“Just the thing,” she said, reaching under the sink again. “You might as well do the job right.”
Bentley came back in.
“In the pantry,” she said to him, pointing toward a big cupboard near the door.
He opened it and got out a broom, then poked at the dirt on the floor. The dirt was too wet, though, and simply smeared across the linoleum.
“Mop’s in there too,” she said. “Hot water’s in the sink. Use the right tool for the right job. I’m surprised I have to tell you that, a man your age. Maybe you’d better fetch Henry out of the car after all at this rate, the kind of job you do.”
She took a flyswatter from a peg on the wall and slammed the hell out of a fly that was just then buzzing against the window, then settled herself on a stool by the sink.
“He wouldn’t have lasted a week at the Paradise, my place in Honolulu. Any of those little Filipino girls could clean circles around him.” She squinted at Bentley, who clearly kept his silence for Henry’s sake. He edged past her, dipping the mop into the sink and then twisting some of the water out of it.
“That’s still too wet,” she said to him, pointing at the mop with the swatter. “It’ll take a week for the floor to dry. You’re not bathing a poodle here, you’re just picking up a little dirt.”
He wrung it out again, leaning into it, nearly tearing the head off the mop, then he moved off across the kitchen again and slapped it around on the muddy floor.
“Watch out with that mop! For heaven’s sake!” she said. “Mind the cream pitchers!”
On a shelf above the back door stood a half dozen ceramic pitchers—cow and moose heads, a pig with a corkscrew tail, a Cheshire cat. All of them had holes in their mouths or noses where the cream could pour out. Bentley looked at them for a moment as if he didn’t quite understand them, then went back to mopping.
“That’s right,” she said, “back away from it, don’t walk through it or you’ll get your socks wet and track it all over the rest of the floor. There, you missed some—along the baseboard.” She gestured with the swatter again. Walt sprayed the degreaser on the last of the stove pieces and wiped them down with a rag. The least he could do was leave it clean, since, he knew by now, there was no way he was going to fix it. He didn’t have the foggiest idea what was wrong with it.
Bentley rinsed the mop again, then took one last swipe at the remnants of the mud. Turning toward the sink, he clipped the cream pitcher shelf with the mop handle, and the cow head pitched off the shelf onto the floor, breaking into three or four pieces.
44
BENTLEY STARED AT the broken cow head in disbelief. Mrs. Biggs slumped, putting her face in her hands as if this had finally defeated her utterly.
“I’m terribly sorry,” Bentley said, dropping to his hands and knees. He picked up the fragments and tried to fit them together. “Here we go, here’s its eye …” He groped under the edge of the clothes dryer.
“That was a priceless antique.”
“Let me pay you for it,” Bentley said. “Honestly…. How stupid of me …” He held his hands out, shaking his head helplessly at Walt.
“Maybe some Super Glue?” Walt said helpfully.
“That’s kind of you,” Mrs. Biggs said to Walt, “but I’m afraid your friend has ruined it. I won’t say that he did it on purpose, but …”
“I most certainly did not do any such thing!” Bentley said, his face suddenly red. “I’ll be happy to take your word for it being valuable.” He hauled his wallet out, fingering the bills inside and drawing out a ten. She stared at it, as if it were some kind of Chinese phoney-dough.
“Don’t in sult me,” she said coldly.
“All right. Fair enough.” Bentley took out a twenty and started to put the ten back, but Mrs. Biggs pulled them both out of his hand.
“Fifty dollars should just about do it,” she said. “If I can replace the creamer at all. That object was made in Germany—prewar.”
Bentley looked at Walt again. “That’s it,” he said. “I’m tapped out.”
“What do you need?” Walt asked, settling the chrome top back onto the stove. “Another twenty?” He got his wallet out and handed over a twenty. Mrs. Biggs took it politely.
Uncle Henry appeared right then, out on the driveway, standing next to the Buick and looking like a lost child. He waved at them.
“You might as well get the old goat in here,” Mrs. Biggs said to Walt. “He can at least lend a hand. He’s got to be good for something.”
“Now look here,” Bentley said, starting up again. “This has gone just about far enough. We’ve mopped your floor and repaired your stove …”
“And broke my priceless heirloom, you might as well say.”
