Redemption For Two

by Tobias Tanner

  Chapter Four

  Outside, another beach goer stood off to one side and gave them a look. Mickey grinned at him and Sandy blushed furiously. The guy had obviously heard, and been waiting for them to finish. He gave Sandy a sort of wistful look and went into the bathroom as they walked away. Sandy covered her face with her hands, mortified, but laughing anyway. When they got to her car, she asked for the g-string.

  “It isn’t much,” she said. “But it’s all I have.”

  “Nope,” Mickey said.

  “I am not going to work without underpants!”

  “Sure you are,” he said, smiling.

  “Come on, baby, this isn’t funny anymore.”

  “Deal with it, Sandy. No g-string today and no panties tomorrow.”

  “You’re impossible,” she said, miffed and showing it. “What do you want me to do, beg?”

  “I want you to get in the damned car.” He’d been about an inch away from giving in to her, and changed his mind on the spot. “Come on, it’s nearly one. You don’t want to be late for work.”

  “I told you,” she said in a controlled voice. “I’m not going to work without...”

  “Okay, play hooky, then. Call in sick this afternoon, and we’ll go swimming up at Juno Beach. Maybe pick up a six-pack on the way. I brought your bathing suit, so you don’t even have that as an excuse.”

  “I can’t...”

  “Will you just stop telling me what you can’t do, for once?”

  She took a breath. “This job is all we’ve got,” she said.

  That was the ultimate reasoning, throwing the responsibility back into his lap. If he made her lose the job, then they’d have nothing. That was the inference, and the accusation. Mickey felt the knot of muscle forming in his belly. Nothing like a little guilt trip to ice the cake.

  Sandy’s expression said very clearly that she had made her point, and the conversation was over. She started the car and drove away with a quick little flip of her hand as good-bye. Mickey watched her go, thinking that she hadn’t won shit. He still had the silly leather thong in his pocket, the thing she had refused to wear in the first place, and then dug her heels in to recover.

  “Got’cha, sweetie,” he said with no little satisfaction.

  Midday was no time to fish the beach, and it was too early to go home. He went back out to the table where they had eaten lunch and balled the paper wrappers up and put them in the trash. He wondered what to do for a minute and then got back on the bike and went over to the metal shop where he had worked for three years before the big layoffs.

  “You could spend a couple of hours straightening out the yard,” Donnie Ponz said in his laconic way. Ponz owned the place. He was talking about the lay down areas where he stored metal and scrap.

  “Fifty bucks,” Mickey said.

  “Your ass, fifty,” Ponz said with his sour laugh. “Nine bucks an hour for labor, sport, cash in hand. Best I can offer.”

  Mickey wished he had the baseball bat, but said that would be fine. Ponz flapped one hand toward the yard, and said, “You know where the forklift is.”

  It was the first time in two months that Mickey had sweated, and he liked the feeling. Shifting steel and balks of timber around was scut work, and he was no laborer. He was a fabricator. No one had asked him to do anything else and he grumbled in his head about it, squinting behind his sunglasses out there in the sun. He thought about it, realizing that he hadn’t asked to do anything else, either. Maybe that hadn’t been too bright, after all.

  The job took three hours and a little bit, and in the old days, Mickey would have made seventy-five bucks in that time. Ponz made him shift a couple of more things and then gave him a crinkled twenty and a five and two ones from his own pocket.

  “What’s up with you, Mickey? You always figured this kinda shit was too good for you, didn’t you?”

  “Not doing it for me,” Mickey said, straightening the money and folding it carefully into his pocket.

  Ponz grunted, hearing that. “You still got your CDL?”

  Mickey has had a commercial driving license since he was seventeen. “I got it,” he said. “Not doing me much good these days, though.”

  “You want to do a delivery down to Miami for me on Friday?”

  “Same pay, Donnie?”

  Ponz shrugged. “Nah, we can beat that, Mick. I can’t pay the going rate, but I can kick it up some. How about fifteen an hour for the trip? Be five hours or maybe six by the time you unload down there and get back.”

  “Sounds like a hundred bucks, cash money.”

