Tishomingo Blues

by Elmore Leonard

  This time Mr. Mularoni looked up. He said, “Charlie, leave us the fuck alone, okay?”

  Charlie turned to Carlyle the driver and said, “I think he remembers me. In that Series with the Padres I pitched two and a third innings of the fifth game. Went in and struck out the side. Hit a batter on a nothing-and-two count, so you know it wasn’t intentional . . .”

  Late afternoon, Dennis was in his bedroom taking a nap, lying on the chenille spread in a pair of shorts, no shirt. Vernice came in in her black pongee bathrobe and her white legs, the dive-caller script in her hands. She said, “Oh, were you sleeping?” Then a change of tone, looking for sympathy with, “I can’t learn all this by tonight. I’ve never been like onstage before.” Then getting a pouty look, this big girl. “I don’t think I can do it.”

  “You read it, Vernice. Just the places that’re marked.”

  She said, “I don’t know . . .” and sat down on the edge of the bed.

  Dennis said, “Let’s see,” drew up his knees and swung around to get next to her. He opened the script. “See, only where it’s marked. The script is really for a team, three or four divers. It’s the only way you can do the comic stuff. One guy, there’s too much time between dives. You know? I need you to fill in. Otherwise I don’t know. Get a band?”

  Vernice said she wished she could help him and crossed her legs—Jesus, coming out of that black material. Hell . . . he put his hand on her pure-white thigh, plump but not too, turned his face to hers waiting for him and said, “Do you sing?”

  Vernice said, “No, but I moan a lot when I make love.”

  It got the pongee bathrobe open to all of her flesh and that was it. They went about making love in the usual way, quick, but that was all right, they were both in a hurry to have it. She moaned a lot and then screamed.

  Vernice said, catching her breath, “There. You get all that lust out of the way and the next one, that’s the fun.”

  She left the bedroom and came back with a pack of cigarettes, her lighter and an ashtray, telling Dennis as she got in bed, “I’m an old-fashioned girl at heart with old-fashioned ways. You want one?” And said, “That’s right, you don’t smoke. No small vices. What’s on your shoulder?” Looking at his tattoo.

  “A seahorse.”

  “It’s cute, looks like a little dragon.” She smoked and said, “You like it here?”

  “You mean staying here?”

  “In Tunica.”

  “It’s up to Billy Darwin.”

  “You can always get a casino job.”

  “I’m a diver, Vernice.”

  “You sure are, honey. You ever been married?”

  “Once, a long time ago.”

  “Didn’t care for it?”

  “We were too young.”

  “You’re not one of those fellas says ‘What do I need to get married for, my neighbor’s got a wife,’ are you? One of those backdoor fellas thinks he’s slick?”

  “I wonder about Charlie,” Dennis said. “You two have been together a while.”

  “I don’t owe Charlie nothing,” Vernice said, stubbing out her cigarette. She turned to him. “Hon, you think you might be ready?”

  Dennis said they could give it a try.

  Charlie came home—they were in the kitchen—saying he had to go all the way to Memphis International to pick up these two never said a goddamn word in the limo the whole trip. Germano something, Mularoni—think of macaroni, the way to remember it—and his wife. Looks like a movie star only she’s real skinny.

  Vernice, at the table in her terry-cloth robe cinched around her, said, “I ‘magine you checked her rack.”

  “They were there, but not much to ’em that I could tell. She had a coat on.”

  Vernice said, “In this weather?”

  “To be stylish, not to keep her warm, it was real flimsy. She wore these tiny sunglasses and was real tan, or else she was PR or Cuban, I couldn’t tell.”

  “She look like she’s trying to pass?”

  “She’s made it if she is. You know, playing ball I saw all kinds of PRs and Dominicans, Cubans, and some you can’t tell, you’d swear were white. Didn’t even have that nappy hair.”

  “What was hers like?”

  “I guess brown, with these light streaks in it. Come down over her shoulders and she’d toss it aside. The guy, Germano, looked like a manager who’d been in the game a while, stocky, losing his hair. Had on like a golf outfit, a jacket with the cuffs turned up.”

  “Why would you notice that?”

  “Checking out his pinky ring.”

