Georgette was reading a thick paperback that looked bloated, as if it had done time in a tub.
“This is Lucky,” I said. The little boy stared at her gravely.
“Yours?”
“Borrowing him for a while.” I could see the faded but still legible title of her book. War and Peace. Her thumb held her place far into its depths. She followed the track of my eyes. “Saw this goin’ out to sea one day.”
So that’s what other people did with their overly ambitious biodegradable summer reading lists.
“Nearly done now,” she said. “It’s good, except those Russians have so many names it hurts the eyes. So hello, Lucky. Makes sense I’d meet you today. This is a lucky one for me, all right.” She leaned closer to the little boy. “I’ve been at war, but now I’m at peace,” she said in a stage whisper. “Get it?”
Lucky shook his head.
“Don’t have to.” She flashed her gap-toothed smile. Then almost immediately, her expression darkened. “I had my own kid, once.” She looked up at the clear blue sky, blinking hard.
I watched her mood dip and wobble and was reminded of Sasha earlier today. I knew what had hit Sasha and sent her reeling, and I hoped it was short-term, and that she’d regain her equilibrium soon. I wondered what had slammed into Georgette with such hurricane force that it had permanently destabilized her emotions.
She regained composure and sniffed deeply. “Good air here, ozone, they call it. Nice people, too.” She nodded in the direction of the hotels. “The chambermaids over there, they let me wash up in the rooms. Before they make it over for the next people. Who does it hurt? Nobody did that for me anywhere else. Better money than Philly, too. People are on vacation, in good moods, they share.”
Speaking of which. “Want this?” I asked. She accepted the hot dog for which I still had no appetite.
I retrieved Lucky from using the boardwalk railing as a tightrope. “Dangerous,” I said softly.
“Ahhh…” He sneered at my old lady timidity and shook me away with five-year-old daredevil disgust.
“Worked after Kurt was gone,” Georgette said when she’d finished eating. “But then we were robbed.” Her voice had no emotion. “And I got sick. Since then, money thinks I’m dead.”
I needed to know how a woman who read War and Peace had come to this.
“Sister…my sister, she…” Georgette twisted the denim skirt fabric with both hands. Lucky fidgeted, darted forward then back, nearly tripping half a dozen slow walkers. I looked across the boardwalk at a store that said PEANUTS on a hand-lettered sign. I missed their fresh-roasted smell along with Mr. Peanut, a seven-foot legume who used to nod and greet strollers, but he’d fallen victim to newer advertising concepts, or to his flashier kin at Disneyland. A sophisticate like Lucky might have sneered, anyway.
“Over there, you see the store that sells peanuts? Here, look, I’ll show you.” I lifted Lucky and my lower back twinged, or perhaps that is too mild a word. What I felt was more like the muscular equivalent of a warning gong. I put Lucky down, took a deep breath, convinced myself that my back no longer hurt as much, pulled out my wallet and gave him a bill. “Buy nuts for the pigeons.” I wondered if his mother had ever ventured out into the fresh air and shared such a moment with him. “And come right back.” He scampered off, again heedless of approaching pedestrians or rolling chairs. I sat down next to Georgette, so that I could watch Lucky’s whereabouts. Near to her, the salt air took on a hint of recently ingested alcohol.
Georgette snuffled. “My sister should have lived.” She nodded, almost rhythmically, as if the motion were also a part of her fixed story.
I nodded, too. Why not? Meanwhile, my mind had become a multiplex theater. On one screen, I monitored Lucky. On the next, Georgette told her fragmented tale. And in the main theater, Sasha’s saga endlessly replayed, word by word, except when interrupted by short features about Dunstan and Jesse Reese.
“If she’d lived, this would be her lucky day, too.”
“Why is that?” I murmured. “Because it’s so beautiful?” I tried to calculate exactly how long it would take a peanut seller to notice and serve a small boy whose head was counter height, exactly how long before I checked up on him.
“What does weather have to do with it? Today is lucky because our enemy perished!”
