by Chris Wiltz
Fifteen minutes they waited in the dining room, Karen so tense she clutched her hands together until the antique diamond dinner ring Jack had given her felt as though it was cutting into her finger.
Solo arrived, mean and sober looking, but saying, “Karen, how nice to see you.”
He was dressed in one his suits, a shiny green reminiscent of lagoon scum, double breasted with a chartreuse silk shirt, gold cross hanging over his waxed chest, and matching pocket handkerchief, a power suit in the world of Miami thugs.
“What’s all this about, Solo?”
He smiled and said, his Cuban accent and his important, busy man shtick making his English quick and precise, “You want a little verbal sparring, I can indulge you.”
“Your man here cut my face.”
“I see that. A little nick, nothing much. Ernesto takes his work very seriously. He gets carried away sometime. But he has a very steady hand, I assure you.”
“I’m bleeding.”
“Karen, let’s not make a big deal.”
He handed her his handkerchief. She hesitated, but Solo was the dry-clean king. Still, she blotted her cheek and laid the handkerchief on the table nearer Solo, folding it over to hide the blood, obscene against the parakeet-bright square of silk.
He said, “We can be very quick here. I want to know where my money is, so I want to know where Jack is.”
“I have no idea where Jack is.”
“I’m sorry to have to say I do not believe you.”
He picked up her right hand, just as he’d done from the first day they’d met. He held it as if he might kiss it, his large manicured thumbnail shining under the globe light over the table. “Your hands, they are still most remarkably beautiful. I tell ’Nesto, I don’ recall more beautiful hands. Isn’t that right, ’Nesto?”
She saw it coming and tried to wrench her hand away, but ’Nesto had it, twisting her wrist painfully. She didn’t cry out but couldn’t stop a small noise in her throat.
“You are brave, Karen. I hope you are not also stupid,” Solo said.
’Nesto laid her hand palm up on the dining room table. He flattened it, spreading her fingers. His huge paw was sweaty, grubby; he breathed hard and fast, like a big dog. He held the knife blade snug against the tip of her pinkie, its edge across the back of her nail, like a scallion he was about to slice.
“I ask you one more time, Karen. Where is Jack?”
“The last time I saw him he was at a casino in Biloxi. The Isle of Capri, I think.”
“The last time. When is that?”
“About a week ago.”
“I think, Karen, you move closer to the truth, but you aren’ there yet.”
He closed his eyes. ’Nesto angled the blade and with a deft flick cut off the tip of her fingernail into the quick. She cried out, but it sounded more like surprise than pain. The pain, though, was rather stunning. She wasn’t sure she had any of her fingernail left. She saw blood on the blade as ’Nesto lifted it.
“’Nesto, he will give you a very nice manicure. Maybe I don’ have to tell you what he’ll do if he runs out of fingernails. Surely that will not become a problem.”
Karen shook her head. She saw tongues instead of fingers spread across the table.
“I didn’ think so. Where is my money?”
“I know where some of it is…”
’Nesto moved the blade to her fourth finger and another nail sailed through the air. Her cry this time was more of a breathless moan, and her eyes teared. She started talking loud and fast. “I took five thousand dollars Jack had in the dresser drawer at the hotel. The rest of it he locked in the safe. I never saw it. I would have taken all of it if I could have opened the safe.” She nodded toward the envelope on the table. “What’s left of the five is in there. Take it.”
Solo didn’t so much as glance at the envelope. He drew his brows together, perplexed. “Why did you take this money?”
Karen didn’t meet his eyes. She said just loud enough for him to hear, “Because I caught him making out with this little blond bitch in the bar, and I was pissed.”
Solo threw his head back and laughed. “Ah, the woman’s revenge. So you jus’ leave? Like that?” He snapped his fingers. “You don’ make big trouble in the bar, fight with the other woman? With Jack?”
“They were busy. They didn’t see me.”
“Truly, Karen, you are a most remarkable woman.”
