That’s why he was sought out by Bodean Gazzer, who’d been having a terrible time trying to park downtown. Having recently purchased the Dodge Ram, Bode thought it was foolhardy to leave it three or four blocks away while he went to wrestle the bureaucracy of the corrections department. Those particular neighborhoods weren’t such lovely places to go for a stroll; wall-to-wall Haitians and Cubans! He had nightmare visions of his gorgeous new truck stripped to its axles.
Chub felt an instant kinship with Bode, whose global theories and braided explanations struck a comforting chord. For instance, Chub had been stung when his parents scorned him as a tax cheat, but Bode Gazzer made him feel better by enumerating the many sound reasons why no full-blooded white American male should give a nickel to the Infernal Revenue. Chub brightened to learn that what he’d initially regarded as ducking a debt was, in fact, an act of legitimate civil protest.
“Like the Boston Tea Party,” Bode had said, invoking his favorite historical reference. “Those boys were against taxation without representation, and that’s what you’re fightin’, too. The white man has lost his voice in this government, so why should he foot the bill?”
It sounded good to Chub. Damn good. And Bode Gazzer was full of such nimble rationalizations.
Some of Chub’s acquaintances, especially the war veterans, disapproved of his handicapped-parking racket. Not Bode. “Think about it,” he’d said to Chub. “How many wheelchair people you actually see? And look how many thousands of parkin’ spaces they got. It don’t add up, unless …”
“’Less what?”
“Unless those parkin’ spots ain’t really for the handicaps,” Bode had surmised darkly. “What color’s them wheelchair permits?”
“Blue.”
“Hmmm-mmm. And what color is the helmets worn by United Nations troops?”
“Fuck if I know. Blue?”
“Yessir!” Bode Gazzer had shaken Chub by the arm. “Don’t you see, boy? There’s an invasion, who you think’s gonna be parked in them blue wheelchair spaces? Soldiers, that’s who. UN soldiers!”
“Jesus Willy Christ.”
“So in my estimation you’re doin’ the country a tremendous goddamn service with those imitation handicap stickers. Every one you sell means one less parkin’ spot for the enemy. That’s how I think of it.”
And that’s how Chub intended to think of it, too. He wasn’t a crook, he was a patriot! Life was getting better and better.
And now here he was, on the road with his best buddy.
Soon to be multimillionaires.
Spending a long leisurely afternoon at Hooters, eating barbecue chicken wings and slugging down Coronas.
Flirting with the waitresses in them shiny orange shorts, sweet God Almighty, some of the finest young legs Chub had ever seen. And asses shaped just like Golden Delicious apples.
And outside: a pickup truck full of guns.
“A toast,” said Bode Gazzer, lifting his mug. “To America.”
“Amen!” Chub burped.
“This here is what it’s all about.”
“For sure.”
Said Bode: “No such thing as too much pussy or too much firepower. That’s a fact.”
They were shitfaced by the time the check came. With a foamy grin, Bode slapped the stolen credit card on the table. Chub vaguely recalled they were supposed to ditch the nigger woman’s Visa after the gun show, where they’d used it to purchase a TEC-9, a Cobray M-11, a used AR-15, a canister of pepper spray and several boxes of ammo.
Chub preferred gun shows over gun stores because, thanks to the National Rifle Association, gun shows remained exempt from practically every state and federal firearms regulation. It had been Chub’s idea to browse at the one in Fort Lauderdale. However, he’d had strong reservations about paying for such flashy weapons with a stolen credit card, which he thought was risky to the point of stupid.
Again Bode Gazzer had put his friend’s mind at ease. He’d explained to Chub that many gun-show dealers were actually undercover ATF agents, and that the use of a phony bank card would send the bully lawmen on a frantic futile search for “J. L. Lucks” and his newly purchased arsenal.
“So they’re off on a goose chase,” Bode had said, “instead of hassling law-abiding Americans all day long.”
His second reason for using a stolen Visa was more pragmatic than political: They had no cash. But Bode had agreed with Chub that they ought to throw away the credit card after the gun show, in case the Chase Bank started checking up.
