth, the sloshing water forcing it off-balance. Then it slowly leaned away from Bobbie Faye, moaning until it collapsed to the ground with a great metallic ripping and grinding. Water sloshed out everywhere as it died.

Bobbie Faye dropped the cell phone to her side in shock, forgetting the call for a moment. All her brain could process was, “Ohmygod. My trailer. My trailer. Shit. Holy shit.”

“Bobbie Faye?” Roy shouted, his voice dim and tinny from far far away.

“My trailer. Geez, Roy. It’s . . . it’s . . .”

“Bobbie Faye? I need you to focus, sis!”

“Focus?” She held the cell phone away from her like it was an alien device and then slowly, remembering, put it to her ear.

“Bobbie Faye? Are you there?”

“Yeah.”

“You sound weird.”

“Don’t mind me. I’m just having an aneurysm.”

“Oh. Okay. Good. So you’ll bring the tiara?”

The tiara. She snapped back to the problem. “Yeah, Roy, I’ll go get it.”

“You can’t contact the police or tell anybody.”

“Like someone would believe me.”

“They said they’re watching you. They’ll know if you call anyone. And they want you to be subtle about it, Bobbie Faye.”

Bobbie Faye frowned at her flattened trailer. “I’m all about subtle right now, Roy.”

“As soon as you get it,” Roy continued, rushed, relief in his voice, “you gotta call my cell. Okay? And then they’ll tell you where you’ve got to take it.”

“Get the tiara, be subtle, call you after. Check.”

The call clicked off and Bobbie Faye glanced from her cell phone to her flattened trailer to Stacey on her hip.

“Is Uncle Roy okay?” Stacey asked.

Bobbie Faye hugged her. Roy was the closest thing to a father figure the kid had ever had. “I’m sure he is, kiddo.”

“Mamma says you can fix anything.”

Hmph
. Bobbie Faye could imagine the sarcasm dripping off Lori Ann when she said it, but the hope in Stacey’s expression squeezed her heart; Bobbie Faye wondered how in the hell she was supposed to live up to that hope. There were people holding her brother hostage, threatening to kill him, and she had no idea where he was.

That’s when she felt it: that fire in the pit of her stomach, that knot of big-sister determination in her chest that had nearly gotten her killed more times than she could count. There were people. Threatening to kill her brother.

Which just fucking pissed her off.

“You gonna fix Uncle Roy?”

She hugged her niece. “I’m gonna give it a helluva shot.”

Bobbie Faye
is
the “chaos theory.”

—former karate teacher whose reconstructive nose surgery after telling Bobbie Faye to “go for it” is coming along nicely

Bobbie Faye shanghaied a few neighbors to help her get as much as she could rescue out of the trailer. The rest of the neighbors, who loved a good trauma when they saw one, were already setting up grills and cracking open ice chests overflowing with beer. A couple of rowdy drunks debated the merits of betting on whether or not she would kill someone by the end of the day.

“That’s like bettin’ a duck’s gonna fly,” one drunk protested. “Throw somet’in’ else in.” She moved out of earshot while they set up a disaster betting pool, similar to a football pool, where a board was constructed with a grid and disasters were listed in columns across the top, while time of day was denoted in rows down the side. Bobbie Faye had heard that since disasters were so common around her, to win, a person had to place a bet on the time of day the disaster would occur.

It was barely 7
A.M.

The bank didn’t open until nine. She didn’t know how
she was going to not kill and maim before nine. The drunks just might make a fortune.

Bobbie Faye struggled out of the trailer with the last of her treasured possessions—her family photos. Stacey hovered and watched as she wiped the condensation from the interior glass and then reassembled each, trying to salvage the cheap wooden frames. These were simple color candids: one from when she lost her first tooth; one from graduation; one from the time she had her arm in a cast; another of herself at ten, with Roy, eight, and their baby sister Lori Ann, four, all sitting on an old-fashioned playground merry-go-round beneath an iron canopy of stars and half-moons. It was one of the few happy memories she had of their childhood.

She was just finishing with the photos when her best friend, Nina, arrived, fashion-plate runway-model perfect in her rosy stilettos and a gauzy translucent blouse so blush pink and skin-toned, Bobbie Faye had to double take to make sure there was a shirt there at all. Her male neighbors seemed to be having the same problem, and two men fell off Old Man Collier’s front stoop as they rubbernecked Nina gliding past.