He Was Her Man (20 page)

But back at the desk, the clerk handed her a message slip along with her key. If this was from Harry, well, he’d better watch himself, now that she had that old one-two punch under her belt. She was of half a mind to call him up and give him what for. Men! Who did they think they were, anyway? She bounced on her toes as she unfolded the message, only to read:

Sorry, kiddo, but a brunch guest choked to death this
A.M.
on a boeuf bearnaise in Her Majesty’s Grill Room. Must fly back home and smooth the waters. We’ll have to move our hike to Audubon Park. Not the mountains, but there’s café au lait and beignets at the end of the road. P.S. Jinx could use a shoulder to cry on, good buddy. P.P. S. Don’t faint at the floral offerings in your room. Harry’s been real busy with the FTD. You’ve not died, and it ain’t your funeral. Kisses, Kitty.

What? No, she wasn’t dead, but she could have been, easy. And now there was no one to share her adventure with. Crap. And be nice to Jinx—was Kitty nuts? She’d give Jinx a shoulder all right, that conniving bitch, a stiff one.

Speaking of shoulders, hers hurt like the dickens. Those boxing gloves were heavy. She really was out of shape. But, how lucky for her that there was the spa, the whirlpool, the hot packs, a massage—right there on the second floor. She’d race in and do it all, then catch up with Loydell. See what the latest was on Olive. Ask the bellman to take those damned flowers and deliver them to the nearest hospital. (Didn’t Harry know that that’s what flowers reminded her of—hospitals, death, desertion by the ones who’d loved her most?)

She was thinking about Olive as she began to undress in the spa’s anteroom, and suddenly she remembered. Olive’s ring! Had it fallen out? Was it still in her jeans? She grabbed them up and felt through her pockets.

Yes! That was a relief, the ring hadn’t slipped out along the Promenade. Or when Jack took off her jeans.

She stood there in her underwear, thinking of Jack pulling off her jeans. Pulling up the red satin shorts. Pulling off her jeans. She flushed. She had a fever. Or maybe this was how hot flashes started.

Nope. She was too young.

The answer was simpler.

She was going crazy. She was standing around in her underwear in Hot Springs, Arkansas, fantasizing about a man who’d kidnapped her, tied her up, stripped off her jeans, dressed her up in little red shorts, and punched her around.

Well, he hadn’t really punched her around. And she’d certainly gotten her licks in.

But any way you looked at it, this had all the elements of a feminist’s nightmare—and she was wallowing in it and getting hot. She was a discredit to her gender.

Though, now, wait a minute. It was perfectly understandable if you thought about it logically. She had been dumped by her younger lover for a baby Barbie. Yes, and therefore, she was feeling old and ugly and invisible. And then this handsome older man came along and kidnapped her and tied her up and… Kiddo, give it a rest. There’s nothing wrong with you that a hot tub and a cold shower can’t fix.

*

Doc Miller had explored every inch of the basement under the old stone house on the hill, the servants’ quarters, a woodshop, a wine cellar, a root cellar. There was a fully outfitted rec room with a billiard table, Ping-Pong, a couple of old pinball machines. The knotty pine walls were dotted with the heads of long-dead deer, caribou, elk. Their glass eyes shone in the lamplight.

Speed McKay’s eyes shone, too. They were filled with tears that brimmed over and tracked down his cheeks like quicksilver. Doc hated to see a man cry. And today he really wasn’t in the mood. He poured himself another tumbler of Scotch and leaned back on the leather sofa that was stitched with cowboys and horseshoes. Speed was sitting across from him in a chair upholstered with a colorful serape.

Speed was talking.

You cut the man’s finger off, and he was still talking.

You cut his head off, he’d probably still be talking.

The only way to shut him up was chop out his tongue, and even then it’d probably flap a path across the floor, lick at your shoe.

“I don’t know why I came down here with you,” the little man sobbed. “Don’t know why. Now you’re just going to do more terrible things to me. I never did anything terrible to you. I never did, Doc. I was always nice to you.”

“Nice?
Nice?
”
Doc reached over and grabbed himself another couple of ice cubes. “What the hell does
nice
have to do with anything? And, you came down here because I poked a knife in your back.”