Chub was about to remind his partner of that plan when an exceptionally long-legged waitress appeared and whisked the Visa card off the table.
Bode rubbed his hands together, reverently. “That is what we’re fightin’ for, my friend. Anytime you start to doubt our cause, think a that young sweet thing and the ’Merica she deserves.”
“A-fucking-men,” Chub said with a bleary snort.
The waitress reminded him strikingly of his beloved Kim Basinger: fair skin, sinful lips, yellow hair. Chub was electrified. He wondered if the waitress had a boyfriend, and if she let him take topless photos. Chub considered inviting her to sit and have a beer, but then Bode Gazzer loomed into focus, reminding Chub what they both must look like: Bode, in his camo and cowboy boots, his face welted and bitch-bitten; Chub, gouged and puffy, his mangled left eyelid concealed behind a homemade patch.
The girl’d have to be blind or crazy to show an interest. When she returned to the table, Chub boldly asked her name. She said it was Amber.
“OK, Amber, if I might ast—you ever heard a the White Rebel Brotherhood?”
“Sure,” the waitress said. “They opened for the Geto Boys last summer.”
Bode, who was signing the Visa receipt, glanced up and said: “You are seriously mistaken, sugar.”
“I don’t think so, sir. I got a T-shirt at the concert.”
Bode frowned. Chub twirled his ponytail and whooped. “Ain’t that a kick in the nuts!”
Amber picked up the credit-card slip, which included a hundred-dollar tip, and rewarded them with a blush and her very warmest smile, at which time Chub dropped to one knee and begged permission to purchase her orange shorts as a keepsake of the afternoon. Two Hispanic bouncers materialized to escort the militiamen out of the restaurant.
Later, sitting in the truck among their new guns, Chub was chuckling. “So much for your White Rebel Brotherhood.”
“Shut up,” Bode Gazzer slurred, “’fore I puke on your shoes.”
“Go right ahead, brother. I’m in love.”
“Like hell.”
“I’m in love, and I got a mission.”
“Don’t you start!”
“No,” Chub said, “don’t you try and stop me.”
To find out if the waitress was right about the militia’s name, they stopped at a music store in a Kendall mall. Drowsily Bode pawed through the racks until he came across proof: A compact disc called Nocturnal Omission, recorded in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, by the White Rebel Brotherhood. Bode was aghast to see that three of the five band members were Negroes. Even Chub said: “That ain’t funny.”
Bode shoplifted a half dozen of the CDs, which he shot up good with the TEC-9 after they returned to Chub’s trailer. They arranged it like a skeet range, Chub tossing the discs high in the air while Bode blasted away. They quit when the gun jammed. Chub unfolded a pair of frayed lawn chairs and made a fire in a rusty oil drum. Bode complained that his beer buzz was wearing off, so Chub opened a bottle of cheap vodka, which they passed back and forth while the stars came out.
Eventually Chub said, “I b’lieve our militia needs a new name.”
“I’m way ahead of you.” Bode cocked the bottle to his lips. “The White Clarion Aryans. It just now come to me.”
“Well, I like it,” said Chub, although he wasn’t certain what “clarion” meant. He believed it was mentioned in a Christmas song, perhaps in connection with angels.
“Can we call us the WC …,”
and then he faltered, trying to recall if Aryan was spelled with an E or an A.
Bode Gazzer said, “WCA. Don’t see why not.”
“Because otherwise it’s kind of a mouthful.”
“No more’n the first one.”
“But hey, that’s cool,” Chub said.
White Clarion Aryans. He sure hoped no smart-ass rock bands or rappers or other patriot tribes had already thought of the name.
From the lawn chair Bode rose in his rumpled camos and lifted the now-empty vodka bottle to the sky. “Here’s to the motherfuckin’ WCA. Ready, locked and loaded.”
“Damn right,” said Chub. “The WCA.”
At that moment the young man called Shiner, glazed by Valium, was admiring the letters W.R.B. that were freshly tattooed in Iron Cross-style script across his left biceps. Etched below the initials was a screaming eagle with a blazing rifle locked in its talons.
