Whale Season (19 page)

Chapter 31

I
n all of his forty-one years on this earth, Leon has never borrowed pants from another man before—now he feels as if he's making it a habit.

“Woo-woo,” he says to himself. He's starting to really like the sound of a model train whistle. “Woo-woo.”

And even Leon knows this is not a good sign.

Leon is standing in Bender's tiny living room, waiting for the mayor to find him pants that fit. He's clutching Sam's around his waist, feels naked. Hinky. Saltwater trickles down his leg, gives him goose bumps. He has sand in places that he's never had sand in before.

Bender lives in a small shed of a house behind The Pink. Inside, it looks like the singsong chalkboard in Mrs. Sitwell's former fifth-grade classroom; every available space is filled with aquariums. In his spare time, Bender breeds “designer” koi for the Japanese market. Five thousand dollars for one fish alone. Some of his most popular “mutations,” as he calls them, are in his “Fishy Politicians” line. It's a bipartisan success. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush are both top sellers. The fish bear an uncanny resemblance to the men.

“It's all in the cheeks,” Bender says. He's heard that they're sometimes used for sushi, but, being a politician himself, he tries not to think about that too much.

All those fish give the room a slightly green tint, an algae air. It's sort of like how Leon feels—green and musty.

“A complete ensemble,” Bender says when he finally emerges from behind the beaded curtain of his bedroom. He hands Leon a towel to dry off with along with a pair of yellow golfing pants and a Hawaiian print shirt from his seemingly endless collection of Hawaiian print shirts.

“You
do
know we don't live in Hawaii?” Leon asks.

“I prefer to overlook insignificant details,” Bender says and leaves the room so that Leon can dress. Both the shirt and pants are the color of police Caution tape. The shirt has splotches of red hibiscus on it.

Once dressed, Leon looks like a crime scene.

Bender sticks his head through the beaded curtain, “Fetching!” he says. Beaming.

Bender's also changed his clothes. He's now wearing a black kimono with a frowning, squatting tiki god across the back of it, traditional
Zori
sandals, and white socks. He's sprayed his tequila sunrise hair with silver glitter. He is neon elegant. His wardrobe is inspired by a bartender he once knew in
Kabukicho,
Tokyo's red-light district, during the height of his “Pirate Years” with Jacques Cousteau.

“Hate to push you out,” Bender says. “But it's New Year's Eve at The Pink. Lots to do. Stop by later. I'll pour you one on the house.”

“What about the whales?” Leon asks. “In the harbor.”

“Has to be something else. Harbor's too shallow. It'd be a miracle if a whale wandered in.”

“You sure?”

Bender barks a deep affirmative bark like a bassett hound. Then bays at an imaginary moon. Silver glitter sprinkles onto his black kimono, like stardust, then onto the floor.

This would all be a funny story to tell Carlotta, but when Leon arrives at Lucky's, she isn't there. Neither is Dagmar. Nor Sam, although his new red Firebird is still parked where Leon left it.

They are gone, all of them.

And so, unfortunately, is the American Dream—with all that beautiful chrome and the tiny lavender mouse pillows.

“Yellow is just not my lucky color,” Leon says, and it starts to thunder, then rain.

Chapter 32

W
hen Jimmy Ray discovered that his machete was missing, he knew Jesus was coming back. But he didn't bother calling Dagmar, or Mr. Trot. There was really no need. Jimmy Ray felt he could handle this himself.

So, he waits.

Outside his tiny key lime house there are fists of lighting. Jimmy Ray sits in the dark kitchen dressed in a black turtleneck sweater, black trousers, and soft-soled shoes—warrior's clothes—and listens to the cacophony of scanners, the great chatter of humanity. Every now and then a flash of lightning illuminates the room. Then darkness again.

Jimmy Ray feels calm. He prays for wisdom to Buddha and God in equal measure. When the kitchen door finally opens, he is ready.

“I don't understand, son,” he says.

A bolt of lightning strikes nearby. For a moment, Jesus is illuminated—his crown-of-thorn scars, the haunted sad eyes. He seems more vulnerable, smaller than Jimmy Ray imagines him to be, but there is blood splattered everywhere—across his face, his bare chest, the shirt wrapped around his waist, and the machete.

“Let's take a ride,” Jesus says. “Don't forget to bring your harmonica.”

Behind Lucky's RV Round-Up, the beached body of Sam the Gator, former University of Florida football star, rocks back and forth in the waves. Trot's cell phone lies next to it, ringing.

As does Trot. His blood mixes with rain, saltwater.

Chapter 33

T
he biggest problem with the Nancy Drew “Girl Sleuth” books is that the legions of little girls who read them grew up to be responsible intelligent women who somehow, in the face of unexpected peril, believe that all you need is pluck.

Luckily, at the age of sixteen, Dagmar discovered Ian Fleming's
James Bond.

So she's at The Dream Café looking for Uncle Joe's gun. She always keeps it in her top drawer, just in case she needs it. It's a Jimmy Cagney tough guy snub-nosed Colt Classic .38.

“It's a short man's gun,” Uncle Joe used to say. “Looks like it means business, even if you don't.”

But she can't find it. It was in her desk two days ago. It's always in her desk. She remembers seeing it last when Jimmy Ray and Jesus came for Happy Hour. She showed it to them as part of the tour. “My bodyguard,” she called it.

“You still got that thing?” Jimmy Ray said.

“Stylish,” said Jesus.

That's the very last time she saw it.

