Under Cover of Daylight (21 page)

When she got back to the apartment, she took a shower, trying to scrub Thorn out of her brain. She had a couple of belts of rum and was working on a third when she heard them come in downstairs. Making an asshole scene, laughing and giggling with Lillian.

They came into her room without knocking, walked around taking an inventory, not saying a word, not even looking at her. And she let them do it. Still knocked on her ass by Thorn’s acting so cocksure. He seemed different. Something going on in his eyes she’d not seen before.

Ricki walked over and took her ceramic pink flamingo out of Irv’s hand and put it back on the bookshelf. Though this was the first time she’d met these two, she’d talked to Irv, knew what a prick he liked to be.

Trying for a businesslike tone, she said, “What I want to know at this point is, do you guys do accidents? Make it look like something else?”

Irv said, “Do we do accidents?”

“Our specialty is accidental death and dismemberment,” said Milburn.

“I don’t know about you two,” she said.

Irv said, “This bimbo is being the hard bargainer. She’s standing there, holding the wad of cash she owes us, in her chink robe, trying to play tough.”

“I didn’t like how you did the other one. The grass all over the place. That was dumb. How do I know you can do an accidental one worth a shit?”

“Call the Better Business Bureau, honey,” said Irv. He edged toward her, as if he were picturing a quick snatch of that money.

“You ever hear of café coronaries?” Milburn asked her. “How Mama Cass died, scarfing down a ham sandwich? It gets caught in the airways, Heimlich maneuver stuff.”

Ricki nodded, not sure of this guy. A slight tremble cropping up in the hand holding all that cash.

“Well, we do boudoir coronaries,” Milburn said. “Falling out of the leather trapeze. Strangling on a dildo. Electrocution by vibrator. That kind of thing.”

Ricki stared at him. Looked for help to Irv, double-checked Milburn. “He’s kidding,” she said.

“He’s a kidder,” Irv said.

Milburn settled into that straw throne chair. Coronation time in the kingdom of assholes, Ricki thought.

They were dressed very weirdly. Uniform things with patches on the sleeves. In small print the patches said,
DON’T FUCK WITH AMERICA
. Like Nazi Boy Scouts.

Irv said, “Honey, thing is, your credit rating is gone to shit with us. We’re not in this business for the applause. You want to fly first class this time, you’re going to pay for first class.”

“I got your three,” she said. “And I got four more.”

“Four more,” Irv said. “You hear that, Jack Benny? She’s got four more.”

Irv sat down on the edge of her water bed. She was standing by the window, noontime sun lighting up her dark eyes, glossing her short black hair.

Irv said, “Honey. Normally, people in our profession never meet with our customers.”

“That’s right,” said Milburn. “But we made an immaculate conception in your case.”

Irv staring at Milburn, like who
is
this guy!

Irv said, “We looked you up, honey, ’cause number one, we’re our own collection service, and you owed us some money. And number two, we wanted to get to meet you, a girl who had morals we can relate to.”

“Yeah?” Ricki sat down at her dressing table. Her knees weren’t taking this very well.

“It takes a special kind of girl to tack a halo on her own mother. Takes the kind of girl who knows what she wants and goes after it.” Irv paused, cleared his throat for effect, and switched over to his consultant’s voice, down to business with the good Death. “Now, is what you’re telling us that there’s somebody else standing in front of you in the gravy train? And you want us to finish this up, clean this guy out? Let the money flow?”

“That’s right. That’s the situation,” she said.

“Who’s the lucky guy this time, your daddy?”

“Adopted brother,” Ricki said.

“Jesus F. Christ, is she something or what?” Irv said to Milburn, clapping his hands and doing a little wiggle in the hips. “Well, like I said. We wanted to meet you anyway, ’cause we had an idea we could help you out in another way. Like with some of the assets that will be coming your way.”

“What assets?” She had picked up a hair brush, was holding it now like a hammer. Like maybe she’d brush these two guys to death.

“Well, we had occasion to have a few drinks at a place up in Matecumbe.”

Ricki said quietly, “Vacation Island.”

“Ri-ii-ight. Very go-oo-od.” Irv nodded at her and nodded at Milburn. “Vacation Island. Now that’s what we would consider proper payment. For killing a guy who’s related to a woman we already killed.

