Sammy Keyes and the Power of Justice Jack (19 page)

In her notebook there’s a list of names and two columns of numbers, and what she does is punch in the
amount that’s in the second column of numbers and multiply it by 0.75 Then she writes down that amount in a third column, counts out the calculated money, calls the person’s name, and hands over a stack of cash.

It doesn’t take long for me to catch on that the first column is the amount the person gave her, the second column is the amount they won, and the third column is the amount she’s paying out.

Which means she’s skimming twenty-five percent right off the top.

She doesn’t seem to realize that I’m hovering behind her, because she barks at anyone else who gets close. “Get back, Sally, I need to concentrate!” “Fran, what did I just tell Sally?” “Ted, you’ll get yours. Back off!”

When she’s finally done distributing the money, I step away as she eyes Mr. Garnucci and says, “Bet you wish you’d believed me.”

Mr. G nods like, No kidding, while the rest of the mob counts through their money, not quite believing their eyes.

Finally the Ted guy says, “But how’d you
do
it?”

The Wedge shrugs as she stuffs away her notebook and what’s left of the money. “Told you. I got a tip.”

“But
what
tip?” Bun-Top asks. “And where’d you go?”

“You probably don’t want to ask too many questions.”

“But why didn’t you just use your own money?” Screwdriver Sally asks.

“She probably didn’t
have
any,” Ted says, and there’s an edge to his voice that doesn’t sound too friendly.

“Then what’s all that green she just stuffed back in her purse?” Bun-Top says.

“Wait. Are you skimming off our winnings?” Screwdriver Sally demands, and I swear if she’d had a screwdriver in her hand right then, she’d have used it to do a stick-’em-up to Mrs. Wedgewood.

The Wedge looks at them and you can tell she’s flabbergasted. “I nearly tripled your money,” she tells them. “I can’t take a percentage?”

“How much did you take?” Ted asks.

“What’s it matter?” she growls at him. “I could have just returned what you gave me and you would never have known I had any winnings at all!”

“How much?” Ted demands.

“Twenty-five percent! And now I’m thinking I should have taken fifty!”

“Twenty-five percent!” the Prune Posse cries. “That’s highway robbery!”

Then an old guy in the back with a five-day stubble shakes his cane and says, “No dealer gets twenty-five percent! Five, maybe ten … And you took twenty-five?”

Mr. G steps forward. “Everybody, calm down! Can we look at the positive here? Yesterday you thought you’d lost all your money; today you’ve got almost three times that amount! I’d be happy to give up twenty-five percent for that kind of return on my investment!”

“But she
could
have lost it all!” Bun-Top says. “And if she had, would she have given us twenty-five percent of her own money?”

Mrs. Wedgewood squints her beady little eyes at her. “What?”

“Go!” Mr. Garnucci tells them, shooing the greedy
grumps off. “Quit looking at how much she took and focus on how much she gave you.”

Everyone else starts to move, but Bun-Top stands firm. “But she risked our money to make a ton of money for herself! She sure shouldn’t get a quarter of it!”

“Go!” Mr. Garnucci barks at her. “Enough of this!”

So she leaves, too, but it’s easy to see from the glares they all throw over their shoulders that they’re feeling ripped off.

“Wow,” I say, shaking my head. “That’s really unbelievable.”

Mrs. Wedgewood nods. “As my daddy would say, no good deed goes unpunished.” Then she opens her purse again and pulls out two crisp one-hundred-dollar bills.

Now, for a second my heart skips a beat, because I think she’s going to give them to me, but instead she turns to Mr. G and says, “Here, Vinnie. Sorry you didn’t invest. I’m sure they’ve been driving you nuts.”

His face lights up. “Why, thank you!”

She drills him with her eyes. “I trust you can keep the investments made here quiet?”

“Of course,” he says with a smile as he plucks the money from Mrs. Wedgewood’s fingers.

Suddenly her giving him the two hundred makes sense. She doesn’t
have
anything on him, which is why she’s bribing him to keep all this quiet.

He doesn’t seem to really get that, though, because he asks her, “Would you like me to wheel you up?” like she’s his new best friend instead of his resident blackmailer.

“No, Samantha can do that.” She gives me one of her
beady looks. “You’re here to visit your grandmother, I assume?”

I force a closed smile and nod.