Karen looked at him. “Jack’s crazy—you know that. No telling how many women there’ve been. You should’ve seen the fight after he didn’t come home once for three days. I broke every dish in the house, a few things I really liked. I decided not to get mad that way anymore. I started acting like nothing he did bothered me, you know? But the blonde. I’d never seen him with another woman. It did something to me. I took the money. I spent it on an apartment and a plane ticket.”
Solo motioned to ’Nesto to release her hand. Karen rubbed her wrist but couldn’t bring herself to look at her mutilated fingers. They were still bleeding, a small pool of blood on the table. Solo, always the gentleman, picked up his handkerchief, flipped it to spread it open, and presented it to her. She wrapped her fingers and cradled them in her other hand.
Solo fingered the manila envelope. He didn’t look inside but held it, felt its weight. He tossed it back on the table.
“To show you what I think of you, Karen, I don’ ask you to return the money, the five thousand dollars. You keep it.” He gestured toward the living room. “Move your furnishings. Start a new life.”
He held out his hand and the well-trained ’Nesto handed Solo Karen’s plane ticket. He handed it back to ’Nesto who shoved it into Karen’s purse. She made a face, disgust that his grubby hands were on her things.
“New Orleans. What’s in New Orleans?”
“That’s where I’m from.”
“Where you met Jack.”
Karen nodded.
“Jack with this blonde,” Solo said, “is not the last you’ll see of Jack.”
She shrugged. “I guess he could find me without any trouble, but a couple of years ago we left New Orleans almost as fast as we left Miami. Maybe he won’t think it’s a good idea to find me.”
“He will want to, then he gets his money back or whatever he decides because you spend his money.”
“But he has the rest of the money. A lot of money.”
“Yes, very much money. But his woman left. She does not even fight for her man. This makes him feel maybe he is not much of a man.”
“You think you’ve got Jack figured?”
Solo lifted a shoulder. “I know what it is to be a man.”
The bozo was perfectly serious. “I see,” said Karen.
“What you maybe don’ see is that if you don’ call me as soon as Jack finds you, you have a bigger problem than Jack.”
He reached inside his jacket and held a card out to her. A business card, for fucksake. Solo Fontova. Security Specialist. Phone number, cell phone, pager, fax number. No address.
“All I have to do is call you, and I’m off the hook?”
“That’s it. You earn your money.”
“What will happen to Jack?”
“That is up to Jack—whatever he has done with the money.”
“You know, Solo, Jack didn’t talk much about his business—your business—very much.”
“Of course not.”
“I don’t even know how much money was in the safe. A lot, I guess, because when we left here, Jack told me not to take anything, you know, any of our possessions, money wasn’t a problem.”
Solo found this most amusing. “For Jack, money is always a problem.” He said something in Spanish, and he and ’Nesto laughed.
Karen waited, their amusement wearing thin, and said, “How much money did he take, Solo?”
Solo stared at her, a woman speaking out of place. She stared back. Just when she thought he wouldn’t answer he said, “Sixty thousand,” made a guttural throat n
oise as he waggled his hand in the air, said, “give or take, mostly give,” and raised his eyebrows at her.
“Madre,” she said, eyes wide.
Solo pulled out a dining chair and put his foot on it, exposing his sheer-striped hose, so straight and smooth that Karen wondered if he kept them up with garters. He leaned on his knee, which put him closer but still looking down at her. “You would like to know how he got it, wouldn’t you, Karen?” He paused, but not waiting for an answer, enjoying her rapt attention, increasing the suspense. “He saw an opportunity and he took it. In this case, a very stupid thing to do.”
That night Jack had provided the “security” for one of the men at the poker game. An important man, Solo said, meaning rich.
“What is it you call the suckers?” Karen said. “Marks? Fish?”
“We don’t have marks or fish,” Solo told her patiently, but she could tell it riled him. “We have only players. You read too many books, Karen.” He glanced over his shoulder at the bookshelf stuffed with her paperback thrillers.