Shit, she thinks.

Just then Bernie knocks on the office door and opens it without waiting for an answer. “Thought you'd like to know we're sold out,” she says. It's half an hour before the first show. Bernie is dressed like a peacock, with a huge plume of feathers and an iridescent G-string. Her red hair is piled on top of her head. She is Las Vegas beautiful.

This year's New Year's Eve theme is Moulin Rouge—big and glitzy. One hundred dollars per couple for the early bird show. A hundred fifty after 9
P.M.
Sold out means about $5,000 net for the first show alone.

Dagmar should be ecstatic, but isn't. She's too worried. “Great,” she says, but doesn't look up. She's got to find that gun. She pulls out the top file drawer, shakes it. Papers and files fall into a heap. The office is a mess.

“Anything I can do?” Bernie asks.

“Jimmy Ray call?”

Bernie shakes her head. Her peacock feathers catch the light. Seem to throw tiny rainbows. “Haven't heard from him since the wake.

“It's nice your ex isn't dead, don't you think?”

Dagmar gives Bernie a look that reminds her of a chow she once had to have put down. “Sorry,” Bernie says and closes the door gently behind her.

Dagmar picks up the phone and calls Jimmy Ray again. Still no answer. It's the fourth time in an hour. This isn't good. She starts to call Trot when Bernie opens the door again. Looks sheepish.

“Can I ask a favor?”

“Hurry up,” Dagmar says. From the tone of her voice the answer feels like no—no matter what the favor is. So Bernie takes a deep breath, straightens the peacock feathers over her breasts. “Well, here's the deal,” she says and then pauses. She's trying to find the right words.

Dagmar taps her watch. “Half an hour to showtime.”

“Right. Well, I know how you don't like boyfriends hanging around, but since the bouncer quit—”

“The bouncer quit?”

“Yesterday. Got a better offer in Miami.”

“Why doesn't anybody tell me?”

“I left a note just in case you noticed he wasn't here. I figured you'd notice, though. I mean he is like a four-hundred-pound Samoan—”

“Is there a point to this?” Dagmar is hands-on-hips angry, mostly with herself.

“Well, my boyfriend would like to be the bouncer for tonight—”

“No.”

“But.”

“You know the rules about boyfriends.”

“But—”

The door opens wider. Preacher, the trucker from Christmas, the one who traded the Vietnamese prayer for his breakfast, stands next to Bernie.

Bernie is blushing. Shrugs.

Dagmar is certainly surprised. She did not expect this at all.

Preacher is dressed in a tuxedo. He's an odd combination of handsome and menacing. In his large manicured hands he's holding a florist's box with an old-fashioned orchid corsage inside. The tag reads “To: Bernadette.”

Jeez, Dagmar thinks.

“I'm sorry to barge in Mrs.,” he says. “I don't want to break any rules. If you want me to pay for both shows, I will.”

Not dating guests is another rule, Dagmar wants to say, but Bernie has a lot of loyal fans. Doesn't want to lose her.

Still, she thinks, rules are rules.

“Bernie,” Dagmar says in that strained way she has, but before she can say anything else, the blushing woman dressed in peacock feathers pulls her aside.

“I know what you're thinking,” she whispers quickly, “but the rest of the girls don't know Preacher was a guest. And he's got a good heart—and a good heart is hard to find.”

She's nearly pleading. She's in love, Dagmar thinks.

Amazingly, Preacher seems to be blushing, too. “I'm sorry. I don't want to cause any problems,” he says. Sounds sheepish, looks hulking—it's all very incongruous.

“Jeez,” Dagmar says, giving in. “All right. Preacher, we don't get a lot of trouble here. Mostly we get couples, especially on New Year's Eve. So just fit in. Don't let anybody touch the girls—that's your main concern.”

“Yes'm.”

“We'll work out the money later.”

“I don't need—”

“Well, you'll take it, just in case something happens. I want you to fill out an application form, too. You need to be on staff and covered by insurance—even if it's just for one night.”

“Yes'm.”

“Bernie, you make sure Preacher gets what he needs.”

Then Dagmar turns back to her desk. Picks up the phone again.

“Mrs.?” Preacher interrupts. “Can I just ask you one thing?”

Dagmar taps her watch again. “Twenty-five minutes before showtime.”

“Sorry,” he says. “It's just . . . could you call me Carl? That's my given name. ‘Preacher' is just something the guys call me.”

That Buddha heart, Dagmar thinks, there it is again. Jeez. Well, at least somebody has one.

“Carl's a nice name,” she says.

“It was my father's.”

“Glad to hear it. That's nice. Now, Carl get out of here. Take Bernie with you.”

He takes Bernie's hand and they're both goofy, beaming.

Lovesick, Dagmar thinks. “Back to work,” she says. “Or I'll fire both your asses.”

When the door closes behind them, Dagmar dials Jimmy Ray again. With Jesus missing, she didn't want to leave him alone, but he insisted. “I'm just old, not helpless,” he told her. Still, she made him lock the doors. But now the phone rings without answer.
Shit.

She slams down the receiver just as Bernie runs back into the office and kisses her on the cheek. “Thanks,” Bernie whispers.

“Get to work,” Dagmar says, as gruff as she can muster. Love, she thinks, what a waste of time. Then she calls Trot's cell. He doesn't answer either.

“Where in the name of hell are you guys?”

It's clear she's going to have to find them, even without a gun.

Just call me Nancy Drew, she thinks—and doesn't like the sound of that at all.