The girls were decked out like twins, wearing red-and-green sequined dresses that hit about mid-hip, and Santa hats with white pom-poms on the ends. One was a bleached blonde and the other was a deep redhead. Dr. Thrasher was about one-third in the bag unless I missed my guess.
“Bruno, my man,” he said. “You win. I will release you tomorrow morning.”
The girls giggled and tucked themselves in a little closer to the good doctor.
“Come on, honey,” the redhead said, “I wanna go back to your place and play doctor.”
Thrasher had the good grace to turn three shades of red. “Meg,” he said, his voice cracking in his effort to remain professional, “I have to make rounds first.”
The blonde tittered. “Ummm,” she said, “if I put on one of those open-backed gowns, will you make rounds on me?”
I looked at the men. They were smirking.
“So what is this?” I said. “You guys bribed him to let you out early?”
Bruno hit the button on his bed control and raised himself up a little farther so he was eye to eye, so to speak, with the doctor and the girls.
“No, Sierra, the doc was gonna spring me. I just wanted him to feel my deep appreciation. All the girls are very thankful. They’ve been plaguing the good doctor. They all want to show their appreciation.” Bruno smiled and Eugene outright laughed. “I had to work out a schedule so’s we don’t wear the doc out.”
Bruno looked at Dr. Thrasher. “Take two every night at bedtime,” he said, “and you won’t have a headache in the morning.”
Dr. Thrasher nodded seriously. “Ladies,” he said, “I believe our work here is done.”
And with that, they departed, wagging their tails behind them.
I looked back at Bruno and Eugene. “You two are pitiful,” I said. “Effective, perhaps brilliant, generous to a fault, but pitiful.”
Eugene smiled. “Fully automatic,” he said. “It just comes to us, like brilliance.”
Yeah, like brilliance, I thought, but not quite.
Twenty-nine
It’s dark by seven in Panama City. I was busting it to make it back to my trailer before Nailor. I had it in mind to take a shower and maybe look a little extra special by the time he arrived. I needn’t have bothered. Eight o’clock came and went. No Nailor and no Yolanda. By nine, I was starting to feel like a prom date who’d been stood up.
It was after ten when I got the first alert from the guard dog. Fluffy was standing on the futon, growling. I sprang for the door, figuring for sure it was Nailor, guessing maybe I’d missed him and Yolanda, that maybe they’d rearranged the meet and had no time to tell me. But when I opened the door, I realized I’d made a serious tactical error. Izzy Rodriguez and Mike Riggs stood there. Mike was smiling, but unless I missed my guess and misread the fidgeting, he was nervous. Izzy, on the other hand, was your proverbial bird-eating cat, grinning like he had good teeth and fresh breath.
Fluffy was in full-tilt watch-dog mode now, growling, barking, and baring her teeth at my gentleman callers. In another chihuahua, this might’ve been ineffective, but I knew what she was doing, she was calling in her red-dog mad-assassin squad, her backup, Raydean.
Between Raydean’s outdoor baby monitor system and Fluffy’s angry alert, it would be only a matter of moments before my callers lost their innocent illusions about threatening or harming me. Of course, I didn’t count out what I was seeing from the corner of my eye, over their shoulders. A black sedan was creeping slowly down my street, lights out. The Moose patrol was on alert status too, or at least I hoped they were.
“So, youse guys are out looking for trouble or what?”
Mike glanced nervously at Izzy and then took the lead. “Sierra,” he said, “we got off to a bad start and I can understand why you’re mad.”
I jumped in. “No, I don’t think you could possibly understand. You see, understanding means you have sensitivity to the situation. What kind of sensitive man would come calling on a lady when accompanied by a slime-sucking snake?”
Mike’s eyes widened but Izzy didn’t react. He stood there staring back at me with a benign expression on his face. For some reason he had no concern. As short as he was and out without his protection, I figured he’d be at least watching his family jewels, but no, he was standing there like we were discussing another slime-sucking snake.
Mike Riggs shoved his grimy white captain’s hat farther back on his head and scratched his scalp.