  “Yeah, you fucking gold brick, it does,” Ponz said, laughing. “Be here at seven.”

  Mickey knew it was a cheat. Ponz would send him down for a hundred bucks, but whoever it was in the shop who didn’t spend all day in Miami traffic in a rattle trap truck would be working in the shop, so Ponz made more money paying Mickey out of petty cash and keeping his boy’s nose to the grindstone. So be it. A hundred bucks was a hundred bucks.

  While he was getting on the bike, Darrel Jones waved him over and he put the side stand back down and went to see what he wanted. Jones had always been a good guy back when they worked together.

  “Hey, Mick, you fuck head,” Darrel said with a grin.

  “How’z it?” Mickey asked.

  “You still diving?”

  Mickey shrugged. “I got the gear, that’s about all I can say.”

  “You want to pull some props for me?”

  “Sure.”

  “Three boats,” Darrel said. “One here in Riviera Beach, two out on the island.”

  The island meant the island of Palm Beach proper, where the big yachts lay. Pulling propellers for cleaning and repair was one of Darrel’s side jobs. Clean a few bottoms, wire brush the running gear on people’s yachts, change anodes. And pull dinged propellers, take them in for repair, and then put them back on. It saved the owners having to haul their boats.

  “How much?” Mickey asked.

  “Twenty-five apiece.” He grinned at the look on Mickey’s face. “Hey, don’t blame me, pal. The economy is in the fucking tank.”

  “Why you asking me, Darrel?”

  Jones shrugged. “Saw you doing the side job out there for Ponz. Thought if you’re doing that, you might be up for something else. Man’s got to make a living, right?”

  “You’re killing me,” Mickey said. “Twenty-five bucks. What kind of shit is that? You get ten dollars per inch of diameter for prop work.”

  “Going rate,” Jones said with a shrug.

  “Twins or singles?”

  “All three of them are twins. That’s a buck fifty to you.”

  “You’re gonna pull, what, fifteen hundred on those three jobs, and you want to give me a hundred and a half? You think I’m stupid?”

  “A pair of twenty inchers, and a pair of twenty-threes,” Jones said. “The Palm Beach one has thirty-twos.”

  “So, that’s fifteen hundred on the button, you fucking pirate.”

  “I’m giving you ten percent as a favor, dick weed.”

  “Twenty five,” Mickey said.

  Jones laughed.

  “Make it twenty,” Mickey said, letting it slide a little.

  “Fifteen,” Jones said. “You don’t have a leg to stand on, Mickey.”

  “Twenty and you pay for gas and air fills on the scuba tanks.” Mickey grinned at him. “That’s a freebie, Darrel, and you know it. Cost you three hundred and fifty bucks and you got a grand and change in your pocket without even getting your dick wet.”

  “Who’s the fucking pirate around here?” Darrel asked. “How about my first born. You want her, too?”

  “If she’s above the age of consent, maybe.”

  “She’s ten, and not nearly as unreasonable as you are.”

  “Well, you could always do it yourself,” Mickey said, turning away.

  “All right, cock sucker. You got me,” Jones said.

  Mickey turned back. “Anything else you�
��re not telling me?”

  Jones looked suddenly cagey. “Might be some bottom jobs come out of it.”

  Scrubbing boat bottoms underwater wasn’t rocket science. Mickey laughed. “Tell you what, Darrel. I’ll give you fifteen percent of any cleaning jobs I get for a finder’s fee.”

  “Half,” Jones said.

  “Twenty percent, same as I’m getting on the props, only the other way around. And I get the zinc jobs.”

  “That’s chicken shit. Ten bucks apiece. You can have it.”

  “Damned right I can.”

  “Job pays when the props go back on. You get that, right?”

  “Pays half when I deliver them to you and half when the stay nuts are torqued,” Mickey said. “Don’t fuck with me, Darrel. You know how this works. Cash money. No checks for the Mickey. Right?”

  “Asshole,” Jones said without heat. “I’m only doing this because I’m in a bind. My back’s fucked up and I just can’t do this shit anymore.”

