by Smith, Julie
“First, I said not to call animal control or anything, that we’d send over our own guys to get the dog an autopsy and investigate the scene. After that I did my standard bit about taking the threat seriously, blah-blah-blah and etc.”
“Oh. Guess that was the part that got him.”
“I’ve noticed your average macho guy gets a little sideways over that kind of stuff.”
Skip was silent.
“See, they hate things they can’t control. So they just pretend it isn’t happening. If you bring it up, they shoot the messenger. That’s how my wife tells it, anyhow. That what’s happening?”
“Pretty much.”
“Not good, Skip; that makes him vulnerable. But the good news is, sometimes they sleep on it and get over it.”
The bad news, in her opinion, was that unless Steve got over it soon, he wasn’t going to be sleeping on it with her. She went inside to wait for the FBI and see what she could do to save the situation.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Mr. Right was pleased as punch with the success of his television show. He was helping people. He was getting to know people, influential people, some of whom he was related to by marriage. Every week he made more of an impact. The show got more and more letters, more and more volunteers to go on camera, more media attention every day.
Truth to tell, he was a lot more than pleased. He was so excited he could bust as he might have said in the old days, the pre-Henry Higgins days, as Rosemarie called his former life. He wasn’t entirely sure what she meant but he didn’t argue with Rosemarie, for any reason, because some day he might have a reason, and he was damn sure going to pick his battles carefully.
This thing he was doing, this Mr. Right thing, was snowballing so fast he could see it going all the way. Absolutely all the way to the top. There was really no reason why it couldn’t. Even his fingerprints were different now; aside from dental X-rays, there was no way in hell to connect David Wright with Errol Jacomine.
He was changing his persona too. In all his previous careers— preacher, politician, and guerrilla fighter for justice— the last thing in the world he’d cared for was material things. Now he relished a well-cut suit, a good cigar. The joy of fine cognac was something he wished he’d discovered years ago, and yet it wouldn’t have been appropriate. Wouldn’t have fit into his lifestyle. It fit into this one just fine. Though he was just thinking that perhaps his littered, cheaply paneled office no longer did. Maybe he could get Karen to come down and work some magic on it. He had a moment to assess it because Bettina was late with her call.
They had to make dates with each other because it was so difficult for her to get to a phone. Messages didn’t work at all. If he missed her call, he might miss something crucial.
Mentally, he improved his surroundings while waiting for the ring of his cell phone— an instrument in the name of Cecil Houseman, a man who existed only on paper. By the time it finally pealed, he’d worked up a backlog of resentment.
“Can’t you do anything right?” he asked by way of greeting.
“Daddy, I’m sorry. Had to be careful. Fat man follow me the other day.”
“What the hell you talkin’ about?” He still dropped his g’s when talking to his flock.
“Pretty sure of it. I seen him twice. After Devil Woman come see me.” Langdon, she meant.
“He follow you today?”
“Nooooo, sir. I be sure he ain’ follow me today. Tha’s why I be a little late.”
“Not a little late, Bettina. Six minutes late.” He switched gears quickly. “Langdon dead yet?” He knew she wasn’t or Bettina would have already told him.
“Well, Lobo, he…”
“Goddammit don’t use his name. What the hell ya usin’ his name for?”
“Oh, it’s okay. See, that’s not his real name. Lobo, he say there was obfus— obcas—”
“Obstacles. What kind of fool is he? I never want to hear that word. Ya hear me?”
“He say he can’t get near the bitch ’cause her boyfriend’s got this big ol’ dog. So first he has to poison the dog. He say that went real good, so…”
“What am I hearing here? What am I hearing, Bettina? Are you saying that ham-handed amateur poisoned a dog?”
“Well, yessuh, he poison a dog. See, he had to, ’cause…”
“I did not authorize any dog poisoning!”
“Well, Daddy, we…”
“What did that poor dog ever do to anybody?”
