Mean Woman Blues (7 page)

For the moment, he just wished he could get these dumb fucks to quit gambling their lives away. It made him sick to see corporate gangsters taking these poor people’s money this way. He read up on gambling, so he knew just how much the odds were stacked in favor of the house, and now and then he’d tell somebody but never in a casino and never if it wasn’t a pretty loose situation.

Nobody cared. Nobody was interested. But he knew it was all a matter of the way you put it. When the Lord was in him, Daddy could convince a cat it was a dog. He couldn’t wait to get back to his calling.

During those grim and gray days, Daddy watched a lot of television. It was a good alternative to throwing his money away, and the more he sat in his room out of sight, the less chance he had of being recognized.

The Lord spoke to him while he was watching television, though not in one single blinding-white moment. The message came gradually and surely, the way an idea starts from a germ and refines itself. But since Daddy had prayed for a message and since God often spoke to him, he was able to recognize the divinity of this one almost as soon as it was given to him. What he had prayed for was divine guidance regarding God’s future plans for him.

Daddy had never thought highly of televangelists, finding them rather slick and transparent, but he tuned in from time to time because he felt it was part of his job to keep up with the competition. One Sunday morning, as he was watching one of his least favorites, the kind of thought came to him that for various reasons made him uncomfortable:
This guy is an amateur. I’m a million times better than this guy.

Having had the thought he almost immediately forgot about the preacher and went into a reverie about envy and the Biblical prohibition against it. It occurred to him that when you had a thought like that, even if it happened to be true, other people at the very least would take it for envy. Even if you knew it to be God’s truth.

God’s truth
. How had that phrase come into his mind? God had put it there. He knew that because he was good at recognizing that very thing— God’s truth.

So he was better than the other preacher. That was a given. Why was God being so insistent with him? He turned it over in his mind a couple of times, knowing that the rest would unfold in its own good time, exactly as God intended and no other way.

He knew that God did not intend him to become a televangelist. He couldn’t have said how he knew, but he knew it quite well, perhaps because it was an anticlimactic idea. Daddy had been a preacher and he had been a politician and he had been a soldier for justice. Deep in his heart he was still a preacher, but he knew that that was only the core of God’s plan for him. His mission was a much bigger one.

He forgot about the revelation of the televangelist— to the extent that it was one— until a week or so later when he was watching a talk show.
This guy is terrible
, he thought.
I could do that.

And in a split second he had it: He understood how a talk-show host could spread the word of God (though of course he never need mention the three-letter word). And, perhaps not coincidentally, he saw how such a host could also be a politician and a soldier for justice.

He turned off the television, went out to get some yellow pads, brought them back to his nondescript motel room, and began to fill them up with the ideas that now flowed out of him like a sacred river.

He filled up two of the pads and then made himself a checklist of the things he had to do and the order he had to do them in. First on the list was call Rosemarie Owens. He couldn’t do another thing until he did because she held the purse strings.

Rosemarie had all the money in the world, thanks to him. Thanks to Errol Jacomine and no one else. Not only that, she was family.

And fortunately the connection between them had never been publicly made, probably because Rosemarie had the money and clout to dissociate herself from him. Still, the FBI knew, and the Devil-Bitch knew. No matter how much Rosemarie wanted to help him— which was probably not at all— her hands might very well be tied. Her phones were probably tapped, and they very likely watched her house as well. Or did he give himself too much credit?

The media had made him into a monster (with the help of Detective Devil-Bitch Langdon), but maybe he was small potatoes to people with real crooks to catch. He’d have to proceed carefully.

When he judged enough time had passed, he fired up his car, checked it for any burnt-out lights or other excuses for cops to stop it, and drove to Dallas. Once there, he registered at a crummy motel, paid cash, and began to scope out the very fancy Ms. Owens.

She lived in the kind of neighborhood where any stranger was suspect, so it looked as if he’d have to watch from a distance. He didn’t like that. If the FBI was also watching from another building, he’d be visible.

Maybe they were checking her mailbox. He had no idea what lengths they were willing to go to.

