Lucky Stiff

by Elizabeth Sims

  I nodded believingly.

  She said, "We got married six weeks after Patricia died. One thing that did disturb me was living in her house, so we moved out here to Novi. It's peaceful here."

  "Did part of the money go for a down payment on this house?"

  "It did, 6,000 of it. The place is all ours now!" She glanced around sarcastically.

  I asked, "Do you know what happened to Patricia?"

  She smiled her secret, sharp smile again. "I do now."

  I looked at the envelopes. "What are you smiling about?"

  She turned the envelopes faceup. There were three, two pale pink, one pale blue. I paid careful attention. She fanned them out, and I saw they were all addressed to Robert Hawley at this house, in the same hand, a neat slanted script. The postage stamps told me the letters were not all recent.

  The return address said "Trix Robertson," and the addresses differed. The postmarks were illegible. I focused on the return address of the most recent one—with today's postage rate—and tried to memorize it.

  Quietly, Adele said, "Patricia wrote these." Her voice had gradually changed over the course of the past five minutes; it had become tighter and higher-pitched. I realized she was busting with pent-up excitement. I met her eye and cocked a brow conspiratorially.

  Suddenly it poured out. She banged her beer bottle down. "I said Patricia wrote these!" She snatched them up and waved them in my face. "These letters came for Bob, and I didn't give em to him. There was another one, the first one. God, when was it—Kelly was a baby, Bob Junior wasn't born yet. I gave it to him and wanted to know who Trix Robertson was. He wouldn't tell me. He acted…he got so mad! He scared the hell out of me. I kept these, these ones that came later. Didn't give them to him."

  I asked, "Did he beat the hell out of you too?"

  She looked down in silence. After a minute she said, "Why?"

  "It's just a feeling I have."

  "I loved him."

  "Course you did."

  "But as of today, boy…As of today I think I'm a new Adele."

  I smiled.

  She said, "Trix Robertson. Get it? Very cute. She couldn't use Hawley anymore."

  "Well, I believe she married another guy. What's in the letters?"

  "A woman asking for money. A woman with—" A light dawned in her eyes. "No leverage! No leverage! The letters are like blackmail! I mean, writing to a man at his wife's house! But no threats! Begging for money, asking for money. And now I know why! No leverage! Until today I thought this Trix was a girlfriend, a girlfriend who thought she might reveal herself to me, out of spite, to hurt our marriage. Or to hurt our children. I'm pretty smart, I'm nobody's fool, I'm no dummy."

  "That's right," I agreed.

  "But now I'm pissed. Now I see what happened. Hah! Bob Hawley. Hah!"

  "When did the most recent letter come?"

  "I guess a couple years ago. Yeah. A couple years ago. Oh, I'm pissed now. I am pissed. I could blow his head off while he's sleeping. I could cut his balls off and stuff them into his mouth and let him bleed to death. That's what I'd like to do."

  "Now, Adele—"

  "That's exactly what I'd like to do. Blow his head off. Stab him about fifty times in his goddamn gut."

  "Adele—Mrs. Hawley—"

  "One of these days I'm gonna do it, I swear to God. The next time he touches me. I swear." She sighed, her corona of rage subsiding. "You know, it's so hard to be an honest person."

  "That's for sure."

  "I've tried." She held the sweaty beer bottle to her temple and rolled it around to her forehead. "Patricia isn't dead," she murmured. "Well, how do you like that?"

  "Listen, Adele, let me look at those letters, OK? I need to find Patricia. If I can actually find her in person, prove she exists—"

  "You can nail Bob's ass to the—"

  "Well, yeah, but…" Questions spurted through my brain. Was Bob Hawley the mastermind of the plot after all, not Bill Sechrist? Were they partners in it, each disposing of his wife, in one way or another? Juanita Sechrist—really dead? Trix Hawley—fake dead?

  I heard a thump and a bang from the front room.

  "We're in here," called Adele sweetly.

  Horrified, I said, "Did you call him home when you left the room?

  She just smiled that sharp smile again.

  Bob Hawley strode into the kitchen. He was a massive son of a bitch, with thick shoulders, small hooded eyes, and a beer gut the size of a Shop-Vac. The gut was supported by a sagging belt with a brilliant silver Coors buckle.

