Offerings, at a mortgage company!
Demencio didn’t need Jerry Wicks to tell him it was no time to slack off. Demencio knew what was out there, knew it was vital to keep pace with the market.
“Wait’ll you see,” he told the mayor, “when I got my Mary cryin’ blood. You just wait.”
The telephone rang. Demencio went to take it in the bedroom, where it was quiet. When he came out, his expression was dour. Shiner’s mother asked what was wrong.
“You said you were gonna pray? Well, go to it.” Demencio waved an arm. “Pray like crazy, Marva, because we’ll need a new miracle, ASAP. Any new Jesus’ll do just fine.”
Jerry Wicks sat forward, planting his elbows on the table. “What happened?”
“That was JoLayne on the phone. She’s coming home,” Demencio reported cheerlessly. “She’s on her way home to pick up her cooters.”
Sinclair went pale. Shiner’s mother stroked his forehead and told him not to worry, everything was going to be all right.
They bought some new clothes and went to the best restaurant in Tallahassee. Tom Krome ordered steaks and a bottle of champagne and a plate of Apalachicola oysters. He told JoLayne Lucks she looked fantastic, which she did. She’d picked out a long dress, slinky and forest green, with spaghetti straps. He went for simple slate-gray slacks, a plain blue blazer and a white oxford shirt, no necktie.
The lottery check was in JoLayne’s handbag: five hundred and sixty thousand dollars, after Uncle Sam’s cut. It was the first of twenty annual payments on JoLayne’s share of the big jackpot.
Tom leaned across the table and kissed her. Out of the corner of an eye he saw a starchy old white couple staring from another table, so he kissed JoLayne again; longer this time. Then he lifted his glass: “To Simmons Wood.”
“To Simmons Wood,” said JoLayne, too quietly.
“What’s wrong?”
“Tom, it’s not enough. I did the math.”
“How do you figure?”
“The other offer is three million even, with twenty percent down. I promised Clara Markham I could do better, but I don’t think I can. Twenty percent of three million is six hundred grand—I’m still short, Tom.”
He told her not to sweat it. “Worse comes to worse, get a loan for the difference. There isn’t a bank in Florida that wouldn’t be thrilled to get your business.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“JoLayne, you just won fourteen million bucks.”
“I’m still black, Mr. Krome. That do make a difference.”
But after thinking about it, she realized he was probably right about the loan. Black, white or polka-dotted, she was still a tycoon, and bankers adored tycoons. A financing package with a fat down payment could be put together, a very tasty counteroffer. The Simmons family would be drooling all over their foie gras, and the union boys from Chicago would have to look elsewhere for a spot to erect their ticky-tacky shopping mall.
JoLayne attacked her Caesar salad and said to Tom Krome: “You’re right. I’ve decided to be positive.”
“Good, because we’re on a roll.”
“I can’t argue with that.”
They’d returned the overdue Boston Whaler with a minimum of uproar, blunting the old dock rat’s ire by pleasantly agreeing to forfeit the deposit. After grabbing a cab down to the boat ramp, they’d retrieved Tom’s Honda and sped directly to Miami International Airport, where they lucked into a nonstop to Tallahassee. By the time they arrived, the state lottery office had closed for the day. They’d gotten a room at the Sheraton, hopped in the shower and collapsed in exhaustion across the king-sized bed. Dinner was cocktail crackers and Hershey’s kisses from the minibar. They’d both been too tired to make love and had fallen asleep laughing about it, and trying not to think of Pearl Key.
When the Lotto bureau opened the next morning, JoLayne and Tom were waiting at the door with the ticket. A clerk thought she was joking when she matter-of-factly remarked it had been hidden inside a nonlubricated condom. The paperwork took about an hour, then a photographer from the publicity office made some pictures of JoLayne holding a blown-up facsimile of the flamingo-adorned check. Tom was pleased they’d avoided TV and newspaper coverage by showing up unannounced. By the time a press release was issued, they’d be back in Grange.
