“Yes.” It was the waitress with the bad attitude.
“Name’s Winnie,” he said, grinning and giving me an elbow to the ribs.
“Ah. Good one,” I said, nodding at Winky. “You’d like to be inside…ha ha. I get it. Very funny.”
Winky scrunched up his freckled face like a naughty kid and grinned. I faked a smile and tried for a third time to herd the hapless hobos toward my own topic of interest. “Like I said, I want to get into that RV, maybe even the house. Tony left all his stuff to a woman named Thelma G. Goldrich. I think that could be Glad.”
“It’s a long shot,” said Jorge, straightening up in his seat. “Why would he leave everything to a dead woman?” Interest and something approaching sobriety appeared on his face. Impressive, considering how pickled his brain must have been.
“He probably made the will before Glad died and didn’t have time to change it,” I offered.
“Maybe. I dunno. But if you think it’s worth looking into, Val, I’m pretty sure I can get my friend Tommy to get us the address. Maybe let us in the house, too. We’re still tight. His brother married my cousin Mercedes. Tommy’s a lieutenant now, so he can pretty much do what he wants without a lot of other guys breathing down his neck.”
“Great! Call him,” I said.
“I don’t have a phone.”
“Use mine.”
I fished around in my purse and handed Jorge my cellphone. He punched in Tommy’s number from memory. His friend on the force didn’t need any arm twisting. A minute or so later Jorge clicked off the phone and smiled. “He’s checking on the address. Then he’s on his way.”
We had just enough time to pay the bill and offer up a “Fuck you, Kiddo” toast to Glad before Jorge’s friend Lieutenant Tom Foreman pulled into the parking lot. I piled into his squad car along with the stooges and headed off to commit my first official crime – breaking and entering.
***
On the ride over, I sat wedged between Jorge and Goober in the backseat of the patrol car. Winky had called shotgun, so he got to ride upfront with Tom the cop. Apparently those were stooge rules. I made a mental note of it.
We headed south on Gulf Boulevard past a line of 1950’s era pastel-colored hotels and motels planted just feet from the road. Wedged cheek to jowl, the small, two-and-three story mom-and-pop establishments obscured the stunning beach that lay just on the other side. In fact, the only hint we were near the Gulf was the carnival parade of sunburned, hungover tourists who stumbled along the sidewalk in too-tight bathing suits and too-late sun hats.
As we passed the bumblebee-striped Bilmar hotel, Jorge and Goober began discussing whether or not Winky could be trusted inside Tony’s house. Sandwiched between the two, I had no alternative but to eavesdrop like a nosy ping-pong ball.
“He’ll mess things up for sure,” Jorge whispered to Goober. “You remember what he did at Kat’s New Year’s party.” Jorge put his mouth to my ear. I got the heebie-jeebies as he whispered, “He went through that poor lady’s drawers and came out wearing her leopard print bra like a pair of earmuffs.”
“Point taken,” Goober said under his breath. “I’ll never forget the scene at Sea Hag’s. Who knew so many toilet rolls could fit down somebody’s pants?”
“Or at Hal’s funeral when he…”
“Oh god. Don’t even say it,” Goober said, cutting Jorge off. “Nothing’s sacred to Winky. Not even the dead. Better leave his ass in the car.”
“How we gonna do that?” asked Jorge. “The boy’s got a fuse as short as his Johnson.”
“Leave that to me,” Goober said. He closed one eye and tapped his bald noggin with his right index finger. “Hey Winky!” Goober yelled across to the front seat.
Winky’s head popped around to face us, tongue out like an eager, ginger-haired pug.
“We need you to keep an eye out for Tony’s nosy neighbor while we search the place,” Goober explained like a military strategist. “Tony told me she looks spot-on-a-match like Pamela Anderson. Likes to prance around half naked in front of her windows. Even sunbathes topless sometimes in the front yard. We don’t want her poking around, messing up our plans.”
“I’m on it, chief!” Winky shot back. He made a thumbs-up next to his right ear. “You can count on me!”
I took a sideways glance at the peanut-headed commander in chief. Maybe Goober wasn’t such a dummy after all.