“Good.” Lucky reemerged with a small paper bag. A dollar was at least worth peanuts. Center screen I once again watched the scene with Sasha in the bar last night. It seemed central, pivotal, but I couldn’t yet see it clearly enough.
Georgette sighed. It was a contented sound. “I wrote President Reagan about it, and he listened. Took time, but look.” She picked up the stack of newspapers to make room for Lucky. He gave each of us a nut.
I replayed the scene in my head again, and suddenly saw the other eyes that were watching. Frankie. The bartender. I really had to talk to him.
Georgette snapped apart her shell. “Look what that President Reagan did for me—even when he’s retired.” She tossed the peanuts to a nearby bird. Within seconds his extended flock received an extrasensory nut alert. Lucky giggled and tossed peanuts to a chorus of ruffled grabbing sounds.
“You see?” Georgette’s hands didn’t seem to belong to her. They were gnarled and arthritic, the hands of a very old woman. One slightly twisted index finger pointed at the uppermost newspaper, the one featuring the recently perished Jesse Reese. Her ragged nail tapped his nose. “You see?”
I could see the dead man’s photograph and her finger, but not her point. Because, of course, even disregarding the theory that the ex-President had executed Jesse Reese on Georgette’s behalf, the woman was missing a few connector wires and had been drinking. The picture must be serving as a generic enemy. I could even understand it if she considered the entire world her enemy.
In any case, her need to share her story seemed abruptly over. We fed pigeons in silence, and when the bag was empty, I gave Georgette a few dollars and made my way into the hotel to find Lucky’s mother and talk to the bartender.
Two real things to do. I was on a streak.
* * *
“Where were you supposed to wait?” I asked Lucky.
“On the stairs.” He pointed to the carpeted flight that led to a balcony lounge. “But it’s boring, except when you slide down the rail.”
The brass rail was periodically ornamented with spiky protuberances, and at one point it rose a good thirty feet above the lobby.
I expected to find a terrified woman racing up and down the staircase, calling his name, or perhaps the police, or the hotel staff or a posse engaged in an all-points search. But no one was looking for him.
Of course, he wasn’t allowed inside the casino. If he were, there would, presumably, have been no problem in the first place. I wasn’t eager to leave him unattended again. I corralled a security guard. “Is there any way to page somebody in there?” I asked.
“Well…” He looked reluctant to tell me, then he noticed my companion. “Hey, Lucky boy,” he said. “Found yourself a friend, did you?” He winked at me. He was in his sixties, with florid good looks, a snow-white crew cut, and a trustworthy, experienced sense about him. “Hope you won’t take this as an insult, ma’am, because it’s meant as a compliment—he always finds attractive friends.”
“Always? His mother has left him before?”
“It’s not my habit to keep tabs on them,” he said. “But she’s a not unfamiliar face.”
“But—he’s just a baby!”
“I am not!” Lucky insisted. “I’m five and a half!”
“I didn’t mean it that way,” I said. “He was out on the boardwalk, panhandling. That’s neglect. That’s abuse!”
“It’s just that nobody likes to report them—”
“Them? Who? Lucky and his mother?”
He shook his head. “Them,” he said very gently. “The ones who leave the kids. His mother, she’s at least here mostly in the daytime. It’s the ones left all ni
ght long, tired and hungry, that are the real problem. Or the little ones still in their carriages. They’re left out here for hours, with all that goes on in this world.” He shook his head wearily. “I try to keep an eye on our own casino kids, but it’s not right.”
Casino kids. There was even a term for it. I was furious.
“Just between us, we need child care here,” the guard said. “They have health clubs for the grown-ups, so why not a place to park kids?” He waved away his words. “Ah, but they say there’s no problem, so they aren’t likely to fix it, now, are they?”
I was itching to fix it single-handedly, to create the episode that made them admit there was a problem, to haul Lucky’s mother out of the casino by her follicles and make her an example for all the fools who gambled their children’s welfare along with their money.
The guard read my face. “Listen,” he said in his soothing voice. “I’ll find her, and I’ll keep an eye on Lucky meantime. You’ve been a good Samaritan, but he’s safe now, and if it’s all the same, I’m nearing retirement and I’d like the management to stay fond of me, know what I mean? She intends no harm, you have to understand.”