“Then let’s go.”

Even when she’s on wheels and not slippery with soap, moving Mrs. Wedgewood is a workout. I wound up having to give her my skateboard to hold because I needed to really lean into the wheelchair to get any movement. And when I
did
get her going, I couldn’t stop and almost crashed her into the elevator door.

Talk about momentum!

Anyway, waiting at the elevator seemed to take forever. Probably because the Miffed Mob was using it.

Or jamming it because they knew the Big W had to use it to get home.

And while we’re waiting, I can’t help noticing that Mrs. Wedgewood’s whole face is misty.

Make that
sweaty
.

And then I see that there are drips of sweat trickling down her temples.

“Thanks for taking me up, sugar,” she says. “I knew you wouldn’t mind.”

Which I wouldn’t if she had asked me instead of commanding me.

And also if she didn’t smell so bad.

And since she’s calling me sugar, I’m pretty sure she’s gathering spice—thinking of ways she can put me to work for her that’ll take me all night. So I try to interrupt her blackmailing mind with small talk. “It’s too bad the rest of them couldn’t just be happy that you won so big.”

“Someone was sure smiling down on me,” she says, wobbling her head. “At the track and at the casino. I was on an incredible roll.” She turns her sweaty face my way. “I hadn’t planned on staying so long at the casino, but the buffet?” Her eyes close and she lets out a happy sigh. “It was un-be-lievable. Unlimited tiramisu, crème brûlée, prime rib, lobster Florentine …” She smiles at me again. “It was out of this world.”

The door finally opens, and as I bear down to push her in, I say, “Sounds like a foreign language to me.”

“You must at least have had prime rib at some point?”

I want to wipe her face and yank her wig straight, but I just push the 5 button. “Nope.”

She doesn’t say anything on our ride up, but as the door slides open, she says, “You’re probably too young to appreciate it anyway,” and she’s
panting
—like riding an elevator up five floors is real exercise for her.

“Well, here you go,” I tell her as I roll her up to her apartment.

I take my skateboard off her lap and wait as she fumbles through her purse. “I can’t find my key,” she finally tells me.

“You want me to look?” I ask, ’cause really I just want to get her over the threshold and
leave
.

“I should be able to find my own key,” she grumbles as she starts pulling things out of her bag and putting them on her lap.

First comes her notebook.

Then the envelope of “rake” money.

Then
another
envelope bursting with cash.

She must have heard my eyes pop, because when she realizes what she’s just done, she says, “I won it with my rake. Not that I need to explain that to you.”

“Hey, I’m just trying to get you home. It’s none of my business and I don’t care. Besides, it’s not like any of them even thanked you.”

Her head screws around and she drills her beady eyes into me. And at first I think she’s mad at
me
, but then she says, “Not one thank-you, you’re right.”

“Well, Mr. Garnucci thanked you.…”

“He doesn’t count.” She goes back to digging through her purse, and out comes a brush.

A
brush
?

Next come perfume, baby powder, a wallet, and a little portable fan.

And that’s when it hits me that she has no luggage.

No extra clothes.

And I’m totally grossing out over the thought that she’s been wearing that same muumuu and undies for maybe a
week
when she says, “Here it is,” and hands her key to me like I’m her doorman.

Well, door
girl
.

So while she packs up her bag, I unlock her apartment and prop open the door, then I come back around and push her inside.

The doorgirl does not get a tip.

Or, ironically, even a thank-you.

The doorgirl gets told to fetch a glass of water. The doorgirl gets told to help her to the couch and remove her stinky shoes. The doorgirl gets barked at to turn on the fan.

And finally the doorgirl gets told to run down to Maynard’s for some Tums. “I’m all out, sugar,” she says, handing me a twenty. “Please don’t take too long. And save the receipt.”

So, yeah, the doorgirl’s more than slightly ticked off, but what can I do?

I take the twenty and tell her that I’ll be back as quick as I can.

“Don’t get sidetracked!” she snaps as I head for the door. “I really need those Tums.”

So I hurry over to Grams’ apartment, where I dump my stuff and whisper, “The Blackmailer’s back—”

“She is?” Grams says, popping up off the couch.

“—and I’ve got to run down to Maynard’s for some Tums for her.”

“Wait! What happened? Where has she been?”