“This is all going to work out,” he assured JoLayne, pouring more champagne. “I promise.”
“What about you and me?”
“Absolutely.”
JoLayne studied him. “Absolutely, Tom?”
“Oh brother. Here it comes.” Krome set down his glass.
She said, “I think you deserve some of the money.”
“Why?”
“For everything. Quitting your job to stay with me. Risking your neck. Stopping me from doing something crazy out there.”
“Anything else?”
“I’d feel so much better,” she said, “giving you something.”
Tom tapped a fork on the tablecloth. “Boy, that guilt—it’s a killer. I sympathize.”
“You’re wrong.”
“No, I’m right. If I won’t take the money, it’ll make it harder for you to dump me later. You’ll feel so awful you’ll keep putting it off, stringing me along, probably for months and months—”
“Eat your salad,” JoLayne said.
“But if I do take a cut, then you won’t feel so lousy saying goodbye. You can tell yourself you didn’t use me, didn’t take advantage of a hopelessly smitten sap and then cut him loose. You can tell yourself you were fair about it, even decent.”
“Are you finished?” JoLayne inwardly ached at the truth of what he said. She definitely was looking for an escape clause, in case the romance didn’t work. She was looking for a way to live with herself if someday she had to break up with him, after all he’d done for her.
Tom said, “I don’t want the damn money. You understand? Nada. Not a penny.”
“I believe you.”
“Finally.”
“But just for the record, I’ve got no plans to ‘dump’ you.” JoLayne kicked off a shoe and slipped her bare foot in Tom’s lap, under the table.
Tom’s eyes widened. “Oh, that’s fighting fair.”
“I’ve had a bad run with men. I guess I’m conditioned to expect the worst.”
“Understood,” he said. “And just for the record, you should feel free to string me along. Drag it out as long as you can stand to, because I’ll take every minute with you that I can get.”
“You’re pretty polished at this guilt business.”
“Oh, I’m a pro,” Tom said, “one of the best. So here’s the deal: Give us six months together. If you’re not happy, I’ll go quietly. No wailing, no racking sobs. The only thing it’ll cost you is a plane ticket to Alaska.”
JoLayne steepled her hands. “Hmmm. I suppose you’ll insist on first class.”
“You bet your ass. Up front with the hot towelettes and sorbets, that’s me. Deal?”
“OK. Deal.”
They shook. The waiter came with the steaks, big T-bones done rare. Tom waited for JoLayne to take the first bite.
“Delicious,” she reported.
“Whew.”
“Hey, I just thought of something. What if you dump me?”
Tom Krome grinned. “You just thought of that?”
“Smart ass!” she said, and poked him with her big toe in quite a sensitive area. They wolfed their steaks, skipped dessert and hurried back to the room to make love.
Judge Arthur Battenkill Jr. came home to an empty house. Katie was probably at the supermarket or the hairdresser. The judge put on the television and sat down to savor a martini, in celebration of his retirement. The early news came on but he didnt pay much attention. Instead he absorbed himself with the challenge of selecting a Caribbean wardrobe. Nassau would be the logical place to shop; Bay Street, where he’d once bought Willow a hand-dyed linen blouse and a neon thong bikini, which he’d brutishly gnawed off in the
cabana.
Arthur Battenkill tried to imagine himself in vivid teal walking shorts and woven beach sandals; him with his hairy feet and chalky, birdlike legs. He resolved to do whatever was needed to be a respectable exile, to blend in. He looked forward to learning the island life.
The name Tom Krome jarred him from the reverie. It came from the television.
The judge grabbed for the remote and turned up the volume. As he watched the footage, he stirred the gin with a manicured pinkie. Some sort of press conference at The Register. A good-looking woman in a short black dress; Krome’s wife, according to the TV anchor. Picking up a journalism plaque on behalf of her dead husband. Then: chaos.
Arthur Battenkill rocked forward, clutching his martini with both hands. God, it was official—Krome was indeed alive!