“I’m here to give you an opportunity,” he said. He was hardening up a bit, trying to stand taller and look more like I should take him seriously, which I didn’t.
“You’re giving me an opportunity?”
Riggs looked over my shoulder, into the warm, inviting kitchen, past the growling, obviously hostile Fluffy.
“Might we come in and talk?”
“No. Say what you gotta say and get out.” I adjusted my black spandex skirt and looked him dead in the eye. “I’m expecting company—po—lice company.”
Riggs jumped a little, but Izzy wouldn’t let him off. Izzy nudged him to continue.
“Okay,” Riggs said, “okay. Here’s how it is. It’s a known fact that you are the best the Panhandle has to offer. The reason the Tiffany did as well as it did was because of you and the Bomber.”
I was going to dispute the Marla title but thought better of it, nodding like I agreed, thinking I should listen so they’d get done and leave. I was tired of fisticuffs and wasting my brain power on ignorants. It was better to listen and get them gone the easy way.
“Your point?”
“Well, Mr. Rodriguez and I are talking about a merger. We’d combine and be the largest venue on the beach.” He was waiting for me to act impressed, but that was a pipe dream, so he went on. “We’re here to offer you a chance to be the headliner. We’d pay you large, give you your own dressing room, star billing, the works.”
The charter-boat captain looked like he was believing his own sell. I was waiting for him to offer a 401(k) and health insurance, whatever shit he could make up to lure me into taking the bait.
“It’s an opportunity for you and the girls to work again.”
There, he’d said it, what he’d come to communicate. But just in case I wasn’t hearing him good, Izzy stepped up to make it clear.
“You see,” he said, “we didn’t think you’d come if it was just you. But if you don’t, I’m gonna personally blacklist them other girls all over town.” He looked at me, his hot beady little eyes boring into mine. “You know I can do it. All’s I have to do is say I don’t want ’em and the other clubs will think they’re worse scum than my usuals.” He smiled. “Don’t think I don’t know what the Beaver’s reputation is,” he added. “And I can make it work for me. There’s a clientele that loves the slut; that loves to know they can be bought cheap and thrown out. And now, Sierra, I’m gonna own the other side of the coin.”
Riggs gave him a sharp glance, to which Izzy responded by slipping his hand up on the captain’s shoulder and patting him like a dog.
“Me and my partner here are going to whisk them other clubs off the map. We’ll expand. We’ll be bigger and better and stronger than anyone else on the beach or off. So if you wanna work P.C., Sierra, if you want your friends to work, then you gotta play the game our way. Otherwise, you and your tramps can flat-back it, ’cause that’s all you’ll be able to do in this town.”
I saw Raydean’s porch light go out. The lights inside had already gone out, so there were no surprises when I heard the door to her trailer open and the screen door moan softly in the night air.
All of us heard Marlena’s opening statement. The shotgun’s blast reverberated, causing Mike Riggs and Izzy to drop to the ground in front of me. The men in the sedan flew out of the car, guns in hand, swinging them from side to side, alternating between covering the men on my porch and Raydean.
Raydean’s voice rang out. “I think the party’s over, boys,” she said. “Let’s us all take our to
ys and go on home.”
Lights all over the trailer park winked out as the residents prepared for Raydean’s assault against the alien intruders. The lucky thing for us all was that Raydean rarely hit anything but the streetlights. What most everyone didn’t know was that Raydean could’ve taken the hairs off a flea’s ass at fifty yards had she wanted to.
I looked down the street at Moose’s men and felt them weighing their odds, felt them thinking they should shoot the crazy lady just as insurance.
“Thomas,” I yelled, “Moose wouldn’t like you to cause undue bloodshed. Raydean’s my friend. Let us handle this our way.”
Raydean never took Marlena’s barrel off her quarry. “That’s right,” she called out. “You ain’t got a dog in this fight. I got it covered.”
None of them said a word. They remained behind the car doors, weapons drawn, watching.