The squad car turned east off Gulf Boulevard into the low-key, red brick entry to Bahia Shores, one of the first subdivisions built on the strip island in the 1950s. Officer Tom drove slowly along curvy streets with kitsch names like Bikini Way and Bali Hi Court before finding Bimini Circle. At the end of the cul-de-sac, he backed his car expertly into the driveway of a flat-roofed, ranch-style house painted tired shades of taupe to match the desolate, gravel-strewn yard. The only specks of green around the place were one straggly pygmy date palm and a few knots of hardcore weeds that had managed to scratch a living amongst the graveyard of dusty stones. The nondescript house was a dump, probably no bigger than a thousand square feet. But the backyard butted up against the Intracoastal Waterway, making the shack worth half a million, easy. Welcome to Florida.
“We’ll be back in fifteen, tops,” said Jorge to his cop friend.
The blond lieutenant gave one quick nod. Then, without a word, he got out and opened the backdoor and returned to his place in the driver’s seat. He pulled out some paperwork and tried to ignore Winky, who was wiggling in the passenger seat beside him like a wormy puppy. The rest of us tumbled out of the squad car and made our way toward the backyard. Dusty gravel crunched under the soles of our shoes. I glanced back at the squad car just before we rounded the corner of the house. Winky had his greasy nose and pudgy hands pressed against the glass of the passenger window, giving him the appearance of a fat kid trapped underwater. I shook my head. The other two stooges had been right. Good call to leave him behind.
Jorge and I watched as Goober picked his way through the backyard and squeezed his tall, lanky frame between a jumble of abandoned stoves and discarded jalousie windows. He climbed over a rusty refrigerator carcass with his grasshopper legs and tried the door on the RV.
“Locked!” he called out. “Let’s check out the house. Maybe there’s a key somewhere.”
Jorge stepped around a jumble of dead bicycles and picked the backdoor lock in a matter of seconds. I wondered how many times he’d done that before. The door cracked open and a smell like fruit-flavored death came pouring out. The back door was right off the kitchen. On the counter, a black pile of slime wriggled. Houseflies buzzed around us like kamikazes. Against my will I took a closer look at the writhing lump on the counter next to the sink. Maggots. A million of them were making the heap that used to be bananas fidget and squirm like a nerd on a first date. I gagged involuntarily. Jorge just looked at the pile and grunted. I watched as he disappeared between the two-meter high columns of magazines, his eyes darting around as if taking in every aspect of the scene around him.
“Holy mother of god, would you just look at all this shit!” Goober shouted, scaring me. He had trailed in behind me and was the only one tall enough to view the chaos in its entirety.
“Cripes, Goober!” I said, annoyed at myself for being frightened. “Can you see Jorge?”
He peeked around and shook his mustachioed head. “Negatory.”
The small, galley-shaped kitchen was surprisingly clean, except for the banana corpses. Besides the backdoor, the only way out of the kitchen was through the narrow gauntlet formed by stacks of yellowing St. Petersburg Times.
“He went that way,” I said, pointing at the foot-wide slit between newspapers.
“Oh goody. Onward and upward,” Goober said dryly. He wiped the sweat from his bald head with a handkerchief. “You’re the teeny-tiny lady. You get to go first.”
I wished I had on a hazmat suit instead of a sundress and sandals. I took a deep breath and squeezed by stacks of dusty magazines and newspape
rs and sacks of god knows what else. Goober trailed behind me, punctuating the journey with curse-laden comments. Finally, we reached an opening that led to a bathroom. I flipped on the light switch. Like the kitchen, it, too, appeared perfectly normal. The vintage, flamingo-pink tiles gleamed in the light from the three round bulbs above the vanity. The matching pink tub and toilet were immaculate.
I could make out telltale tape marks on the mirror where something – most likely Tony’s will – had been affixed for someone to find. Two lonely toothbrushes hung in a black ceramic holder built into the wall by the sink. In the center of the holder stood a tube of denture cream. My heart flinched. Could it be Glad’s? But lots of people have dentures. Especially in St. Petersburg, the city known affectionately as “God’s waiting room.”
I opened the medicine cabinet. Unlike most people’s bathrooms, there was no huge collection of caramel-colored prescription bottles. Who needs Prozac when you’ve got pilsner? No drugs. Just mouthwash and deodorant…and nail polish and lipsticks! A woman had lived here, for sure! I picked up one of the lipsticks. The color was called Certainly Red. Glad’s color if there ever was one!