There was the man’s lawyer on television, saying so. He’d just served the astonished and now flustered Mrs. Krome with divorce papers.
Ordinarily the judge would’ve smiled in admiration at the attorney’s cold-blooded ambush, but Arthur Battenkill wasn’t enjoying the moment even slightly. He was climbing the stairs, taking three at a time, anticipating what he’d find when he reached the bedroom; preparing himself for the catastrophic fact that Katie wasn’t at the grocery or the salon. She was gone.
Her drawers in the bureau were empty; her side of the bathroom vanity was cleaned out. A suitcase was also missing, the big brown one with foldaway casters. A lavender note in Katie’s frilly handwriting was Scotch-taped to the headboard of their bed, and for several moments it paralyzed the judge:
Honesty, Arthur. Remember?
Which meant, of course, that his wife, Katherine Battenkill, had been to the police.
The judge began packing like the frantic fugitive he was about to become. Tomorrow’s front-page newspaper headline would exhume Tom Krome but, more important, rekindle the mystery of the corpse found in the burned house. Detectives who might otherwise have dismissed Katie’s yarn as spousal bile (and done so without a nudge, being longtime courthouse acquaintances of Arthur Battenkill) would be impelled in the scorching glare of the media to take her seriously.
Which meant a full-blown search would begin for Champ Powell, the absent law clerk.
I could be fucked, thought Arthur Battenkill. Seriously fucked.
He filled their second-string suitcase, a gunmetal Samsonite, with underwear, toiletries, every short-sleeved shirt he owned, jeans and khakis, a windbreaker, PABA-free sunscreen, swim trunks, a stack of traveler’s checks (which he’d purchased that morning at the bank) and a few items of sentimental value (engraved cuff links, an ivory gavel and two boxes of personalized Titleists). He concealed five thousand in cash (withdrawn during the same sortie to the bank) inside random pairs of nylon socks. He packed a single blue suit (though not the vest) and one of his judge’s robes, in case he needed to make an impression on some recalcitrant Bahamian immigration man.
One thing Arthur Battenkill found missing from the marital bureau was his passport, which Katie undoubtedly had swiped to thwart his escape.
Clever girl, the judge said to himself.
What his wife did not know (and Arthur Battenkill did, from his illicit travels with Willow and Dana) was that U.S. citizens didn’t need a passport for entry into the Commonwealth of the Bahamas. A birth certificate sufficed, and the judge had one in his billfold.
He latched the suitcase and dragged it to the living room, where he got on the phone to a small air-charter service in Satellite Beach. The owners owed him a favor, as he’d once saved them a bundle by overruling a catastrophic jury verdict. The case involved a 323-pound passenger who’d been injured by a sliding crate of roosters on a flight to Andros. Jurors blamed the air-charter service for the mishap and awarded the passenger $100,000 for each of her fractured toes, which numbered exactly four. However, it was Arthur Battenkill’s view, based on the expert testimony, that the woman herself shared much of the blame since it was her jumbo presence in the rear of the aircraft that had caused the cargo to shift so precipitously upon takeoff. The judge sliced the jury award by seventy-five percent, a decision upheld on appeal and received buoyantly by the air-charter firm.
Whose owners now assured Arthur Battenkill Jr. that it would be no trouble flying him to Marsh Harbour, none whatsoever.
As the judge showered and shaved for the last time as an American resident, he imagined how it would be, his new life in the islands. It would have been better with Katie, for a single middle-aged man surely would attract more notice and even suspicion. Still, he could easily picture himself as the newly arrived gentleman divorcé—no, a widower. Polite, educated, respectful of native ways. He’d have a small place on the water and live modestly off investments. Discreetly he would let it drop that he’d held a position of prominence in the States. Perhaps eventually he would take on some piecework, advising local attorneys who had business with the Florida courts. He also would learn how to snorkel, and would order some books to help him identify the reef fish. He would go barefoot and get a nut-brown tan. There would be time for painting, too (which he hadn’t done since his undergraduate days)—watercolors of passing sailboats and swaying palms, bright tropical scenes that would sell big with the tourists in Nassau or Freeport.