Should he send flowers with a rendezvous note? But what was to stop the feds from showing up at the meeting place?

The problem was, he didn’t know enough about her habits to go wait for her at a place she might turn up. He racked his brain until it finally occurred to him that every rich Texas woman would have at least one habit.

Accordingly, he phoned Nieman-Marcus, said he needed to talk about his bill, and was referred to a Donald McCullough. He then went to the store itself (to get around the caller ID problem) and, by means of a simple ruse or two, actually managed to make a call from the credit department. He was rewarded with the ubiquitous voice mail. Good. The real Rosemarie would probably have just blundered in and interrupted.

“This is Donald McCullough at Nieman-Marcus,” he told the robot. “I’m returning your call about your bill. Four p.m. at my office will be quite convenient. See you tomorrow.”

She would know his voice, but how she’d respond, he couldn’t say. What he would do in her shoes would be to go to McCullough’s office, look around for the caller, wait around a bit and leave if they didn’t show up.

If she did that he could catch her at the bottom of the escalator on the next floor down. Of course, she might decide to turn him in, but he was willing to take the chance. He knew enough about her to make her extremely cautious when dealing with him. Besides, the two of them loved each other. Always had.

Feeling cocky the next day, he waited a few blocks from her house, on the route he knew she’d have to take, and the sight of her driving by in her big sleek white Lexus made him happier than anything had in months. In fact, it made him feel like a million dollars. Bulletproof. Absolutely on top of the world.

He decided to abandon the charade of waiting by the down escalator and in fact caught her as she was coming in the door and planted a big one on her just as she opened her mouth to say his birth name: “Earl Jackson! What the devil do you think you’re doing?” He could just hear her saying his first name, the one he’d had when he married her, in that phony British accent of hers, but anything to keep his name quiet.

“Rosemarie. You’re looking pretty.”

“Well, you look like hell.”

* * *

Rosemarie Owens let him take her arm and stroll her around the store, pretending now and then to admire an expensive bauble. Running wasn’t going to help anything. She figured he probably wanted money; she could just give him some and send him on his way. “The whole world’s chasin’ me,” he said. “— or haven’t you heard?”

Mmm hmm. Definitely money.
She said, “Earl, that wasn’t nice what you did to me— having me kidnapped that time.”

“Well, the guy let you go, didn’t he? I wouldn’t let anything happen to you.”

She was silent, for once at a loss for words. What kind of man had you kidnapped and didn’t even say he was sorry?

“Now, Rosemarie, we may have both done a few things— regarding each other— that we regret…”

“Like getting married, you mean?” They had gotten married when she was fifteen, he sixteen. She was Daniel’s mother.

“You hurt me, baby. You really hurt me.”

She turned to him, smiling, and hugged his neck. “Oh, Earl, you know I’m kidding. I’ve still got a soft spot for you, damn your eyes.” The sad thing about it was, she did.

“‘Damn your eyes.’ Americans don’t talk like that, Rosemarie.”

She shrugged. “What can I do for you, Earl Jackson, former husband and the FBI’s second-most-wanted man?”

“I thought you’d never ask, rich lady. First off, I need to talk different. More like you do.”

What in hell?
she thought. She gave him a look meant to convey that she’d just realized she was dealing with a being from a different solar system. And that she saw what he was getting at. “Ah. You need a disguise.”

“You’ve got one. I figure you know where to get ’em.”

Rosemarie was perfectly aware that people said she reminded them of Ivana Trump. She knew she had a certain brassy attractiveness they couldn’t quite place. Her former husband was one of few who remembered she’d once been Mary Rose Markey of Savannah, Georgia.

She weighed her words carefully, not wanting to give him ideas. “You want me to help you get away.”

“Well, not exactly, honey bunch. I’ve kind of got plans to stick around.”

Bad news. No good could come of this. But she couldn’t let him know she was afraid of him, had to make the monster eat out of her hand. She did her best to look concerned for him and hoped it didn’t come off as frightened for herself. She said, “Earl, it’s too dangerous.”

He nuzzled her neck to test the waters, and it took all her will power, but she didn’t flinch. “I think you need some champagne to steady your nerves.”

