Melanie, the waitress at Shorty’s, had clued her in: Dexon wasn’t your average desert hermit, reading the bible and drinking his days away. He was on a mission, and everybody knew it.
“I want to help you,” Willie said. She touched the actor’s arm. She rarely did things like that.
“Help me? Help me what?”
“Let the man drink in peace,” said Tony.
Willie disliked that tolerant smile of Tony’s, especially since she knew it so well by now. She tilted her head closer to Dexon and said, “I want to help you find The Juliet.”
“Willie!” Tony almost shouted.
Rigg Dexon laughed so hard he began to cough. He set his glass down hard on the bar and gripped its edge as the color drained from his face and veins bulged from his forehead. When the cough subsided, Tony shoved a stack of napkins at the old man.
“For your mouth,” Willie said, looking away while Dexon swabbed away the spittle.
When he had breath again, he said, “I apologize for that.”
Tony asked, “Are you sick, sir?”
Dexon shook his head no, like a dog throwing off water. “You watch too many movies. I’m seventy-four. So are my lungs.”
“It’s the flowers, I’m sure,” Willie said. As she waited respectfully for the man to recover his color, she waved off Tony’s disapproving stare. They’d had this discussion before, about her not creeping out the customers. Tony liked Willie well enough, but not quite the same way Scottie did. Tony was always waiting for her to fail so he could wag his finger at her, whereas Scottie was always waiting for her to fall. So he could catch her, she assumed.
“Mr. Dexon,” she said. “What do you think about us working together? It’s true, isn’t it? You’re here to find The Juliet.”
“What do I think,” said Dexon, still clearing his throat a bit. He patted her knee and had been doing so on and off, first as a way of flirting with her, but now it seemed like he was just trying to keep his balance. She noticed one of his hands trembled slightly. “What I think is that you are delightful.”
Tony leaned his elbows on the bar, bringing himself level with Willie. “That’s a no, Willie. The best bad news you’ll get today.”
* * *
Rigg found himself fascinated by the subtle shades of Willie’s disappointment. He’d expected, from the passion of her proposition, that she would try another tack, but no. She seemed to be one of those people who were nourished, albeit poorly, by defeat. Enduring folk, the defeated. It occurred to Rigg that he had not thought about death for several minutes.
Willie Judy was a tonic.
“So,” he said to her, “What’s your secret identity?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I wasn’t always Rigg Dexon, Tony wasn’t always Tony Jackpot. Even your man Scottie has a past that is very unlike his present. Who were you before you became Willie Judy?”
This was an invitation for her to tell her life story, Rigg’s go-to, no-fail strategy for driving any conversation out of the muck. Everyone loved to talk about themselves, didn’t they?
Willie seemed to be thinking hard about the question. Too hard. Eventually she said, “I’ve always been me. I’m not anything else, yet.”
Just then Scottie hollered out from the back. “Willie, you need to come talk to Carter.”
“Except maybe I just became unemployed.” Willie stood and gave Rigg an unexpected, quick hug around the shoulders. “Don’t leave,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”
As soon as she left, Rigg noticed the beer stopped working. He decided it was time to go. “She with a fella? You or Scottie?”
“Crazy’s not my type,” said Tony. “Scottie’s fond of her though, at least the thought of her. I haven’t seen him make progress.”
“Ha. Dreams are good company. I’d like to settle up, hit the road.”
“Before she comes back, right,” Tony said. “The drinks are on us.”
Rigg politely declined. “I always pay my own way.”
Tony tried to get the actor to start a tab.
Rigg declined again, saying, “At my age I’ve become ‘commitment-phobic.’” It was a term he’d heard a much younger actor use with great seriousness on a television interview, and Rigg thought it was one of the funniest things he’d ever heard.
“Look, you’ve got to come back soon,” Tony said. “I’ll personally make sure you aren’t disturbed again.”
“I thought Willie Judy was very sweet.”
“Sweet? Now that’s proof that you’re still a bad ass.”