  "What's going on?" His voice was harsh and panicked. Anger and fear in equal parts. "Who are you?"

  Forcing myself to remain seated, I said, "I'm the daughter of the Byrds, the couple that got killed in that bar fire with Patricia. Long time ago." Making my voice very calm, I went on, "Please take it easy, Mr. Hawley. I need you to help me."

  He stood in the middle of the room, legs spread wide, feet planted in dusty boots. "What do you want?" I noticed that his small eyes were bloodshot. He was one unappealing bastard.

  "I want to talk to you about Bill Sechrist."

  He paused, mystified. "Who?"

  "Bill Sechrist. Come on, man. You've got to help me find Patricia. Or Trix, or whatever she's calling herself these days."

  "I don't know what the flying fuck you're talking about." He folded his arms in a visible effort to make his chest expand beyond the boundary of his gut.

  Before I could speak again, he said coldly, "Hey, she sent you. Didn't she? To my fucking house! Yeah, she sent you all right! Well, you go back to Las Vegas and tell Trix Fucking Robertson she can go to hell and suck dick!" He unfurled his arms, cocked his fist, and stepped in my direction, but I was ready. I flung my coffee mug at him with one hand, and with the other grabbed and threw Adele's beer bottle. He had to duck once, twice, and I snatched the letters from Adele's hand and bolted for the door. I was running fast down the street to the Caprice before he'd made it to the doorstep.

  Chapter 12

  I wanted to talk to Blind Lonnie. More accurately, I wanted him to talk to me. No, more accurately still, I just wanted to be with him. It was Thursday night; sometimes he played Greektown on Thursday nights. I loaded my mandolin into the Caprice and drove down there. Muggy air gushed in through the windows.

  He was sitting on his box at the corner, playing a blues medley of pop crap, a soft smile on his lips. The crap, specifically, was the kind of nauseating show tunes from the kind of nauseating hit musicals—Broadway, Disney, you name it—that people eventually request to be played at their weddings. The songs people begin to ask piano players at fern bars to play, and play them straight, too.

  Lonnie was trashing them brilliantly. Sweat glistened on his fat, smooth face. He was humiliating those songs. I came up and set my mandolin case deliberately on the concrete sidewalk. Lonnie knew the sound of my case.

  "Ah," said he. "Lillian."

  I made a gagging sound and he laughed. He came to a stopping place and gave me his open A. I tuned to it and said, "Let's clear the air here some."

  "OK," he said, "'Come Rain or Come Shine.'"

  "OK," I said, "F?"

  "Yeah."

  We hit it, and I relaxed into the music. "Ah," I murmured. "Ah."

  It's a fairly simple melody—you can go all over the place with your chords if you want to, and lots of players do. But I just floated along behind Lonnie's precise lead, sticking to F major, throwing in a few flatted fifths in the break. It had been not quite a week since Lonnie and I last played. I tried some fancier improvisation, but failed to get it going. My sound wasn't bold, it wasn't clean. Disappointed in myself, I went back to playing two-note chords. Improvisation takes practice.

  A buxom teenager lagging behind her well-fed Greek parents stooped and, with an impulsive gesture, emptied her coin purse into Lonnie's case.

  "Thank you, little lady," said Lonnie.

  She stared at us intensely, longingly, then scurried after he
r parents.

  I smiled at his acuity. Did he hear her necklace clicking as she bent over? Her clip-cloppy sandals and short footsteps? Or did he hear her Lycra-blend skirt stretching over her butt as she stooped?

  "Funny how flexible F natural can be," remarked Lonnie when we finished the tune. I didn't answer. He inclined his head toward me. "What's troubling Lily tonight?" He played some slow arpeggios in F.

  "Oh, Lonnie."

  "Problems?"

  "Yeah. Everybody's got problems."

  "That old boyfriend of yours got you shook up?"

  I had to laugh. "Well, yeah, in a way."

  "Tell Lonnie."

  "Oh, it's just that I feel I'm losing my mind."

  "Yeah."