“Oh, he was a real mean dog. Like to took Wolf’s, I mean Lobo’s, hand off.”
“Bettina, you fucked up. You fucked up big time this time.”
“But, Daddy, I didn’t…”
“Ya gotta do penance, Bettina. I’m gon’ make you suffer a way you never suffered before.”
There was a long pause on the telephone. Finally, she said softly, “Daddy, if I got to, I got to. Ain’ nothin’ I wouldn’t do for you.” He could tell she was getting off on the idea.
“I want you to take that ugly baby of yours…”
“Daddy, you ain’t never even seen yo’ baby.”
“What did you say? What’d you say, Bettina? That’s your baby. That’s the curse the good Lord sent you for your weakness. Now I want you to take that ugly baby…”
“His name’s Jacob.”
“Every night for a week, now, I want you to take little Jacob and put him over your knee and give him twenty whacks with a hairbrush.”
“But Daddy, he’s a good little baby.”
He heard real distress in her voice, and that pleased him. “Well, you fucked up, and Jacob’s got to suffer for it. Listen to me! Listen to me, now. I don’t mean little love taps either. You whack him till he cries. And after two, three days, when he’s real sore, you whack him twice as hard, hear me? And every tear that child sheds’ll be the same as my tears for you, because of your mistake, and Jesus’s tears for me and for all of us on this Earth. You go and do that now.”
She was crying. He knew she’d do it, but it would hurt her bad. “Lobo say…”
“You tell Lobo to lay off right now. Tell him not to do a goddamn thing till further notice. And call me Thursday at six.” He disconnected before she could answer.
For obvious reasons, he had his door closed. There was a knock on it now, as if someone had just been waiting for him to end his conversation. He didn’t answer. He needed a moment to get back in character. He was pretty sure you couldn’t hear more than a mumble from the other side, but he was glad he’d told Bettina to call him next at a time when he could get away. It wasn’t safe to take her calls here.
The knock came again.
He cleared his throat and spoke in the cultured voice he’d so lately learned. “Come in.”
The person on the other side burst in carrying a clipboard, puffed up with importance. It was his producer, Tracie Hofer, a sloppy looking girl with long curly hair clipped back carelessly. She always wore pants, and they always looked too short for her. She was too dark for his taste, too bohemian; probably the only woman in Texas who didn’t give a damn what she wore.
Without being invited, she sat down. “David, I’ve got something really great coming up. This woman called who ended up in jail because of bank fees. Ever heard of anything like that?”
He thought about it. “Hell, I don’t know. What happened?”
“She’s perfect for us: an art student, very young but enterprising. Even has her own business running errands for people. The trouble is, she still barely makes it. You with me so far?”
He leaned forward, smiling at her. “Totally. Isn’t that what people your age say?”
She put her hand up for a high five, a practice he rather liked but thought should be reserved for truly celebratory moments. “You got it. So anyway, she’s living on the edge. Fits the profile, right? So she has two bank accounts, and she writes checks on one, deposits them in the other before they’ve cleared…”
“Check kiting.”
“Yeah,
but she’s got no idea it’s against the law or has a name or anything. Also, she doesn’t know the bank’s charging her huge fees every time she bounces a check, and, because she’s frantically trying to cover her ass, she never has any money in either account, and the bank has the right to put the checks through twice. So she incurs not one but two fees on each check, neither of which she knows about.”
An obvious question came to mind, but Tracie held up a hand to stop it. “So she finds out when she gets her statement right? She panics, borrows money to straighten it out, goes down to make a deal with them; they take her money, then they turn right around and throw her ass in jail.”
He felt the beginnings of a smile playing about his formerly thin (now quite attractive) mouth. “This is sounding good.”
“It’s better than you think. This same thing happened to me in college.”
“You got thrown in jail for check kiting?”
“Oh, no. I most certainly didn’t. The bank manager sat me down, explained it was illegal, gave me a chance to make good, and that was that. But it gave me an idea. I started asking around. Just in the office and in— uh— a bar last night. I found six people it happened to. And not one of them ended up in jail.”
