Cole, out of the goodness of his heart (and with the idea that it might be useful to have Tariq in his debt), drove a stolen 1998 Chevy Camaro over Tariq’s friend-turned-snitch Sunny, while Tariq, snugged away in a holding cell, possessed the state of Texas as his alibi.
Why Herta Loved Cole:
He was handsome, decisive, clever, lively, and heartless.
Why Cole Loved No One:
He didn’t know how.
* * *
“The girl is the center of the group,” Tariq explained. He bartended at the Azure Lounge, an upscale tavern with divey pretentions on Westheimer just below River Oaks Boulevard. In Houston, River Oaks equaled royalty: money to make Rockefeller envious, mansions to make Gatsby blanch. “They show up three, four times a week—after gym, before dinner, late at night. Rude bastards who tip for shit. Usually three or four of them, sometimes five. Ordinary looking, except they’ve got that sheen that comes from money. You know that sheen?”
Cole had lived in Houston all his life. He knew that sheen.
Herta said, “You can’t spend sheen.” She was not from Houston. She was not from anywhere.
“Not to worry. Madelyn lives with her dad right on River Oaks Boulevard,” Tariq said. He, too, was a native Houstonian, by way of Lahore. “They’re loaded.”
“Money with a pedigree,” Cole said.
“Yeah,” Herta agreed. “Not just any mutt can move onto River Oaks.”
Cole and Herta shared a house two neighborhoods east, in Montrose. They sat at the kitchen table and passed around the covert photos Tariq had taken at the Azure: Madelyn Glancy in tennis gear, in yoga pants, in a gold lamé dress that bunched at her neck.
“That dress fits her body,” Herta said, “the way a newspaper fits a fish.”
Cole fingered the picture, tracing the woman’s head. Madelyn Glancy had a rather long face.
“Don’t say like a horse,” Herta said, reading his mind. “It’s not accurate. People just say that.”
“More like Virginia Woolf,” said Cole.
“I hated To the Lighthouse,” Tariq put in. “Why do they force that mopey white woman on every English major?”
“Here we go,” said Cole.
“Because she was a genius?” Herta suggested. “Because she was the best writer of her generation?”
“I got a black eye reading that book,” Tariq went on. “Fell asleep and hit my beer with my face.”
“You may get another,” Herta said. “I have a first-edition hardback that’ll crack your skull.”
“Don’t argue with her,” said Cole. “She reads.”
“I gave up reading after college,” Tariq said dismissively. “Even before.”
Cole raised one finger to make them focus. “Let’s see the other photos.”
Tariq speculated that Madelyn was sexual with a boy in the group, a pudgy wide-butt with a hipster haircut. “They don’t seem like a real couple,” he said, “but I think they do the nasty sometimes.”
“I can distract Pork Chop,” Herta said.
“How?” Tariq asked. “They ignore everybody.”
“Use a little personal landscape.”
“Am I supposed to understand that?” Tariq asked.
“I will show him my buttocks,” Herta said. To Cole, she added, “This is why I don’t like adding partners.”
“You can’t show your ass in the Azure,” Tariq said. “It’s a respectable bar.”
“Stand up,” she said.
“Here we go,” said Cole.
Tariq obeyed.
“Good boy,” Herta said, rising but losing her balance, catching herself just before her face hit the floor.
“I didn’t know girls actually wore those,” Tariq said.
“Every woman under forty wears a thong.” Herta righted herself as she spoke. “Haven’t you ever gotten laid?”
“Pakistani girls don’t wear them.”
“Yes they do,” Herta said. “Mormons wear them. Nuns wear them.”
Tariq turned to Cole. “So after Butterball breaks up with Madelyn, you move in? Catch her on the rebound?”
Now it was Cole who glared.
“You guys are so touchy,” Tariq said.
“Look at this picture.” Cole indicated Madelyn. “Elaborate haircut, plucked brows, painted nails. Wearing gym clothes but also makeup and mascara. If she’s screwing fat boy—”
“Pork Chop,” Herta said.
“—that’s good news. Think she’ll hesitate to dump him for me?”