“See, I don’t know if you’re perceiving this thing all that clearly. You kill one person, and nobody knows exactly what the deal is, ’cause this person could be into all kinds of bad shit. But you kill a second person shortly thereafter, a person who in this case is even related to the first, well, now you’ve established a pattern. Patterns, honey, we don’t like patterns. Bad for business.

“So, if I say that yes, we’ll do this, we’ll yank the plug on some guy you name for us, so you can be a rich rich lady, then I’m saying it with the understanding that I can take a nice long vacation myself after the deed is done.

“Vacation Island,” Irv said. “Vacation Island.”

“Well, forget it then,” Ricki said. “Take your three and split.” She started counting the money on the dressing table.

“Honeybuns, honeybuns.” Sounding grieved. “Think about this. You’re not in a great position here. There’s people around who don’t care about you, who would just as soon you were an earthworm farm.”

“Who?”

“Us, honeybuns. Me and my friend. Us.”

“Forget it. Forget the whole thing. I’m finished with all this.”

“Nobody’s finished with nothing,” said Milburn. “Hey, man. Let’s just wet this broad and take our cash and our bonus and get on with it.”

“See? See what I’m telling you? My associate wants to go have lunch. He wants to pinch out your flame and go have lunch. You see what you’re up against here?”

“OK,” Ricki said, her voice misty. “I don’t give a shit. You can have Vacation Island. It sucks anyway. I just want the money. You do this guy, and you got it. But it has to be an accident. None of this dildo stuff. A real live accidental death.”

“Everybody’s a joker,” said Irv. “Everybody’s up for an Oscar.”

“His name is Thorn,” Ricki said. “I drew you a map, how to find his house.”

A half hour after they left Ricki’s, Milburn was still going on about how they should have killed her, and Irv, concentrating on finding a decent restaurant on Duval Street, let him talk. He finally found a place beside a dime store. On the other side of it was a shop selling bikinis and T-shirts. Across the street was the Hemingway bar, its big doors open and inside looking dark and empty. Parachutes draped from the ceiling, Jimmy Buffet on the jukebox, moaning about what a drunk he’d become.

Irv hated Key West. It wasn’t all the gay guys checking him and Milburn out, and it wasn’t all the tourists with their funny hats and matching clothes. It was the smell. The funk of vegetables rotting in the sun. Food becoming something else.

You’d think with all that gingerbread on the storefronts, all that fresh paint, all that incense coming out of the little purple boutiques and the hammers going nonstop up and down Duval, they’d take more care with their garbage. Irv pictured a festering carcass down in the bowels of the city. Only city he’d smelled worse than this was New Orleans, the French Quarter. Another queer town.

“This guy,” said Milburn, as Irv was combing his hair in the window of the dime store, “this guy isn’t going to be real happy to see us.”

“Yeah.”

“He told us, I remember it, ‘Don’t ever show yourself within ten miles of me.’ ”

“I remember. A nice guy. Sweetheart.”

“I feel dorky in this uniform. We don’t look like any boat captains I ever saw.”

“Hey,” said Irv, putting his comb back in his pocket, making Milburn squeeze out of the way has he headed for the restaurant. “Hey, man. You dressed us like this.”

“I feel like a part of the vegetable kingdom,” Milburn said.

Irv stared at him. What was with this guy?

“Here’s the scene, Mr. Tomato. We’re going to see him. Lay it out for him. We know something’s coming down the pipe, something big. We can smell it on the way, and we want a small piece of it. We don’t tell him about Vacation Island or any of that. We just go in there and act like we are there to give further assistance, but we’re not in anybody’s farm league anymore. You, you just stand there and try not to fart. I’ll handle it.”

“I say we go to the nude beach and get out of these things, forget Grayson, forget anything coming down any pipeline. You already got Vacation Island. You’re pushing our luck we go in there. This guy is very unfriendly on the phone. I have no desire to become business partners with this person.”

“I have no desire to become business partners with this person.” Irv doing his sissy imitation. “Listen to you, man. Listen to your stupid self.”

Irv swung the doors of the restaurant open and nearly whacked two thin young men who were walking past. One of them gave him the fluttering eye. Irv smacked his lips at the guy, blew him a kiss. La-di-da.

Shaking his head and groaning, Milburn dragged himself after Irv. As they were being seated, Irv reached around and touched the flat automatic holstered under his shirt. Mean little SIG/Sauer nine-millimeter printing its silhouette into his lumbar region. He tucked his khaki shirt in tight around it.

