I tried to look as if I didn’t know what we were talking about. Stupid is a hard act for me, but when it’s my life, I figure I can do bimbo as good as anybody.
“And what is that?” I asked innocently. I crossed my arms like I was cold, then let my fingers drift slowly down my arms in a long caress that issued an invitation to linger.
He smiled, shifting the cigar from one side of his mouth to the other. “Let’s go inside and have a little talk about your last will and testament,” he said.
I walked slowly across the grassy yard with the muzzle of the Uzi pressed hard against my back. Sister Mary Frances returned to my head, full of “I told you so’s” and rosaries. The fact that Nolowicki was prodding me with the tip of the cold metal gun pissed me off and didn’t put me in the mood to work a seductionbased plan.
I took the steps slowly, looking around, hoping to see a means of escape or destruction, but there was nothing. When he finally had me inside, standing in the kitchen, I turned around very slowly and faced him.
“How about a drink?” I asked.
Nolowicki was staring at my breasts, his breathing coming a little quicker. When I spoke his attention shifted back to my face. “Sierra, a drink isn’t going to change the bottom line. I’m going to fuck you and then you’re going in the well.”
I looked right back at him, feeling the color drain out of my face and my fingertips go numb.
“You do know how to put a girl in the mood,” I said. “Now, I want a drink.” Because, I was thinking, if I’m going to get raped and killed, I at least want some form of anesthesia.
I was looking around the sterile little kitchen, all white, clean, and empty. I was envisioning blood and Nolowicki’s mustache sliding down a cabinet door. I thought of Nolowicki himself a tangled mass of Uzi damage and guts. If only I could get Eugene’s gun.
I looked at the barren counter, saw a bottle of Southern Comfort, and winced, the worst possible choice for a Wild Turkey girl.
“Give me a couple of shots of that,” I said. “I’m no good without a jumpstart on a cold morning.”
Nolowicki pointed the muzzle toward a cabinet. “Get the shot glass yourself,” he said. “Go ahead.”
He was starting to sound irritated, rushed. He wanted to take care of business, then take care of me.
I threw back two quick shots, felt the fire hit my gut, and then turned around to face him again, wishing I’d eaten a hot dog with Eugene and Frankie, realizing I wouldn’t be in my current mess if I’d taken time to indulge in a little processed meat.
He was looking at me now, a bulge in the crotch of his pants, his pupils dilated with desire or drugs, I wasn’t sure.
“Walk down the hallway,” he said. “The bedroom’s at the end.”
Some foreplay, I thought, trying and failing to kid myself into a problem-solving mode instead of an I’m-going-to-die mode. I looked everywhere for weapons and alternatives, but an Uzi beat everything hand’s down. It was too quick, too sure.
“Okay,” he said, as we entered his room. “Take off your clothes.”
I looked at the bed. It was a double, with a thin blue coverlet made up military-style, so tight you could probably bounce a quarter off it. One armchair sat across the room from me. A TV and stand were wedged next to a highboy dresser. I considered jumping behind the highboy, pulling it down on him, and racing out of the room, but I knew I wasn’t that kind of strong.
“I have to pee,” I said, trying the last alternative. He wasn’t that stupid. He was a cop.
“Fine,” he said. “Go ahead. Bathroom’s right there.”
I walked the few short steps to the tiny master bath and turned to pull the door shut behind me, envisioning myself crawling out the small window across from the commode.
He stopped me with one hand, holding the door open. “Go ahead,” he said. “Don’t mind me.”
I glared at him, hesitating and hating him. Although he was about fifty, he looked to be in good shape, outweighing me and probably much stronger than I was. He put the Uzi down on the bedside table behind us, and I started to think about how I could get to it, all the while unsnapping my pants and pulling them down.
Nolowicki stood in the doorway, reaching for his lighter and preparing to relight his cigar. He was smiling.
“Do you have to smoke?” I asked, wrinkling my nose as he tried repeatedly to get the ugly stump going.
“Do you have to breathe?” he answered.
I shuddered, looking away, focusing on anything but him as I sank down onto the cold commode.