I looked down at my two visitors. “You may rise,” I said. “Go in peace or you will depart in pieces.”
Raydean laughed. Izzy and Mike Riggs slowly clambered up onto their feet, and Izzy actually took the time to brush himself off, like maybe my stoop was dirty or something. Then he looked back up at me, the anger making his eyes sparkle in the darkness.
“You should think about what we are saying, Sierra. If you and your friends want to work around here again, you’d be wise to hook up with us. Otherwise I couldn’t guarantee your collective safety.”
I looked down at the little shrimp and resisted the urge to pick him up by the lapels of his slick polyester jacket and shake him until his teeth chattered and his eyes rolled back in his head.
“You don’t frighten me, Rodriguez,” I said. “I don’t even have to import talent to take care of you. You are a pimple, an oozing, festering blemish of a person, and I don’t do infection.” I looked at Riggs. “I don’t know what this worm has on you,” I said, “but it ain’t a quarter of the trouble you’ll find if you lie down with this dog. He’ll swallow you alive. Don’t join up with him. Let Vincent pay you off when he gets out. Let the Tiffany go back to good management and walk away with a little profit. I’m sure Vincent will be generous.”
Riggs looked at me, his eyes meeting mine for the briefest second. He was afraid, and I saw it.
“It won’t be so bad, Sierra,” he said.
“Then you don’t understand the concept of eternal damnation like I do.”
Raydean’s voice rang out again. “Get thee behind me, you agents of Satan. Get thee offa that porch before I commence to blowing your bodies to tiny pieces a bit at a time!”
I looked down the street and saw our landlady, Pat, emerge from her trailer, her silvery white hair glowing in the light of the remaining streetlights. She was heading for Raydean like a gunfighter at high noon, right out in the middle of the street.
Mike Riggs and Izzy Rodriguez apparently decided to take the high road. They moved back down the stairs, making their way to Izzy’s car like there was no particular hurry, but Riggs kept looking over at Raydean while Rodriguez took stock of the black sedan that waited in the darkness.
Pat just kept coming her pace slow and deliberate, her intent clear. Order was going to reign in her little kingdom and she didn’t much care what she had to do to restore it. She had little tolerance for Raydean’s paranoia and didn’t particularly like it that I was always dragging Raydean into my schemes. It was just as well that our little vignette was ending before she could walk into the middle of it.
“Raydean,” she said, “what in tarnation is it this time?” She looked over at me, checking me out to see if this was my fault, deciding that it was, and not liking the outcome.
Raydean slid the shotgun behind her housedress and smiled. “The Eagle has landed,” she said, “and they are ours.”
“The party’s over,” I sang softly.
“Who’re they?” Pat asked, nodding toward the Moose mobile.
“They’re some out-of-towners looking for excitement,” I said. “I’ll let ’em know to look elsewhere,” I said. “Don’t worry about it. They’re not hurting anything.”
Pat looked skeptical, her eyebrows drawing together in a frown. “Sierra, have you not noticed that they have guns and are crouching down behind their car like they’re expecting a fight?”
“Yeah,” I said, “but they’re from New Jersey. It’s like that there. It’s sort of the way you say hello or do business.”
Pat wasn’t having any of it. “If you don’t have a resident’s sticker,” she called to them, “you’re trespassing. Now move it along or I’m calling the police.”
I would’ve expected the Men from Moose to laugh at this or, at best, ignore it, but they did neither. Instead they quietly lowered their guns, got back into the car, and started the engine, this time turning on the headlights.
I looked at Pat in surprise, then noticed what they’d all seen and I had overlooked. Two of Panama City’s finest squad cars were rolling down the street. Someone had called the cops already.
“Well,” Raydean said, her voice slowing to a lazy drawl, “I can see my work here is finished.” She looked at Pat. “Reckon we oughta duck into my parlor and have us a cup of Constant Comment?”
Pat looked at the squad cars and started negotiating Raydean’s booby-trapped front yard.
“Wouldn’t hurt, I reckon,” she said. “It’s a mite chilly out here. Besides, Sierra can handle this. It ain’t no big thing, is it, honey?”