Still a bad ass. The things people said once you passed sixty. Rigg patted his jacket, making sure he had his jeep keys. He had at least six pockets to check and every one jangled or crinkled when he touched it. What you got for a grand was a jacket that let you tote a bottle or a gun in without ruining the line.
Rigg was stalling, thinking about Willie. He pushed a twenty and a five over to Tony. “What do you think she’ll do now?”
“Short term, Scottie and I can give her work here through Mother’s Day, but we’re the only ones that would. She’s run through her options.” The gambler was doing his best not to say that Willie Judy was a loser. “Don’t get me wrong, I love her like a sister, but long term, I hope she goes back home to West Virginia. You have to have a certain vision to make it out here.”
“It sounds like she did, once upon a time,” said Rigg, reminded of his own lost plot. “That Parks Service job. What happened there?”
“Couple of poor judgment calls. She didn’t make it out of probation.” Tony lowered his voice even though there was no one to overhear. “We’re not supposed to talk about it, but she might have killed a dog, thinking it was a sick coyote. And there was an injured flammulated owl she lost track of when she was supposed to be rehabilitating it.”
Those were sobering details. “And then she took the job she just lost?”
“Shuttling car parts across the valley for Carter’s Auto out in Beatty. There were a couple of less glamorous gigs in between.”
Rigg sighed. “She’s not a very lucky person, is she?”
“Luck is a scaffolded phenomenon, Mr. Dexon,” Tony said. “My field of expertise. Now, if you let me pour you another short one—on the house—I’ll tell you all about quantum uncertainty. What do you say?”
Four months ago, Rigg would have enjoyed bullshitting with the gambler about cosmic chances, but these days he was not so glib. In fact he trembled under the majesty of death and other phenomena he only barely understood—luck being one of those.
Somewhere in the back rooms of the Alkali, Willie Judy was absorbing her luck, with flinty grace, no doubt.
Rigg said, “I’ll have to come back for the full lecture, but in the meantime—” he reached into an inside pocket for a pen. He wanted to leave an autograph that the proprietors of Lily’s Lounge could pin to the wall, but crossed left when he should have crossed right and withdrew a wrinkled, trifold document.
He laughed and showed the papers to Tony Jackpot. “You recognize this, don’t you?”
Tony sure did. A lot of fellows he played with came to the table with their docs: pinks, boat registrations, and sometimes land deeds.
“Let’s make some luck, then,” said Dexon.
* * *
By the time Willie and Scottie returned, Dexon was gone. Tony pushed the papers across the polished ironwood bar. “It’s the deed to Parcel 68 on Apollo Camp Road. That’s the legal name for Goud’s Trail. Now signed over to one Wilhemina Charlotte Judy.”
The deed to The Mystery House. Willie said, “This can’t be real.”
“It’s real,” said Tony. “Unless you tell people I signed your name for you.”
“Looks like you notarized it too,” Scottie said. “Surely he’ll return once he realizes he needs a place to sleep.”
“He’ll sleep back in Hollywood where he belongs. You should have seen h
is face. It was like he was in one of his old movies.”
Willie’s eyes blinked rapidly. “The Mystery House is historical.”
“It’s a shack on a crumbling bluff,” Scottie cautioned. “And besides, it’s all historical. It’s the desert. I’ll take you up to Jackass Spring, show you bean cans still rolling around from when Charlie lived there.”
Tony frowned at his partner. He’d said the C word. They tried to avoid such talk at the Alkali. White people were crazy, coming to the Valley to see flowers, but after only a few days of poppy peeping they had their fill, and all they wanted to talk about was Manson.
Willie tilted and examined the deed as if it might reveal a secret message under different light. “Did Mr. Dexon say where he was going?”
“Not specifically,” Tony said. “But my guess is he’s headed out to see Carter.”
Willie lowered the map. “What for?”