Speed sobbed and held up his right hand. A towel, soaked with crimson, was wrapped around it. “This wasn’t nice. Not nice at all. Mickey didn’t think it was nice.”

“Don’t kid yourself. You think Mickey gives a rat’s ass about you? She’s in this for the dough, just like me. If I know her, she hasn’t given a second thought to you, she’s upstairs right now figuring out some other scam to make the trip to this burg worthwhile.”

Speed brightened. “How about Jack? I know the kidnapping part fucked up, but we can still hit on him. Lean on him hard, get a bunch of money out of him. You know, make him suffer for the way Joey treated us. That was all Jack’s fault.” And then the little man looked down at his hand again and started to bawl.

Doc thought out loud. “Mickey doesn’t know Jack. Though, you know, that could be interesting, putting her on to him. Maybe we could rig something in one of his casinos, still make a big score.”

“Yeah, we could!”

“Not
you,
jerkoff. Jack knows you.”

“Yeah, but, I could help set it up, no problemo, run interference, you know what I mean?”

“I know you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. And I don’t much have any use for you at this point.” Jack grabbed up the kitchen knife that was sitting on the coffee table, drew back, and hurled it across the room at a dartboard.

Speed flinched and laughed. The hysteria was creeping in. “Gee, Doc, that was pretty good.” His voice was out of control. “Bull’s-eye. Pretty neat. Heh heh heh.”

“You wet your pants that time, Speed?”

“No. No way. Nuh-uh. I didn’t wet my pants. I knew you weren’t going to throw that knife at me.”

“Tell you what, little man. Why don’t you just get up and walk out of here? There’s nothing holding you.”

“I—I wouldn’t run off and leave you like that.”

“You think I’d kill you, don’t you?”

“No, I don’t think that. I really don’t.”

Doc leaned back into the sofa, stretching his long legs out in front of him. “You don’t even like to hear me say those words, do you, Speed? Like, if I say them, it makes the possibility more real, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Doc. I really don’t. I really don’t know what it is you mean when you say that, but I’ll tell you, I think we ought to start working a plan to do something about Jack. We could hold up his casino. We could hold him up on the road with his receipts. We could poison his pigeons. He’s crazy about those pigeons.”

“Two out of three, Speed. You win, you walk. You don’t, you don’t. That make sense?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Doc. What are you talking about? I mean, if you want to play something, gin, whatever, sure, no problemo, but I don’t understand what these stakes are you’re talking about.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll show you. Now, here we go.” Doc pulled a book of paper matches from his pocket, tore out a match, and holding it by the very bottom, turned his hand over so the match was inverted. “I’ll bet you I can light this match and hold it in this position while counting to fifty without letting go of the match or extinguishing the flame. Here.” He handed the match to Speed. “You try it, then see if you want to bet me.”

“I don’t want to. You’re gonna make me burn my good hand. I only have one good hand.” He whimpered and held up the blood-soaked mitt.

“You don’t have a lot of choices here, Speed. You know what I mean?”

Cowed, Speed took the match, struck and lit it and held it in the inverted position Doc had showed him, for about five seconds before he dropped it.

“Ouch! I knew you were going to burn me.”

“So? You think I can hold it for fifty? Without letting go or putting it out?”

“No. No way you can do it. I know you can’t do it.”

Jack lit the match. “One, two, three,” he started counting slowly, all the while moving the hand holding the match back and forth over a distance of about eight inches. “Eleven, twelve thirteen.” The match burned, but because of the motion, it burned very slowly, and the flame was pulled away from his hand. “Thirty-eight, thirty-nine.”

“You didn’t say anything about moving your hand,” said Speed. “I don’t think you said a word about moving your hand.”

“Forty-nine, fifty. No, I didn’t, jerk. If I’d told you how the prop worked, that would have been stupid, wouldn’t it? And
I’m
not stupid, Speed.” Doc poured himself another Scotch. “Now that’s one for me. Let’s go for two.”

“I don’t think I want to, Doc.”

“Fine. Then just get up and leave. No one’s holding you here.”

Speed sat staring at Doc. Sweat poured off the top of his balding head. Gray strands were glued to his scalp. He leaned forward a little, as if he were going to do it, get up and walk out, but then he fell again into the chair, sank back, defeated. He was too afraid to move. Doc was the cobra, Speed the mongoose.