  “What kind of stone?”

  “Purplish. He was fooling with it waiting for the luggage. She was smoking.”

  “High rollers,” Vernice said.

  “From Detroit,” Charlie said.

  And Dennis, at the counter making drinks, thought of Robert. He said, “They have casinos up there,” and thought of Robert saying you had to have a reason to come to Mississippi.

  As Charlie was saying he didn’t get a lot of conversation out of them. “She checked them in and signed the card while he went over to look in the casino. Her name’s Anne, but that don’t mean nothing. She said at the desk she said she wanted a suite facing east—listen to this—so she could see the diving show.”

  Dennis looked around. “She said that?”

  “To the desk clerk, making sure she got the right view.”

  “How would she know about it?”

  Charlie said, “You’re the world champion, aren’t you? Went off the cliffs of Acapulco . . . and broke your goddamn nose?”

  It was evening now. Robert came in. Anne closed the door and turned to him, Robert smiling, Robert saying, “Hey, shit, huh?” They slipped their arms around each other, Robert’s inside her kimono feeling her bones, Anne’s under his silk sweater sliding over bare skin. They began to kiss knowing the fit and the feel, the fooling around with tongues, but cool about it, never getting too near the top. Saving it. Robert said, “You are the best kissin’ I’ve had since I was eleven years old.”

  Looking into her sleepy brown bedroom eyes. Shit.

  “Was it a girl?”

  “It was nobody. Eleven’s when I felt the need to start kissin’. It wasn’t till I was in Young Boys, twelve going on twenty-one, I had any pussy. You in Young Boys you have pussy in your face all the time, big-girl pussy. You ain’t had none by the time you thirteen, you homasexual.”

  “You think you talk street it turns me on.”

  “Doesn’t it?”

  She said, “Come on,” and took him by the arm into the sitting room—Robert checking out the bottle of white in the ice bucket, two bottles of red and the basket of popcorn on the table where the lamp was on low—taking him toward the sofa in her kimono, this girl who could stride down a runway to the disco beat and turn you on.

  “Did you see Jerry?”

  “He’s playing dice. Winning.”

  “He always wins.”

  “Wuz wrong with that?” Robert smiling again. “You ever see that interview with Miles—the man goes, ‘Then we come to the lowest point in your career, when you were pimping,’ and Miles says in his voice, ‘Wuz wrong with that?’”

  The door to the balcony was open. Robert steered Anne toward it saying, “Let’s see what’s happening,” looked out at the night, the ladder a gray shape against the sky, the grounds around the tank dark, and said, “Nothing.” Somebody was down there, maybe Dennis, but Robert couldn’t make him out for sure.

  Anne’s hand was under his sweater again moving over his back. “Was he winning big?”

  “Not enough that he’d stop.”

  “You think we have time?”

  Across the lawn spotlights came on and Robert said, “There it is,” the ladder and tank lit up top to bottom now. He saw Dennis in his red trunks and almost said his name and pointed to him. Instead, he said, “We got time.”

  Anne said, “It doesn’t look so high.”

  “’Cause we’re
as high as it is. Get down on the ground and look up, it’s high.”

  She said, “What if Jerry walks in?”

  “Put the chain on the door.”

  “Then he’d know for sure.”

  “You’re in there taking a nap. I’m out on the balcony watching the show. He won’t say nothing, he trusts me.”

  She kept staring at him with those eyes, liking the idea.

  “We ever been caught? He trusts me,” Robert said, “’cause he needs me to make things happen.” He kissed her on the cheek and said, “Go on get in the bed.”

  She slipped her hand from under his sweater and gave his butt a pat as she walked away, Robert looking out at the tank again.

  He saw lights come on in the pitching cage, Chickasaw Charlie standing there with a young woman—the TV woman, ’cause now a dude with a video camera had come out of the cage and another one carrying a couple of black cases, yeah, the TV woman’s soundman. Now all four of them were heading toward the tank.

  Robert looked at his watch. Five of nine, the show in twenty minutes. He walked out on the balcony to stand at the rail and looked down to see a good crowd on the patio having drinks and people straggling out on the lawn and coming out of the trees from the parking lot, some of them carrying their lawn chairs. Chickasaw Charlie was talking to Dennis now in his red trunks, the TV woman and her technicians waiting close by to interview him.