Cole got up from the table to pose. He had a casual, alluring way of standing, as if he were about to tip over backward. A child looking up at him wouldn’t see his head, just the promontory of his chest. Adults would note eyes the color of an overcast day and the delicate purse of the lips, as if he were considering extraordinary things. He was clean-shaven, free of sideburns, and carried the retro odors of Lucky Strikes and Old Spice.
“Here’s the kicker,” Cole went on. “She’s vain enough—and rich enough—to believe I might actually be attracted to her.”
“I think she’s kind of good looking, anyway,” Tariq said.
“That’s only ’cause she’s bitchy to you,” Cole explained.
“Have you even read Mrs. Dalloway?” Herta demanded.
* * *
The Azure Lounge was cool but close, like mentholated smoke. Heavy drapes the color of a bruise shut out the world. Through slits where the curtains failed to overlap, yellow blades pierced the room. Tariq stationed Cole and Herta near the entrance, where the drapes parted a sliver.
“Incoming,” said Cole, and Herta moved into position.
The group arrived boisterously, Madelyn leading, with three boys trailing. Herta, who’d situated herself perfectly, dropped her leather wristlet between the passing of the first lug and the arrival of Pork Chop, permitting only him to see the length of her legs as she bent. Then she jumped up and into him, as if he’d goosed her.
Pork Chop uttered a series of wha, wha, wha sounds, as if suddenly transformed into a helicopter.
“Oh, sorry,” she said, patting his chest and dropping her purse again. “I’m such a klutz!” She started to bend once more, but stopped herself and crouched demurely, offering an exaggerated frowning-smile for Pork Chop alone.
Simultaneously shocked and smitten, the fat boy could manage neither expression nor locomotion until the trailing boy of their group prodded his shoulder, and Pork Chop reluctantly hoofed it to their table.
Herta handed Cole a copy of the Houston Press, taken from the stand by the door—the presumptive reason for her stroll. Wrapped within the tabloid’s pages was Pork Chop’s wallet.
Cole went into action, aiming himself at Madelyn’s group. He paused on his way to swoop down, pretending to snag the wallet from the floor. The periphery of his vision flashed red, as if a trigger in his head were half-depressed—a sensation he understood as pleasure. “Hi there.” He copped a pose and smiled, eyeing Pork Chop. The group circled a table but were not yet sitting. “When my sister inadvertently tackled you—” he paused to laugh and roll his eyes; he hated eye-rolling, but rich people loved it, “you dropped your billfold.”
The three males self-frisked, dogs with fleas. This was their greatest worry, and they had to lay hands on their money.
Cole handed the wallet to Pork Chop, who riffled through his cards and cash, saying, “She’s your sister?”
Cole and Herta did not look anything like siblings except that each had a cunning nature that lent a cast to their eyes and set their heads at an angle, and these shared traits were easy to mistake for familial bond.
“Thank the man,” Madelyn Glancy told her portly pal. Her eyes never left Cole’s. “Can he buy you a drink? Your whatever—sibling—too. Have I seen you here before?” To Pork Chop, she said, “Put your money away. Where are your manners?” She rolled her eyes for Cole’s benefit.
Cole had rolled his first. He couldn’t hold it against her. He said, “You gu
ys have room for two more?”
Tariq’s First Words to Cole:
“This is supposed to be funny, right?” They’d exited a classroom at the U of Houston, Tariq brandishing The Importance of Being Earnest. “Funny ha-ha?”
“It’s funny,” Cole assured him. “I can tell. Want to help me boost a car?”
“I don’t know ’bout that.”
“From the faculty lot.”
“All right then.”
What Cole Speculated about Tariq:
That he never thought twice about anything, and this was his greatest asset.
Herta’s First Words to Cole:
“Oh, is this yours?” Her hand was on his wallet. His hand held her wrist. Anvil was happy-hour crowded.
He leaned close. “How many billfolds in that purse of yours?”
“I don’t have a bookkeeper,” she replied.
He led her to a booth where, after a few drinks, he discovered that her skills were hard-earned. Her résumé included a six-month stint in Shakopee Women’s Prison in Minnesota, but she’d never been arrested in Texas, and never anywhere under the name Herta Oberheuser.