This man, the player, was the big winner that night, going all-in on the last hand. Jack put the sixty-plus thousand in a duffle bag and with his gun at his side, walked the man to his car. That was the last Solo had seen of them. Next thing, Solo gets a call from the player. He’s in the hospital. Had a heart attack out by the car that night. Jack drove him to the hospital, told him he’d hold the money for him until he got out. He’s getting out, he tells Solo, and he wants the money.
“No problem, I tell him, except I discover Jack is no longer in Miami.”
“So you had to make good,” Karen said.
Solo closed his eyes briefly, his way of nodding. “I will have to, yes.”
“But you haven’t yet.”
“It is the only way to get him to come back.”
So the fish could lose the next time, nothing left to chance, not that anything had been left to chance the first time. Jack had told Karen enough about his “business” dealings. She said, “He might not come back anyway, Solo. Too much booze, too many broads and cigarettes for his heart.”
“I have my reputation to protect.”
And your ass. Karen said, “You see, that’s where Jack has an edge. He doesn’t care about things like reputations. He’s a type T personality.”
“What is this, type T?”
“T. For thrills.”
***
Karen walked to a drugstore a couple of blocks away, her two fingers wrapped in Solo’s blood-stained handkerchief and a dishtowel. When she’d finally looked at them she’d been relieved to see a good part of the two nails still there, but where the quick was exposed, it hurt too much to think about getting a couple of customs glued on yet. She got gauze, adhesive, and Neosporin, a butterfly bandage for her cheek, and a look from the cashier. After the movers left Karen went straight to the airport, not in the least sorry to leave Coconut Grove behind.
It wasn’t until she was settled on the plane that she had a chance to think about what she’d done. She’d convinced Solo that she knew nothing about the money, and except for the fingernails, it hadn’t even been hard, just talking fast and acting scared. Not that it was all an act; ’Nesto and his knife had scared her plenty. But not enough to give up the money. Not enough to really believe Solo would amputate her fingers or her tongue. He was far too fastidious. Jack was such an ass.
The plane took off, and she experienced a moment of lightheadedness. What she’d done, it wasn’t like her, and that was exactly why she liked it. The lightheadedness was a rush of exhilaration.
The staff at La Costa Brava might have called her a hard-ass, but that was about work, running a tight operation, because in that business inattention to details and not keeping track had a way of making money disappear. Outside of work, she’d been a pushover. All Jack had to do was look at her, those puppy-dog eyes…except that was the excuse, not the reason. She’d been restless, bored, and being in love was action. Danger was action too. All in one package—Jack.
So what about Jack? Would she really be able to hang him out there, wait to see what Solo would do? She knew she wouldn’t; she’d give Jack the money.
Karen ordered a bourbon and soda, and as she sat sipping it, she admitted to herself that she’d crossed the line from watching danger to putting herself in the way of it. Was she still so bored that she needed a change from following the action to being it? Maybe action was addictive that way. Maybe that was Jack’s problem, always looking for his next fix of exhilaration. She wondered if that’s what Jack felt, exhilaration, after he saw an opportunity and took it. She also wondered if it made seeing the next opportunity easier. Her line of thought got broken because something else occurred to her. She’d forgotten her Donna Karan dress at the cleaners after all.
Four
Raynie Devereux walked the streets of the French Quarter. She had to find a job, and she had to get out of that rat-hole where she was living. For one thing, she couldn’t cook there—just a back room in a deteriorating house on Esplanade, a hole in the roof over the stairway, for which she paid an extravagant hundred and seventy-five dollars a week, bathroom down the hall. And the other people who lived there were weird. Worse than weird—scary. They wore black all the time, dyed their hair black, painted their fingernails black and wore black lipstick, even some of the…What should she call them? They weren’t boys, but they certainly weren’t men, and to call them guys seemed…too wholesome.
The couple next door, though, had been nice to her during the thunderstorm the previous afternoon. The roof had begun to leak over her bed. Raynie had moved it, but the room was situated that the best she could do was shove the bed against a wall so only a corner of the mattress got wet. The girl found a bucket for her in a closet downstairs then asked her if she wanted to go to a party that night with her and her boyfriend.