  "And it's a convoluted story, and I don't understand it. There's this thing that happened when I was a kid, and I thought I'd left it behind, thought I'd left a bunch of sad, sad shit behind. Y'know?"

  "Mm-hmm." He switched to playing a slow five-note rock scale in B.

  "And I was so glad to see Duane. But the past can't come back in just the pieces you want. In just the pieces you miss. You get pieces you wish you hadn't…" I trailed off, thinking.

  "Mm," said Lonnie.

  "There's business now that I have to take care of. Shit I need to know. I learned some shit this week, and now I see that once I know some shit, I need to know more. At first I was excited. Now I feel sick. No one but me knows what I know."

  Lonnie laughed softly.

  I added, "And suddenly it's going fast."

  Lonnie said, "Because more people are in it now?"

  "Yeah, how'd you know?"

  "That's always the way."

  "Lonnie, how'd you lose your eyesight?"

  He switched over to A-flat. "Never had any to begin with."

  "Oh."

  "So I don't miss it. See?"

  "I guess so."

  "Lily, if somebody was to blindfold you now, you'd be surely scared, right?"

  "I would."

  "But if you was me, you wouldn't be. It wouldn't be nothing to you." When I didn't respond, he said, "You got more than you need."

  I thought about that, and said, "I'm still scared."

  "Of having to do something? Or of learning more truth? Never mind, you're gonna say 'both.'" His left hand moved up his fingerboard while his right drew notes from the strings. He changed keys again, then went back to A-flat. I began to discern a tune, a theme. I listened harder, not quite believing it.

  I said, "Lonnie, is that Chopin?"

  He smiled.

  I said," 'Polonaise in A-flat?'"

  He was laughing, playing it: that stirring, dense piano piece from the military tradition of Eastern Europe. He was hitting the melody recognizably enough, supplementing the strong bass line with agile flourishes in the upper register. He was putting wit into it. I listened in amazement, suddenly joyful.

  "You can play anything," I said.

  "Not the point here," said Blind Lonnie.

  "You're as good as the Cambridge Buskers. Better."

  "Who?"

  "Oh, they're a couple of guys, couple of Brits who do what you're doing right now. Flute and accordion. You should hear them play those warhorse overtures, 'Poet and Peasant,' '1812.' They do Elgar, Rachmaninoff, everybody."

  "You got them?"

  "Yeah, I got two of theirs on CD. I don't know if they're still recording."

  "Lend 'em to me, will you?"

  "Yeah! Sure."

  "You go home now and listen to your Chopin and your Beethoven. Leave Mozart alone. Hit you some Brahms. Hit you some Grieg."

  "How come?"

  "Because something Little Memphis Jim tol' me one time."

  "You knew Little Memphis Jim?"

  "Yeah, I knew him. We played together around St. Louis before Jim met up with that deceitful white horse."

  "Oh, yeah."

  "Anyway, Little Memphis Jim told me this one time: When your chips are down, listen you to heroic music. You need to have your beats on one and three."

  He meant emphasis on the first and third beats of the measure, as opposed to on the second and fourth, which is mostly what you get in jazz and blues. Rock as well.

  I said, "One and three. But blues is heroic, in its way. It's about perseverance."

  Yeah. But I'm saying for you."

  "How did you know I'm into classical too?"

  "Blind Lonnie hears it in your playing."

  I just had to shake my head.

  He said, "Little Memphis Jim studied with Horowitz."

  "Horowitz? Little Memphis Jim studied with Vladimir Horowitz? He did not!"

  "That's a true fact."

  I tried to picture the austere Horowitz, his thinning hair combed back on his delicate skull, sitting at a Steinway with Little Memphis Jim, a hunchbacked sharecropper's son who wouldn't, in those days, have been permitted to drink from the same water fountain. I pictured a bottle of bourbon and a couple of ashtrays. A New York skyline beyond the windows. I tried to picture them talking. I really couldn't. Then I pictured their four hands on the keyboard, speaking that way. Two legends on a piano bench.

  "Wow," I said.

  "Remember," said Lonnie, "you got more than you need."

  "Thanks, Lonnie."

  "Don't make too much of this."

  .

