Lucky You

Instead the reporter said: “How long had you known each other? What are your fondest memories? How do you think he’d like to be remembered?”

  All questions that Dick Turnquist found it easy to answer. He didn’t say so, but he was grateful to The Register for saving him further aggravation in tracking Mary Andrea Finley Krome. Once she heard the news, she’d naturally assume she could stop running. Tom’s dying would get her off the hook, litigation-wise, and she’d have no reason to continue the dodge. Mary Andrea had always been less concerned with saving the marriage than with avoiding the stigma of divorce. The last true Catholic, in her estranged husband’s words.

  She was also a ham. Dick Turnquist expected Mary Andrea would get the first plane for Florida, to play the irresistible role of grief-stricken widow—sitting for poignant TV interviews, attending weepy candlelight memorials, stoically announcing journalism scholarships in her martyred spouse’s name.

  And we’ll be waiting for her, thought Dick Turnquist.

  On the phone, the reporter from The Register was winding up the interview. “Thanks for talking with me at such a difficult time. Just one more question: As Tom’s close friend, how do you feel about what’s happened?”

  The lawyer answered, quite truthfully: “Well, it doesn’t seem real.”

  On the morning of December 2, Bernard Squires telephoned Clara Markham in Grange to inquire if his generous purchase offer had been conveyed to the sellers of Simmons Wood.

  “But it’s only been three days,” the broker said.

  “You haven’t even spoken to them?”

  “I’ve put in a call,” Clara fudged. “They said Mr. Simmons is in Las Vegas. His sister is on holiday down in the islands.”

  Bernard Squires said, “They have telephones in Las Vegas, I know for a fact.”

  Normally Bernard was not so impatient, but Richard “The Icepick” Tarbone urgently needed to make a covert withdrawal from the union pension accounts. The nature of the family emergency was not confided to Bernard Squires, and he pointedly exhibited a lack of curiosity on the matter. But since the Florida real estate purchase was crucial to the money laundering, The Icepick had taken a personal interest in expediting the deal. None of this could be frankly communicated by Bernard Squires to Clara Markham, who was saying:

  “I’ll try to reach them again this morning, I promise.”

  “And there are no other offers?” Bernard asked.

  “Nothing on the table,” said Clara, which was strictly the truth.

  As soon as the man from Chicago hung up, she dialed the number in Coral Gables that JoLayne had given her. A desk clerk at the motel said Miss Lucks and her friend had checked out.

  With heavy reluctance Clara Markham then phoned the attorney handling the estate of the late Lighthorse Simmons. She described the pension fund’s offer for the forty-four acres on the outskirts of Grange. The attorney said three million sounded like a fair price. He seemed sure the heirs would leap at it.

  Clara was sure, too. She felt bad for her friend, but business was business. Unless JoLayne Lucks found a miracle, Simmons Wood was lost.

  An hour later, when Bernard Squires’ telephone rang, he thought it must be Clara Markham calling with the good news. It wasn’t. It was Richard Tarbone.

  “I’m sicka this shit,” he told Squires. “You get your ass down to Florida.”

  And Squires went.

  They’d checked out of the Comfort Inn shortly after Moffitt’s visit. The agent had come straight from the redneck’s apartment. His tight-lipped expression told the story: no Lotto ticket.

  “Damn,” JoLayne had said.

  “I think I know where it is.”

  “Where?”

  “He hid it in a rubber. The camo guy.”

  “A rubber.” JoLayne, pressing her knuckles to her forehead, trying not to get grossed out.

  “A Trojan,” Moffitt had added.

  “Thanks. I’ve got the picture.”

  “He’s carrying it on him somewhere, I’m willing to bet.”

  “His wallet,” Tom Krome had suggested.

  “Yeah, probably.” Moffitt matter-of-factly told them about the search of Bodean James Gazzer’s place—the anti-government posters and bumper stickers, the gun magazines, the vermin, the condoms in the wastebasket.

  “What now? How do we find the ticket?” Krome had asked.

  “Gimme a week.”

  “No.” JoLayne, shaking her head. “I can’t. Time’s running out.”

  Moffitt had promised he’d take care of it as soon as he returned from San Juan. He had to go testify in a seizure case—illegal Chinese machine guns, routed through Haiti.

