Between the Bridge and the River (30 page)

“He should play golf!” declared Borg.

“Did he play golf in life?” asked Guillame.

“I have no idea but it is unimportant. He was also not French. What we are driving at here is the essence of Tootsiepop Ted.”

Guillame was delighted. He loved to play golf, as did Borg.

“We should have a round tomorrow, for rehearsal,” said Guillame.

“Excellent,” Borg agreed.

Leon steered Claudette to the piano.

“Do you play golf?” he asked her.

She laughed. “
Non, monsieur,
I do not play golf.”

“What’s funny? Women play golf.”

“Not this one,” said Claudette.

Leon sat at the piano. He had learned that the impact of his singing could be enhanced if he accompanied himself, so had learned how to tinkle a few chords. He played and Claudette listened as he sang. A few of the guests drifted from the party but there were quite
a few powerful people in attendance, so no one wanted to appear too enthusiastic, just polite admiration would be appropriate.

Leon ran through his repertoire, giving it all to Claudette with both barrels, and as he did so he admired her composure, which made him want her even more. He had seen that under this kind of seductive pressure most women buckled, became embarrassed, or even came on to him, but she enjoyed his singing and clapped politely with the others when he was done.

“You sing beautifully, thank you,” she told him.

Then excused herself and went to find Guillame.

She had just come out of the bath and was sitting in her robe happily devouring one of the delicious complimentary chocolates the hotel had put out for them when he knocked at the door.

She was surprised to see him. She said that unfortunately Guillame was not there, he had gone off to play golf with Borg. Leon said that he wasn’t here to see Guillame and walked into the room, closing the door behind him.

He looked at her, fresh from the bath, hugging the big white terry-cloth robe around herself like a security blanket. She was the most enchanting thing he had ever seen.

“Claudette, I have a blowjob in mind,” he said softly.

Claudette couldn’t quite believe her ears. “Pardon?”

“I need your mouth on me,” he said, using that tone that always worked for him.

Claudette went to the door and opened it.

“Please leave,” she said flatly.

Leon was genuinely mystified. He had never really encountered this kind of thing before. He had mistakenly believed the press and gossip about himself. He had read in
Peephole
magazine that he was the most eligible single man in the world. “This sexy bachelor can have any woman he wants,” they had written, and they were known for their accuracy.

In his confusion he thought this was a game. He went to her and tried to embrace her, putting his hands on her robe and forcing it open so that he could see her magnificent body.

He gasped. Not at the sight of the naked Claudette, although she was indeed breathtaking, but at the sharp pain he felt in his testicles as she kneed him in the nuts. He still couldn’t get a breath after she had thrown him into the hotel corridor and slammed the door of the suite.

He had to hide his face as a chambermaid looked out a room she was servicing to see what was going on.

He was deeply ashamed.

He didn’t want anyone to see he’d been rejected.

THAT A CAREER CRIMINAL LIKE T-BO
would have chosen to ride around in as distinctive a car as the one he had needs a little explanation. The car itself was not owned by T-Bo alone. He had paid cash for it from stolen money he had acquired from his mugging escapades with Silky, Wilson, and occasionally Vermont, although Vermont was usually too high to do much but smoke more crack, so they didn’t really consider him as having a share.

The last time they took him on a job he had almost gotten them arrested by pulling an attitude with a cop who wanted to know why they were running down the street. The three other boys were together enough to know that the way to fool cops was to be polite and act respectful but unafraid. Vermont had been neither, yelling at the cop, who was black, that he was an Uncle Tom doing whitey’s dirty work for him. The boys managed to get away by saying their friend was a little drunk after having been to the school prom where his girlfriend had ditched him for a white boy. The cop, Buford Manning, didn’t buy it for a minute but he was on his own, it was the end of his shift, his wife was nine months pregnant, and he wanted to go home. He was quite happy to drop the whole thing if he didn’t lose face. T-Bo, Silky, and Wilson played the forelock tugging just right and managed to get away
but they never took Vermont out again. He was fun to party with but he was a liability in the field.