  I went home and got out my boxed set of Beethoven's symphonies, Von Karajan's Berlin sessions. I lay on the floor and listened to number three (the Eroica) first, of course. I let the music move through me. Then I listened to numbers five and seven.

  Todd snuggled up to my side and I stroked his fur, so soft and brown.

  The insistency of it, I thought. That was one thing Beethoven had going, he was insistent. And fearless. He took risks, that son of a bitch did. He challenged destiny. You know he gradually lost his hearing when still at his peak as a composer. Yet his music is filled with triumph. And death, I thought. You can't have one without facing the other.

  I put on Artur Rubinstein playing Chopin, all the polonaises. I let the music swell and wash over me. I felt the strength of it. I relaxed and went to sleep.

  .

  In the morning I phoned Duane.

  "Want to go on a trip with me?"

  He thought he did. When I got done talking, he really did. He offered to buy tickets and I let him.

  He called back. "Is tomorrow too soon?"

  "Nope," I said.

  "OK, I'll pick you up at 6 in the morning. Our flight's at 7:50."

  "Good. Duane?"

  "Yeah?"

  "Would you also please bring a fistful of hundred-dollar bills?"

  "What for?"

  "Use your imagination."

  He paused. "OK."

  .

  I again got out the letters I'd grabbed from the Hawleys' table. I'd read them all yesterday as soon as I'd gotten home from Novi. The letters bore the imprint of Trix all right.

  This one was the first in the series, which would have been the second letter Trix sent, according to Adele.

  Dear Bob,

  I could shit on your grave. Things have gotten worse.

  You don't know. I never expected the double cross from you.

  I didn't take steps I should have, and now I've got it up the

  ass about as far as it can go. I need the money.

  Nothing has worked out for me.

  You on the other hand have got a new house. New wifey.

  Cuntstruck again, that's you Bob. New kiddies too I bet.

  I didn't deserve it and you know it. You might just as

  well stuck an icepick in my eye.

  What can I do? If you have any feeling left, send me my God

  Damn money. Before you have to start paying for college ha ha.

  Imagine how happy St. Peter will be to see you then.

  I need it Bob. Like I said before I've got in a little trouble.

  —Trix

  The others were similar. I laughed sadly at myself.
I'd thought Trix liked me, really liked me as a person. Therefore, how could she have been part of something that hurt me so terribly? And if it wasn't supposed to happen that way but went wrong, how could she have run away, not owned up to her part in it? But, I mused, the affections of children are taken for granted.

  In the letters Trix spoke of "the money." Not "money" but "the money," so it was clear there was a specific amount in question. She closed her last letter with the pathetic plea, "Even a few bucks. For God's sake Bob." It, like the other letters, was undated. I used my magnifier under my strong desk lamp and made out the postmark. Adele Hawley was about right: The letter was eighteen months old.

  So Trix was desperate. The address wasn't fresh, but maybe I could work with it. I was ticked off enough at Minerva not to bother telling her what I was about to do. Why would she even give a shit anyway? I thought bitterly. Bet she's got that little Tillie on the jump day and night. Bet it's a lot of fun.

  I'd taken Todd along on trips before, but lightweight was the way I needed to go this time. I could get away with just my gym bag with a change of clothes and extra underwear, plus my purse and notebook.

  I called Billie, my animal friend. A waitress by night, she also shared her home with an assortment of neutered cats, dogs, rodents, and the occasional reptile. She agreed to look after Todd for a few days. "Don't tell me," she said. "You're off on a possibly dangerous adventure and you don't know exactly when you'll be back."

  "Well, yeah," I admitted with some annoyance.

  "Lillian—"

  "Don't start with me."

  "Fine. Fine."

  "Thank you."

  She said, "I still have your pet carrier. Sorry I haven't returned it yet." She'd borrowed it a few months ago to transport a baby raccoon she'd rescued from the jaws of a stray Rottweiler in her neighborhood.

  "Whatja do with the Rottweiler?" I asked.

  "It could take care of itself," she answered. "It was the raccoon that needed me." She nursed the raccoon back to health and into adulthood, but it hadn't grown to be terribly docile. She drove the animal out to her favorite nature preserve, where she released all the wild animals that came into her care.