Cole had no criminal record. His ID was legit, if odd—his whole name was simply Cole. His mother insisted it was all he needed.
“What about your dad?” Herta asked.
“He was in Kuwait when I was born.”
“They still alive?”
“They were the last time I saw them.”
“Which was?”
“Five years ago,” he said. “Maybe six.”
“Where’d they move?”
“Nowhere.” He named the address of his childhood home.
“That’s like a five-minute drive.”
“Without traffic. It can back up there because of the off-ramp.”
“I’ve never met anyone like you,” she said.
To which he replied, “Let’s steal something together.”
She counted it as the most romantic moment of her life.
“What’s your actual name?” Cole asked before they left Anvil. “Nobody is really named Herta Oberheuser.”
“It rhymes with something found in nature,” she said.
“Belephant?” was his only guess.
What Cole Speculated about Herta:
That she must have attended college—you couldn’t do anything without a degree these days—but not in Houston, which was the only place he knew.
And that she loved him, which meant she’d be loyal. Up to a point.
What Cole Speculated about Himself:
That his only gifts were his looks and charm. And his ruthlessness, he supposed, but this acknowledgment made him feel immodest.
* * *
“Vodka tonic,” said Cole. “Stoli.” To impersonate the wealthy, one had to be picky, but when Tariq returned to say they were out of Stoli, Cole couldn’t think of another brand. “Whatever your house vodka is, I guess.”
“It’s absolutely barbaric,” Madelyn interjected. “From reject potatoes grown in Oklahoma or Kansas. Without the best potatoes, you get inferior vodka. Russia has the best. Or Idaho. Which is why the capital of Idaho is Moscow. Oh, don’t just stand there, Tark, get the man a Cirôc and tonic—and use your best tonic, Fentimans, if you’ve got it, or Schweppes from a bottle. A small bottle, freshly opened, not from that abominable squirter.”
She continued her monologue after Tariq departed, extolling the virtues of several liquors, many of which Cole knew for a fact were indistinguishable from one another, but he listened and nodded, feigning interest.
Well, he was interested, so he was feigning something else.
“This is just what I need,” he told her when she finally paused, “someone to give me a clue.” He showed as many of his teeth as he thought she could handle, then asked if she knew the way to a person’s heart.
“I don’t know the way to anyone’s heart,” she said, as if it were an unattractive organ like the bladder or rectum. “Most people I know aim a little lower.”
Did that mean they aimed for simple affection? Or the groin? She was hard to read. In any case, she kept talking. Across the table, Herta already had her hand in Pork Chop’s hair. A priest sat in the next booth, drinking whiskey, talking to a woman in a dark dress. She might be a nun. Cole wondered if she wore a thong.
“Get me another of these,” Madelyn told Cole. Tariq was working both the bar and the tables, which made him slow. “And don’t let him forget the lemon peel. I like a good peel, and these guys, you have to watch them or they cheat you.”
By these guys, Cole wondered as he walked to the bar, did she mean workingmen in general or Pakistanis in particular? Whatever else one might say about Cole, he was not racist. He disapproved of all humanity equally.
According to their research, Madelyn Glancy was amply wealthy now but also heir to the family’s money, and her mother had recently kicked. Her father was the only stumbling block, and he was off in Europe—a grieving tour, Madelyn called it. The term would trouble Herta but did not interest Cole.
“You want her drink extra strong?” Tariq asked. “Yours extra weak?”
“Just regular,” said Cole. “You know the priest and nun?”
“The priest, sure, Father Silverman. I don’t think that lady’s a nun.”
“Silverman? He’s a Jewish priest?”
“What do I know from Jewish?” Tariq deadpanned. “The woman, take a look when she gets up. She’s got a tattoo on her leg.”
“Still could be a nun.”
“Like it’s a Jesus tattoo?” Tariq set the drinks before him and waved away payment. “Add it to my share.”