I opened a drawer and discovered I had spoken too soon about the prescription meds. I picked up the lone brown plastic bottle and read the label. It was a gag prescription for Fukitol. Against my will I burst out laughing.
“You all right in there?” Goober poked his peanut head around the doorframe.
“Yes. Hey, Goober, Tony wanted you to have this.” I tossed him the bottle. He caught it midair with his long, basketball-player fingers.
“Hmmm. Fukitol,” Goober read as he held the bottle close to his face with one hand and smoothed down his moustache with the other. “Recommended by six out of five doctors. I like the odds. But honestly, I prefer JD myself. That’s Jack Daniels, in case you didn’t know.”
“I get it. I’m a TNT gal, myself.”
“Ahh, Tanqueray and tonic,” Goober said, raising his eyebrows a good inch. “Classy, yet unsophisticated.”
“High praise indeed,” I sneered. I was about to close the bathroom drawer when I heard a muffled voice.
“Guys, come look in here!” Jorge called from somewhere in the house.
“Where are you?” Goober called back. “Say something. We’ll follow your voice.”
Jorge did one better. He began to sing. In Spanish. Goober and I smiled at each other. It had to be a good sign.
“Ladies first,” he said, pointing down the hall in the direction of Jorge’s tenor.
“Always the gentleman,” I replied snidely. I frowned and eyed the newspapers and garbage bags stacked along both walls. There was barely enough room for a rat to get through. “Winky’s fat ass would have never fit,” I muttered. I sucked in my stomach and inched sideways down the hall.
It took a full minute to squeeze down twelve feet of hallway. At the end, the garbage subsided, revealing a bedroom as orderly as the kitchen and bath. On the edge of a queen-sized bed covered in a white chenille spread, Jorge sat crooning like the leader of a teen boy band. He stopped singing when we entered.
Jorge shook his head softly. “It was a love story, man. Amor. Take a look.” He handed me a framed picture of Tony and Glad. They were arm in arm, smiling at each other like contented lovebirds.
“What?” I gasped. Glad had mentioned nothing to me about Tony. My heart pinched from feeling left out of the loop. I started to sulk, then caught myself. “This looks like it was taken a good twenty years ago.”
“Secret lovers. The best kind,” Jorge said dreamily.
“Secret lovers my ass,” said Goober. “Find anything else, lover boy?”
“Jes, Señor Suave. I found t’ree chooboxes of letters and photos and stuff. They must have been together for years. There’s a Polaroid of them in Hawaii from 1998, with hotel receipts and those little drink umbrellas. They kept everything.”
“No surprise there,” Goober said sarcastically. “This guy didn’t even toss his cookies.”
“Come on, Goober. Where’s your sense of romance?” I teased.
“Romance? What the hell’s that?” Goober threw his hands in the air. “It’ll take us hours to sort through all this shit, and this place smells like a monkey’s ass. I say let’s take the boxes and get the hell out of here. This place is getting on my nerves.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll take the three boxes home tonight. It was my idea, so I’ll do the dirty work of sorting through them.”
“Suits me,” said Goober. Jorge nodded.
I had lied about my motive for wanting the boxes. But it was a white lie – the so-called polite kind of lie we women in the South were weaned on. I was practically dying of curiosity to find out more about Glad. But beyond that truth was another, bigger one: I couldn’t fathom trusting these guys with Glad and Tony’s personal belongings. The thought of Goober or Winky or Jorge pawing thoughtlessly through the remains of their life together gave me heartburn. I knew these guys had been Glad’s friends too, but that didn’t make the thought feel any better. It still seemed wrong. Really, really wrong. Plus, I was hurt that Glad hadn’t mentioned her relationship with Tony to me. Unless he was her true love lost? And to be brutally honest, I didn’t want to be the last to know what else she might have kept a secret.
“Guys,” I said, “Glad and Tony kept their relationship quiet for some reason. Let’s not blow it for them now. Not yet. At least not until we find out more about it.”
“No problemo,” said Jorge.
“Okay,” agreed Goober. “Fine. Whatever it takes to get us out of here!”
“I guess we’ve got what we need for now,” I said. “We can try the RV later if this doesn’t pan out.”
