Authors: Lynn Hightower
“When you coming down?”
“One of us got to budge sometime.”
“I may actually be up there in a few months.”
“You call me, girlfriend, and tell me when.”
“I will. 'Bye, Christy.”
“Tell Rick hi from Christy girl.”
“You trying to make Marty jealous?”
11
The Cutlass was low on gas and running rough.
Lena parked in the small lot in front of Eloise Valetta's apartment building. Weeds were sprouting through cracks in the asphalt.
“Ah, spring,” Lena said.
The front door of the apartment building was warped and stuck in the mostly closed position. Lena had to brace one foot on the door frame and pull hard. She wondered how people did that with bags of groceries or babies in their arms.
The hallway was carpeted in worn lime green shag, and smelled of cigarette smoke and sour dishrags. Lena ran up the stairs to the second floor and knocked at Eloise Valetta's door. The television in the next apartment was turned way up. A man invited a shrieking woman to “
Come on down!
”
Lena heard little feet pounding a threadbare carpet, and the door swung open. Charlie put his hands behind his back and stared up at her.
“No, Charlie, how many times I told you,
don't
â”
“Hi, Charlie,” Lena said.
He stuck a finger in his mouth. “Hi.”
“Charlie!”
Eloise appeared behind him, scowling and out of breath. She looked scared for a moment, then her face cleared.
“Hi, Lena.” She put a hand to her chest and took a deep breath. “Come on in.”
There were newspapers and magazines on the living room floor. A cardboard box that said Del Monte Freestone Sliced Peaches was brimming over with clean laundry.
“Can I get you someâ”
“No, thank you.” Lena sat down on the couch.
The radio was playing in the kitchen. A coffee can full of broken crayons had been dumped out next to a thin pastel coloring book with the Easter bunny on the cover. The book was untouched. Charlie sat in front of the crayons and began arranging the pieces.
Eloise sat on a stool and went back to the laundry she was folding. “Tell Miss Lena what you got on.”
Charlie ignored her.
Eloise leaned toward Lena.
“Batman underpants.” She spoke in a whisper and grinned. “Second day, and
no
accidents.” Eloise folded her arms tightly. “Been in his drawer for more'n a year, and yesterday, he points and says
no
to the diaper, wanting those underpants. I swear, I'm ready to jump up and down. Been so excited I coulda had an accident myself.”
Lena tried to smile.
“Something's wrong.” Eloise unfolded her arms and rested her hands on her knees. “Charlie. Take those crayons in your room.”
Charlie peered at an orange crayon, hesitated, and set it down. He picked up a piece of yellow crayon.
“Charlie.” Eloise scooped the crayons into the coffee can and handed them to her son. “Go on back in the bedroom. Right now.”
Charlie took the coffee can and trudged down the hall. Eloise reached into the box of laundry and pulled out a pair of navy polyester pants. She folded them and set them on the chair in front of the stool.
“Tell me about Harry Zyn,” Lena said.
Eloise rubbed a finger across a pulled thread on the pants. “Who?”
“Harry Zyn. Harry Straczynski. The Bennelton agent who covered the savings and loan Archie robbed.”
Eloise pulled a tiny red-and-blue striped shirt from the box and smoothed it on her knees. She shrugged. “What's to tell?”
“I did happen to have it in the back of my mind,” Lena said, “to find out what really happened to the robbery money. I thought if we knew what happened, maybe we could get Archie off your back.” Lena shrugged. “Not much of a play under the best of circumstances. I don't see Archie as all that reasonable. Particularly as you did take that money.” Lena frowned and looked at her feet. “What I don't understand is why you're still in his reach. The reason I'm here's to advise you not to be.”
Eloise took a quick breath, and her chest heaved up and down. “I don't know why you got it in your head I took that money. If I can't change your mind I guess there's no more to say.”
Lena nodded. “Probably not, if you take that attitude.” She stood up and walked to the door.
“I have
dreams
about Archie coming here.”
Lena reached for the doorknob. Hayes was problem enough to keep her busy for now.