They had a beer at a bar that opened onto Duval. Sitting at a little table almost on the street. Irv watched all the bartenders fussing with ferns, polishing the brass light fixtures. While Milburn complained about his eye, couple of guys at a table nearby, dressed as Kmart managers, were having a late lunch, a conversation about somebody stealing stock from the warehouse. Everywhere you looked, people ripping off what they could.

Milburn ordered fried chicken, and Irv scowled at him.

“I like fried chicken,” Milburn said.

“And you, sir?” The waiter was wearing jeans and an undershirt.

“Give me a barf bag,” he said. And while the waiter watched him, Irv just sat there, taking the waiter’s scorn or whatever he was sending out. Finally the waiter left.

“Can’t you ever be nice?” Milburn asked him.

“What is it with you ordering fried chicken?”

“I
like
fried chicken. Just because Irv senior is fried chicken czar doesn’t mean I can’t ever eat the stuff.”

That was it. Milburn was dead.

“Hey, enjoy it,” Irv said. “Eat every greasy morsel. Slide it down into that grease pit of a body. It could be the last fucking food you ever eat.”

“Jesus, Irv. I thought you’d be happy for once. Vacation Island. Think about it, man. You and me, running a whole big resort.” Milburn raked his fork across the white tablecloth, a little kid, excited. Trying to whip Irv up. “I see myself as losing some weight. You know, getting down to my fighting weight, one-eighty or something. Get into one of those little bikini suits, start doing weights. Slay the women. Just stay out in the sun all day and fucking slay the women.”

“Sure, Milburn. Sure. Dream on.” Dead man. “And like get out of this business. I don’t like it anymore. It’s not fun.” Lowering his voice. “It was fun, but it isn’t anymore. I’m having bad dreams. I like the idea of getting into something legit. You know. Like we had our fun, and now we’re getting older and more serious. Mid-life crisis and all that shit. I’m ready for it, whip myself into shape, and sleep good again. I don’t see any reason we couldn’t be happy running a place like that. We can do it. Shit, the two of us? We’re a fucking team, man.”

Irv had just shoved Grayson’s door open and walked in. Milburn behind him talking about being polite. Polite. What’d he think, they were missionaries? Inside the door they just stood there, Irv soaking up the ambiance. Place gave good ambiance.

Should have known Grayson would have a fag secretary. Blond guy looked like he’d just gotten off a Swedish cruise ship. Blue eyes. Handsome sucker, and he wasn’t having any of it from them either. Grayson was in, doing important business on the phone, and he wasn’t seeing anybody didn’t have an appointment. Not even old friends, not even old friends who’d come a long way. Not even old friends who had a wad of money.

Irv stood back away from the secretary and looked at the waiting room. It was in a one-story Conch house, with wood floors and couches and rocking chairs and paintings of seascapes and scenes from New England. Palms in clay pots. Somebody’s parlor. This secretary didn’t even sit behind a desk. He was there in a white wicker chair, reading a paperback, wearing tennis clothes. But on the glass-topped table beside him there was an appointment book, so Irv knew he wasn’t shitting them. He was the gatekeeper all right.

Saturday morning, just jerking off a few leftover clients before he was off to the tennis club. It didn’t sit well with Irv, kind of snob shit that ragged his ass.

“Hey, Adonis,” Irv said, pretending to study a painting of sea gulls on the beach at Martha’s Vineyard, “tell me something. You ever been shot? I mean with a pistol. Smith and Wesson, like that?” He heard Milburn making noises behind him.

“You two better leave now,” Rolfe said, or Ingmar or whatever the fuck he was.

“I got this crazy urge. Call me nutty, but I just feel like opening up a new asshole for somebody. Does this mean I’m a sociopath? Is this what this means? I get down here, all this Hemingway stuff everywhere, and I feel like killing something and hanging it on my wall.”

The kid was on his feet now. The guy had forearms. And calves. Probably a hell of a backhand.

Irv walked over to one of the potted palms, opened up the fly on those stupid khaki shorts, and took a leak.

The kid had the phone up to his face and was punching in the numbers. Irv zipped up and drew out the automatic.

“Put it back to sleep,” he said. “We want to see our man, Grayson, is all we want. But we want that one thing very bad.” “Back here,” said the blond. Businesslike now, like he’d had this experience before. You really wanted to see Grayson, you had to pull your gun.