I climbed off my high steed and became a mere mortal again. I pictured the boy’s mother, probably very young, already semidefeated, raising him without help, coming here when possible for entertainment, escape from her routine, hoping to make a quick killing, to be a winner, to find the round of luck that could make a difference. Look what she called her baby boy. “You’ll try to make her understand what could happen to him?” I asked.
He nodded. “I’ve got five grandkids myself,” he said softly. “I’ll give it my best. And I’ll explain about having to report it next time, except that might make her switch casinos, not habits.”
I hugged Lucky, suggested that next time he bring along books and crayons and something electronic for entertainment. Maybe if he made enough little-boy mess and noise, and I made some very real grown-up noise, our combined impact would stun the management into noticing that they had both children and a problem on their hands.
I checked the desk for messages, but Mackenzie had obviously not yet located Dunstan Farmer, a situation I found both frustrating and oddly satisfying. I left a message as to my whereabouts and set off for Frankie.
There were very few patrons in the bar. My back hurt and my head was dizzy with competing problems. I wanted wine along with information, but I hadn’t eaten all day and was afraid of making alcohol my midday meal. I sat down at the curved teak bar and ordered a glass of mineral water. “I’m Amanda Pepper,” I said, to jog his memory.
“Hey, no problem.” I found that response distinctly confusing. “I’m permitted to serve alcohol to strangers,” he added. Obviously, I had not made much of an impression on him.
He didn’t ask for my ID, either. I have not, alas, been carded in the past three years, since two days after my twenty-eighth birthday, not that I’m counting.
“I’m Sasha Berg’s friend. I met you last night.”
He sucked in his breath and nodded. “Big mess, all right,” he said. “I can’t believe it, just can’t believe it. You’re the roomie, okay. But where were you? I mean when it…it happened in your room.”
“Out. On a date. All night.” I felt a recidivist flash of embarrassed fear, as if Frankie might phone my mother. “Mandy didn’t come home all night,” he’d tattle.
He did some more deep breathing. “You know, she came in here yesterday to say hello when you were checking in, and I thought maybe I’d impress her. Always had a soft spot for Sasha. So I called on a favor and got her that suite. Didn’t know you were along, by the way. Then Reese shows up dead in that very room. Some way to impress a girl, right? She was going to meet me here when my shift ended. Finally going to get the girl, like in a movie, only my luck…” He shook his head and sighed.
“Do you remember what time she came in here last night?”
He shrugged. “Tenish? I dunno. I been stuck with two shifts, covering for a sick pal, like today again, and it gets blurry.” He was tall, with wide shoulders, around Sasha’s height, but quite slender. He didn’t fit the witness’s description of a small man—unless the man was referring to girth, not height, but even so, and despite his candid style, I couldn’t bring myself to trust him completely. Frankie was still in the best position to have set Sasha up.
“If we can get her out, maybe you can still get the girl,” I said. “You know her date? This Dunstan Farmer?”
“Never heard of him.”
“How about Jesse Reese?”
Frankie shrugged. He was probably a good and classic bartender, best at responding quietly to others’ stories, but not too good at telling his own. This was the time for the other night’s—impossible to believe it was only last night’s—aggressive and verbal bartender, but life doesn’t work out that way. “Knew him like I’d know you if you came here on a regular basis and talked a little.”
“Is—Was—he a drinker?”
Frankie shook his head. “Not particularly, although last night he seemed tanked by the time he left. Probably would have flagged him if he’d asked for more. Started celebrating somewhere else, I guess.”
Not tanked. Drugged, Mackenzie had said. Very possibly and logically in here. By Frankie? Was his wide-eyed speculation all an act? “What time was that?” I asked, inwardly begging him not to say with Sasha or when Sasha left.
Frankie shook his head again. “Like I say, it blurs, but it wasn’t till…he stayed awhile. He wasn’t gambling last night, just stopping by.”
Odd. The paper said he lived in Haddonfield, almost all the way back to Philly. Why would a gambler come down here, if not to play?