“She wasn’t kidding about having a hot tip. Everyone tripled their money.”

Grams gasps, “No!” and you can tell she’s kicking herself. But she shifts gears fast and says, “So when are the police showing up?”

I laugh, ’cause I hadn’t even considered that she might have done something really illegal. I mean, how could someone like the Wedge make a mad dash or escape?

Besides, the thought of a walrus in a wig doing some kind of
heist
was just ridiculous.

Anyway, I head for the door, saying, “I’ve got tons to tell you, but I’m starving and I have to get this done first. Garnucci knows I’m here, so I’ve got to leave anyway. I’ll be right back!”

“Promise me you won’t get sidetracked!”

I stop and turn around.

“Why does everybody tell me that?”

She laughs. “Why do you think?”

“Thanks a lot,” I grumble, and then head out the way I’d come in, promising myself I’d prove them all wrong.

You’re probably thinking I got sidetracked.

Well, guess what?

I didn’t.

What I
did
was almost get killed.

Now, if Maynard’s freeloading son, T.J., had been working the counter instead of the Elvis impersonator, I might have had to go clear down to the supermarket, because T.J. likes me about as much as a chained dog likes a cat. Something about seeing me sets him off, and he will bark and snarl and snap at me until he finally drives me away.

So there was definitely the
potential
for a sidetrack, but Elvis was happy to see me. “Hey, little mama!” he calls from behind the counter. “How are things in Carny Town?”

Now, with Hudson’s help, I had finally figured out that the Elvis clerk talks only in Elvis songs.

Well, almost.

He’ll throw an extra word in now and then to tie together the lyrics or song titles, but pretty much everything he says is something Elvis sang. And it used to drive me kinda nuts, because I’ve never heard any Elvis songs—well,
except maybe “Jailhouse Rock” or “Hound Dog”—so it was like he was talking in riddles.

No, not even riddles.

More like mixed-up phrases.

Nonsense that actually made sense.

In a weird Elvis-impersonator sort of way.

Even so, I’m always super-happy to see Elvis, because seeing him means I don’t have to see T.J. Of course, Elvis doesn’t know that. He just thinks I’m a happy camper coming in for bubble gum.

“Things are hoppin’ in Carny Town,” I tell him, and then right away I flash to the similarities between him and Justice Jack. Not what they do—just how they dress in costumes and prefer to be people they’re not. “Have you heard about Justice Jack?”

“Didja ever? He’s catchin’ on fast!” Elvis says with a crooked Elvis smile. “Beginner’s luck.”

“Think so?”

He nods. “Watch him try to move from a jack to a king.”

I laugh. “But you’re the King, right?”

He laughs, too. “Doin’ the best I can.”

I grab the Tums and put them on the counter. “Seems like the two of you could be friends.”

He shakes his head. “I got wheels on my heels, baby.”

I stare at him. “Okay. What
does
that mean?”

He rings up the Tums. “I’m just a lonesome cowboy in a long black limousine.”

I almost tell him, No, you’re not. You’re an Elvis impersonator working in a corner market! But instead I ask, “Can you translate, please?”

“My long-legged girl told me to get on the long, lonely highway.”

“So … you had a girlfriend who broke up with you?”

He nods. “My honky-tonk angel turned out to be the meanest girl in town. I told her, ‘Reconsider, baby, put the blame on me! Let’s patch it up!’ I said, ‘Baby, I’ve been steadfast, loyal, and true! You’re the only star in my blue heaven!’ But she’s a machine with a wooden heart, and now there’s been too much monkey business.” He shakes his head. “I’m afraid it’ll be the twelfth of never before my blue moon turns to gold again, so it’s viva Las Vegas for me.”

I hand over the twenty. “You’re moving to Las Vegas?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die. I’m movin’ on.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow night. It’s now or never.” He makes my change and snaps off the receipt, and as he hands them over, he sort of cocks his head and says, “You look like you’re gonna sit right down and cry.”

“I really liked you being here,” I tell him.

He gives me a little shrug. “I slipped, I stumbled, I fell, and I’m leavin’. But that’s all right, mama. Don’t think twice.”

“Well, I’ll miss you,” I tell him, then grab the Tums and head out.

“Hey, hey, hey!” he calls after me, and actually follows me to the door. “Before we go our separate ways, let it be me that gives you some sound advice.”