Gwenny June's Tommy Crown Affair

by Richard Dorrance

  Chapter 29 – ZZ Top Boys

  As we left the gallery Tommy said he’d pick me up for a late lunch tomorrow afternoon, that today he had to get back to his job of catching crooks. He may have been sulking a little after his beating, but I don’t think so. We separated at the top of the stairs down to the ground floor, him going back to his office, and I had the impression he wanted to kiss me goodbye. Whether it would have been a platonic kiss on the cheek or one of another kind I’ll never know, but I had a feeling of the same kind myself. The chess match had been fun.

  Halfway down the stairs I heard someone call my name, and looked up to see Gale and Jinny hanging over the second floor railing. “Come back up. We want to show you something.”

  They met me at the top of the stairs, Jinny shaking his head, Gale with a high five. “What do you want me to see?”

  They led me back into the gallery, from which the Curator already had removed the Faberge, and over to the silver exhibit. Gale said, “We want to come back again. In the night. I want this and Jinny wants the table.”

  “You guys are bored, aren’t you?”

  “Neither one of us is in the throes of a salacious romance, adultery and endless imminent doom, like you, so, yes, we’re bored. Roger’s not here to keep things interesting, though god knows what he’s doing over there with all those French women draped around him.”

  I looked at Gale and then Jinny, and said, “You’re pulling out all the stops, aren’t you. First congratulations on the match, then unfounded accusations followed by a guilt trip followed by dissy inferences that Roger is fooling around. All those in three little sentences. Very efficient. Oh, and not forgetting a proposal for another heist operation here. Quite a little bundle.”

  “Well?” said Gale.

  “Well what? No, I’m not cheating, I’m not up for more pinching, and Roger’s not fooling around.”

  Jinny said, “How do you know?”

  I grabbed Gale by the arm and dragged her towards the stairs, saying, “I offered to buy Tommy lunch and he said, No. So how ‘bout I buy you two lunch and try to keep you out of trouble?”

  Gale said, “If he’d said, Yes, would you have had wine with lunch?”

  “Maybe.”

  “And then after lunch, with the wine working, what then?”

  “Then I don’t know. I’m not planning all this stuff out, I’m just winging it, having a little fun. Kind of how you live your entire life, my dear.”

  “I’m different. I’m Gale, a fashionista. He’s Jinny, a gangster. You’re Gwen June, wife of Roger June, Charleston aristocrats. You don’t do stuff like we do. Right?” she said, looking at Jinny for support.

  By this time we were out in the parking lot standing next to the Mustang. Jinny said, “You implying I cheat on my significant other?” looking at Gale, a smile lurking in the vicinity of his mouth.

  “We don’t have significant others, so we can do what we want in the sex department.”

  “But if I did, you saying I’d cheat on her?”

  “Umm....”

  I saved Gale from herself by opening the door of the 360 and pushing her into the back seat. I fired up the engine, which I had to admit was not as impressive as the 500 horses of her Ferrari, but still was satisfyingly loud. I headed up Meeting Street and turned onto the entrance ramp of I-26, powering through the merge and into the fast lane. In twenty seconds we were doing eighty and Jinny was smiling. From the backseat came, “You’re pissed he didn’t go to lunch, aren’t you?”

  I ignored her, and then ignored the car I cut in front of which gave me an angry horn blast, and then ignored the cars and trucks I passed on their right having swerved over to the far right lane, scaring a guy in a semi. We covered a mile in forty-five seconds and I pulled off at an exit and onto a cross road that led towards the old navy base. After a few minutes on this I pulled into the parking lot of a bar with a big red sign mounted on the roof that said CONFEDERATE NATION. As Gale got out of the back seat and saw the sign I heard her say to Jinny, “She’s pissed.”

  I led the way inside and instinctively went to a booth against the far wall, not knowing what kind of crowd this place drew, but wanting to keep whomever the crowd consisted of in view at all times. The waitress came over and looked at us, never before, apparently, having seen four inch golden silk pumps on any of her customers. She had a large button on one of her boobs that said DCV, with a battle flag under it. Blabbermouth Gale asked, “What’s DCV stand for?”

  “Daughters of Confederate Veterans, and proud of it.”

  Gale said, “I’ve heard of Sons of Confederate Veterans before, but not Daughters.”

