by Ted Thackrey
She nodded vaguely, accepting the explanation without further curiosity while beginning to focus on the next—and far more complicated—question that still had to be asked. And answered.
“And just what the hell,” she demanded, “am I supposed to do with them now?”
I didn’t have a good answer for that, so I offered one I knew she would reject.
“A man was here from the DEA a few days ago,” I said. “He told me the Palermo case has been moved to the inactive file. But I suppose it could be moved back to active again, and then to closed, if you want to turn the stones over to the government.”
She considered it for a moment, but then made a face and shook her head. As I had known she would.
“They wouldn’t close the case,” she said, “and I’d be trying to explain for the rest of my life. And so would you, Preacher.”
“That I would, for a fact.”
“So, for now, what I’m going to do, I’m going to put this cork back in the bottle and put the bottle back on the rack and lock up the door and put the jars and cans back on it and forget all about the damn diamonds. At least for a while.”
She picked up the cork, removed the corkscrew, reinserted the cork in the neck of the bottle and drove it home with a single powerful blow from her fist.
We never mentioned it again.
We slept apart again that night, and in the morning, I packed my suitcase and put it in the back of a little Subaru I had rented and prepared to return it to the company at Santa Rosa airport, where a helicopter would be waiting to take me back to Best Licks.
Angela kissed me good-bye at the door of the old house and stood there as I pulled out of the driveway for the last time.
Terry was home for the day on her first furlough from the hospital, and they both waved to me as I made the turn onto the main road and drove away from there wondering if I wasn’t the prime fool of all time for not holding on to what we’d had together in that place. For keeps.
But I already knew the answer.
We had cherished each other and celebrated each other and healed each other and accepted our limitations and never tried to pretend that it was passion undying, and that is more than most can claim for a lifetime—and certainly more than full measure for a one-eyed crossroader with a weakness for the second raise on aces wired.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ted Thackrey Jr. was a Korean War vet, an author, and newspaper reporter who, after stints at several newspapers, ended up in 1968 at the Los Angeles Times, where he became known over the next two decades for his colorful news stories, columns, and obituaries. His novel The Preacher was an Edgar The Preacher was an Edgar The Preacher Award finalist that led to two sequels, Aces & Eights and King of Diamonds, and the movie Wild Card starring Powers Boothe. Wild Card starring Powers Boothe. Wild Card He also wrote the nonfiction books The Gambling Secrets of Nick the Greek and The Thief: The Autobiography of Wayne Burke, and ghostwrote more than forty books and several screenplays. Thackrey Jr. died in 2001.