Prior to this scam, Cole had only ever worked one rich woman, a good-looking widow in her fifties. She gave him a watch that he hocked for $750, but the real money came from her checkbook. Herta copied the woman’s penmanship perfectly, and they paid off their debts and bar tabs. Cole sent money to a handful of phony businesses that Herta set up online. By the time the woman cut him off, he’d stolen close to twenty thousand dollars. Yet she didn’t have him arrested. She could afford financial loss better than embarrassment.
Tedious Madelyn Glancy was worth a great deal more than the Rolex woman. Cole girded his sensibilities and headed back to the table. His was hard work, but it was the life he’d chosen.
“I want you to take this back,” Madelyn said after a single sip. “Tell him I can taste. I have a discerning tongue and a developed palate. This is not Cirôc. He’s charging you for the good stuff and pouring rotgut.”
“Sorry,” Cole said, “I didn’t think to track that.”
“They’re always looking to cheat you,” she went on without pause. “Especially to cheat me. They think I can afford it, and, big whoop, I can afford it, but I don’t let it happen. My eyes are like an elephant’s memory: they never forget.”
That makes no fucking sense, Cole thought, rising, smiling.
“She says this isn’t Cirôc.”
“She’s a piece of work,” Tariq replied.
“Pour it into a different glass. Add a dollop of the cheapest shit you’ve got,” Cole said. “Vodka’s vodka.”
“There you go.” Tariq nodded to a departing couple, the priest and woman. The tail of a dragon descended her leg, its body vanishing under her skirt. “Lucky dragon,” he added.
“They have forked tongues,” Cole replied. “In the Chinese tradition, at least.”
“You’re a fount all right.” Tariq slid papers onto the bar.
“What’s this?” Cole asked.
“The report you fucking made me write. I know you can’t take it now, but tell Herta.”
Cole examined the pages: Virginia Woolf’s Use of Landscape in Mrs. Dalloway. He shrugged apologetically. “It was the only way to shut her up.”
“I want a full third.”
“It’s three pages.”
“Single-spaced.”
“Fine, Christ, give me the drink. Wait, did you get this off the Internet?
”
“Fuck you. I was an English major.”
“She’ll know, and she’ll have your balls.”
Without looking down, Tariq wadded the papers and threw them away. “I still want a third,” he said, delivering the drink.
“Then do your work,” said Cole.
* * *
The party moved to River Oaks. Madelyn’s house was not big by neighborhood standards—barely the size of an ocean liner. White columns divvied up the front. Sycamores and live oaks shadowed either side. The living room was roughly the size of a Walmart. Not a Walmart Supercenter, Cole noted, just the ordinary store. They aimed themselves at a cow-colored leather couch as long as a limo.
“A whole herd of Holsteins committed hari-kari to be this family’s sofa,” Herta said.
“The wealthy have that effect on cattle,” Cole replied. “It’s why they’re forever running for office.”
Cocaine on a silver tray passed from lap to lap. “We have different dads,” Herta was saying. “I’m an Oberheuser, he’s a Cole.”
“Herta Oberheuser?” one of them said. “Wasn’t there a Nazi with that name?”
“Probably,” Herta said. “Our family has long history of betting on the wrong nag.” She changed the subject: “Isn’t it funny we say lose our virginity?” When in doubt, talk sex. Boys loved girls who talked sex. “Like it’s a rowdy dog that got off its leash? Should’ve kept that damn virginity in a kennel.”
“How else could we say it?” Madelyn pressed.
“Whopped my virginity upside the head,” Herta said.
“Poisoned it,” suggested Cole. “Murdered that twit.”
Pork Chop’s face reddened at the grinding of wheels inside his thick head.
Herta adopted an accent. “Give me virginity da boot, I did.”
“Hanged it from a mighty oak,” offered Cole.
“I let someone else have it!” Madelyn said, thrilled to contribute. “I let him or her have it!”
Herta smiled and leaned to whisper in Cole’s ear. “This is like filching marbles from first-graders.”
“Yeah,” said Cole. “Fun.”
“Did I tell you what happened at Affirm today?” Madelyn asked. Affirm was her gym. She described the day’s activities in excruciating detail, a saga that lasted nearly twenty minutes. Summary: she exercised.
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