“Worst thing is what'll happen to Charlie. There's nobody to take care of him but me.”
Lena sighed. “I can give you some ideas on how and where to disappear.”
“You going to give me the money, too?”
“I'm not the one who
has
a hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”
“It was a hundred and thirty-eight thousand. And I ain't got it now.”
“Must have been a great day for the malls.”
“I never had it.”
Lena leaned against the doorjamb. “See, I can't help you when you tell me lies. There's nothing to work with, besides being offensive.”
“You honestly think I'd live in this dump if I had that kind of money? You think I'd put my clean laundry in a box, and my boy got no more toys than you see on this floor?”
“I think you're a pretty poor budgeter.”
Eloise pointed to the couch. “You sit down there and I'll tell you what happened.”
“I'm listening.” Lena folded her arms.
“Harry Zyn is one of those men who looks at you like there's nobody else for miles, and listens to everything you say. Everybody likes him. And when a guy like that focuses on you ⦠I told you I drank a lot. I didn't even know I told him about the money, until when I woke up one morning, we was in bed at the Red Badge Motel. He said we'd go off together, to Rio, but I guess you know the rest of that story. All I got from Harry was a night or two feeling pretty, and a whole lot of words.”
“And the clap.”
“How'd you know?”
“I checked your medical records.”
“Now, how can you do that when I can't even look at them?”
Lena sat back down on the couch. “Eloise, the patient is about the only person who doesn't have access. That's beside the point. What are you goingâ”
The phone rang.
“Look,” Eloise said. “I got to answer that. It may be a cake order. Please, don't go yet.”
She went to the kitchen. Lena heard her say hello twice, mutter something about wrong numbers that hung up without even saying they were sorry, then put down the receiver.
Eloise came back into the living room and sat down on the stool. She leaned forward.
“I got no people I can go back to. Nobody that wouldn't be worse than Archie.”
“They might protect your son.”
“Yeah, but he'd be better dead. I won't have him grow up like I did. Them days is over, and I ain't going back. You don't want to help me, okay. But did you really expect me to say, yeah, I had the money, but
sorry
, now it's gone?”
“I expected the truth. If I'm wasting my time looking for something that isn't there, I can't help you.”
Eloise lifted a small pair of boy's jeans and folded them. “I'm not sure what you can do to help me, anyhow.”
Lena shrugged. “It comes down to inconvenience. If it is more inconvenient for Archie to bother you than to go away, he'll go away.”
“He'll kill me first.”
“There's that. He know about Charlie?”
“No.”
“Then we can keep him out of it. I need to know more about Archie. What he's scared ofâ”
Eloise laughed. “Archie ain't scared of nothing.”
“Got to be something.”
“You don't get it. Archie hung around too much with your sister's husband. He thinks he got the devil on his side. That's why he didn't take care of that money like he should. He was sure Satan would get him off. He's nutty on it. He was shocked all to pieces when he went to jail.”
Lena sighed. She unlaced her tennis shoes. “You mind?” she asked Eloise. “I think better when I'm barefooted.”
“Go on and get comfortable.”
Lena slipped her tennis shoes off and sat cross-legged on the couch. “Give me a pile of those clothes and I'll help you fold. And while we do it, we're going to talk about Archie. You were married to him once, you ought to know the soft spots.”
Eloise grabbed an armful of clothes and deposited them on the couch. “He's allergic to peanuts.”
“I guess that's a start. We could corner him and force-feed him Jif.”
Charlie picked the cheese and pepperoni off a slice of pizza.
“Eat the crust, too,” Eloise said absently. She leaned over and wiped sauce off his ear. “I can't think of nothing else. I told you everything except he wears boxer shorts.”
“
Does
he?”
“Yeah.”
“Doesn't seem the type.”
“What is the type?”
“With men, you never can tell.”