“Pew-pew,” Tony said, cocking finger-guns into the air while doing half a jig. “More cowboy shit, I guess. He signed the deed, and then all of a sudden it was as if he’d snorted a bucket of coke. He was bouncing in his boots and said Carter needed to learn a lesson.”
“Oh man,” Willie said. “I guess I should call Carter.”
“Hold on,” said Scottie. Things were moving too fast for him. “Doesn’t anyone care about why Dexon would do something like this?”
Tony’s mood had definitely improved, and he was clearly proud of having been the catalyst for Willie’s turn of fortune. “Oh, I know why. He wanted to win an argument. We were getting a bit philosophical, and then all of a sudden he whips out the deed to prove a point.”
“Yes, but what point?” Scottie asked.
“That people can change, and also that people can be changed.” Tony turned to Willie. “Rigg Dexon wants to change you, Willie.”
Scottie said, “That’s damned offensive.”
Willie Judy placed the deed on the bar and said, “And it’s crap. Dexon adores me the way I am, can’t you tell?”
“Honey, I was there,” Tony said.
“You’re going to Honey yourself into a cast, Tony.” She tapped the documents. “I know what this means. He’s sending a message.”
“What message?”
“It means he thinks I can do it.” Willie smiled. “It means he thinks I can find The Juliet.”
THE JULIET
Chapter 3
Date set but Mystery Remains: Where is The Juliet?
The Indian Murderess, Caroline Firebird, will be hanged to death in The Free Pitch on the 16th of August for the brutal murder of businessman Louis Montgomery Stieg. The widowed father of twin boys and also Firebird’s benefactor, Stieg was stabbed during a struggle over possession of The Juliet Emerald. A Christian Judge and Jury discarded Firebird’s claims of self-defense but were unable to ascertain the fate of the famed Egyptian jewel. Though a Certain Evil will be banished from our midst when this Depraved Killer is sent to Hell, we must ask a final question: where is The Juliet?
—From The Inquisitor, 1877
February 1893: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Though he had been prepared for the eccentric ways of Sailor and Toby Stieg, attorney Martin Dellaire was nonetheless shocked by their appearance when he met them in person for the first time. The twin brothers were ghost-like, pale with rouged lips. Sailor’s black hair was affixed to his skull with glycerin in a severe style from the previous century, and he wore a dark parson’s coat buttoned up to his throat. In contrast, Toby had somehow managed to color his hair, eyebrows, and even eyelashes a shade of white that was only natural on a child. He wore a pale summer suit, loosely cut.
Young people and their ludicrous fashions. Dellaire was not impressed. They were waiting for him in the firm’s oak-paneled conference chamber. He said, “Mr. Stieg,” to Toby, and then “Mr. Stieg,” to Sailor as he shook their hands in turn. Both brothers only rose partway from their seats, as if it took too much effort to stand erect like men. When Dellaire also sat, he discovered that his hand reeked of perfume. So it was true. The boys were mad. Rumor had it that they soaked themselves in scent to mask the vinegar odor imparted by their affiliation with the Daughter Pickling & Spice Company, even though they had sold the operation a year before, just as soon as they came of age.
Dellaire began. “I’m led to understand you are here on some financial matters?”
“Yesss,” said Sailor.
Toby rocked forward in his seat, nodding with his torso. “The family business.”
“Which family business would this be?”
Sailor made a queasy expression that Dellaire understood to be a smile. “That business,” he said. “That bad business of our heritage.”
Dellaire had been raised Quaker and for professional convenience had recently converted to Methodism. Either way, his patience for whimsy was limited, and it looked like the Stieg boys intended to test its limits.
Sailor took the lead. “Mr. Dellaire. What if I were to tell you that we know the answer to The Great Question?”
“The Great Question?”
“Yesss. The question. Where is The Juliet?”
Dellaire clamped down a smile. The boys were playing a game. “Before I let you continue, you should know that Miss Firebird’s allocution is legendary within the Philadelphia legal community. She was very detailed in her description of the circumstances surrounding your father’s death, and she was clear about The Juliet. There is no mystery, except the one that sells newspapers. Firebird was an unhappy woman with a story to tell, and she told it all. I apologize if I appear indelicate.”