Walt opened the back door and gestured at Uncle Henry. “Watch the mud,” he said as the old man came around the back side of the house.
“Is she still on the warpath?” Henry whispered.
“She’s had it with Bentley. He’s not much of a diplomat.”
“Roll up your sleeves, Henry, and scrub up this mess in the sink.” She shouted past Bentley and waved Henry in through the door. “And you, Reverend, why don’t you see what you can do with a tube of glue, unless you’ve got the shakes. You don’t look too steady. Not a secret toper, are you? Or is that what your big rush is all about? Too long away from the sauce?” She grinned at him for a moment before opening a drawer and pulling out a little green tube of Super Glue. Bentley sat down at the table without a word and went to work on the cow.
“That stove looks fine,” she said to Walt. “Good as new. Now, how about that tea?”
“I’d like a cup of tea,” Henry said.
“Maybe not,” Walt put in, glancing at his wristwatch. “It’s nearly time to get the kids from school.” The stove looked first-rate, but there was no telling …
“Oh, just one cup,” she said. “Just to celebrate a job well done.”
Henry hauled one of the cast-iron grills out of the sink, dried it off, and set it over its burner. Mrs. Biggs put the teakettle on top of it and twisted the knob. There was a faint hiss, but nothing happened beyond that.
“Takes a moment to run the gas back in through the pipes,” Walt said, knowing what he said was nonsense. The stove was completely buggered up. There was the smell of gas in the air, heavy now, so something was working, anyway. Walt picked up the matchbook on the counter and struck a match, slipping it under the edge of the grill. The burner ignited in a whoosh of blue flame, a fireball the size of the stovetop that singed all the hair off both of his arms. Walt danced backward, fanning at the stove with his hand, but there was no point; the flames were already out. He moved forward and twisted the knob, shutting down the burner.
“I guess this is a job for the gas company,” he said, shaking his head. “Sorry. I gave it a try.”
“No harm done,” she said. She looked wistfully out the window. “I don’t suppose the gas company can come out today, though. Not this late. And I can’t use the stove in this condition—it’s like to blow up the house, isn’t it?” She sighed. “Lord knows I can’t afford to eat out, though, not these days. I’ll eat cold food, I guess, out of the fridge. I’ve got the rest of a box of frozen day-olds from the All-Niter. That’ll do for the likes of me.”
“You’ve got fifty dollars,” Bentley said, trying to glue the cow’s eye back into its head.
“That’s pitcher money,” she said. “You ought to know that much, unless that bourbon’s ate up all your brain cells, too.”
“Maybe we could treat Maggie to a meal,” Henry said. “I didn’t bring any money, but …”
“I’ve got another twenty in here someplace,” Walt said, dipping into his wallet again. Hell, he thought, looking at the two singles that were left. There was no use putting it off. Obviously she’d have those too, before they left; might as well burn it all down right now. “Here you go, dinner on us.” He handed her the whole works, tipping his wallet toward her to make it clear it was em
pty of anything but moths.
“There we go,” Bentley said heartily, setting the repaired cow pitcher down on the table. “Darned well good as new.”
Even from halfway across the room Walt could see that there was something wrong with it. A chip was apparently missing, and Bentley had tried to compromise by gluing the eye in a quarter inch too far down the nose. The effect was startling, almost demented, as if the cow were trying to look up its own nostril. Mrs. Biggs picked up the creamer, flinching when she got a good look at it. “Now it’s ruined good and proper,” she said. “It’s trash now, isn’t it? You’ve finished me off, Reverend.”
She began to cry, and set the pitcher on the counter. “Never mind me,” she said, waving her hand. “An hour ago I had a stove, a cream pitcher. I had my d … d … dignity.” She bleated out a sob, and Henry moved to her side, putting his arm around her shoulders.
Bentley closed his eyes, and Walt got the idea that he was counting, that maybe he would have to count several times.
“I was wondering,” Henry said softly to Walt. “Maggie’s Buick has been acting up, and she hates to take it over to Pinky’s Garage again, not after what they soaked her for last time. Maybe you’ve got some idea … ?”