  “When I get back, I’ll deal with these guys. Do a traffic stop, pat ’em down real hard. Search the pickup, too.”

  “But what if—”

  “If it’s not there, then … hell, I don’t know.” Moffitt, working his jaw, stared out the window.

  “How long will you be gone?”

  “Three days. Four at the most.”

  Moffitt had handed JoLayne Lucks the lottery tickets from Bodean Gazzer’s sock drawer. “For Saturday night,” he’d said. “Just in case.”

  “Very funny.”

  “Hey, weirder things’ve happened.”

  JoLayne had tucked the tickets in her handbag. “By the way, Tom’s dead. It’ll be in the papers tomorrow.”

  Moffitt had glanced quizzically at Krome, who’d shrugged and said, “Long story.”

  “Murdered?”

  “Supposedly. I’d prefer to keep it that way for now. You mind?”

  “I’ve never laid eyes on you,” Moffitt had said, “and you’ve never laid eyes on me.”

  At the door, JoLayne had given the ATF agent a warm hug. “Thanks for everything. I know you stuck your neck out.”

  “Forget it.”

  “Nothing happened? You sure?”

  “Easy as pie. But the place is trashed—Gazzer’ll know it wasn’t some chickenshit burglar.”

  As soon as Moffitt was gone, they’d started to pack. Krome insisted. The robber’s address was in Krome’s notebook, the one JoLayne said he never used.

  The first formal meeting of the White Clarion Aryans was held by lantern light at an empty cockfighting ring. It began with a dispute over titles; Bode Gazzer said military discipline was impossible without strict designations of rank. He declared that henceforth he should be called “Colonel.”

  Chub objected. “We’s equal partners,” he said, “’cept for him.” Meaning the kid, Shiner.

  Bode offered Chub the rank of major, which he assured him was on a par with colonel. Chub pondered it between swigs of Jack Daniel’s, purchased (along with beer, gas, cigarets, T-bone steaks, onion rings and frozen cheesecake) with the cash stolen from the young Colombian stockbroker.

  Major Chub didn’t sound particularly distinguished, Chub thought. Major Gillespie wasn’t half bad, but Chub wasn’t psychologically prepared to revert to the family name.

  “Fuck this whole dumb idea,” he mumbled.

  Shiner raised a hand. “Can I be a sergeant?”

  Bode nodded. “Son, you’re reading my mind.”

  Chub raised the liquor bottle. “Can I be a Klingon? Please, Colonel Gazzer, sir. Purty please?”

  Bode ignored him. He handed each of the men a booklet distributed by the First Patriot Covenant, an infamously disagreeable cell of supremacists headquartered in western Montana. The First Patriot Covenant lived in concrete pillboxes and believed blacks and Jews were the children of Satan; the Pope was either a first or a second cousin. Simply titled “Starting Up,” the group’s booklet contained helpful sections about organizing militia wings: fund-raising, tax evasion, rules of order, rules of recruitment, dress codes, press relations and arsenals. Shiner could hardly wait to read it.

  “Page eight,” Bode said. “‘Be Discreet.’ Everybody understand what that means? It means you don’t go blastin’ away with rifles on the goddamn turnpike.”

&nbs
p; From Chub came a scornful grunt. “Blow me.”

  Shiner was startled. This was nothing like the army. He felt a sticky arm settle around his shoulders. Turning, he got a faceful of whiskey breath.

  “Funny thing,” Chub said, fingering his ponytail, “how it’s fine and dandy for him to roust a couple beaners for eight lousy bucks, but I swipe four C-notes off poor ‘Bob’ Lopez and all of a sudden I’m a shitty soldier. You tell the colonel he can blow me, OK?”

  An angry cry arose, and the next thing Shiner knew, they were locked together—Bodean Gazzer and Chub—thrashing in the dry dirt of the rooster pit. Shiner wasn’t convinced it was a serious fight, since no hard punches were being struck, but he was nevertheless disturbed by the unseemly clawing and hair pulling. The two men on the ground didn’t look like battle-ready officers, they looked like barroom drunks. Shiner found himself wondering, with a twinge of shame, whether the White Clarion Aryans had a snowball’s chance against crack NATO troops.