He stepped closer to the toilet, fumbling with his fly with one hand and still trying to light his cigar with the other. He was stepping right up to my eye level, his crotch in my face, the repeated click of his lighter the only sound in the tiny room. He smelled bad—unwashed and sweaty. His breath stank of cigar and garlic.
“I got something for you to do while you’re sitting there,” he whispered. He reached inside his fly, fumbling with one thick hand, reaching for his penis. He moved closer, the hard stump of wrinkled gray skin and hair looming closer … And they say men don’t resemble their pets.
I looked up at him, widening my eyes and smiling like this was exactly what I wanted. I slowly licked my lips and stretched both hands.
“I got something for you, too,” I said. I reached out to touch him with my left hand, my eyes never leaving his. But with my right hand, I reached over and picked up the spray can of deodorant that sat by the sink. With a swift, sure move, I pushed the button as hard as I could, aiming up into his eyes.
There was a whoosh as the aerosol spray met the lit tip of his cigar, a flash of orange that exploded into a fireball, catching Joe Nolowicki full in the face.
He screamed an agonizing howl of pain and rage, staggering backward, unable to escape the flames that now engulfed his head. I jumped up, pulling at my pants and grabbing a towel. I threw the towel at him, not waiting to see if he used it to put out the fire, then grabbed the Uzi from the bedside table and started running as fast as I could for the back door.
The screams went on and on, echoing in my head as I bolted out of the house and into the backyard, racing for the Camaro. I hopped in, tossed the gun on the seat beside me, and hit the toggle switch. The engine roared to life and I threw it into reverse. Joe Nolowicki appeared at the back door, barely recognizable, his face a black-and-red blob of pain and third-degree burns. He was screaming, running blindly, insane with pain and rage.
I tried not to hit him, swerving as I floored the accelerator, screaming as he bounced off the hood of my car and landed a few feet behind me. I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t help him or look backward or indeed do anything that would keep me there.
I grabbed my purse, fumbling through it for the cell phone, driving like a maniac down the driveway and out onto the road.
I punched in 911, screamed for an ambulance, and then pulled over when the reality sank in that he couldn’t follow me.
“Put me through to John Nailor,” I said. “Police emergency.”
The communicator’s voice was a stable monotone. “Are you an officer?” she asked.
“No. I’m his …” But my voice faded. I’m his what? “Associate,” I said finally.
I think she thought to give me a hard time but, considering what I’d told her about the ambulance and the victim in need of assistance, decided to go ahead.
One ring. Then: “Nailor,” he answered.
“I need you,” I said, and started to cry. “Your vice squad just tried to kill me.”
Thirty-four
You can’t keep a secret in little Panama City, but we tried. The night the big game went down, everybody close to the Tiffany Gentleman’s Club arrived hours ahead of schedule, sitting out in the house like they were attending a wake, drinking and talking to the girls like they were sisters. Of course, Tonya and the rest of us weren’t working the club that night. We were still out on strike, still waiting for a miracle to happen, still hungry and a
pprehensive.
Everybody knew what was about to jump off in the back room. They all knew the stakes and they all knew their future now rested in the hands of one woman, a woman as crazy as bat shit and as brazen as brass-monkey balls.
She sat at the table in Vincent’s old back room, her hair in pink foam curlers, her knee-high stockings sagging around her wrinkled white ankles, and with the pockets of her faded blue housedress stuffed to overflowing with money and wrinkled tissues. Raydean was loaded for bear and possibly more.
Mike Riggs sat across from her, his dirty white sea captain’s hat shoved back on his head, his face looking more and more like a Saint Bernard’s.
The peanut gallery, the warm-up crew, flanked them on either side. Everybody had pink bubblegum cigars sticking out of their shirt pockets or tucked into pockets, a token of Turk Akins’s gratitude at being able to come out of hiding in time to witness his daughter’s birth.
Pa sat on Raydean’s right side, frowning and looking at his cards, a mug of steaming coffee by his right hand. Behind them, Ma reclined on Vincent’s leather sofa, covered up in Raydean’s handmade quilts, a glass of Pa’s homemade Chianti at her fingertips and a comfortable smile on her face.