  “We’s the better half. And meaner, too.”

  That shut the fashionista up, and I ordered a pitcher of Bud. When the waitress had left Gale said, “When was the last time you drank Budweiser?”

  “This is the first.”

  She looked at Jinny, who was exchanging glances with a woman sitting in another booth with three guys all of whom looked like the two guys from ZZ Top: beards down to their navels, shades, tattoos; he said, “She is really pissed.” She looked at me and said, “You gonna order pork rinds, really get into it? Ribs, eat ‘em with your hands, get sauce all over your face? Then switch to tequila?”

  “I’m thinking about it.”

  The waitress brought the pitcher and three glasses, all of which had spots on them. Jinny poured, waited for the head to subside, and drained the glass. We waited for his verdict, which was, “They wouldn’t serve this in one of Stalin’s gulags.”

  I poured a glass for myself and sipped, having left all epicurean discrimination at the door. I admitted to myself I was pissed, even if just a little.

  Gale said, “If you’re not contemplating going to bed with this guy, how come you’re pissed?”

  “I didn’t say I’m pissed.”

  She looked at Jinny, trying some telepathy, saying to him, "Yeah, right."

  He said, “You’re pissed, which is why we’re here. Last time we were in a place like this we were looking for the morons from Idaho that’d kidnapped her,” nodding at Gale.

  “I’m not pissed,” I lied.

  Now he projected back to Gale, "Not only is she thinking of fooling around with that guy, but she’s taken up lying to us. She ever lie to you before?"

  Gale said, "No," getting into the groove of silent communication, doing it selectively, leaving me out. "She brought us here cause she wants to distract herself from him rejecting her, not going to lunch with her."

  "How’s this place going to distract her?"

  "She’s gonna get into it with someone here, maybe the waitress. Maybe some biker that comes in." Gale projected, "Gwen June’s gonna pick a fight in a dive bar just because some guy said no to lunch? Wake up, Jinny. It’s not just some guy. This may be the first time she’s ever contemplated cheating on Roger. This whole thing is new to her. Us, we do this shit all the time, but not her. She’s out of her element; doesn’t know how to go about it. We get rejected....well, you do. So she’s desperate; hence this place. We gotta do something."

  Jinny poured another glass of horsepiss, thought for a minute, communicated with his new telepathy partner, "I’m confused. Are we supposed to help her by preventing her from cheating, or help her by showing her how it’s done, us being experts....well, you." Jinny could dish it out as well as take it with good humor.

  During this exclusionary interlude I too had poured a second glass of horsepiss, and while gagging it down was sizing up opportunities to create a diversion from my pissiness. Jinny had stopped looking at the babe across the room sitting with the ZZ Toppers, and I had started. This was the only game in town, there not being any morons from Idaho present. Jinny’s mention of them referred to the time a couple of years earlier when I, we, were involved in not one but two simultaneous kidnappings. Paul McCartney had been kidnapped while walking down a Charleston street after d
inner with his daughter, Stella, by a rich local woman who wanted to be richer. And Gale had been kidnapped by some neo-nazi morons from Idaho who really wanted to kidnap Anna, our friend, in order to get revenge against her grandfather, and had snatched Gale, hoping to trade her for Anna. It all got complicated for a while, but Roger and I worked it out for the best. During the complications we had had a couple of, several actually, interactions with the morons that some people might consider violent, or at least quasi-violent, involving guns being waved around in people’s faces, though only minimal shooting, and some of these interactions had taken place in a dive bar up on the interstate outside of town known to local law enforcement as a trouble spot. Remembering all this, and looking around me now I noticed a similarity in ambience to this other place, though this place appeared devoid of any neo-nazis. The only slightly unsavory characters available were the three ZZ guys, so I devoted my attention to them.

  I slid out of the booth, walked across the room to where they sat, and stood looking at each of them in turn, ignoring the woman.

  Gale forgot about telepathy and said, “Oh, shit. Now what’s she up to? You got your gun?”

  Jinny nodded. “I thought we came here to save her from the Crown guy. Now we gotta save her from those guys. I thought it was going to be boring with Roger gone, but first we steal something from a museum and now we’re going to tangle with some gray beards. It’s never dull around her,” he said smiling.