“Acting up how?” Walt asked. Bentley turned away, cutting the air with little slashes of his hand, as if he were reading his congregation a hellfire sermon.
“Overheating,” Henry said. “Isn’t that it?”
She nodded, sniffling a little and fingering the cream pitcher again.
“She can’t drive it ten blocks,” Henry said. “She’s lucky to make it to the All-Niter.”
“Probably just the thermostat,” Walt said. “Nothing to it. We’ll pull the hose and pop it out. We can run the thermostat down to Chief and swap it for a new one. Won’t take a second, won’t cost a cent.” He winked at Mrs. Biggs, who had gotten her composure back.
“I’d be obliged,” she said. “And I wonder if you’d pop into the Satellite for a few groceries, too? I know it’s only a block down, but my sciatica …” She grimaced, and straightened her back with what was apparently a monumental pain and effort. “Here.” She offered Walt one of his twenties back, but Henry stopped her.
“We’ll take care of it,” he said. “You buy yourself another one of these vessels.” He pointed at the cow.
Bentley stepped to the door, opened it, and went straight out without saying a word.
“Pissant,” Mrs. Biggs said. “That’s the only name for a creature like that. And he calls himself a man of God.” She shook her head sadly, as if it were a shame. “I’ll make out the grocery list while you look to the car. There’s some tools in the garage, but not many.” She inclined her head at Walt. “Leave ‘em as clean as you find ‘em. That’s what I always told the help at the Paradise.”
“Good policy,” Walt said. “Leave it to us.”
He followed Henry out the door again. It only took a few minutes to get the top hose off the radiator and pull out the thermostat. But the hose had gone mushy, so Walt took it, too, and then pulled the bottom hose just to be safe, letting the green radiator water run down the driveway and into the gutter while Henry diluted it with hose water. They’d have to buy clamps before it was over, and a gallon of antifreeze. Still, unless the radiator itself was shot, the whole thing wouldn’t cost more than twenty-five bucks, and maybe another twenty for groceries, give or take, and if that was the end of Maggie Biggs, they’d have gotten off cheap. Bentley had sat in his car the whole time, staring out through the windshield while Walt worked on the Buick. He popped the trunk from inside when Walt rapped on the window, and Walt dropped the hoses and thermostat inside.
“How much?” Bentley asked when Walt and Henry climbed in.
“How much what?” Walt asked.
“How much more of this damnation extortion till we’re out of the woods? I tell you I’ve seen a few hard cases in my day, but she takes the cake, every blessed crumb of it.” He pulled away from the curb, shaking his head darkly. “And I’ll tell you what—you give these people an inch of rope, and they’ll hang you. Velma Krane and her dignity! I’ll bet you a shiny new dime there never was a Velma Krane. And that cow pitcher! Prewar Germany! That was a piece of plaster of Paris she bought down at Pic ‘n Save, and she soaked us for fifty bucks! What did she take you for, altogether?”
“Pull in here at the bank,” Walt said, digging out his automatic teller card. It’s your call, Henry. Shall we see this through?”
“Absolutely,” Henry said. “Damn the expense. If she calls Jinx …”
Walt hopped out of the can and drew five twenties from the machine, then handed three of them to Bentley when he got back in. “There’s grocery money and enough left over to cover the thirty you put out for the cow pitcher. Drop me off at home, will you? I’m late already to get the kids, and I don’t want to get in dutch with Ivy.”
“Well … heck,” Bentley said. “Never mind the thirty for the cow pitcher. I broke it.” He tried to hand two of the twenties back, reaching his hand over the top of the seat.
“It’s not your fight,” Walt said, waving them away. “Thanks for going along. If you can see this grocery list through to the end, you’ve done a day’s work. Keep your money.”
“Maybe it is my fight,” Bentley said. “I came around this afternoon looking to enlist the two of you in this little affair of mine, didn’t I? I thought I was up against a pretty formidable dragon, but now I’m inclined to believe that Maggie Biggs gets the brass ring.” He stopped at a red light at Shaffer Street, in front of Coco’s, and tucked the two twenties into Walt’s shirt pocket. “In for a penny, in for thirty bucks, as they say. Keep your money. It’ll all come out even in the end.”