  “Shouldn’t have told me that,” Mickey said with a grin. “Shit’s going to cost you twice as much next time.”

  “Fuck you, twice as much,” Jones said. “Now, you get me those props chop-chop, because I need the week-end to work them over. You good with that?”

  “I’ll check my schedule,” Mickey said dryly. “Tomorrow’s free, I think.”

  “It ain’t free, whatever it is,” Jones said, like it hurt him.

  Mickey rode away feeling downright cheerful. It felt good to be actually doing something again, rather than filling out useless job applications on computers with sticky keys in offices that smelled of old coffee and despair. He had Linus Davidson’s money, and maybe four or five hundred more that was all but in the bank. If he was lucky, there’d be more.

  It made him wonder what had changed.

  Chapter Five

  “That’s not a job,” Sandy said, putting a little sympathy into it, with just a dash of disappointment on top for flavor. Not up to par, she meant. You can do better, she meant. When are you going to work? That’s what she really meant.

  “Four hundred and change in three days,” he said, feeling the old anger at being put on the defensive. “That damned sure beats what I made in the last couple of months.” And that didn’t include the three hundred and twelve dollars from Linus Davidson’s wallet, which was hidden in his garage tool box.

  “I know, baby,” she said. “It’s just I know you can do better if someone would just give you the chance.”

  “You want to complain because I’m bringing some money in?” Mickey asked, clenching his fists behind his back. “How about I cut my wrists for you, too?”

  “Oh, that’s not what I meant!” “Yeah, it fucking was,” he said.

  “No, really, I...”

  “Be best you just stop talking right now.” He wanted to slap the shit out of her. It was about all he could do not to.

  Sandy blinked at the sharpness in his voice. Her face went blank for a moment, then she closed her mouth with a snap and turned her back on him, stiff as a damned plank. She wanted to talk about it, start one of those interminable ever-so reasonable conversations that went on and on until the wee hours and made everybody miserable while solving exactly nothing. Mickey was done with that.

  He went to drag Cindy out of the tub. The kid was a water rat from the get go – any water, beach, pool, tub, or even rain puddles. She got that from her old man. Mickey rinsed the bubbles off her and applied the towel before sending her off to put on pajamas. He stayed in the bathroom to rinse the tub and collect Cindy’s toys into the blue plastic basket. Then he filled the bath again with a second bubble bath and called out to Sandy.

  “She’s on the porch, Daddy,” Cindy said. “And you didn’t dry my hair enough.”

  “Go get Mommy,” he said. “I’ll find you a fresh towel for your hair.”

  Sandy came after a minute and looked at the tub and then, briefly, at Mickey. “I’m just going to have a shower,” she said in that reasonable tone with a little sullen under it for emphasis. Sandy was big on those layered responses. She got a fresh towel and went to work on the three year old’s hair.

  “Tell your Mommy to take her bath,” Mickey said.

  His daughter put her fists on her hips and said, “You have to, Mommy, just like me. And if you’re a good girl then Daddy will take us both to the beach on Saturday.”

  Sandy gave Mickey a murderous look over the top of Cindy’s head and said, “Of course, I’ll take my bath, darling. Just as soon as we finish making your hair beautiful.”

  Mickey turned and went back to the kitchen to pour a cup of coffee and have a cigar on the back porch. Three cigarette butts were ground out in the ashtray. Sandy only smoked when she was mad or drunk, and he knew which one it was this time. And three cigarettes one right after the other said that she was really mad. Well, fuck her. She’d just better get used to it.

  Later, they tucked their daughter in and Sandy disappeared into the bathroom. Mickey waited in the hall, and in about a minute, heard the gurgle of water as she opened the drain in the tub. He knocked gently and went in. Sandy was smoking another cigarette by the open window, all of her clothes in a pile on the floor.

  “Very pretty,” he said, and reached to stop the tub drain again. He tested the water and turned on the hot spigot to warm it up.

  “What the hell is the matter with you?” she asked, watching him.

  “Keep your voice down.”

  “I don’t want to take a bath, Mickey.”

  “Nyah, nyah, you can’t make me?” He grinned at her. “You love bubble baths, Sandy. They relax you.”