She was smirking at me like I was finally getting a dose of my own medicine, like a grandma saying, “Make a mess, clean it up.” I didn’t mind.
Raydean and Pat disappeared into the darkened interior of Raydean’s trailer, and as I watched, the lights came on one at a time. The two squad cars were sitting in front of my trailer now. No one had moved to leave the vehicles. They were scouting the area, I figured, or worse, waiting on Nailor.
I breathed a sigh of relief when one door opened, but just as quickly sucked in more air when I realized it was Nailor.
“You all right?” he said, his voice echoing in the darkness, as warm and sexy as always.
“Fine,” I answered. “Why the escort?”
Nailor was approaching the bottom of my steps. The coat was gone. He stood there in his dark suit, the white of his shirt a bright contrast to the tan that never seemed to fade.
“Well, I was on another call when I heard there were shots fired here.” He glanced over toward Raydean’s trailer. “I figured it might be the usual, but in light of you seeming to be a troublemagnet lately, I wasn’t altogether certain.”
He was looking at me with those dark eyes, communicating on another level, checking in personally. When Nailor checks like that, I melt. I could stand to be checked like that on a regular basis, a dark-of-night, naked, regular basis. But I digress.
“She didn’t show,” I said. “And neither did you.”
“Who didn’t show?” he asked, genuinely puzzled. “What do you mean?”
I looked down at him standing there and felt a little twinge of fear ignite inside my gut. He really didn’t know what I was talking about.
“I left you a message this afternoon at your office. Yolanda, ‘Angel,’ the girl from the poker game, she wants to talk to you and only you. She said she has information to give you in return for you hooking her up to leave town. I told her to come back here at eight and talk.”
Nailor frowned. “So where is she? She get tired of waiting?”
I looked out into the darkness surrounding the trailer. Even with two squad cars sitting in front of my house, I felt exposed, not safe. The entire world was turning more sinister by the moment and I couldn’t figure it all out.
“Didn’t you get my message?”
Nailor shook his head. “I haven’t been in all afternoon. Haven’t even checked my messages. Why didn’t you page me?”
I didn’t have an answer. Why sound stupid and tell the truth? Hey, I would’ve paged you but I was feeling insecure? Nah, it was better to look like it ha
dn’t occurred to me.
“I just figured you’d get the message.”
Nailor started up the stairs, looking past me and nodding, like we should continue the conversation inside.
“It’s no big deal,” he said. “She didn’t show. Happens all the time.”
I didn’t think so. I had a bad feeling about Yolanda, but nothing to connect it up with.
“So why are you here then?”
Nailor grinned. “So I need a reason? Okay, I thought I might bring your car when I come back later. You wanna get the keys for me?”
He followed me up the steps and into the kitchen, flipping the light switch off as he came through the door, plunging us into darkness and reaching for me with one sure, familiar motion. He backed me up against the refrigerator, his hands gripping my upper arms with a certainty, his mouth seeking, then finding mine.
“I miss you,” he said softly, his lips brushing my ear as he whispered. “Wait up for me, will you?”
He reached up and took the spare keys off the hook by the door, leaned back and kissed me again, then started to leave.
“How long will you be?”
He shrugged, a movement I could see even in the darkness. “It shouldn’t take long.”
“A homicide?”
His shoulders dropped a little. “Yeah. Probably cut-and-dried, but it’ll take a little time.”
“What happened?” I was stepping closer to him now, not wanting him to leave, wanting to hear his voice go on and on in the darkness.
“Somebody shot one of the bouncers at the Busted Beaver.”
The image of the two men flashed instantly into my head and I wondered which one of them took it.
“Dead?”
“Yep. D.R.T. Dead Right There.” He shrugged again. “There’s a shooting there once a month,” he said. “It’s a wonder nobody’s died before now. Dope dealing. Bar fights. If it ain’t one thing, it’s another.”
But I was interested now. “Who did it?”
Strip Poker Page 20