  Pure fatigue ended the scuffle. Bode got a torn shirt and a bloody nose, Chub lost his eye patch. The colonel announced they were all going to his apartment and cook up the steaks. Shiner was surprised the drive was so peaceful; no one mentioned the fight. Bode talked expansively about the many militias in Montana and Idaho, and said he wouldn’t mind moving out there if it weren’t for the winters; cold weather aggravated the gout in his elbows. Meanwhile Chub had twisted the rearview mirror to inspect his split eyelid, observing that the whole orb socket had taken on a rank and swampy appearance beneath the airtight bicycle patch. Shiner recommended antibiotics, and Bode said he had a tube of something orange and powerful in the medicine cabinet at home.

  Upon arriving at the apartment building, Bode Gazzer neatly gunned the Dodge Ram into the first handicapped slot. A scolding stare from an insomniac neighbor made no impression. Bode asked his white brothers to mind the guns, while he toted the food inside.

  Chub and Shiner were perched on the tailgate, finishing their beers, when they heard it—more a moan than a scream. Yet it was riven with such horror as to raise the fuzz on their necks. They scrambled toward Bode’s apartment, Chub drawing the .357 as he ran.

  Inside, unaware that the colonel had dropped the groceries, Shiner slipped on an onion ring and went down headfirst. Chub, stepping in cheesecake, skated hard into the television set, which toppled sideways with a crash.

  Bodean Gazzer never turned to look. He remained stock-still in the living room. His pale face shone with perspiration. With both hands he clutched his camouflage cap to his belly.

  The place had been taken apart from the kitchen to the john; a maliciously thorough job.

  Dumbstruck, Chub stuck the Colt in his belt. “Jesus Willy,” he gasped. Now he saw what Bode saw. So did Shiner, one cheek smeared with rat shit, peering up from the kitchen tiles.

  The intruders had ripped down the posters of David Koresh and the other patriots. On the bare wall was a message scrawled in red, in letters three feet high. The first line said:

  WE KNOW EVERYTHING

  The second line said:

  FEAR THE BLACK TIDE

  It took only fifteen minutes for the White Clarion Aryans to load the pickup—guns, gear, bedding, water, plenty of camo clothes. Wordlessly the men piled into the front, Shiner in the middle as usual. Chub’s head lolled against the side window; he was too shaken to ask Bode Gazzer for a theory.

  To Shiner it seemed the colonel knew exactly where he was going. He looked determined behind the wheel, taking the truck on a beeline to Highway One, then making a sharp left.

  South, by Shiner’s reckoning. The Everglades, maybe. Or Key Largo.

  Bode flicked on the dome light and said, “There’s a map under the seat.”

  Shiner spread it across his lap.

  “Flip it over,” Bode told him.

  Instead he should’ve been paying attention to his mirrors. Then he might have noticed the headlights of the compact car that had been following them from the apartment.

  Inside the Honda, JoLayne Lucks turned down the radio and asked: “How did you know they’d run?”

  Tom Krome said, “Because these are not brave guys. These are guys who beat up women. Running away is second nature.”

  “Especially with the ‘Black Tide’ on their tails.” JoLayne chuckled to herself. She and Tom had arrived an hour earlier and peeked in the apartment window, to make sure it was the right place. That’s when they’d seen Moffitt’s menacing valentine on the wall.

  Now, pointing at the truck in front of them, JoLayne said: “Think they’ve got my ticket on ’em?”

  “Yep.”

  “Still no game plan?”

  “Nope.”

  “I like an honest man,” JoLayne said.

  “Good. Here’s more: I’m not feeling so brave myself.”

  “OK. When we get to Oz, we’ll ask the wizard to give you some courage.”

  Krome said, “Toto, too?”

  “Yes, dear. Toto, too.”

  JoLayne leaned over and put a lemon drop in his mouth. When he started to say something, she deftly popped in another one. Krome was hopelessly puckered. He didn’t know where the pickup truck was leading them, but he knew he wasn’t turning back. Bachelorhood in the Nineties, he thought. What a headline Sinclair could write:

  DEAD MAN DOGS DANGEROUS DESPERADOS

  16

  The farther they got from Coconut Grove, the stronger grew Chub’s conviction that he would never see his treasured Amber again. He was seized by a mournful panic, a talon-like snatch of his heart.