Really good idea
, she thought, and made up her mind to seduce him. Hell, she still thought he was attractive. Not good-looking— not for a second. Earl Jackson always had been a warty little toad, and time hadn’t improved him. But he had something. An energy or something. She needed time to think, and sex would put him in a good mood.

They went and drank some champagne and then they checked into a hotel. And then, for the first time in forty years, she made love to her ex-husband. What he said in the afterglow was kind of interesting: “Know what Baby? You’re the only woman I ever loved. I mean that.”

She doubted it, but there was a kind of respect between them; there was definitely something there. “Come on, Earl,” she said. “You just slept with me to see if I was wearing a wire. Like some people I know.”

It was a reference to a little insurance policy he’d bought for himself, a recording he’d made of a certain conversation they’d had and sent to her shortly after she’d come into her money. That is, he’d sent a
copy
to her and made that fact very clear. If he went down, she went down. She was still smarting about that.

She knew that she still had the soft, white, unspeakably delicate skin she’d had when she was a teenager, and he stroked her shoulders and her arms and her breasts and belly as he told her his crazy plan. So crazy it just might work.

And considering the alternative, it had to.

He started out slow. “I’m going to need some speech lessons.”

She nodded, thinking it over. She could help him with that. The idea had appeal: Rosemarie Owens as Pygmalion. She wondered if she could pull it off, decided it might be a hell of a lot of fun to try.

“I know a guy,” she said, “but he’s in England. How would you get a passport?”

“Maybe you could bring him over. Say you’ve met a diamond in the rough.”

She nodded, and Earl said, “Do you know an English plastic surgeon?”

That one was easy. “Mexican. Lots of them.”

He sighed. “Looks like I’m going to need papers.”

She made a little face, wondering how to find a reliable forger. The Internet, maybe. “We’re just going to see what we can do, aren’t we? May I ask what you’re going to do once you’ve reinvented yourself?”

“Well, now. You own a cable television station, don’t you?”

“I do.”

“I’m gonna be a TV star. What do you think of that?”

Now he was getting way too close to home. She gave him the alien look again. “Frankly, Scarlett, I think you’ve got a screw loose.”

“Just hear me out now. Just hear me out. This is something The Lord showed me. And it’s what I was meant for.” His voice dropped on that one, as if he actually awed himself. “All these years and now I know.”

Rosemarie rolled her eyes. “You and God, Earl! You and God.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

His eyes flamed fury. She’d forgotten that about him: how fast he could turn mean. Clearly this was no time to make fun of his new life’s work, however crazy it might be.

“Nothing. Go on; I’m interested.”

“Well, it was a sort of vision. I was holed up in some cheap motel in Biloxi, and the Lord showed me what I had to do. I looked at those televangelists, and I looked at those talk shows, and I looked at those reality shows, and I thought,
You know what? There needs to be a whole different kind of talk show, a talk show that could help God help real people. A talk show with a mission.
And you know what that mission would be?”

She shook her head, wondering where on Earth he was going with this.

“The mission is to right wrongs, lady. Real people’s wrongs. If somebody gets cheated, badly treated, or roughed up by the assholes in power, why, Mr. Right will have them tell the story on his show, and then we’ll follow up with some solid reporting on the underlying phenomenon of whatever it was, and then the show’ll sponsor a letter-writing campaign or whatever seems appropriate. To right the wrong. See?”

Her heart rate was starting to pick up by a good little bit. This was a bloody great idea, the kind of thing that could really catch on, breathe life back into her floundering cable station. He was right; it combined three incredibly popular genres, and it would give people a chance to act out their angst. Not just the contestants but also the viewers. With the right host, it could become a national sensation.

She sat up in bed and laughed, breasts flapping like tether-balls. She loved it, actually loved it. “Earl, Earl, Earl,” she said. “Talk about thinking outside the box! You’re a sketch, you know that? I’ll have to keep you around just to amuse myself.” It was daring and dangerous and so insane she just had to do it (leaving escape hatches for herself, of course). “I even like the name.”