Sideswipe (23 page)

Troy was back at the booth, handing Stanley a bag of Wise barbecue potato chips. "These are just as salty as pretzels, aren't they?"

"Maybe so, but the barbecue flavor gives 'em a better taste. They go good with beer." Stanley opened the bag, poured a handful of chips into his left hand, and offered some to Troy. Troy shook his head and made his lightning grimace.

"What happens, Troy, if I don't loan you the money?"

Troy shrugged, grimacing again, pulling his thin lips tightly over his small teeth. "James and me'll have to cowboy it, that's all. We'll have to drive around at night and hold up some liquor stores and gas stations. Two thousand isn't much. In two or three nights we'll have the stake. That's what I usually do when I need some quick cash. But James is inexperienced, and a little on the nervous side. That's why I asked you instead."

"In other words, you're gonna go through with this big robbery you planned, whether I help you or not?"

"You know I am, Pop. I already told you before, this is what I do. But I won't press you. If you don't think you're getting a good return on your investment, forget I asked you. And if you don't trust me--"

"I trust you, Troy." Stanley licked his fingers. "Hell, if I can't trust you, who can I trust? Besides, as they say, one hand washes the other."

"Now you're talking. Just let me borrow your Visa card, your union card, and voter's registration for ID. You can then drive back to the house, and I'll get a cab to take care of business."

"I don't have no voter's registration card. Down here in Florida, if you register to vote they make you serve jury duty."

"Your Social Security card'll do just as well."

"That ain't supposed to be used for identification. It says so right on the card."

"The man I'm dealing with will accept it, Pop. Trust me."

Stanley took out his wallet, found the cards, and handed them over to Troy. Troy slipped them into his shirt pocket. He snapped the flap shut. "I'll take the rest of the change here on the table for cab fare. You keep the travel folder and show it to Dale when you get back to the apartment. She hasn't seen it yet. You better cash one or two traveler's checks, too. But keep a record of every cent you give Dale for groceries. We can add that in on top of your twenty-five hundred next Saturday."

Troy dropped the Honda keys on the table and slid out of the booth. "Finish the rest of my beer, Pop--"

"Just a minute, Troy. Whatever happened to the cab driver?"

"What cab driver?"

"You know, the one who was carrying on with Dale."

"Oh, him? He visited Dale in the hospital, took one good look at her, and she's never seen him again. Some men are like that."

"That poor girl." Stanley shook his head and poured the rest of Troy's beer into his stein. "She's lucky she found you."

"I think she knows it, Pop." Troy kissed the old man on the cheek and left the bar.

Stanley trusted Troy about the money. After all, he thought, everything so far had happened the way Troy said it would, so Stanley had no reason not to trust him, and he could tell that Troy genuinely liked him. Stanley had worked with other men all of his life, and he could tell whether someone was sincere or not, and Troy was the only person who had paid any attention to him since he had moved to Florida. On the other hand, the credit limit on Stanley's Visa card was all the way up to $2,200. Without even asking him, the bank had automatically raised the limit by two hundred dollars when he had renewed the card two months ago. Any way he looked at the matter, he couldn't afford to outright lose two thousand dollars, even though, as Troy said, his intention was to pay back five hundred in interest just for using the money till Saturday. Stanley picked up his beer and his cane and crossed to the bar.

"Can I use your phone?"

"There's a pay phone in the hall, back there by the john. You need any change? It takes quarters."

"No, I've got change. But I can't read phone numbers too good, even with my reading glasses. Would you look up the eight-hundred number of Visa for me? And write it down?" Stanley put a dollar bill on the bar and pushed it toward the bartender. The bartender put the bill into a glass beneath the bar, then got the battered L--Z telephone book from the shelf to look up the number.

Stanley called the Visa number the bartender gave him and told the woman who answered that he had lost his Visa card.

"Do you have the number?"

"No, but I can give you my Social Security number and address."

"Let me have your name first."

Stanley gave her his name, Ocean Pines Terraces address, and Social Security number.

"When did you lose your card?"

"Yesterday, I think. But I didn't miss it till just now."