He stroked the lower part of his face. “Viewer empathy.”
“Hell, yeah, viewer empathy— like, half the population’s been there. I’ve backgrounded the girl, and she’s totally clean. Also dumb as a rock when it comes to math; no way she would have tried to scam the bank. I mean the only way she could do that would be to step into it, which she did. Now get this; I’ve also researched the bank, and their fees are twenty-five percent higher, on average, than those of other banks, plus they have more of them. They charge teller fees, for God’s sake. There’s a five-dollar penalty for not using the ATM!”
“I’m liking this a lot.”
“Well, that’s the tip of the iceberg. I’ve got incredible stuff on the banking industry in general. This is big, David. This could be one of our best yet.”
He was still thinking. “Everybody goes to banks.”
“Yeah, and everybody’s intimidated by them.”
“Tracie, this is terrific. I really can’t thank you enough for this.”
“It’s my job.” But he could see she was eating it up.
“No, you always go the extra mile. I admire your work so much.”
“Really? Well, I do try to be thorough.”
“No, you’re great. Really. I’m deeply, deeply impressed.”
He could see she left on a cloud, a cloud he knew exactly how to produce. Women were so insecure. All you had to do was praise them a little bit, and they fell in love with you at the very least; if you worked it right, they were your servant for life.
* * *
Isaac had talked Terri into letting him paint her portrait, something he was desperate to do while she still had the blue hair. Or maybe he wanted to do it because it was a way to feel close to her when they were so obviously moving apart. She had bugged him once or twice about lying to her, and all he’d been able to do was shrug and say he was sorry, he didn’t know why he’d done it. Which was another lie that drove another wedge between them. He knew exactly why he’d done it: because normal people have mothers that they go to see on Mother’s Day; they don’t have grown-up nieces whose fathers are incarcerated. He wasn’t ready to open the door to conversations about his family.
And now, since her arrest, she’d been so self-absorbed he hardly knew her anymore. As he worked, he argued with himself, about to go nuts with love and frustration. Maybe it wasn’t love. Maybe he’d never loved Terri. If he loved her, he had to trust her, right? And if he trusted her, why wouldn’t he open up about his family? Maybe it was guilt and frustration. Maybe she wasn’t right for him; maybe he needed to break up with her.
As soon as it occurred to him to break up with her, he had to excuse himself.
When he came back from the bathroom, he found that she’d lit up a cigarette. Before he could stop himself, he gasped.
“What?” she asked, drawing her robe around her. She was posing nude. He couldn’t stand painting a woman with clothes on, even if he painted her only above the neck; the energy didn’t flow right. In his life, he’d spent a lot of time meditating; energy was a big thing to Isaac.
She was out of the pose, back in the robe, and a blue cloud was rising above her. She stank; the room stank. Everything was different from the way it had been three minutes ago. He felt almost as if he wanted to cry.
“Isaac, what is it?” she said again. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I didn’t expect you to be smoking,” he said.
“What do you mean? I’ve been smoking ever since I got arrested. That and eating chocolate and fries and every kind of junk food— I bet I’ve gained ten pounds. Christ I’m a mess!”
She was. The wonderful blue hair was greasy. He didn’t even want to paint her today.
“Terri…” He didn’t know how to talk about it, didn’t know how to tell her who he used to be, how repellent these things were to the former White Monk: the smell of smoke, of fast-food grease in her car.
“What?” she said again, asking a different question now.
He sat down on the stool he used for painting. “I’m worried about you. It seems like…” Oh, hell, he might as well say it. “It seems like you’re falling apart a little bit.”
“You got that one right bro’.” He hated it when she talked like that. In street clichés. She was an educated woman; she had a brain, and she used to use it to a lot better advantage. “Yeah, I’m falling apart! You would be too if you were me.”