Toby frowned. “A story that only lawyers remember. How sad.”
Sailor was disappointed as well. “So you know that my brother and I possess the two halves.”
Dellaire nodded. The general assumption was that The Juliet was broken during the struggle, but some suggested it was damaged afterwards, during the investigation of the crime scene. Emeralds are fragile, and police are rough. “You each received a segment with the rest of the estate when you turned eighteen. That is correct, is it not?”
Toby rocked forward again, affirming the terms of the trust. Couldn’t the lad bend his neck?
Dellaire asked, “What happened to the platinum setting?”
“Our father had common tastes.” Toby turned his face to the door as if he expected someone to enter, tilting his head downward. Dellaire and Sailor waited for Toby to continue his train of thought, but soon realized Toby had dozed off.
Sailor continued, “Our father had common tastes. The setting was offensive, so we sold it to a dealer. We are not convinced that we procured full value in that exchange, but we held on to the gems. We don’t intend to squander the rest of our inheritance.”
The rest of it? Now Dellaire was beginning to understand. There was nothing left, was there? Nothing left of the Dakota Mining Company’s fortune, nothing left from the sale of Daughter Pickling & Spice.
The Stieg boys were only nineteen years old. And there was nothing left of their inheritance but a couple of rocks.
Toby shifted, and his head lay against the carved wooden back of the chair. He was still dozing. Sailor leaned over to retrieve a blonde satin kerchief from Toby’s waistcoat. He acted as if his brother always slept this way.
Sailor laid the kerchief out, unfolded it.
Dellaire was impressed at last. “May I?”
“Of course.”
They gems were warm in the attorney’s hand. Two luminous, green blobs, like prizes from an undersea kingdom. Such extraordinary color. One stone was nearly half again as big as the other. Both were cloudy with occlusions.
“I call them the snake eggs,” said Sailor.
Dellaire nodded and returned them to the handkerchief as if they might hatch out at any moment. “And you want me to help you get the most that you can for these, is that right?”
Toby awakened, pushed a flop of stiff white hair
out of his eyes. “We know there’s no value in cutting them into smaller gemstones. No real value, anyway. No lasting value.”
“Which brings us back to The Great Question,” said Sailor.
Dellaire had almost figured it out. Though the facts were known, for nearly twenty years the press had persisted—and succeeded—with a concocted mystery. Where is The Juliet? What the Stieg boys needed now was a new mystery to replace the old, rejuvenating the family business, as it were.
“What did you have in mind?”
“Well,” said Toby, “We rather think that competition is healthy.”
“Healthy,” echoed the darker brother.
Dellaire said, “An auction then? After a bit of strenuous promotion, of course, highlighting The Juliet’s legend, no doubt.”
Sailor touched the tip of the smaller stone, giving it a tender twirl in the center of the kerchief. He said, “We are imagining a more challenging event, Monsieur Dellaire. A hunt.”
“A treasure hunt,” Toby said. He even smiled. “That strenuous promotion, as you say, being a key element. Can you imagine it, people paying for the privilege of looking for The Juliet?”
“Well, that is an inventive idea.” Dellaire straightened, already calculating potential costs. “Have you worked out the details? Where would you conduct this hunt?”
“We have invested the last pennies of our inheritance in the purchase of a very special and historic venue,” Sailor said, pausing for dramatic effect. He leaned forward and opened his eyes wide, and Dellaire observed that the boy’s pupils were unnaturally large. Narcotic or cosmetic?
“We have procured the Bottler’s House.”
Dellaire was speechless. The Stieg twins were madmen, and they’d gone and bought themselves a madhouse. In particular, one that specialized in hysterics, drug fiends, and female offenders like Caroline Firebird. It was widely believed that she was held at the Bottler’s House in the days preceding her execution.
The Juliet Page 5