We put the three shoeboxes in a garbage bag and Goober balanced them on top of his bald head like one of those jug-carrying desert wanderers. We inched our way back to the kitchen, then exited the house. Jorge locked the door behind us. Relief swept over me as I took in a deep breath of hot, humid outside air – as fresh as it got in St. Pete in July.
“Remember, we tell no one,” I said as we crunched through the dry gravel along the side yard. Both men nodded a silent oath as we rounded the corner and walked toward the squad car. As soon as we came into view, Winky jumped out of the vehicle and ran toward us, waving his arms wildly.
“Coast is clear!” he yelled at the top of his lungs. “Nobody seen us!”
I cringed and turned to Goober and Jorge. “That means not a word to Winky, either.”
“That really goes without saying, Val,” Goober said dryly and rolled his eyes.
Chapter Ten
Since Glad’s death, I’d let the stooges creep into my world, little by little. Like a stray cat you give a meal to, then a name, then wake up one day to find pawing at you in bed, wanting something you weren’t sure you wanted to give. Unlike that hypothetical cat, however, I hadn’t allowed any of these strays into my bed. Not yet, anyway. I took comfort in that. I still had some kind of standards. Maybe I should call these guys the Schrodinger’s cats. Until I am actually observed screwing one of them, my dignity can remain undetermined, both dubious and intact.
The irony that I was growing increasingly reliant on three of the world’s most unreliable men was par for the pothole-laden course that was my life to date. In fact, bizarre events and situations like this had, over the past 45 years, shaped me into one of irony’s biggest admirers. If someone ever did a biography on me, they might even say I founded my life on pillars of irony. Even so, the most ironic twist of them all had to be my experience with Glad – the woman who taught me to enjoy life again, then died and left me in agony. Her passing reminded me that irony had a dark side. Maybe even a mean streak. Actually, I was beginning to think irony could be a downright bitch.
***
I left my partners in crime at Caddy’s and drove home with the three boxes of booty lifted from Tony’s place. I parked Maggie in the assigned spot behind my apartment and hit the switch to close
the convertible top. I found my girlie hotrod four months ago. Landing in the States with no credit and not a dime to spare, I had tried living without a car for three months. But then the summer heat kicked in and fried my will to walk. So I’d scoured the FSBO ads and found Maggie. After seeing the price and the owner financing option, it was love at first sight.
Lots of small imperfections had taken her worth down bigtime, but she still retained her classic beauty. Besides, what was a little rust and a couple of dents among friends? Lately I’d had plenty of hard lessons on the topic of beauty running deeper than shiny surface veneer. Truth be told, a few weeks ago I didn’t think I had any veneer left. But Glad’s advice had changed me. I now looked at perfection not as a goal, but as an overrated illusion designed to keep us anxious and dissatisfied. I guess you could say that, under Glad’s guidance, my philosophy on achieving personal perfection had changed from fix it to fuck it.
Being fifty-six years old, it takes Maggie a couple of minutes to drag her ragtop out of its compartment behind the backseat and shimmy it slowly over her chassis like a tired-ass hooker giving it one last go. She bitches the whole time, too, whining like an overwrought can opener. I used to fidget impatiently waiting for her to finally flop the canvas top onto the chrome windshield frame. Now I kind of like that she takes her time. Just as Glad had, Maggie reminded me to relax and breathe and live and let live. Chill. You’ve got time, Kiddo.
I cut the ignition and snapped the heavy chrome clips down to clamp the ragtop in place. Then I cranked the windows shut and grabbed the garbage bag on the seat next to me. A garbage bag containing the life of Glad’s garbage-loving man. I savored another taste of bittersweet irony.
I slung the bag over my shoulder and climbed the rickety wooden stairs to my home-sweet-home. No larger than the double garage it sat above, my apartment wasn’t a bad place, all in all. Built in the 1920s, it had wooden floors, built-in cabinets and lots of windows. Having said that, the floors slanted like a funhouse, the painted-shut drawers required dynamite to open, and the original, single-pane windows provided absolutely no insulation or soundproofing whatsoever. I could actually hear the neighbor two doors down raking his leaves – among other things.
Glad One: Starting Over is a %$#@&! (Val & Pals Book 2) Page 6