"All right. You'll get a replacement card in a week or so, but it'll have a new number. Not exactly a new number, but four additional zeros will be added in the middle. And this time, please write it down and keep it in a safe place, in case you lose it again."

"If someone finds and uses my card I won't be charged more'n fifty dollars, will I?"

"That's correct. But you should be very careful with your Visa card. It's not the same as money, it's better than money."

"Yes, ma'am. I might've just misplaced it, but far's I know now, it's lost."

"Yes, sir. Now if you do find it, don't use it. Just cut it in half and mail it in to us. Wait until you get your replacement card before you charge anything again."

"Yes, ma'am. I'm sorry I lost my card."

"We're sorry, too. But thanks for reporting the loss promptly, and have a rainbow day."

"Yes, ma'am."

Stanley folded the slip of paper with the Visa phone number on it and put it into his wallet. It would take the Visa people a day or two, perhaps more, to get the missing number on their lists, and by that time, Troy would have an ample opportunity to charge whatever he wanted. He felt a little guilty about reporting his card as lost, but if everything worked out all right, he could call Visa again and tell them he had found it after all. A fifty-dollar loss wouldn't hurt him too much, but a two-thousand-dollar loss, when a man was on a fixed income, was simply too much. What he would do, Stanley decided, was to just ask Troy for two hundred dollars in interest, instead of five hundred, when he got his money back. After all, the money Troy was going to make was primarily for Dale's and James's benefit, and Stanley felt sorry for both of them.

Stanley filled his car with gas and cashed a fifty-dollar traveler's check before driving back to James's garage apartment.

CHAPTER 13

Patsy didn't call Hoke at Frank Moseley's house until almost noon. On the advice of Curly Peterson's doctor, Patsy said, Aileen had been placed in a clinic at a Catholic convent in the Verdugo Woodlands section of Glendale. There she would be watched around the clock by the live-in sisters who ran the school.

"It's much better than a regular hospital, Hoke," Patsy said, "because as far as anybody knows, she'll be just another student there. Curly worries about his image, and it wouldn't look good for him if it got into the papers that his stepdaughter was starving to death. Not with his income."

"She isn't Curly Peterson's daughter. She's our daughter."

"Well, it wouldn't look good for you or me either, would it, if Aileen starved to death? Besides, Dr. Jordan'll look in on her every day. Curly said Dr. Jordan practically wrote the book on sports medicine, and he has a lot of confidence in him."

"She needs psychiatric help, not sports medicine. All those guys know how to do is shoot people in the knee with painkillers."

"That's easy for you to say. If you saw the bone spurs on Curly's feet, you'd want shots, too. But the Mother Superior will talk to Aileen every day, and she told me she's had a lot of experience with anorexics. Apparently some of the nuns have had it, and some of the convent girls come down with it on Novenas, she said."

"What are Novenas? One thing I know for sure, Aileen doesn't take any drugs--"

"I don't know what they are, and I didn't ask. I'm just telling you what the Mother Superior told me, that's all. The important thing is she knows all about anorexics, and she'll watch Aileen like a hawk and supervise her diet. She's got little black eyes like shiny caraway seeds."

"How serious is Aileen's case? And when'll she be cured?"

"It just takes time and patience, Dr. Jordan said. But first she's got to gain some weight and accept the idea that she's not too fat. I already promised her that when she gets up to one hundred pounds I'd take her home. So we'll just have to wait and see, that's all. She ate breakfast before the doctor gave her a shot, and that's a good sign. I already fired that weird nurse you sent out with Aileen, by the way. Where'd you find her, anyway?"

"On short notice, it was hard to get a nurse willing to fly out to L.A. I hope you paid her--"

"I did, and you owe me another hundred dollars."

"You'll get it, Patsy, just as soon as my pension money comes in. After my retirement papers go through, I'll take all my money out of the pension fund in a lump sum. And as soon as Aileen's well again, I want her back. But right now, money's tight."

"You -have- to take her back, Hoke. I go on all the road games with Curly, and we can't take her with us. If Curly told me once he told me a dozen times, he married me--not my daughters. Sometimes, when he's at bat, the camera points at me, and they tell the TV audience I'm his wife, and he likes that."