She beckoned Raynie into their room, one of the large front rooms of the house with two windows that stretched from the floor almost to the high ceiling, an alcove with an ancient rusting refrigerator not as tall as she was, a tiny stove, their own bathroom. The paint was peeling from the walls, the mantel full of candles and crosses and strange objects, a dead rat painted with stars and stripes dangling above it. Between the windows a plastic baby doll was nailed naked to a cross, one blue eye open, a hole where the other eye should have been. The other eye, glued on top of the cross, stared from under its fringe of lashes. Raynie nearly ran from the room.
Then the girl sat down on the unmade mattress on the floor where the boyfriend lounged with his big black boots on the dirt-gray sheets. She leaned into him, crossing her ankle over her knee, her black skirt falling between her legs. Her eyes closed. She smiled as his fingers with their black nails drifted slowly up her arm. Their sensuality made Raynie feel weak, she wasn’t sure with what. She just had to get out of there.
As if the girl could hear her think she said, “Come sit with us, stay a while.”
Raynie didn’t know if she was being invited for a threesome. She was both curious and afraid. Fear won out; she told them she had to go.
“Come with us tonight,” the girl said, her eyes fluttering. The boyfriend smiled—no, it was more of a smirk—at her.
“I’ll see,” Raynie murmured and turned to flee.
“We’ll knock on your door before we leave,” the girl said.
As she closed their door, Raynie saw the girl bend her head back, exposing her neck, the boyfriend’s large-knuckled hand loosely circling it, stroking it.
In her room, Raynie felt agitated. She wanted to leave, walk until she got distracted by the street action, until she calmed down, but it was still raining too hard. She sat in the straight-back chair, her feet propped on the small wobbly table, the only other furniture in the room besides the bed and a bureau, and listened to the rain on the roof and the ping in the old galvanized bucket.
As soon as the rain stopped, Raynie left and stayed out until after ten. She wandered up and down the streets,
looking for HELP WANTED signs. She saw none. Then she sat in front of the cathedral at Jackson Square and listened to the street musicians. When she got back to the rooming house, she crept up the last few stairs after she saw light through the transom above the couple’s door.
When the knock came, it jolted her awake, nearly midnight. Raynie lay rigid, her heart pumping so hard she could hear it. They knocked again. Her heart revved for fifteen minutes after she heard them leave, the lug soles of the boyfriend’s boots thunking down the staircase.
She had trouble getting back to sleep. She blamed it on the heat, oppressive even though she lay in her underwear by the open window. But she couldn’t get the image out of her mind—that big hand with its slow light touch on that long stretch of neck. The agitation set in again. How could they be so scary—and so sexy?
Daniel’s hand, her neck: Raynie, sad that it wasn’t exciting without the look of sexual abandon on the girl’s face, cried herself to sleep.
***
Raynie’s feet in their strappy, high-heeled sandals, her toenails painted cherry red, were tired. She walked up Royal Street, stopping in at the shops she’d passed up the first week she was in town, choosy before she’d been humbled by hearing, “Nothing right now; you know, the storm; business is slow; don’t know if we can stay open; maybe in a couple of months,” too many times. She was starving when she got to the newsstand at Canal for a morning paper. At a nearby coffee shop she looked for a bulletin board, hoping to find a woman in the Quarter who needed a roommate, but this shop didn’t have a board. She pulled out the Classifieds and put them aside, too weary to look at them, too afraid that she was close to the last resort—grunge work in some two-star hotel or washing dishes in some dirty restaurant kitchen. She sipped a cup of coffee and slowly ate a large bran muffin, the cheapest item in the display case.
Desperation was not far away. Restaurants and cafés were eating her money, but loneliness was gnawing her spirit. She’d have gladly paid to talk to Bernie, even Peewee, but she knew if she called, she’d end up going home. Raynie was more homesick than she’d ever imagined, and she’d told herself many times over the months she’d planned her escape that she’d be lonely for a time, maybe a long time. She didn’t want to give up for that reason. She told herself she wanted the comfort of home without having to be there.