She was pinking up, looking more like Ma and less like a victim of a holocaust. Whatever Raydean had done to care for her, it had worked. Still, the specter of her disease and her impending chemotherapy and radiation hung over her, preventing the fear from leaving her eyes completely.
Pat sat on Raydean’s other side, her white hair gleaming in the light of the overhead lamp that hit the table, illuminating the players but leaving the observers in the dark. Bruno sat next to Pat. Bandaged up, he held his right arm in a navy-blue sling, but this didn’t hold him back from playing, because Eugene held his cards for him and ministered to him like a mother.
I figured with the amount of existential and misplaced guilt that Eugene carried for Bruno getting shot, he could turn Catholic without much trouble at all. Hell, the way he looked at Bruno, with his eyes all sad, I figured they might just nominate Eugene for martyrdom.
Bruno’s physician, Dr. Thrasher, sat next to Bruno, totally ignoring his patient in favor of a pair of blond-headed twins who sat on either side of him, a little gift from Vincent in appreciation of saving Bruno’s life. The doctor was smiling, seeming not to care at all that he’d lost his last chip twice and had to stake his BMW in order to remain in the game.
The only two people missing from the action were Moose Lavotini and John Nailor, both excluded for good reason. The way I saw it, the only thing worse than the Tiffany remaining Big Mike’s House of Booty would be for it to fall under mob control. I didn’t care if Moose was a nice guy and grateful to me for getting him sprung from the trumped-up drug charges. I didn’t care that he was like a magnet, drawing me closer and closer to him. Mob was mob and there was no way to pretty up that picture.
I hadn’t invited Nailor for the obvious reason, and because I couldn’t deal with him yet, and unless I missed my guess he couldn’t deal with me either. If I closed my eyes, I could still see him coming for me: lights and sirens, sliding his car to a halt in front of mine while the others went on to the scene. I could feel the way he took me in his arms, stroking my hair, soothing me, listening to the entire story, then telling me Nolowicki was dead. And worst of all, I could still feel the slight hesitation in his touch, the holdback, the piece of him that wasn’t there for me and maybe never had been or, worse, maybe never could be.
So we sat there, playing every conceivable version of poker, from five-card stud, to guts, waiting for the big moment, sneaking up on it. We’d been playing for two hours when Mike Riggs looked up at Raydean and smiled.
“Looks like you’re almost out of chips,” he said. “Sure you still want to play for the house?”
Raydean took her time looking back at him, eyeing her cards, counting the two measly chips over and over, like somehow they’d multiply if she stared long enough. But then she smiled. It was her psychotic bring-on-the-best-you-got-’cause-I-got-God-on-my-side, crazy-assed smile.
“Let them that’s without luck cast the first chip,” she said. Fluffy was sitting on her lap, smiling. Fluffy wasn’t blinking in the face of danger; she was as nuts as Raydean when it came to cards.
The rest of us pulled our chips back, folded our hands and threw the cards into the center of the table. Suddenly the room was too warm and the air stale and still with tension and expectation.
“Draw to see who deals and call the game,” I said.
Riggs leaned forward, picking up a card in his big beefy paw and flipping it over. The Jack of Spades.
Raydean smiled, leaned down toward Fluffy, and said, “The one on the left or that’un on the right?” She appeared to listen, nodded, and then drew slowly from the left. She clutched the card to her chest, then painstakingly pulled it back, a smile slowly crossing her face.
“A big man,” she said, looking at Pa and laying the King of Hearts on the table. She looked up at Riggs, cocked her head to the side, and winked. Then she drew the cards in close and began shuffling.
“Raydean,” I said, “how’s about we rethink this?”
She looked over at me and smiled. It was gentle and filled with love, but it wasn’t a smile that would take an argument.
“It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to,” she said, then began singing softly, “cry if I want to, win if I have to.”