She stubbed out her cigarette, and, to his chagrin, lit another. It was his house; he didn’t even have the nerve to ask her not to smoke in his house. She brushed greasy blue hair out of her eyes. “Isaac, I just can’t seem to catch a break. I told you what happened before I met you: I caught my boyfriend cheating on me and he kicked me out. Now how does something like that happen?”
Isaac had heard the story. “If I recall, it was his apartment.”
“And I’d left a really good, cheap one to move in with him. So I had to scrape up the money for a new one. All I could find was that expensive dump I live in, which I hate. But at least it would do; it would get me through. And then my transmission got fucked up.”
He winced. He really wished she wouldn’t swear.
“And now this. Then I get arrested for something I didn’t do.”
He corrected her. “Didn’t know you did.”
“Isaac, goddammit.” She got up and paced for a moment, then headed for the bathroom. “I’m going to take a shower.”
“No!” he shouted, unaware he’d raised his voice.
She stared at him, astonished. “You don’t shout. What’s this about? You’re not acting like yourself.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell. I need to get in the bathroom first.” Before she could argue with him, he went in, closed the door, did what he had to do, and returned five minutes later.
She was smoking another cigarette, half-concerned, half-angry. “Isaac, what’s going on? Are you doing drugs?”
“Drugs? Oh, you mean the bathroom. No, uh-uh. I’m not doing drugs.”
“Well, why are you going to the bathroom so often? Are you sick?”
“Sick. Well, no. Not in the usual sense.” He was trying to decide whether to tell her. “A little nuts, maybe. That’s about it.”
She surprised him by smiling. “A little nuts.” She ruffled his hair. “You’re so cute when you’re nuts.”
She got up, went in the bathroom, and closed the door. A moment later he heard the shower go on.
He took the opportunity to scurry, emptying her ashtray, wiping off all the surfaces they’d both dirtied, washing the glasses from the Diet Coke they’d shared, and then, before he could stop himself, sweeping the floor, counting the strokes.
He was almost in a trance, never even heard her com
e up behind him. “Don’t you think it’s clean enough?’ she said.
Damn! She’d made him lose count. That meant he had to start over. He did so without speaking, forgetting that he could. The last time he’d done this, he’d been operating under a vow of silence.
“Isaac.”
Again he ignored her, but at least this time he didn’t lose count. Or did he? Had he lost count? He couldn’t be sure. That meant he had to start over. He stopped long enough to speak to her. “I’ll just be a moment Terri.”
When he finished, he saw that she’d washed her hair, but she’d lit up another cigarette. She was going to stink again.
Her face was twisted in surprise and fear. Sorrow too, he thought. “Isaac, what’s going on?” Her eyes started to swim.
For a moment he loved her again, just as he had a few days ago, just as if nothing had happened. He sat down in his old rocking chair, feeling better about things and thinking to tell her, just wishing he didn’t have to breathe cigarette smoke. In fact he found he couldn’t speak as long as she was smoking. He felt as if he were choking. He decided to write it for her, just like in the old days, when he had to write everything. “Can we talk without smoke?”
She looked at him like he was nuts and shrugged. “Sure,” she said, and stubbed out her cigarette. She even emptied the ashtray, which pleased him mightily. Once again, he excused himself and went into the bathroom.
“What do you do in there?” She asked, her voice high-pitched and pleading.
“I wash my hands,” he said.
“That’s all?”
“Oh, no. Then I take a clean towel and wipe off the sink and the doorknob, and everything I’ve touched. Then I have to wash my hands again and then clean everything off again, and after that, if nothing’s strange, like the mirror got splashed or something, I can go.”
She closed her eyes and opened them. “You what?” she said, and the tone of her voice was unfriendly.
“I guess,” he said, “you’ve never heard of OCD.”
“Uh…” she seemed to be searching her memory. “No.”
“Obsessive-compulsive disorder. People who have it wash their hands a lot and check thirty times to see if they’ve locked the door. And count. I was counting the broom strokes awhile ago.”