"I can understand a!l that. But if you hand!e the c!inic and doctor bills, I'll take Aileen back, and gradually pay you back. Sue Ellen's got a good job in Miami, so I don't have to worry about her"--Hoke didn't mention the green Mohawk haircut--"but Aileen'll have to go back to school in September."

"Sue Ellen's got a job? That's hard to believe. I couldn't even get her to pick her clothes up off the floor in Vero Beach."

"What can I tell you, Patsy? She's getting minimum wage, plus tips, at the Green Lakes Car Wash."

"She has to go back to school, too, doesn't she?"

"No, she's dropping out. They like her at the car wash, and the manager gave her a permanent job."

"What kind of career is that for a girl? Only wetbacks work in car washes here in California."

"It's mostly Haitians down here. Sue Ellen's the only white girl there. But that gives her an advantage, she says. It won't hurt her to work for two or three years. Then, if she wants to go to college, she can take the G.E.D. test and go to Miami-Dade Community College. Don't worry about Sue El!en. You've got enough to think about with Aileen. And please tell hen to call Grandpa's house collect any time she wants, and I'll get back to her when they !et me talk to her. Okay?"

After Patsy inquired after the health of Frank and Helen, and asked Hoke to give them hen love, she rang off.

Hoke was vaguely dissatisfied and resentful after the conversation. Somehow, either on the phone or in person, Patsy had always managed to put him on the defensive. Hoke and Patsy were not Catholics, and he knew very little about the religion except that nuns were supposed to be tough discip!inarians. But maybe that was what Aileen needed. In religious matters, Hoke and Patsy were both nonbelievers, and they had never sent the girls to Sunday school, figuring that they could make up their own minds about that when they were old enough to think such things out for themselves. The nuns would undoubtedly go to work on Aileen, but Hoke had already warned the girls about religious cults and their brainwashing techniques, and he was sure Aileen could handle whatever propaganda the nuns tried to give hen. Curly Peterson, the ballplayer Patsy had married, was probably a Southern Baptist, if he was anything, so it was probably the sports doctor--with his somewhat Biblical name--who had insisted on the Catholic clinic.

Hoke had eaten breakfast with his father, but Frank had been unperturbed by the news of Aileen's affliction. "When a girl's sick," he said, "she should be with her mother, and you did the right thing. When we find out exactly where she is, I'll wire her some flowers."

"Under the circumstances, it might be better to send her a basket of fruit."

"What? Oh, sure, I see what you mean. I've got to get down to the store."

Helen usually slept until noon, so Hoke managed to get out of the house before she called Inocencia for her breakfast tray.

Hoke became very busy at the El Pelicano. Before he could shave, Mr. Winters, a man in a khaki safari suit, had showed up wanting to rent an apartment for two months, and perhaps through October as well. He had a cashier's check for twelve thousand dollars, but no cash and no bank account. To obtain the first and last month's rent in advance, Hoke had to break his rule again and drive Mr. Winters to the bank in Riviera Beach so that he could cash the check and open an account. The drive to the bank was what Hoke would have called once a "two-cigarette" drive, one on the way over and another coming back, but he no longer smoked. Mr. Winters, or "Beefy" Winters, as the new tenant called himself, was an elephant trainer. He had been fired from the Ringling Brothers Circus in Kansas City. He tried to explain why, as they drove over the bridge into the city, but Hoke couldn't follow the complicated politics of the dismissal. Winters had also left his wife, who still worked for the circus "in Costumes." After returning to Sarasota, their winter home, Beefy Winters had cashed in their savings, and then had driven over to Singer Island to hide out from his wife until the season ended. He had a permanent winter job every year in Sarasota as a pharmacist, so he had decided to sit out the rest of the circus season in Singer Island and let his wife worry about where he and the money had gone. He was pretty sure that by the end of September she would take him back. He already missed the three elephants he trained, but not his wife--at least, not at the moment. But he would be glad enough to see her when the circus returned to its winter quarters in Sarasota.