The tattoo artist worked out of a Harley joint in Vero Beach, Shiner’s first stop on his way south to Florida City, where he planned to hook up with his new white brothers. He had quit the Grab N’Go, leaving on a high note—Mr. Singh, the owner, demanding to know why Shiner’s Impala was moored in the store’s only handicap space. And Shiner, standing tall behind the counter: “I got me a permit.”
“Yes, but I do not understand.”
“Right there on the rearview. See?”
“Yes, yes, but you are not crippled. The police will come.”
Shiner, coughing theatrically: “I got a bad lung.”
“You are not crippled.”
“Disabled is what I am. They’s a difference. From the army is where I hurt my lung.”
And Mr. Singh, waving his slender brown arms, hurrying outside to more closely inspect the wheelchair insignia, piping: “Where you get that? How? Tell me right now please.”
Shiner beaming, the little man’s reaction being a testament to Chub’s skill as a forger.
Saying to Mr. Singh: “It’s the real deal, boss.”
“Yes, yes, but how? You are not crippled or disabled or nothing, and don’t lie to me nonsense. Now move the car.”
And Shiner replying: “That’s how you treat a handicap? Then I quit, raghead.”
Grabbing three hundred-dollar bills from the register, then elbowing his way past Mr. Singh, who was protesting: “You, boy, put the money back! Put the money back!”
Yammering about the videotape Shiner had swiped, on Bodean Gazzer’s instruction, from the store’s slow-speed security camera—in case (Bode explained) the cassette hadn’t yet rewound and taped over the surveillance video from November 25, the date JoLayne Lucks bought her lottery numbers.
Bode Gazzer had emphasized to Shiner the importance of the tape, should the authorities question how they’d come to possess the Grange ticket. The camera could prove they didn’t enter the store until the day after the Lotto drawing.
So, shortly after Chub and Bode had departed, Shiner obediently removed the incriminating video from Mr. Singh’s recorder and replaced it with a blank. Shiner wondered, as he gunned the Impala past the Grange city limits, how Mr. Singh learned about the switch. Normally the little hump didn’t check the VCR unless there’d been a robbery.
Shiner would have been more properly alarmed had he known that Mr. Singh had been visited by the same nosy man who’d accompanied JoLayne Lucks to Shiner’s house. The man named Tom. He’d persuaded Mr. Singh to check the Grab N’Go’s security camera, at which time they’d found that the surveillance tape from the weekend had been swapped for a new one.
Shiner’s misgivings about the video theft were fleeting, for soon he was absorbed in the tattooing process. It was performed by a bearded shirtless biker whose nipples were pierced with silver skull pins. When the last indigo turn of the B was completed, the biker put down the needle and jerked the cord out of the wall socket. Shiner couldn’t stop grinning, even when the biker roughly swabbed his arm with alcohol, which stung like a mother.
What a awesome eagle! Shiner marveled. He couldn’t wait to show Bode and Chub.
Pointing at the martial lettering, Shiner asked the biker: “Know what WRB stands for?”
“Shit, yeah. I got all their albums.”
“No,” said Shiner, “not the band.”
“Then what?”
“You’ll find out pretty soon.”
The biker didn’t like wise guys. “I can’t hardly wait.”
Shiner said: “Here’s a hint: It’s in the Second Amendment.”
The biker stood up and casually kicked the tattoo stool into a corner. “I got a hint for you, too, jackoff: Gimme my money and move your cherry white ass down the road.”
Demencio was tinkering with the weeping Madonna when the doorbell rang. There stood JoLayne Lucks with a tall, clean-cut white man. JoLayne carried one end of the aquarium, the white man had the other.
“Evening,” she said to Demencio, who could do nothing but invite them in.
“Trish is at the grocery,” he said, pointlessly.
They set the aquarium on the floor, next to Demencio’s golf clubs. The journey up the steps had tilted all the little turtles to one end of the tank.
JoLayne Lucks said: “Meet my friend Tom Krome. Tom, this is Demencio.”
The men shook hands; Krome scrutinizing the decapitated Madonna, Demencio eyeing the agitated cooters.
