Lucky You (4 page)

“Exactly,” Bode said. As soon as his heart stopped skipping, he put the truck in gear and eased back on the turnpike.

Chub watched him in a neutral but not entirely innocuous way. He said: “You understand what coulda happened? That we wouldn’t be partners no more if I blowed your brains all over this truck and took the Lotto stub for m’self.”

Bode nodded tightly. Until now it hadn’t occurred that Chub might rip him off. Obviously it was something to think about. He said, “It’s gonna work out fine. You’ll see.”

“OK,” said Chub. He opened a beer: warm and fizzy. He closed his eyes and sucked down half the can. He wanted to trust Bode Gazzer but it wasn’t always easy.
Negro,
for God’s sake. Why’d he keep on with that word? It troubled Chub, made him wonder if Bode wasn’t all he claimed to be.

Then he had another thought. “They a whorehouse in Grange?”

“Who knows,” Bode said, “and who cares.”

“Just don’t forget where you hid our ticket.”

“Gimme a break, Chub.”

‘Be helluva way to lose out on fourteen million bucks, winds up in the sheets of some whorehouse.”

Bode Gazzer stared straight ahead at the highway. He said, “Man, you got a wild imagination.”

The brains of a goddamn squirrel, but a wild imagination.

Tom Krome didn’t wait to unpack; tossed his carry bag on the bed and dashed out. The owner of the bed-and-breakfast was pleased to give directions to the home of Miss JoLayne Lucks, at the corner of Cocoa and Hubbard across from the park. Krome’s plan was to drop in with sincere apologies, invite Miss Lucks to a proper dinner, then ease into the interview gradually.

His experience as a visiting journalist in small towns was that some folks would tell you their life story at the drop of a hat, and others wouldn’t say boo if your hair was on fire. Waiting on the woman’s porch, Krome didn’t know what to expect. He had knocked: No reply. He knocked again. Lights shone in the living room, and Krome heard music from a radio.

He walked around to the backyard and rose on his toes, to peer in the kitchen window. There were signs of a finished meal on the table: a setting for one. Coffee cup, salad bowl, a bare plate with a half-nibbled biscuit.

When Krome returned to the porch, the door stood open. The radio was off, the house was still.

“Hello!” he called.

He took a half step inside. The first thing he noticed was the aquarium. The second thing was water on the hardwood floor; a trail of drips.

From down the hall, a woman’s voice: “Shut the door, please. Are you the reporter?”

“Yes, that’s right.” Tom Krome wondered how she knew. “Are you JoLayne?”

“What is it you want? I’m really not up for this.”

Krome said, “You all right?”

“Come see for yourself.”

She was sitting in the bathtub, with soap bubbles up to her breasts. She had a towel on her hair and a shotgun in her hands. Krome raised his arms and said, “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“No shit,” said JoLayne Lucks. “I’ve got a twelve-gauge and all you’ve got is a tape recorder.”

Krome nodded. The Pearlcorder he used for interviews was cupped in his right hand.

“Sure is tiny,” JoLayne remarked. “Sit down.” She motioned with the gun toward the commode. “What’s your name?”

“Tom Krome. I’m with
The Register.”
He sat where she told him to sit. She said, “I’ve had more company today than I can stand. Is this what it’s like to be rich?”

Krome smiled inwardly. She was going to be one helluva story.

“Take out the cassette,” JoLayne Lucks told him, “and drop it in the tub.”

Krome played along. “Anything else?”

“Yeah. Quit staring.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t tell me you never saw a woman take a bath. Oh my, is it the bubbles? They sure don’t last long.”

Krome locked his eyes on the ceiling. “I can come back tomorrow.”

JoLayne said, “Would you kindly stand up. Good. Now turn around. Get the robe off that hook and hand it to me—without peeking, please.”

He heard the slosh of her climbing out of the tub. Then the lights in the bathroom went out.

“That was me,” she said. “Don’t try anything.”

It was so dark that Krome couldn’t see his own nose. He felt something sharp at his back.

“Gun,” JoLayne explained.

“Gotcha.”

“I want you to take off your clothes.”

“For Christ’s sake.”

“And get in the bathtub.”

“No!” he said.

“You want your interview, Mr. Krome?”