  Anne’s voice reached him from the bedroom. “Hey—are we gonna do it or not?”

  Annabanana’s Indian love call. It was funny how his mind was always on something else when she called and he always called back, “I’m halfway there, baby.”

  9

  DENNIS SAID, “I’M STUCK WITH you calling the dives again? Tell me you’re kidding.”

  Charlie shook his head. “She’s too nervous, afraid she’ll screw up. You don’t know Vernice like I do,” Charlie said. “She has to do things her own way, how she’s always done it. You give her something different, she gets confused.” Charlie stepped to one side then saying, “Dennis, say hello to Diane Corrigan-Cochrane, the anchor lady at Channel Five, the Eyes and Ears of the North Delta. Diane, meet the world champion high diver, Dennis Lenahan.”

  Dennis smiled at her saying, “You ever call dives?”

  Diane said, “Like announce what you’re doing?”

  Quick and perky, a cute blonde not more than thirty in her khaki shorts and white blouse, slim legs, tan feet in sandals.

  “All there is to it,” Dennis said. “You want to? I think Charlie has the script.” Dennis turned to him. “Charlie, please tell me you brought it.”

  Charlie pulled the script, folded the long way, from his waist in back. “I can help her, show her what to say.” He handed the script to Diane. “You read the parts that’re checked. Like you tell everybody to stand back from the tank, so they don’t get splashed? He’s got his dives, what he’ll do, numbered, one, two, three . . .”

  Diane was looking at the script now. “Where will I be?”

  “About where you are,” Dennis said.

  “I won’t be on camera, will I?”

  “You can have the camera go to you if you want.”

  She looked up from the script. “You’re the show, Dennis, not me. I have a camera on me every day.”

  He liked her anchor-lady voice, calm and just a touch nasal. She had a cute nose and some freckles, a country girl. “You from around here, Diane?”

  “Memphis. I was a deejay with a hard rock station. I hated all that chatter, so I quit.”

  “I trained as a blackjack dealer once,” Dennis said, “but only worked a few days. I didn’t like the outfit they made you wear.” Letting Diane know he was as independent as she was.

  “You’d rather show off your body,” Diane said. “Why not? I know the girls think you’re hot.” She glanced at the script again. “Okay, I’ll do it—if I can have a few minutes alone with you first.”

  “For an interview,” Dennis said.

  She gave him a flirty look, having fun with him. “What else would I have in mind? I’ll ask how you got into high diving. What it’s like to go off from up there . . .”

  He said, “You know what the tank looks like?”

  “I’d imagine about the size of a teacup,” Diane said, “but save it till we’re on.”

  Another teacup. It made him think of Billy Darwin and wonder if she had talked to him. But now she was walking over to the side of the tank, looking at the scaffolding that supported the three-meter board. She turned to him saying, “Is that where the guy was shot? Under there?”

  Dennis hesitated. “It’s what I was told.”

  She said, “Oh? I thought you were up on the ladder, you saw the whole thing.”

  “No, uh-unh. Where’d you hear that?”

  She seemed to think about it before saying, “Someone heard it in a bar and told someone else. You know, passed it along. I’m trying to remember who told me. It might’ve been someone in the sheriff’s office. I talk to the staff there a lot.” Diane the TV lady kept staring at him. “If it was true—boy, wouldn’t that be a story.”

  Robert had opened the bottle from the ice bucket and poured two glasses, Pouilly-Fuissé, Anne’s drink. The red was Jerry’s. They were on the balcony now, the show already going on.

  Across the way in the lights, Dennis, in black Speedos, stood on the three-meter board. Over the speakers a woman’s voice was telling the crowd, “Next, a three and a half forward somersault . . . And there he goes.”

  Robert said, “How’s he have time to do all that in the air?”