“Whatcha up to?” JoLayne asked.
“No big deal. One of her eyeholes got clogged.” Demencio knew lying would be a waste of energy. It was all there, spread out on the living room carpet for any fool to see—the disassembled statue, the tubes, the rubber pump.
JoLayne said, “So that’s how you make her cry.”
“That’s how we do it.”
The man named Tom was curious about the bottle of perfume.
“Korean knockoff,” Demencio said, “but a good one. See, I try to make the tears smell nice. Pilgrims go for that.”
“That’s a fine idea,” said JoLayne, though her friend Tom looked doubtful. She told Demencio she had a proposition.
“I need you and Trish to watch over the turtles until I get back. There’s a bag of fresh romaine in the car, and I’ll leave you money for more.”
Demencio said, “Where you goin’, JoLayne?”
“I’ve got some business in Miami.”
“Lottery business, I bet.”
Tom Krome spoke up: “What’ve you heard?”
“The ticket got lost, is what I heard,” said Demencio.
JoLayne Lucks promised to reveal the whole story when she returned to Grange. “And I sincerely apologize for being so mysterious, but you’ll understand when the time comes.”
“How long’ll you be gone?”
“Truly I don’t know,” JoLayne said, “but here’s what I propose: one thousand dollars to take care of my darlings. Whether it’s a day or a month.”
Tom Krome looked shocked. Demencio whistled at the number.
JoLayne said, “I’m quite serious.”
And quite nuts, thought Demencio. A grand to baby-sit a load of turtles?
“It’s more than fair,” he remarked, trying to avoid Krome’s eye.
“I think so, too,” JoLayne said. “Now … Trish mentioned you had a cat.”
“Screw the cat,” said Demencio. “Pardon my French.”
“Has it had its shots? I don’t remember seeing you folks at Doc Crawford’s.”
“Just some dumb stray. Trish leaves scraps on the porch.”
“All right,” JoLayne told him, “but the deal’s off if it kills even one of my babies.”
“Don’t you worry.”
“There’s forty-five even. I counted.”
“Forty-five,” Demencio repeated. “I’ll keep track.”
JoLayne handed him a hundred dollars as an advance, plus twenty for a lettuce fund. She said he’d receive the balance when she returned from the trip.
“What about Trish?” she asked. “How does she get on with reptiles?” br />
“Oh, she’s crazy for ’em. Turtles especially.” Demencio could barely keep a straight face.
Krome took out a camera, one of those cardboard disposables. Demencio asked what it was for.
“Your Virgin Mary—can I get a picture? It’s for a friend.”
Demencio said, “I guess. Just give me a second to put her back together.”
“That’ll be terrific. Put her back together and make her cry.”
“Christ, you want tears, too?”
“Please,” said Tom Krome, “if it’s not too much trouble.”
8
It was past midnight when Tom Krome and JoLayne Lucks stopped at a Comfort Inn in South Miami, near the university. Fearing her nasty cuts and bruises would draw stares, JoLayne remained in the car while Krome registered them at the motel. They got separate rooms, adjoining.
Krome fell asleep easily—a wonder, considering he had no job, thirteen hundred dollars in the bank, and an estranged wife who was pretending to be a drug addict while refusing to grant him a divorce. If that wasn’t enough to cause brain fever, he’d also been marked for grievous harm by a jealous judge whose wife he’d been screwing for not even a month. All these weighty problems Krome had put aside in order to recklessly endanger himself pursuing two armed psychopaths who’d robbed and assaulted a woman Krome barely knew.
Yet he slept like a puppy. That according to JoLayne Lucks, who was sitting in the room when he awoke in bright daylight.
“Not a worry in the world,” he heard her say. “That’s one of the best things about my job—watching puppies and kittens sleep.”
Krome rose up on both elbows. JoLayne was wearing a sports halter and bicycle shorts. Her legs and arms were slender but tautly muscled; he wondered why he hadn’t noticed before.
“Babies sleep the same way,” she was saying, “but watching babies makes me sad. I’m not sure why.”