Until that moment, everything that had happened in the house of JoLayne Lucks was splendid material for Krome’s feature story. But not this part, the disrobing-at-gunpoint of the reporter. Sinclair would never be told.

Once Krome was in the water, JoLayne Lucks turned on the lights. She stood the shotgun against the toilet, and knelt next to the tub. “How you feeling?” she asked.

“Ridiculous.”

“Well, you shouldn’t. You’re a good-enough-looking man.” She peeled the towel off her head and shook her hair.

Tom Krome roiled the water to churn up more soap bubbles, in a futile effort to conceal his shriveled cock. JoLayne thought that was absolutely adorable. Krome fidgeted self-consciously. He reflected on the difficult and occasionally dangerous situations in which he’d found himself as a reporter—urban riots, drug busts, hurricanes, police shootouts, even a foreign coup. Yet he’d never felt so stymied and helpless. The woman had thought it out very carefully. “Why are you doing this?” he asked.

“Because I was scared of you.”

“There’s nothing to be scared of.”

“Oh, I can see that.”

He laughed then. Couldn’t help it. JoLayne Lucks laughed, too. “You gotta admit it breaks the ice.”

Krome said, “You left the front door open.”

“I sure did.”

“And that’s what you do when you’re scared? Leave the door open and wait buck naked in the bath?”

“With a Remington,” JoLayne reminded him, “full of nickel turkey load. Gift from Daddy.” She ran some hot water into the tub. “You gettin’ chilly?”

Krome kept his hands folded across his groin. There was no sense trying to act casual, but he did. JoLayne put her chin on the edge of the tub. “What do you want to know, Mr. Krome?”

“Did you win the lottery?”

“Yes, I won the lottery.”

“Why aren’t you happy about it?”

“Who says I’m not.”

“Will you keep your job at Dr. Crawford’s?” The lady at the bed-and-breakfast had told him JoLayne Lucks worked at the veterinary clinic.

She said, “Hey, your fingers are pruning up.”

Krome was determined to overcome the distraction of his own nakedness. “Can I ask a favor? There’s a notebook and a ballpoint pen in the pocket of my pants.”

“Oh, no you don’t.”

“But you promised.”

“I beg your pardon?” She picked up the gun again; gonged the barrel loudly against the tub’s iron faucet, which protruded from the wall between Krome’s feet.

OK, he thought. We’ll do it her way.

“JoLayne, have you ever won anything before?”

“Bikini contest at Daytona. I was eighteen, for heaven’s sake, but I know what you’re thinking.” She rolled her eyes.

Krome said, “What was the prize?”

“Two hundred bucks.” She paused. Puffed her cheeks. Propped the shotgun against the sink. “Look, I can’t lie. It was a wet T-shirt contest. I tell people it was bikinis because it doesn’t sound so slutty.”

“Heck, you were just a kid.”

“But you’d put it in the newspaper anyway. It’s too juicy
not
to.”

She was right: It was an irresistible anecdote—yet one that could be retold tastefully, even poignantly, as JoLayne Lucks would appreciate when she finally saw Tom Krome’s feature article. In the meantime he could do little but gaze at the glassy bubbles that clung to the wet hair on his chest. He felt disarmed and preposterous.

“What are you afraid of?” he asked JoLayne.

“I’ve got just an awful feeling.”

“Like a vision?” Krome was fishing to see if she was one of the local paranormals. He hoped not, even though it would’ve made for a more colorful story.

“Not a vision, just a feeling,” she said. “The way you can sometimes feel a storm coming, even when there’s not a cloud in the sky.”

It was agony, hearing one good quote after another slip away untranscribed. Again he begged for his notebook.

JoLayne shook her head. “This isn’t the interview, Mr. Krome. This is the
pre
-interview.”

“But Miss Lucks—”

“Fourteen million dollars is a mountain of money. I believe it will attract a bad element.” She reached into the water—deftly insinuating her hand under Tom Krome’s butt—and yanked the drain plug out of the bathtub.

“Dry off and get dressed,” she told him. “How do you like your coffee?”

4

Demencio was carrying out the garbage when the red pickup rolled to a stop under the streetlight. Two men got out and stretched. The shorter one wore pointed cowboy boots and olive-drab camouflage, like a deer hunter. The taller one had a scraggy ponytail and sunken drugged-out eyes.