  “Perfect execution,” the woman’s voice said. “Wait until he’s out of the pool . . . Okay, and now let’s hear it for our world champion Dennis Lenahan, the pride of the Big Easy, New Orleans, Louisiana, where Dennis prepped at Loyola before turning professional. Dennis is going up to the forty-foot level now. I’ll warn you, anyone within ten feet of the tank may be splashed. That will be our splash zone here at Tishomingo Lodge and Casino’s inaugural high dive show. Dennis is ready now. And there he goes.”

  “Beautiful,” Robert said.

  Anne sipped her wine. “How would you know?”

  The woman’s voice said, “A beautiful dive, perfectly executed.”

  Robert said, “See?”

  “Our champion,” the woman’s voice said, “is getting ready now for what’s called a spotter three and a half.”

  Dennis was on the three-meter board again, flexing his hands hanging at his sides.

  “A spotter is a back somersault to land back on the diving board. And at night, under these lighting conditions, we hope Dennis will land squarely on his feet, for he’ll immediately do a forward three and a half, a total of four and a half somersaults in two different directions in the same dive.”

  Robert said, “Hey, shit.”

  “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, the spotter three and a half requires absolute silence.”

  “Watch,” Robert said. And a moment later said, “Man, perfect. Did you see that?”

  “He did a back flip,” Anne said, “and the same dive he did before.”

  “You don’t appreciate it,” Robert said, “keep it to yourself, all right? Dennis is my man.”

  “I don’t get it—like you’re a big fan. On the phone, ‘Wait till you see this guy.’”

  “How many people you know can do what he does?”

  “He ever saw what you get into he’d die of fright.”

  “Listen.”

  The woman’s voice telling the crowd world champion Dennis Lenahan was now going off the very top of the ladder, eighty feet to the surface of the water. “Ordinarily Dennis closes the show with this dive. But because it’s opening night you’re in for a special treat. Dennis will do his death-defying dive twice. Now, and again at the close of the show.”

  Anne said, “Is he a reenactor?”

  “He is, but don’t know it yet.”

  “Wait till you see what I’m wearing. Jerr
y comes in while I’m packing? ‘Where’s the hoop for the hoopskirt?’ I said, ‘Tell me how to get a fucking hoop in the bag and I’ll bring it.’ I’ve never had any intention of wearing a hoopskirt. I haven’t told him yet, but I’m going to be a quadroon camp follower.”

  “Cool. You’ll be the show.”

  “Hang a red lantern on the tent.”

  “How much you charge?”

  “I don’t know. What do you think, back then?”

  “High-class whore? Maybe two bucks. Camp follower? About four bits.” He said, “Listen what she’s saying.”

  The woman’s voice telling the crowd, “Chickasaw Charlie Hoke, Tishomingo’s popular celebrity host, would like to say a few words to you as our champion climbs all the way to the top of that eighty-foot ladder. Charlie?”

  Now Charlie’s voice came over the speakers.

  “Thanks, Diane. Folks, let’s give a big hand to Diane Corrigan-Cochrane, the Voice of the North Delta.”

  “Good crowd,” Robert said. “Hundred and a half easy.”

  “For eighteen years,” Charlie’s voice told them, “Dennis has been performing as a champion, the same length of time I spent in organized baseball. Like Dennis, ready to bear down wherever and whatever famous sluggers I was facing. While Dennis was showing his stuff all over the world, I was with the Orioles organization, the Texas Rangers, the Pittsburgh Pirates, the De-troit Tigers, Baltimore again, got traded back to De-troit and finished my career with the Tigers in the ’84 World Series. When Dennis started out he knew he would never give up till he was a champion in his field. Just as I bore down in the minors striking out some of the biggest hitters in baseball. Al Oliver, Gorman Thomas, Jim Rice. Let’s see, Darrell Evans, Mike Schmidt when I was with Altoona, back then throwing ninety-nine-mile-an-hour fastballs. Bill Madlock, Willie McGee, Don Mattingly. And I fanned Wade Boggs twice in the longest game on record. Went eight hours and seven minutes. In other words I know and can appreciate what Dennis Lenahan has gone through to get where he’s at today.”

  Robert said, “That man is all scam. I can’t believe he’s never done time.”

  “You haven’t,” Anne said. “Or have you?”

  “Jail, no prison. Charlie says he’s gonna reenact. Wants to be a Yankee this time.”