“That’s the truth,” Henry put in. “And by heaven I’ll reimburse both of you after the sales party. That lingerie will sell. You’ve got nothing to worry about there. Vest will have delivered it by now.”
“That’s good news,” Walt said, imagining the lingerie party for the first time, actually picturing it in his mind—he and Henry hauling foundation garments and knickers and brassieres out of a cardboard box, a dozen neighborhood women grinning at them, going into the other room to try these things on….
The picture was absolutely insupportable; he saw that clearly now. There would be no recovering from such an ordeal. If he was lucky he would merely be a laughingstock. More likely he’d be considered a world-class pervert. Bentley braked to a stop in front of the house. There was no box on the porch yet; Vest apparently hadn’t arrived. Bentley was talking to Henry like a Dutch uncle, giving him advice, waving his finger. Walt tuned them out, his mind consumed by his sudden horror of the lingerie, of the party over on Harwood. God bless Henry, but sometimes he was like a doomful prophecy in an old Greek myth. Oedipus is humiliated at a lingerie party. What else can he do but gouge his eyes out?
The popes, Maggie Biggs, Sidney Vest—it was all too much. And it was his own fault, wasn’t it?—letting things go on too long, full of futile hope. Well, this was it. Push had come to shove. Something had to be done right now. There was no more putting it off.
Then the answer came to him, like a radio signal from a distant planet. Out of nowhere he recollected Vest’s chatter at Coco’s, the talk about selling the vice presidencies, cashing out, moving back to North Carolina. It was all suddenly easy: Walt could put one over on fate and do Vest a favor at the same time. He made the wish right there and then: send Vest home now, he thought, talking to the bluebird. Kill the lingerie deal right this instant and send Vest back to Raleigh.
45
IVY TURNED LEFT from Palm onto Batavia and headed north, on her way to check out Argyle’s lots. Within a couple of blocks the neighborhood changed from residential to industrial. There was almost no open land at all throughout the downtown area, and the few lots still available had gotten expensive during the boom years in the eighties when the price of real estate had quadrupled. For a couple of years it just hadn’
t been prudent to buy, and prices drifted downward. Now, with diminished interest rates, things were starting to come back around, but very slowly. Argyle might have moved his two properties quick five years ago and done pretty well, but now prospective buyers would be looking hard for a bargain, and the money he wanted for the parcels didn’t look like a bargain to Ivy. Selling them would be a long haul.
She turned into the driveway of an auto parts warehouse and pulled into a stall at the lonesome end of the parking lot, adjacent to one of the parcels, and then sat for a minute looking over the paperwork in the manila envelope, glancing up now and then to get some idea of the place. The dirt lots had turned into mud holes with all the rain, and there was a lake covering half the acreage.
She got out of the car and stood in the cool breeze, leaning back against the hood. This whole thing was baffling: suddenly she was at the edge of making real money, as if a door had opened for her. It was hard not to think of all the what-ifs, to start spending the money in her mind—and not just this commission, but those that might follow. It occurred to her suddenly that she had been treating Argyle a little hard, probably because she didn’t want to fight with Walt about him. It was easier to let Walt have his way sometimes, although if she was going to do the kind of serious business with Argyle that it looked like she might do …
At the back of one of the lots were a couple of heavy old eucalyptus trees, the loose bark peeling off and littering the ground along with broken-off limbs. Kids had nailed boards to the trunks of the trees, and there were planks up in the lower limbs, half hidden by leafy branches. Somebody, anyway, would be disappointed if the lots sold and the trees had to come down. Such was progress. Out near the street, someone had dumped an old washing machine and some other trash—that would all have to be cleaned up. And she’d have to get a sign, too, which would be covered with graffiti in under a week.
A black pickup truck nearly as long as a limousine pulled off the road right then, onto the muddy shoulder in front of the farther lot. A man got out and stood looking, maybe fifty yards from Ivy. He was a big man—tall and heavy, like an enormous football player way over the hill. He was dressed nicely, in a coat and tie, and had curly hair cut like Nero.
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