Demencio said: “Visitation’s over.”

“Visitation of what?” asked the hunter.

“The Madonna.”

“She die?” The ponytailed one spun toward his friend. “Goddamn, you hear that?”

Demencio dropped the garbage bag on the curb. “I’m talking about Madonna, the Virgin Mary. Jesus’ mother.”

“Not the singer?”

“Nope, not the singer.”

The hunter said, “What’s a ‘visitation’?”

“People travel from all over to pray at the Madonna’s statue. Sometimes she cries real tears.”

“No shit?”

“No shit,” said Demencio. “Come back tomorrow and see for yourself.”

The ponytailed man said, “How much you charge?”

“Whatever you can spare, sir. We take donations only.” Demencio was trying to be polite, but the two men made him edgy. Hicks he could handle; hard-core rednecks scared him.

The strangers whispered back and forth, then the camouflaged one spoke up again: “Hey, Julio, we in Grange?”

Demencio, feeling his neck go tight: “Yeah, that’s right.”

“Is there a 7-Eleven somewheres nearby?”

“All we got is the Grab N’Go.” Demencio pointed down the street. “About half a mile.”

“Thank you kindly,” said the hunter.

“Double for me,” said the ponytailed man.

Before the pickup drove away, Demencio noticed a red-white-and-blue sticker on the rear bumper:
mark fuhrman for president.

Definitely not pilgrims, Demencio thought.

Chub was intrigued by what the Cuban had said. A statue that cries? About what?

“You’d cry, too,” said Bodean Gazzer, “if you was stuck in a shithole town like this.”

“So you don’t believe him.”

“No, I do not.”

Chub said, “I seen weepin’ Virgin Marys on TV before.”

“I’ve seen Bugs Bunny on TV, too. That make him real? Maybe you think there’s a real rabbit that sings and dances dressed up in a fucking tuxedo—”

“Ain’t the same thing.” Chub was insulted by Bode’s acid sarcasm. Sometimes his friend seemed to forget who had the gun.

“Here we are!” Bode declared, waving at a flashing sign that spelled out
grab n’go.
He parked in the handicapped space by the front door and flipped on the dome light inside the truck. From a pocket he took out the folded clipping from
The Miami Herald.
The story said the second winning lottery ticket had been purchased “in the rural community of Grange.” The winner, it reported, hadn’t yet come forward to claim his or her share of the prize.

Bode read this aloud to Chub, who said: “Can’t be many Lotto joints in a town this size.”

“Let’s ask,” said Bode.

They went into the Grab N’Go and picked up two twelve-packs of beer, a cellophane bag of beefalo jerky, a carton of Camels and a walnut coffee cake. While the clerk rang them up, Bode inquired about Lotto tickets.

“How many you want? We’re the only game in town,” the clerk said.

“Is that a fact.” Bode Gazzer gave a smug wink at Chub.

The clerk was eighteen, maybe nineteen. He was heavyset and freshly sunburned. He had a burr cut and a steep pimpled nose. A plastic tag identified him as
shiner.

He said, “Maybe you guys heard—this store had the winning ticket yesterday.”

“Go on!”

“God’s truth. I sold it to the woman myself.”

Bode Gazzer lit a cigaret. “Right here? No way.”

Chub said, “Sounds like a line a shit to me.”

“No, I swear.” With a finger the clerk crossed his heart. “Girl name of JoLayne Lucks.”

“Yeah? How much she win?” Chub asked.

“Well, first it was twenty-eight million, but come to find out she’s gotta split it. Someone else had the same numbers, is what the news said. Somebody down around Miami.”

“Is that a fact.” Bode paid for the beer and groceries. Then he tossed a five-dollar bill on the counter. “Tell you what, Mister Shiner. Give me five Quick Picks, assuming you still got the magic touch.”

The clerk smiled. “You come to the right place. Town’s famous for miracles.” He pulled the tickets from the Lotto machine and handed them to Bodean Gazzer.

Chub said, “She a local gal, this Joleen?”

“Lives acrost from the park. And it’s
JoLayne.”

Chub, scratching his neck: “I wonder if she’s lookin’ for a husband.”

The clerk grinned and lowered his voice. “No offense, sir, but she’s a little too tan for you.”

They all had a laugh. Bode and Chub said goodbye and walked out to the truck. For a while the two men sat in the cab, drinking beer, gnawing on jerky, not speaking a word.

Finally Chub said, “So it’s just like you said.”

“Yup. Just like I said.”

“Goddamn. A
Negro.”
With both hands Chub tore into the coffee cake.

“Eat quick,” Bode told him. “We got work to do.”

Tom Krome spent three hours with JoLayne Lucks. To call it an interview was a stretch. He’d never met anyone, politicians and convicts included, who could so adroitly steer conversation in a wrong direction. JoLayne Lucks held the added advantages of soft eyes and charm, to which Krome easily succumbed. By the end of the evening, she knew everything important there was to know about him, while he knew next to nothing about her. Even the turtles remained an enigma.

“Where’d you get them?” he asked.

“Creeks. Hey, I like your wristwatch.”

“Thanks. It was a gift.”

“From a lady friend, I’ll bet!”

“My wife, a long time ago.”

“How long you been married?”

“We’re divorcing … ” And away he’d go.

At half past ten JoLayne’s father called from Atlanta. She apologized for not picking up when he’d phoned earlier. She said she’d had company.

When Tom Krome rose to leave, JoLayne told her father to hang on. She led Krome to the door and said it had been a pleasure to make his acquaintance.

“May I come back tomorrow,” he asked, “and take some notes?”

“Nope.”

She gave him a gentle nudge. The screen door slapped shut between them.

“I’ve decided,” she said, “not to be in your newspaper.”

“Please.”

“Sorry.”

Tom Krome said, “You don’t understand.”

“Not everybody wants to be famous.”

He felt her slipping away. “Please. One hour with the tape recorder. It’ll be fine, you’ll see.”

That was the lie, of course. No matter what Krome wrote about JoLayne Lucks winning the lottery, it wouldn’t be fine. Nothing positive could come from telling the whole world you’re a millionaire, and JoLayne was smart enough to know it.

She said, “I’m sorry for your trouble, but I prefer to keep my privacy.”

“You really don’t have a choice.” That was the part she didn’t understand.

JoLayne stepped closer to the screen. “What do you mean?”

Krome shrugged apologetically. “There’s going to be a story in the papers, one way or another. This is news. This is the way it works.”

She turned and disappeared into the house.

Krome stood on the porch, contemplating the hum and bubble of the aquarium pump. He felt like a shitheel, but that was nothing new. He took out one of his business cards and wrote on the back of it: “Please call if you change your mind.”

He inserted the card in the doorjamb and returned to the bed-and-breakfast. In his room he saw a note on the dresser: Katie had phoned. So had Dick Turnquist.

Krome sat heavily on the edge of the bed, pondering the slim likelihood that his New York divorce lawyer had tracked him down in Grange, Florida, on a Sunday night to deliver good tidings. He waited twenty minutes before making the call.

JoLayne Lucks worked as an assistant to Dr. Cecil Crawford, the town veterinarian. JoLayne had been trained as a registered nurse, and easily could have earned twice as much money at the county hospital if she hadn’t preferred animal patients over human ones. And she excelled at her job. Everyone in Grange who owned a pet knew JoLayne Lucks. Where Doc Crawford could be cranky and terse, JoLayne was all tenderness and concern. That she was rumored to be eccentric in her private life was intriguing but immaterial; she had a special way with the animals. Just about everybody was fond of her, including a number of lifelong bigots who confided that she was the only black person they’d ever trusted. JoLayne found it interesting that so many of the local racists owned small, neurotic, ill-tempered breeds of dogs. The women favored toy poodles; the men, grossly overfed Chihuahuas. In Dade County, where JoLayne grew up, it was German shepherds and pit bulls.

The job at Dr. Crawford’s clinic was only JoLayne’s second since leaving nursing school. Her first job was at the infamously exotic emergency room of Jackson Memorial Hospital, in downtown Miami. That’s where JoLayne had met three of the six serious men in her life:

Dan Colavito, the stockbroker, who on a daily basis would promise to give up cigars, cocaine and over-the-counter biotechs. He’d arrived on a Saturday night at Jackson with four broken toes, the consequence of dashing into the middle of Ocean Drive and kicking (for no apparent reason) what turned out to be Julio Iglesias’ personal limousine;

Robert Nossano, the policeman, who would spend his road shifts stopping attractive young female drivers, few of whom had committed an actual traffic offense. Officer Nossano had been brought to the emergency room complaining of a severely bruised testicle, the result (or so he said) of falling on his nightstick while trying to subdue a burglary suspect;

Dr. Neal Grossberger, the young chiropractor, who would phone JoLayne at least twice an hour when she was home, and who would weep like a drunk when she’d refuse to wear the portable pager he’d bought her (baby blue, to match her hospital scrubs), and who couldn’t get dressed in the morning without calling to ask what socks he should wear. Neal had come breathlessly to the hospital after consuming a suspect gooseneck clam, and had waited seven hours in the emergency room for what he’d predicted would be a virulent onset of salmonella, which never arrived.

JoLayne Lucks finally quit the hospital after meeting and marrying Lawrence Dwyer, the lawyer. Like JoLayne’s other lovers, Lawrence had good qualities that were instantly obvious and bad qualities that took a bit longer to surface. It was Lawrence who’d suggested to JoLayne that they move upstate to Grange, where he could concentrate on fighting his disbarment, absent big-city distractions such as vengeful ex-clients. Such was JoLayne’s affection for Lawrence (and her determination to make the marriage work) that she’d declined to read the four loose-leaf volumes of trial transcripts from his Miami fraud conviction. She’d chosen instead to believe her husband’s claim of complete innocence, which relied on a complicated theory of prosecutorial entrapment, judicial conspiracy and a careless bookkeeper whose “zeroes looked exactly like sixes!”

In Grange it had been JoLayne who’d found the old house on Cocoa and Hubbard, and JoLayne who’d put up the down payment. She had been touched and secretly proud when Lawrence took the job as a toll taker on the Beeline Expressway—until he got arrested for stealing the jumbo-sized bag of change. That evening, after boxing all her husband’s clothes, jewelry and toiletries for the Salvation Army, JoLayne made a backyard bonfire of his law books, files, depositions and correspondence with the Florida Bar. After the divorce she asked Dr. Crawford if she could cut back to three days a week at the animal clinic; she said she needed time to herself.

That’s when she started exploring Simmons Wood, a rolling splash of oak, pine and palmetto scrub on the outskirts of town. Once or twice a week, JoLayne would park on the main highway, hop the short wire fence and disappear into the tree line. Every green thicket was an adventure, every clearing was a sanctuary. She kept a spiral notebook of the wildlife she saw: snakes, opossums, raccoons, foxes, a bobcat, a half dozen species of tiny warblers. The baby turtles came from a creek—JoLayne didn’t know the name. The creek water was the color of apricot tea, and it ran through a stand of mossy oaks down to a sandy, undercut bluff. That was where JoLayne usually stopped to rest and eat lunch. One afternoon she counted eleven little cooters perched on flat rocks and logs. She loved the way they craned their painted necks and poked out their scaly legs to catch the sunlight. When a small alligator swam by, JoLayne tossed it part of her ham sandwich, to keep its mind off the turtles.

She never thought of taking the little fellows out of the creek, until that day she’d parked on the edge of Simmons Wood and noticed a freshly painted
for sale
sign facing the highway: 44 acres, zoned commercial. At first JoLayne thought it was a mistake. Forty-four acres couldn’t be right—it sounded too small. The Wood seemed to go on forever when JoLayne was walking there. She’d driven straight back to town and stopped at the Grange courthouse to check the plat book. On paper Simmons Wood was shaped like a kidney, which surprised JoLayne. On her hikes she’d tried not to think of the place as having boundaries, but there they were. The
for sale
sign had been correct on the acreage, too. JoLayne had hurried home and phoned the real estate company named on the sign. The agent, a friend of JoLayne’s, told her the property was grandfathered for development into a retail shopping mall. The next morning, JoLayne started taking the baby turtles from the creek. She couldn’t bear the thought of them being buried alive by bulldozers. She would have tried to save the other animals, too, but almost everything else was too fast to catch, or too hard to handle. So she’d concentrated on the cooters, and from a pet-supply catalog at Dr. Crawford’s she’d ordered the largest aquarium she could afford.