  “I’ll decide when...”

  “How about a glass of wine?”

  “Damn you,” she said in a flat voice. “Who do you think you are?”

  “Just a guy pouring wine for his wife,” he said, ignoring her tone and the circumstances. “I’ll bring you an ashtray.”

  Sandy lifted the toilet seat and dropped the cigarette butt deliberately into the water as if she was making some huge point. “I don’t need an ashtray,” she said. It was a petty thing to do, and even she seemed to realize it.

  “Stop being such a mule,” he said softly.

  Sandy’s eyes narrowed in sudden fury. “Why, you...!”

  He didn’t let her finish, just closed the door behind himself and went to pour wine into a stem glass. He took one of the pebbled glass ashtrays down from the cupboard and carried them both back to the bath. Sandy was in the tub when he got back.

  “I hope you’re satisfied,” she said acidly.

  He put the wine and the ashtray down on the side of the tub and found her cigarettes and lighter in the pile of her clothes. She leaned her head back, ignoring him pointedly. Mickey left her to it.

  “Gotcha again, sweetie,” he said to himself, walking away to get his dive gear ready. There wasn’t going to be any sex after that little set-to. Sandy would see to that. He was okay with it for the time being. Let her stew.

  When the alarm went off in the morning, Mickey got up to fix the coffee. It was only five o’clock, but he wanted a decent head start on the day. The truck was loaded, so all he had to do was clear the cobwebs out of his head and get on with things. Easier said than done. Two months on his ass, he’d developed some bad habits. Sitting around drinking coffee in the mornings being one of them.

  While the coffee perked, he got down on the floor and groaned through leg lifts and pushups, did some stretches and then some squats to wake his legs up. He was sweaty and short of breath by the time he finished, and could only do seven chin ups on the bar outside. That sucked.

  After a shower, he went naked back into the bedroom with coffee in one hand, planning to get dressed. Sandy was sleeping on her side with the covers kicked off. She’d worn the most frazzled granny gown she owned to bed, making yet another pointless statement, in Mickey’s view.

  He liked to watch her sleep, the way her face settled into calm and looked sweet and untr
oubled like it had when they were first married. Christ, that seemed like a hundred years ago. She was nearly twenty-five, but if the family genes were anything to go by, she wasn’t going to show any age for a long time. Her mother was in her late forties, and you just flat couldn’t tell how old she was if you didn’t know.

  The stupid granny gown had bunched up in the night so that her hips were bare and Mickey got some wood, just looking. She was some piece, that was for sure. And worth fighting for, although bushwhacking Linus with a baseball bat really hadn’t been much of a fight.

  Mickey wasn’t sorry. The fucker deserved what he got, screwing around with other people’s wives. Plus, Linus was nine years older than Sandy’s father, and that didn’t sit well either, for some reason. Either way, though, you pay if you’re going to play, that was the rule. And badass FBI agent or not, Linus Davidson had damned sure paid.

  Fuck this, Mickey thought. I’m getting laid.

  He put his cup down on the nightstand and was glad that he’d already brushed his teeth. Sandy squirmed a little when he snuggled up to her, not waking. Maybe dreaming a little, or at least feeling him there. Mickey stroked her back and her hips until she shifted a little and woke about halfway up.

  “Leaving already?” she mumbled.

  “Got something for you before I go,” he said, and nuzzled the back of her neck. “Just ease up on your knees, honey. You don’t even have to help.”

  She mumphed and grumbled under her breath, but did as he asked. Mickey got up and slid the meat to her from behind. She gasped and made that little yipping noise as he went inside, and then gushed warm around him even though he’d gone in dry. He held her hips and fucked her nice and slow. It was so relaxed that he reached over for his coffee and finished it without missing a stroke. Sandy didn’t even notice.

  When the coffee was gone he put the cup back and held her hands pinned together at the small of her back like he did the night before. She let him do what he wanted, he gave her a good thrashing and spurted as deeply into her as he could and thought while he did it that he was going to fuck her in the ass one of these days whether she liked it or not.