Lena leaned back on the couch, careful not to scatter the neatly folded laundry. She had suggested sending out for pizza without thinking and felt guilty because Eloise had insisted on paying half. But she knew a lot more about Archie now, including his preference for undershorts. He was a fanatical photographer, thought crickets were lucky, and didn't like spiders. He was allergic to peanuts, would not drink beer from a glass, worked, when he did work, as a roofer, loved basketball games, thought soccer was for sissies, and was happiest on his Harley.
“Tell me more about the motorcycle gang he used to ride with.”
“The Grits? Don't know much. He'd quit them before we got married. He got a scar on his arm from when they burned off his tattoo.”
“Burned it off? Nice. Why did he quit?”
“Got
kicked
out. Their tattoo was one of those, you know, like they have in those desert places. A scorpion. Black one, on his arm. When he got kicked out they took hot spoons and just made it into this awful red scar. Archie says he was lucky they didn't kill him.”
“Why didn't they?”
“Stickboy. The ⦠now, what he call him? The sergeant-at-arms. That was Stickboy Madison. He and Archie was real tight, and when Archie got kicked out, Stickboy burned the tattoo off and beat him up real bad. But he didn't kill him, and to hear Archie talk, it was some kind of big favor. I guess that's the one thing Archie
is
afraid of. Them Grits, and mainly Stickboy. He was always real careful to make sure he didn't do nothing to step on their toes.”
“And you don't know why they kicked him out?”
“Archie never would say. But he hinted some. I think it was on account of some pictures he took? See, he used to have this little plastic camera, and he could hold it like at his waist? It was like them old-fashioned kind, with the little window in the top, so he didn't have to hold it up to his face. He called it somethingâoh, hip shooting, that was it. Most the time, nobody would notice that he was taking pictures.”
“Camera of choice for blackmailers,” Lena said. “You think he tried to blackmail somebody in the gang?”
“He wouldn't tell me if he did. But that'd be Archie all over.”
“What do you know about the Grits?”
Eloise shrugged. “Not much.”
“This may be the way to the ticklish spot. I'll have to research this gang, see what I can come up with. If Stickboy Madison told Archie to leave you alone, would he?”
“Oh, you bet.”
“That leaves one really hard part.”
“Which be?”
“Getting something on Stickboy to make him call Archie off for us.”
“Be easier to convince the devil.”
“That's an idea, too.”
12
Lena saw him at the stoplight. The Cutlass was still running rough and she had the window down, so she could listen to the engine. The guttural sputter of a Harley caught her attention.
The man straddled his bike, one booted heel resting on the pavement. He wore a black tank top and blue jeans, his hair reddish gold and frizzy beneath a Greek fisherman's cap. It was hard to tell where the hair stopped and the beard began. But what really got her thinking was the scar on his bicep. A ragged red scar, where you might expect a tattoo.
The light turned green, and the bike roared through the intersection. Lena checked her mirror for cops, then did an illegal U-turn.
Definitely headed in the right direction. He pulled into the right lane, bike canting from side to side with grace and precision. If he turned right ⦠but no, he was headed into Cutler's Food Mart.
Lena sighed.
The bike zigzagged through the grocery's parking lot and exited onto Kearney Street, avoiding the red light and the intersection. Lena pulled in after him. Whoever he was, he was less than two miles from Eloise's apartment.
The biker turned left at the stop sign, and Lena accelerated. The car jerked and did not respond. Lena checked the gas gauge. The needle was well to the left of empty. She coasted down the hill.
The car quit a half mile too soon. Lena pulled to the side of the road, and a man in a navy blue Lynx honked and roared around her. She looked for a pay phone, but the area was downtrodden residential, with nothing likely in sight.
She went to the trunk, got her baseball bat, wished for a gun. She took off running down the street.
The bike sat in the apartment parking lot, and the door to the building stood open. Lena steadied herself against the doorjamb, chest heaving, while she caught her breath. She knocked at the first ground-floor apartment. There was movement behind the peephole, but the door did not open. She knocked at the door across the hall. Nothing.
A child screamed, staccato and shrill.
“Call the cops!” Lena yelled, kicking the first door she'd tried.