“Okay, good.” Doc rubbed his hands together. “I guess that means you want to try again. Now, here we go.” Doc ripped another match out of the book and flipped it up into the air as if it were a coin and let it land on the table. Then he ripped and flipped another. “You see, Speed, one side’s gray, and one side’s brown. That’s the way paper matches always are, different colors on each side. Now, I can make whichever color I want to come up.”

“I know there’s a trick,” Speed sighed.

“No. No trick. Come on, let’s give it a try. You call.”

“Gray.”

Doc flipped, and the match came up gray.

“All right!” Speed crowed.

“You want to do it again?”

“Sure.”

“Call.”

“I’ll take gray again.”

The match was brown.

“Okay, so we’re even.”

“Can I see the matchbook, Doc?”

“Speed, Speed, Speed, baby, you don’t trust me? I’m shocked.” But he handed the matchbook over.

Speed inspected it carefully and satisfied himself that the matchbook wasn’t gaffed, that all the matches were indeed two colors. “Okay, let’s do it again.”

They did, and the little man won. “So, that’s one to one, right? You won the lit match thing, and I won this.”

“That’s right.” Doc smiled. “But, you know, I bet I can make a match land on its
edge
instead of one of its sides.”

“Can I see the matches again?”

“Why, sure.”

Speed ripped out five matches and flipped them one at a time. All of them landed on a side, two brown, three gray, which were the odds of pure chance that Doc was playing with when he suckered Speed with the come-on.

“Tell you what,” said Doc. “You win this one, you win the whole magillah. I can’t make the match land on its edge, you get up and walk out of here, I won’t do a thing to stop you.”

“Swear to God?”

“Swear on my mother’s blessed soul, may she rest in peace.” At that, Doc downed another two fingers of Scotch.

“Deal.”

Doc picked up a match, and as he started to flip it, he bent it in the middle with his thumb into a V shape. It landed on the edge every time. Time after time, as Doc flipped it over and over, and Speed cried. Great big tears rolled down his face, and he was sobbing aloud, but he was silent once Doc stuffed a rag in his mouth and taped it. He also bound Speed’s hands behind him with strapping tape. And then he marched him outside and down to the boat dock.

Five minutes later, Mickey came down to the kitchen wearing clean white sweats with a towel wrapped around her head. Doc was cleaning up, putting away what was left of Speed’s chicken salad, the plates, cutting board, knives, mopping up the spatters of blood from Speed’s stump.

“Ummmmm, you smell good,” Doc said to her. “You have a bubblebath?”

She ignored him and pulled a jar of apple juice out of the refrigerator. She poured herself a glass, drank it, and started to head back upstairs, when she paused and looked around. Her eyes narrowed. “Where’s Speed?”

“He’s outside.”

“Outside? Doing what?”

“Trying to win a little wager.”

She turned and faced Doc. “A little wager?”

“Yeah, I bet him a hundred bucks he couldn’t swim out to the float and back.”

“So, why aren’t you watching him?”

Doc smiled.

*

Ruby was kneading Sam’s shoulder with bony fingers that
hurt.
This wasn’t quite what she’d been looking for, but shiatsu and pressure-point release didn’t seem to be part of the Foot-washing Baptist’s repertoire.

“So how’d you get into this business, anyway?” she asked Ruby between her grunts, making conversation.

“My chicken died. I used to run the Tic-Tack-Toe Chicken across the street over by the Ohio Club. Tourists paid a dollar to play with her, she beat ’em nine times out of ten. But when the gambling went, lots of the tourists did, too. Chicken wasn’t worthwhile.” Then she grabbed up Sam’s right leg like she might just wrench it off at the knee.

“Why, Ruby, I thought you didn’t believe in gambling.”

“The chicken wasn’t gambling. You didn’t win anything if you beat her except the satisfaction that you’d won. You could go back home to Texarkana and tell all your friends that you were smarter than a Rhode Island Red.” Sam laughed, and Ruby whacked her in the thigh. “Anyhow, the massage is more in line with my beliefs. Humbling yourself in the service of another. That’s what it’s all about, you know. Just like Jesus wasn’t too stuck up to wash another’s feet, we do it, too.”