  Neither of his companions noticed. Shiner was preoccupied with the mysterious “Black Tide,” and Bodean Gazzer was brimming with theories. Both men were shaken by the scene inside the ransacked apartment, and chatting about niggers and communists seemed to steady their nerves. An even flow of conversation also preserved the illusion of a calm orderly flight, when in fact Bode had no plan beyond running like hell. They were being pursued; chased by an unknown evil. Bode’s instinct was to hide someplace remote and out of reach, and to get there as fast as possible. Shiner’s naive and breathless queries, which otherwise would have provoked the harshest sarcasm, now worked as a tonic by affirming for Bode his role as the militia’s undisputed leader. Although he hadn’t the foggiest clue who the Black Tide was, Bode gave the full weight of his authority to wild speculation. This kept his mind busy and his spirits up, and Shiner hung on every word. Chub’s lack of participation was of small concern, for Bode was accustomed to his partner’s nodding off.

  He was therefore flabbergasted to feel the gun barrel at the base of his neck. Shiner (who’d detected Chub’s arm slipping behind the seat and figured he was just stretching) jerked at a sharp noise near his left ear—the click of the hammer being cocked. He turned only enough to see the Colt Python pointed at the colonel.

  “Pull over,” Chub said.

  “What for?” Bode asked.

  “Yer own good.”

  As soon as his partner stopped the truck, Chub eased down the hammer of the gun. “Son,” he said to Shiner, “I got another mission for you. Provided you wanna stay in the brotherhood.”

  Shiner flinched like a spanked puppy; he’d thought his place in the White Clarion Aryans was solid.

  “It’s no sweat,” Chub was saying. “You’ll dig it.” He stepped out of the pickup and motioned with the gun for Shiner to do the same.

  Being half drunk and exhausted did not affect Bodean Gazzer’s low threshold of annoyance. Chain of command obviously meant nothing to Chub; the goon operated on blood impulse and reckless emotion. If it continued, they’d all end up in maximum security at Raiford—not the ideal venue for a white-supremacy crusade.

  When Chub reentered the truck, Bode said, “This shit’s gotta stop. Where’s the boy?”

  “I sent him back up the road.”

  “For what?”

  “To finish some bidness. Let’s go.” Chub, laying the revolver on the front seat between them; Shine
r’s spot.

  “Well, goddamn.” Bode could hear the kid’s golf spikes clacking on the pavement.

  “Jest drive,” Chub said.

  “Anywheres in particular?”

  “Wherever you was goin’ is fine. Long as it ain’t too fur from Jewfish Creek.” Chub launched a brown stream of spit out the window. “Go ’head and ast.”

  Bode Gazzer said, “OK. How come Jewfish Creek?”

  “On account of I like the name.”

  “Ah.” On account of you’re a certified moron, Bode thought.

  By daybreak they were at a marina in Key Largo, picking out a boat to steal.

  Tom Krome’s death was announced with an end-of-the-world headline in The Register, but the news failed to shake American journalism to its foundations. The New York Times didn’t carry the story, while the Associated Press condensed The Register’s melodramatic front-page spread to eleven sober inches. The AP’s rewrite desk circumspectly noted that, while the medical examiner was confident of his preliminary findings, the body found in Tom Krome’s burned house had yet to be positively identified. The Register’s managing editor seemed certain of the worst—he was quoted as saying Krome was “quite possibly” murdered as the result of a sensitive newspaper assignment. Pressed for details, the managing editor replied he was not at liberty to discuss the investigation.

  Many papers across the United States picked up the Associated Press story and reduced it to four or five paragraphs. A slightly longer version appeared in The Missoulian, the daily that serves Missoula and other communities in the greater Bitterroot valley of Montana. Fortuitously, it was here Mary Andrea Finley Krome had hooked up with a little-theater production of The Glass Menagerie. Although she was not a great fan of Tennessee Williams (and, in any case, preferred musicals over dramas), she needed the work. The prospect of performing in small-town obscurity depressed Mary Andrea, but her mood brightened after she made friends with another actress, a dance major at the state university. Her name was Lorie, or possibly Loretta—Mary Andrea reminded herself to check in the playbill. On Mary Andrea’s second morning in town, Lorie or Loretta introduced her to a cozy coffee shop where students and local artists gathered, not far from the new city carousel. The coffee shop featured old stuffed sofas upon which Mary Andrea and her new pal contentedly settled with their cappuccinos and croissants. They spread the newspaper between them.