“Maybe he left around the same time that Sasha left for her date,” Frankie finally said. “Or a little after? I can’t remember.”
One more unanswered prayer. Or maybe Frankie was trying to frame Sasha. I surely wasn’t suddenly accepting Sasha’s judgment as to whether a man was or wasn’t someone to have faith in. “Do you know if he’s in debt?” I asked. “In trouble?”
Frankie laughed. “You mean was like the Godfather after him?” He laughed again. “The man was clean. Gambled a lot, but he had the money. Always paid up. I got the feeling he’d never mess with his image, you know? They called him Professor Money. He taught in the junior colleges and retirement centers and he was even going to have his own show on TV.”
“What do you mean?”
Frankie put his finger up, signaling me to wait while he poured a draft for a young man whose belly testified to a precocious and continuing affection for the brew. And then he was back. “An infomercial. He’d be selling his business, but it’d look like a seminar on investing. A first seminar—there were also going to be tapes to buy. He’s—He was—pretty good at what he did, I hear. And successful. Costs a lot to produce those things, don’t you think, and it came from his own pockets. And he was ready to roll. Already taped the whole first show.”
“I wish I could see it.”
“Won’t air now,” Frankie said. “Besides, it’d be boring. Or maybe that’s just my point of view. Financial management is not my strong point.” He laughed softly, a little bitterly.
“But it’d give me a handle on the man.”
Frankie shrugged. “Like I said, the man was doing fine. Only trouble he was likely to get into would be with his wife, because half the time he’s up in that suite with somebody else. As a matter of fact, his wife used to be one of those somebody else’s, and she can’t forget how she got her current position, so she’s always looking over her shoulder to see who’s gaining on her, especially since the accident.”
I must have looked puzzled, because he offered further explanation. “Car crash a year or so after they married. Something doesn’t work in one of her hips anymore. Uses a cane and has to drive a special car. Damn shame. She was a gymnast when she ran for Miss America.” He wiped at the counter. “But the thing is, this one time, he was here o
n business, he said. No hanky-pank. Not even gambling.”
The good news was that there was a perpetually jealous wife as suspect. The bad news was that she was lame.
“And she didn’t seem angry last night, anyway. She smiled at some dumb joke I made about Sasha sleeping in Jesse’s room.”
“She was here?”
Frankie nodded.
“What’s she look like?” I asked.
He shrugged. “You know,” he said. This, then, was the definition of a not-trained observer. “Nice-looking.”
Which one had been Mrs. Jesse Reese? Not the sari, not the pregnant ponytail, so if I remembered correctly, that didn’t leave a wide field, and as she’d once been a pageant contestant, she wasn’t the drab one, I’d bet. “Does she wear a lot of metal on her clothing?”
His eyebrows rose. “So you’ve seen her. Sure. Mrs. R. designs the stuff. Once, she’s sitting in here and I comment on the brass trim, and she says, ‘Frankie, this is not trim. This is a fashion statement.’”
Good. The wife, the often deceived wife, had been here last night and had known who was occupying the suite. And she had big, teased dark hair, Sasha had said. “She’s tall, isn’t she?” I asked, allowing myself a flare of hope.
Frankie shook his head. “You’re thinking of somebody else, then, maybe. Mrs. R.’s an itty-bitty one.”
A small, lame woman. We were back to zero. “Who else was here?” I asked. “Who else heard the joke about the suite?”
“Anybody who was around, I guess.” Frankie worked at an imaginary stain on the bar top and I drummed my fingers. Finally, he looked up with an expression that suggested that he was tired of the conversation and of me. “There were people all over the place. I don’t pay much notice. They’re faces and orders.”
People were haircuts and bad music to the secretary in Wisconsin, faces and orders to Frankie. I couldn’t decide whether I’d stumbled on a great unifying truth or a trivial sadness.
“Was anybody else here, aside from his wife, who knew Jesse Reese?”
“How’d I know something like that?” Frankie asked, with some justification. “He had his briefcase. I guess he was doing business down here, so whoever that was with might have been around.”
How I Spent My Summer Vacation Page 8