They bought the car together for status and protection. If they had kept the cash and that became known, even if they had it secreted somewhere, they would have become targets for other guys in the neighborhood. One or maybe all of them could be kidnapped or tortured until they had given up the goods. Also, if they kept the money in cash, then they had to believe that one of them would not at some point abscond with all the money. The boys were uneducated but they were not stupid, so they plowed a chunk of money into the car. They could ride in it together, they could chase girls, look good, and feel cool. Just what every teenager wants.

Buying a car also involved less paperwork than most other big purchases, so it was easier to have the legality forged should you be stopped by a cop, and if you are young and black and in a pimped ride, you will definitely be stopped by a cop.

That’s one of the things that gives the car status with other kids.

So the car was owned three ways and they had put more money into it, getting it just the way they wanted it, and now T-Bo had stolen it. There was no chance the other boys would report the car as stolen, and they had no idea in which direction T-Bo was headed, but if they ever saw him again they would have to shoot him. They knew it and T-Bo knew it. So he was never going back to Miami.

He thought about this as he drove north on the Florida Turnpike with his new gang. He felt bad about taking the car and promised himself that one day he would make it up to his friends.

He also began to countenance the thought that he would have to make amends to the people he had mugged. He shook that off. Too much too soon.

Fraser was looking at the flat, wet countryside and thinking about the French policeman who had banjaxed him with the truncheon. He said he shook like a Bethlehem shepherd. What did he mean by that? He wondered who had written
Could do better
on his report card.

Jesus?

Probably.

He wondered what Carl would make of all this.

Vermont was thinking about crack cocaine. He had always promised himself he would never turn out to be a drunk like his old man. He had hated the way the fool had drooled on himself and been a laughingstock among the family and in the neighborhood and yet he felt he had done the exact same thing to himself with the pipe. He was done with that shit. He felt free; the open-top car added to the sensation. He felt as good as he had ever felt in his life. He held his hands up in the air and with sheer delight he screamed, “Yee fucking haw!” in his best cowboy.

The others smiled.

Cherry had not eaten as much as she had in Hooters in one sitting since before she started having her period. She felt good too but a bit sick. She felt her rib cage with her fingers, she touched her nipples through her shirt, trying to find where her breasts used to be. At twenty-three she thought she should be at the absolute peak of her physical beauty as a woman and yet here she was like a fucking scarecrow. She decided she really needed to put on some weight. Her body, unaccustomed to the calorie intake and fried food, was in a mild state of toxic shock and her digestive tract was in some kind of emergency mode.

“I need to go to the bathroom,” she said.

“Me too,” said Fraser.

T-Bo said he would pull in at the next stop.

Mickey Day was an angry man.

He had been angry when he worked as a high-school math teacher in Boston. He thought it might be because the students were such a pain in the ass but when he retired the anger didn’t go away. He thought maybe it was because of his wife, Agnes, who was such a fucking chowderhead, but he could get plenty angry these days and Agnes had been in her grave for two years. Maybe it was because he didn’t have kids or because of the government or the media or all of the above. He guessed it came down to one absolute truth: Other people were just fucking assholes. They consistently proved his point
by the way they drove or acted around him. You had to carry a gun for protection. It made him feel better knowing it was there, sitting in the glove compartment like buried treasure.

He had tried to get away from being angry. After he retired, he and Agnes had sold everything and bought an RV, a big camper wagon that they were going to go out on the open road with. They were going to tour America, get out and away from all the assholes, but Agnes fucked up; she died of a heart attack three weeks out of Boston. He went back, cremated her, and went out on the road again and here he was, sixty-three years old, bald, varicose veins, high blood pressure, and blowing around the country like a fucking tumbleweed.

No wonder he was fucking angry.

He needed gas, so he pulled into the next stop.

