The Rag, The Wire And The Big Store

by Duane Lindsay

  Chapter Four

  A WHOLE LOTTA SHAKIN’ GOIN’ ON

  June, 1959

  The years flutter by like the Texaco Gas company calendars Adele keeps on the back of the pantry door.

  1954

  Leroy comes dragging in from God knows where, a sorry sight indeed. Adele takes him in, letting him stay for a few weeks one time, a few months another, glad when he’s there, relieved when he leaves. He visits with George, still weak from the pneumonia, and is gone well before Adele finds out she’s again with child.

  1955

  Kate Mulrooney, former con artist, marries William “Big Bill” Carver at the Presbyterian Church of Our Lord in Portland, Oregon. The Groom is in construction, building a new three hundred home subdivision along the Columbia River, base priced at $7,000 to mimic Levittown. The bride is radiant in off-white and Mayor Fred L. Peterson sits in the front row.

  1956

  FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover assigns rookie agent Winslow Petrie to a task force investigating fraud in America. Adele Logan has her third child, a girl, in New Orleans. They move to a larger house, one with a large room above the garage that often houses Leroy’s shadier buddies.

  1959

  Georgie Logan is caught trying to hide National Geographic magazines under his mattress and lectured by his mother about morality, a subject dear to her heart. She insists Leroy talk to the boy, which proves a mixed blessing for all concerned.

  Adele Logan, as serene and pious as any lamb of God could possibly be, considering, pours orange juice for her husband, scrambles eggs for her husband and empties his cup in the sink.

  “Hey,” says the husband, scowling. “I was drinking that.”

  “It’s scotch,” says Adele. “You can’t drink scotch before breakfast.”

  “It isn’t before breakfast until after I’ve slept.”

  “You’ve been out all night?” The again is implied. She shakes her head, tsks, mixes waffle batter and manages to pour him a cup of coffee all at the same time. Adele Logan is a bear for efficiency, prudence, piety, good morals, temperance and patience, the last being sorely tried by the crumbling wreck of a man squinting in the early light of a Louisiana summer morning.

  She says to the Lord, “Forgive him, please,” and to the husband, “Maddy; you have got to quit these sinful ways. It’s bad for the children, it’s bad for me and it’s bad for your soul.” She pours syrup and changes tack. “Take Georgie fishing with you today. You have to explain a few things to him.”

  “I do?”

  “Yes. The boy idolizes you. He’ll do what you say.”

  “Fine,” says Leroy, doubting it very much.

  “Tell him it isn’t nice,” says Adele.

  “Fine.”

  “Looking at women that way…”

  “I said fine, dammit!”

  “Maddy! There is no place for profanity in this house.”

  To which Leroy Logan says, “Shit!”

  But he says it quietly.

  Down by the side of a lake Leroy watches the boy fish. George Logan, head nearly shaved, tattered but clean and pressed overalls, no shirt, bare feet, is patiently waiting for the coming lecture. He’s known trouble was coming ever since his sister found the stash of magazines under the box in his closet and ratted him out to his Mama. Knowing her, George is perfectly okay with waiting for his father.

  Who says, “I hear you got found out…about that stash of magazines.”

  George says, “Yessir,” because he’s been raised by his Mama to say that to every adult, one of many rules in his house. In contrast, these fishing trips with Pops have almost no rules at all.

  “What do you learn from this experience?” asks Pops.

  George sighs theatrically, like he’s sorry, really he is, and it won’t happen again; scout’s honor. George is in the fifth grade, already a year past his Pop who only made it to fourth. That’s about all he knows about his father, except for the now he’s here, now he’s gone part. He says, “I shouldn’t a took ‘em.”

  Leroy laughs, scaring a heron picking his way through the reeds. The bird squawks with anger and flies away. “No, you idiot. You shouldn’t a got caught.”

  Later, on a rock, feet dangling in the cool water, Leroy smokes a filtered cigarette ’cause he’s trying to cut back and George waits gratefully for more. He feels close to his father and finally decides to ask the question. The question.

  “So…” he begins. He sucks in a lot of air and lets it out. “What the hell do you do for a living?” Leroy cuffs him upside the back of his head and George concludes, “Ouch!” rubbing it.

  “Watch the language, boy,” warns his father and George gapes, totally confused.

  “Why?” He asks finally. “You don’t. I heard you.”

  “Lots of things I do that you can’t. Your Mama runs a clean house, son; you follow her rules and you won’t end up…” He’s about to say, “like me,” but curbs it. “Bad,” he says instead. Leroy’s not very comfortable with this father/son stuff.

  “Listen,” he says, after a while. “What’s wrong with you lookin’ at those pictures of naked ladies?”

  George, sensing a trap, tries, “’Cause they’re naked? Mama says it’s against the Lord’s will to lust after women. Sure don’t feel wrong though.”

  “That’s because it isn’t. What’s wrong,” says Leroy, a master of things wrong, because he’s done most of them, “Is when you disrespect women.”

  “What’s that mean, exactly?” asks George. He’s lying on his back now, feeling the sun warm his front while the rock warms his back. His feet are damn cold, though.

  “It means,” says Leroy, hearing Kate’s faraway voice and feeling sadder for it, “That what you think in your own head is alright but you can’t go acting on it if it’s going to hurt somebody.”

  “Like how?”

  “Like those pictures. It doesn’t hurt anybody, you having them. But when your mama finds them she gets to thinking she’s doing a bad job bringing you up. So, in a way, you’re making her feel bad.”

  “That means,” says George, maybe getting it, “If she don’t know what I’m doing, it’s okay what I’m doing. Right?”

  Leroy runs this by his own moral compass, an untrustworthy guide, it’s true, but he’s thinking it matches up. “Right. A boy’s gonna have his thoughts no matter, but it’s how he behaves to women is what makes him what he is.”

  He feels so good about this being a father stuff that he pulls a pint bottle of whiskey out of a rear pocket and takes a sip. George sits up, watching intently, and Leroy hands over the bottle, saying, “Here. Boy’s gotta learn some time.”

  Larry “Shemp” Caulkey glances at his cards, snorts with disgust and tosses in his hand. “What’s with that wife of yours?” he asks, pulling a local brew from the ice bucket, uncapping it with a church key.

  They’re hiding out in the loft above the garage, the door open to let in the heat and bugs. Leroy says, “Adele?”

  “Unless you got another wife, yeah.” Shemp is brighter than most, despite looking like Howdy Doody and dressing like a hayseed. He has carrot-red hair, jug ears, too many freckles and a gap-tooth grin that suggests a child-molester recently paroled. Adele Logan doesn’t like any of her husband’s cronies but she hates Shemp.

  Leroy sighs, takes a sip – he’s drinking a stronger local product than Shemp and it’s making him peckish – and opines. “She’s got a streak of the Lord in her, Adele. Won’t consider divorce, won’t admit what I do ’cause she won’t abide a thief…”

  “You ain’t no thief!” Shemp protests. He’s been Leroy’s friend since they both left the fourth grade, at the suggestion of the Hamilton Parrish school board. He manned a tank in big war, making him unfit for anything civilian except maybe driving a bus, and his wit, always dark, rules out even that. Leroy is his sole source of livelihood, the income disguised as poker winnings.

  “I know that,” agrees Leroy. �
�I’m a grifter. But try and tell it to her.” He shakes his head at the ways of women. