Sailor & Lula (61 page)

Pace took the suitcase from Rhoda's hand and stepped aside.

Lula thought about Sailor. She pictured him lying in their bed, smoking a Camel and staring at the ceiling. When she imagined him this way, Lula realized, Sailor always looked like he had forty years or so before, in the beginning of their time together. Sailor's hair and muscles had dropped away since then, as surely as Lula's looks had begun to fade, her own shiny black hair to turn gray and dull, her large breasts to shrink and sag. All of this was inevitable, Lula knew. No matter how dedicatedly she exercised and avoided bad foods, there was no way she could prevent her body from spreading, her skin from crinkling up like used Reynolds Wrap. Lula recalled the first time she noticed that the curve of her behind had flattened out. She had been trying on a knit skirt at Jaloux, a fancy dress shop in Covington owned by a former call girl who had married a United States senator, and when Lula looked at her profile in the mirror she almost screamed. She felt like the former president did in that old movie when he woke up in a hospital bed after being run over by a train, discovered that his legs were sawed off at the knees and yelled, “Where's the rest of me?!”

Lula felt the same way when she was separated from Sailor for very long. It was almost as if they had become one person named Sailula. She was afraid now, sitting by herself in a darkened room in a strange house somewhere in the swamp, wondering if the two demented creatures that were keeping her from being with Sailor really intended to release her once they had the ransom money. Most of the time, Lula knew, kidnappers killed their hostages whether or not a ransom was paid. Archie Chunk and Kitty Kat Cross had already committed at least one murder, Kitty Kat having gunned down a clerk at the Rinaldi Hotel during the robbery, so one more homicide certainly would not matter. If they were apprehended, the law would demand the death penalty. There was no good reason that they should keep their part of the bargain. The only chance Lula had to stay alive, she figured, would be to talk her way out of it, to somehow convince Archie and Kitty Kat to return her to Sailor.

Rain pelted the roof, leaking through the cracks in the ceiling. Lula
refused to cry, keeping her face tight even though she knew the exercise would deepen the creases already established around her eyes.

“Oh, Sail,” Lula whispered to herself, “this ain't where I want to be. Shit,” she said. “Shit, shit, shit.”

Suddenly Lula felt a chill and her entire body shivered. She remembered herself forty years ago, lying pregnant and helpless in a crummy room in the Iguana Hotel in Big Tuna, Texas, just before Sailor Ripley, the only man of her dreams, made the single biggest mistake of his young life. A storm from the Gulf hurled itself desperately at Pointe à la Hache, rattling the walls. Lula watched through the window as a sliver of vertical lightning like in one of Archie Chunk's photos clove in two an oak that stood next to the house, leaving behind a black, electrical sizzle. In another room, Kitty Kat screamed and Lula laughed reflexively, then quickly covered her mouth with her hands. Lula was surprised at herself, unsure of what it meant, of what anything meant. The rain came down harder, blurring everything outside the window.

Sailor, Pace, Rhoda, Phil and Bob Lee Boyle were seated around the diningroom table in the Ripley house.

“What about the car, Daddy?”

“They can keep it. Your mama's all I care about.”

“So how you figure on playin' this game, Sailor?” asked Bob Lee. “Air strike? Ground assault? Seriously, you want to try somethin' or just leave the money and hope they turn Lula loose?”

“Thought about it real hard, Bob Lee, and I see it this way: Rhoda and I leave the duffel at the Judge Perez gate a half hour early at one A.M., and drive away. I'll leave Rhoda in the car on Tupelo Street and walk back, keepin' out of sight, to a spot where I can conceal myself while keepin' an eye on the gate. Pace and Phil will already be there in place, one on each side of the road. Bob Lee, you'd be doin' us a real favor stickin' by the phone right here.”

“Whatever you say, Sailor.”

“If they make the pick-up, Pace and Phil will take after 'em in their car. Rhoda, you'll keep an eye out for my black Cad, which the kidnappers'll prob'ly be drivin'. If it comes by you headed for the park, creep after it with your lights off and pick me up right after they make the grab. If they come past you from the other direction, after they've made the pick-up, you wait until Phil's car comes by, then follow him. That happens, I'll go with Pace and Phil. If nobody comes to make the pickup by two A.M., Rhoda, you come get me. If I'm gone, you go home. They might come from the other direction, make the pick-up and turn back the way they come. In that case, it'll just be Phil's car goin' after 'em.”

“You aren't going to call in the police, then,” said Phil.

“Think we're better off without 'em, Phil.”

“We gonna be packin', Daddy?”

“You bet, son. I got enough weapons to go around.”

Pace looked at his ex-wife.

“Rhoda,” he said, “you don't need to be in on this.”

“That's right, sweetheart,” said Sailor, “you don't. I can ride with Pace and Phil and you can stay here with Bob Lee, you'd rather.”

“Uh-uh,” said Rhoda. “I'll be glad to participate in any way you feel is best.”

“Bob Lee,” Sailor said, “reason I need you here is you'll know what to do if one of us calls.”

“You got it.”

“Any other questions?” asked Sailor, looking directly at each person in turn around the table. Nobody spoke, so Sailor said, “Okay, then. We'll meet here tomorrow midnight.”

“Sailor?” said Phil.

“Uh huh?”

“What do you think of Clark Westphal?”

“You mean the actor? One who done them Filthy Al cop pictures, like
Ripoff
and
Ripoff II
?”

“Right. What would you think of his portraying you in a movie?”

Sailor laughed. “Could do worse, I suppose. Know Lula'd like it.”

“I recently saw one of his early films on TV the other night,” said Rhoda, “
The Devil's Always Busy.
He certainly was handsome.”

“So was Daddy,” Pace said. “Mama always told me weren't no man handsomer in her eyes.”

“Gray with violet lakes in 'em,” said Sailor. “Nobody in the world got eyes to match Lula's.”

Rhoda looked at Pace and smiled.

“We'll get her home, Daddy,” he said.

“My old man was sixty-one when I was born,” Archie Chunk told Lula, while he bound her hands and feet. “Apparently he was pretty proud of the fact, too. We was livin' outside Bartlesville when he died. I was four. His name was Doc. Don't know why. Never heard anyone call him by another, and my ma was dead before I got old enough to ask her. Doc Chunk was a carny man most of his life, but by the time I was born he and my ma were operatin' a travelin' zoo. Had them a couple apes, a camel, black bear and a mess of snakes.

“One mornin' Doc looked in on this giant python that was his feature attraction and saw that he was sheddin' his hide. Way I heard it, my old man went in the cage to clean out the discarded skin and the snake got a whiff of paint thinner was on the old man's hands. Drove that reptile crazy and he locked his self hard around Doc's body. By the time Ma got out there, the python had clumb halfway up a utility pole and Doc Chunk was squoze to death.”

“That's a awful way to die, I'd guess,” said Lula.

“Yeah, my folks didn't have much luck in the death department,” Archie said, as he ran a line from Lula's ankles to her wrists. “My ma was killed two and a half years later in a bar in Festus. Man she was drinkin' with was in a fight and she got in between him and the other guy, who stabbed her in the chest. She bled to death right there on the barroom floor before the ambulance arrived.”

“What was her name?”

“Havana Moon. Ain't it pretty? My grandma told me she named her after a song she liked, and named her other daughter, Juella, also after a song. Their unmarried name been Fike. Juella was eleven months younger than Ma, and she died a year to the day but one after her. Juella and her Osage husband, Charlie Chases Weasels, hanged theirselfs after buryin' their infant son what perished in his sleep.”

“What are you gonna do with me?”

“Kitty Kat got a place in mind we put you, then go get the cash, I guess. With it and what we scored at the hotel, we might could have us
a deluxe trailer home, set it down on a mountain out west somewhere, and never have to work a hard day the rest of our lives.”

“Don't sound half bad, Mr. Chunk.”

“Archie, to you. Hush now while I tape your mouth. Be more comfort in the closed position.”

“Pace, I know what a difficult time this is for you,” Rhoda said, “and I hope I'm not complicating things by coming here. I just couldn't help myself, though. The divorce was a terrible mistake, I know that now, and I need to talk to you about it.”

Pace and Rhoda were in Pace's boyhood room upstairs at the rear of the Ripley house. Pace was sitting on the edge of the bed and Rhoda was seated in an armchair next to the window overlooking the backyard. Rhoda pulled out a pack of Bel-Air Menthols and a gold lighter from her purse. She extracted a long, white cigarette and lit it. Pace recognized the lighter, with the initials RGR emblazoned on it in mother-of-pearl, that he'd given Rhoda as a gift for her birthday six years before.

“Thought you'd quit,” Pace said.

Rhoda took a quick puff and blew out a short cloud of smoke, shook her brown mop and said, “Started up again the day our final decree arrived. I've been very unhappy.”

Pace looked out the window, hoping to see some birds. For some reason, the sight of birds in flight never failed to calm him.

“Don't tell me you was happy when I was around,” he said. “Least not the last six or eight months.”

“I suppose I just didn't realize how difficult it was for you, working for Gombowicz and Sons, how dissatisfied you were. I still don't know why you didn't just quit earlier.”

“What was I gonna do in New York, Rhoda? You had your practice, you weren't about to abandon that. At first I didn't mind the diamond business. I mean, it was somethin' completely diff'rent from anythin' I'd ever known. And your fam'ly was great about takin' me in, 'specially your brother, Ethan. It weren't for him I might not of made it at all. Ethan's the one saved my bones on the Irish switch. It was a big change from livin' in Katmandu, sure, and workin' on Forty-seventh Street weren't like leadin' treks in the Himalayas, but it was a new kinda challenge and I loved you and all, so I was willin' to take a shot. Lasted eight years, Rhoda, which ain't 'xactly punkin' out.”

“I'd leave New York now if you wanted me to.”

Pace shook his head and half-smiled. “Rhoda, you'd really go crazy if you had to be anyplace else longer'n a month, three weeks. It's your place, your fam'ly's there, and like I said, so's your work. You do good up east, I don't.”

“I'd give L.A. a try. I could build up a practice there.”

“You might could, seein's how there's more sick puppies per square inch in Beverly Hills alone than there are in all five boroughs of New York City. But I don't know how long I'm even gonna stay there, Rhoda. I'm thinkin' 'bout movin' back down south somewhere. Here or Charlotte, maybe.”

“What about your work with Phil? Learning the film business and all?”

“We'll see how it goes. I like Phil okay, and he's serious now about makin' a movie based on Mama and Daddy's early life, but tell the truth, L.A. really ain't my kinda town. Besides, Rhoda, geography ain't our only problem.”

Rhoda looked around for an ashtray, found a glass one on the bedside table and stubbed out her Bel-Air over the words Stolen from the Hotel Ritz, Paris.

“We could adopt a child, Pace. I think I could handle that now.”

“This ain't really what I need to be talkin' about right now,” said Pace.

“Are you seeing anyone?” Rhoda asked.

“You mean a girlfriend?”

Rhoda nodded. She kept turning the lighter with the fingers of her right hand until she dropped it on the floor, then picked it up and replaced it in her purse.

“Nobody special. Plenty of good looks in L.A., okay, but there ain't many women willin' to give very much. Never come across such a half-demented herd of vain, selfish folks, female or male.”

“Worse than I am, huh?”

“You ain't neither too vain nor the least selfish, Rhoda, not really. You just been brought up a certain way don't entirely mix with the way I am. It ain't your fault.”

“You wouldn't have left, Pace, had I been willing to have children. That's the truth, isn't it?”

“Prob'ly woulda been harder for me to go, we had. I'll admit that.”

Rhoda stood up. “I'm sorry I came, Pace, I really am. I'm just adding to your problems.”

“Don't be sorry, Rhoda. Daddy's glad you're here, and so am I. We're glad to have your help. And Mama'll be happy to see you, too.”

Pace stood, put his arms around Rhoda and hugged her to him.

“We can talk some more soon's this mess is finished,” he said.

“The air outside felt strange today, Pace, as if nothing were happening. Do you know what I mean?”