Leaning his forehead against the tiles in the steamy shower, the Honorable Arthur Battenkill Jr. could see it all. What he couldn’t see was the plain blue sedan pulling into his driveway. Inside were three men: an FBI agent and two county detectives. They’d come to ask the judge about his law clerk, whose name had been helpfully provided by the judge’s wife and secretaries, and whose toasted remains had been (less than one hour ago) positively identified by a series of DNA tests. If, as Mrs. Battenkill stated, the judge had assigned the late Champ Powell to the arson in which he’d perished, then the judge himself would stand trial for felony murder.
It was a topic that would arise soon enough, after Arthur Battenkill toweled off, got dressed, picked up his suitcase and— gaily humming the tune of “Yellow Bird”—walked out his front door, where the men stood in wait.
“What’ll happen to your husband?”
Katie Battenkill said, “Prison, I guess.”
“God.” Mary Andrea Finley Krome, thinking: This one’s tougher than she looks.
“There’s a Denny’s off the next exit. Are you hungry?”
Mary Andrea said, “Tell me again where we’re going. The name of the place.”
“Grange.”
“And you’re sure Tom’s there?”
“I think so. I’m pretty sure,” Katie replied.
“And how exactly do you know him? Or did you already say?”
Mary Andrea wasn’t in the habit of road-tripping with total strangers, but the woman had seemed trustworthy and Mary Andrea had been frantic—spooked by Tom’s divorce lawyer and rudely shouted at by the reporters. She would never forget the heat of the TV lights on her neck as she fled, nor the dread as she fought for a path through the crowd in the newspaper lobby. She’d even considered feigning another medical collapse but decided against it; the choreography would’ve been dicey amid the tumult.
All of a sudden a hand had gripped her elbow, and she’d spun to see this woman—a pretty strawberry blonde, who’d led her out the door and said: “Let’s get you away from all this nonsense.”
And Mary Andrea, stunned with defeat and weakened from humiliation, had accompanied the consoling stranger because it was the next best thing to running, which was what Mary Andrea felt most like doing. The woman introduced herself as Katie something-or-other and briskly took Mary Andrea to a car.
“I tried to get there sooner,” she’d said. “I wanted to tell you your husband was still alive—you deserved to know. But then I got tied up at the sheriff’s office.”
Initially Mary Andrea had let pass the last part of the woman’s remark, but she brought it up later, as an icebreaker, when they were on the highway. Katie candidly stated that her husband was a local judge who?
??d committed a terrible crime, and that her conscience and religious beliefs required her to rat him out to the police. The story piqued Mary Andrea’s curiosity but she was eager to steer the conversation back to the topic of her scheming bastard husband. How else to describe a man so merciless that he’d burn down his own house to set up his own wife—even an estranged one—for publicly televised ridicule!
“You’re mistaken. It wasn’t like that,” said Katie Battenkill.
“You don’t know Tom.”
“Actually, I do. See, I was his lover.” Katie was adhering to her newfound doctrine of total honesty. “For about two weeks. Look in my purse, there’s a list of all the times we made love. It’s on lavender notepaper, folded in half.”
Mary Andrea said, “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Go ahead and look.”
“No, thanks.”
“Truth matters more than anything in the world. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”
“And then some,” Mary Andrea said, under her breath. She considered putting on a show of being jealous, to discourage the woman from further elaboration.
But Katie caught her off guard by asking: “Aren’t you glad he’s alive? You don’t look all that thrilled.”
“I’m … I guess I’m still in shock.”
Katie seemed doubtful.
Mary Andrea said, “If I weren’t so damn mad at him, yes, I’d be glad.” Which possibly was true. Mary Andrea knew her peevishness didn’t fit the circumstances, but young Katie couldn’t know what the Krome marriage was, or had become. And as good a performer as Mary Andrea was, she wasn’t sure how an ex-widow ought to act. She’d never met one.