It was Raydean’s gift and I knew it, but it was also her future. We all knew Raydean had money, but how much? Certainly if she lost, it would take almost everything she had. But then, she had backup. She had me. This was Raydean’s way of being in the game, the game where everybody’s equal, even the ones who hear voices and see aliens. Raydean wanted to put up her money, all of it, to save the Tiffany. She was a team player and she was one of the family.
When Raydean had shuffled, passed the cards to Mike for the cut, and piled the cards back into a stack, she reached down by her side and pulled up her thick black leather bag. It was stuffed with rubber-banded stacks of one-hundred-dollar bills.
“I believe we counted this earlier and you found it to your satisfaction?” she asked.
Riggs nodded and tossed the keys to the front door of the Tiffany onto the table. Vincent picked this moment to lean over and whisper in my ear.
“Do they let nuts have liquor licenses, ’cause I know they can’t carry concealed.”
I looked over at him and scowled. “How would you know? They turn your application down?”
Raydean was oblivious to the tension in the room. She dealt the cards, five each, facedown, smiling like this was just another hand.
“Five-card draw,” she said. “One-eyed Jacks are wild.”
Mike Riggs studied his cards, then looked up at Raydean and said, “I’ll take one.” He slid a card to the center of the table, smiling as he waited for her to deal.
Vincent’s head sunk into his hands. Pat looked away, staring at a spot on the wall above Pa’s head. No one was breathing. No one moved except for Ma, who slowly raised her glass to her lips and took a short sip of Chianti.
“It’s a sign,” Raydean said, sliding four cards out of her hand and across the table, pulling four new cards, facedown, toward her chest. She looked at her hand, then over at Pa. He looked right back at her, smiled and winked.
Raydean leaned toward him, rested her curler-covered head on his shoulder like a child, and slowly revealed her hand to him. He looked, his face a frozen mask, and patted her hand like it was all right, like she’d tried and that was all that could be expected.
“Show,” Riggs said, smirking.
“You first,” Raydean said.
Riggs laid out his hand, one card at a time. Ace of Spades, Ace of Diamonds, Ace of Clubs, and a one-eyed Jack of Spades.
“Four aces. Does this discourage you?” he asked, chuckling.
Raydean seemed very sad for a moment, looking up at Pa, her eyes questioning.
“Go ahead, honey,” Pa said. “Show the man what you got. That’s the rules.”
Raydean clutched the cards closer. “But they’re so pretty all cuddled up like this. I’d hate to expose them to an alien plot or subterfuge.”
“Raydean, I’ll watch over ’em,” Pa said. “You can take them right back up and hold on to them all night as soon as we’re done.”
Raydean nodded and slowly fanned the cards open. She looked at them, kissed one, and laid her family down on the table … a three, four, five, six, and seven of Hearts. A straight flush.
“Oh my God!” Vincent yelled, jumping up from his chair and dislodging a startled Marla.
Mike Riggs was staring at the table as if he couldn’t believe it. Then he shrugged, like in some way it was no big deal. In light of his brush with the entertainment industry, I figured it wasn’t.
Raydean let go of Pa and returned to her current reality. She reached out, took her purse in one hand and the keys to the club in the other.
“There you go, baby,” she said, handing them to me. “Merry Christmas! I figure that beats a cake any day!” And then she cackled and turned to Ma. “Hey, girl, when we get you up and running, how’s about we dress up in camo again and go hunting for men?”
Ma laughed. “I could make us hats,” she said. “With feathers and sequins.”
Pa shook his head. “You been up in Philly with them Mummers long enough, baby,” he said to her. “Sequins’ll frighten ’em off. If you wanna catch men, you gotta wear something that don’t shock ’em. Try beer cans and fish hooks on those hats and you’ll come home with ’em strapped to your bumper.”
Raydean was looking a little confused. “Why would you strap a man across your bumper when you could tie him down to the bedpost?”
We were too busy envisioning Raydean strapping a hapless man to her bed to notice the back door giving. When it opened, Eugene was the first on his feet, the Uzi materializing from nowhere, and a ferocious look on his face. Marla, of course, screamed. Bruno reached into his jacket pocket like he’d find anything other than painkillers there, and Pa stepped in front of Ma, pulling Raydean with him.
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