It wasn’t much of a crash and it would have been difficult to say who was at fault but the fact that the Chevy had the roof down didn’t help. T-Bo was pulling out of the rest area and Mickey Day was pulling in. The big RV crashed into the passenger side of the Caprice, hitting Vermont and Fraser, who were on that side of the car. Vermont had a few bumps and bruises and Fraser had a few more than he’d had before but otherwise everyone was okay.

Mickey was furious and adrenalized. He stuck his gun in his waistband under his shirt, got down from the RV, and yelled at T-Bo, “You slammed into me!”

T-Bo did not want trouble, they didn’t need cops around. “It’s cool, man, it’s all good. Everybody’s okay.”

“I am not fucking okay!” shouted Mickey. “Look what you did to my vehicle.” He pointed to a smashed headlight on the camper, which had survived the impact in far better shape than the Chevy, which had a buckled front wheel and a mashed front wing.

It was no longer drivable.

“Be cool. It’s all good,” cooed Vermont, stepping wide and away from Mickey so that he couldn’t look at both him and T-Bo at the same time. The ghetto kids were going into autopilot. They had to get out of this, and soon.

Cherry started crying and Fraser put his arm around her.

“Now look what you’ve done,” he said to no one in particular.

Mickey took stock of the situation. Two niggers, probably on crack, a mangy-looking fag in a dress, and some skinny junkie girl. He knew this was dangerous. He panicked and pulled out the gun.

“Stay where you are,” he said, not knowing who he meant.

Everyone stood still.

Except Fraser.

Fraser had never seen a handgun before except in the movies, so he had no real concept of what danger he was in, and even if he had known he wouldn’t have cared. He worked for God now.

He left Cherry and started walking toward the shaking Mickey.

“Get back, faggot!” Mickey yelled at him.

Fraser smiled the big gap-tooth grin and told Mickey it was all right.

Mickey was actually about to pull the trigger when he felt a shooting, searing pain tear across his body. His legs buckled and he fell like a stone. He was out.

“What the fuck?” said Vermont. No one had been anywhere near him.

Other drivers and customers at the rest stop were looking over.

“Quick, get in the bus,” said T-Bo.

“It’s an RV,” said Cherry.

“Just fucking get in it,” said T-Bo.

Cherry and Vermont bundled into the camper. Fraser was leaning over Mickey, who was convulsing and foaming at the mouth. T-Bo ran over to them.

“We gotta get out of here, Rabbi.”

“Okay.” Fraser smiled. “Help me carry him.”

T-Bo didn’t want to take Mickey but he was between the devil and the deep blue sea. Taking the camper without Mickey in it was grand theft auto and probably an assault charge or worse if the old fuck died. Taking him and the vehicle was carjacking and assault or worse if the old fuck died.

Staying was not an option. No cops or judges were going to believe a crackhead, a homeboy, a stripper, and a foreigner in a dress
that the whole thing was just a huge misunderstanding, especially when they saw the gun.

The fastest way out of there was not to argue with the Rabbi, so he helped Fraser drag the convulsing senior, who was beginning to turn blue, into the camper.

He started it up and got back onto the turnpike.

The handgun was left lying in the road next to the damaged car.

T-Bo was smart enough to realize that someone at the gas station might have taken the camper’s number (although if they tried tracing the Chevy, all they would get was a fictional bartender in Miami named Desmond Cosby), and that traveling on the turnpike would probably be a mistake, so he got off at the next exit.

They would take the back roads north.

Fraser was sitting with Mickey, who had stopped convulsing but still not regained consciousness, as T-Bo drove into a hick town in northern Florida looking for a place for them to hunker down for the night.

Fraser kept whispering in the old man’s ear, “Come back, come back, come back.”

T-Bo was exhausted, this place would do. It looked like nothing had happened here for years. He read the town’s name on the roadside sign.

C
RAWFORD’S
C
REEK.

P
LEASE DRIVE CAREFULLY.

EDINBURGH AND GLASGOW
are only about forty-five miles apart and there is no direct scheduled flight from Paris to Glasgow, so George and Claudette flew into Edinburgh Airport instead. It was a little plane, the demand not being high, and George could not get comfortable in his seat.