  I reached down to their table, picked up a bowl of pork rinds and a bowl of peanuts, and walked back to our booth, not saying anything to them. As I sat down, I noticed Jinny pull his Beretta out from under his jacket at the rear of his right hip and hold it under the table.

  Gale looked at me and said, “You still pretending you aren’t pissed at Tommy? Jesus, girl, most people they get turned down for lunch, they don’t go looking for trouble at CONFEDERATE NATION, messing with dudes look like that. I’m supposed to be the wild one, doing dumb stuff in the name of love, or at least, lust; you’re supposed to be the together one, judiciousness personified.” Gale was interrupted by the screech of metal legs on the concrete floor as the ZZers pushed the table away from them, got up, and walked across the room.

  As they stood looking down at us Gale smiled up at them and said, “She’s not herself today. Got rejected for a lunch date. Anyone ever say you look like the ZZ Top guys?”

  The one on the left said, “We are the ZZ Top guys.”

  “But there’s only two of them.”

  “This here’s our brother. Lives in Charleston.”

  “How come he’s not in your band?” said Gale.

  “The guy on the left looked past the guy in the center to the guy on the right, said, “Should we tell ‘em?”

  The guy on the right looked past the guy in the center, said, “Why not? We just gonna kill ‘em afterwards anyway.”

  The guy on the left looked at the guy in the center, said, “Sorry, dude,” and then said to us, “He can’t rock.”

  Gale said, “You mean he can’t rock and roll? Can’t play like you guys do?”

  All three of them nodded, the one in the center not appearing to feel bad about the situation.

  “Wow, bummer. But what do you mean, your brother? The ZZ Top guys aren’t related.”

  The guy on the left looked at the guy in the center and then the guy on the right, and said, “Should we tell ‘em?”

  The guy in the center said, “Might as well send ‘em to their graves knowing what no one else does.”

  The guy on the right said, “Actually, we are related. Just pretended at the start we weren’t. We bros.”

  “No shit,” said Gale. “And now here’s your other brother, or so you say.”

  The three guys looked at each other, then the guy in the center said, “We shave off all this hair hanging down, you see. Bros.”

  “Cool. Nice to meet you. I love ‘Sharp Dressed Man.’ Great song. I’m a fashionista myself.”

  The guy in the center, the non-rocker, said, “So we noticed. Wanna go home with us?”

  “So even though you’re not a rocker, you’re still a sex maniac?”

  “Oh, yeah. Double these guys.”

  I said, “So what’s with the ‘we’re going to kill them thing’?”

  The guy on the left said, “Just jokin’ around.”

  “That’s good,” I said.

  “How come?”

  I looked at Jinny and nodded. Under the table Jinny racked the slide on his Beretta, the harsh metallic sound echoing off the mirror behind the bar.

  The guy on the right asked the guy on the left, “That what I think it is?”

  The guy on the left bending down and looking under the table found himself staring down the barrel of Jinny’s gun. He stood up and said, “Yup.” Then he looked at me and said, “That ain’t nothing, though.”

  The guy in the center said, “What’s more interesting than having a gun pointed at you under a table?”

  “Pump.”

  “What?”

  “Silk pump. Four incher. Yellow gold. Leg. Great leg.”

  The other two guys bent and looked under the table, ignoring Jinny’s gun. When they straightened up the guy in the center said, “Four. Four great legs.”

  “So, maybe, you’ll consider not killing us? Gale said.

  They nodded, Yes, in unison.

  I said, “So you don’t mind I took your pork rinds and peanuts?”

  The nodded, No, in unison.

  I said, “You boys wanna sit down, have a beer with us?”

  Two of them nodded, Yes, in unison, the third one saying, “Maybe you get your friend to put away his gun?”

  I nodded, Yes.

  They dragged chairs over, bringing the woman with them, who’d watched this whole thing from afar and had been eyeing Jinny, ordered three pitchers of beer and more pork rind and peanuts, and sat down.

  Gale looked at me and said, “You feeling better now?”

  I nodded, then looked at the boys and said, “A little later, maybe you sing us an a cappella version of ‘Got Me Under Pressure’?”

  The non-rockin' brother said, “You put that pump up on the table here with your foot in it, that’s what we’ll be feelin'.”

  I smiled.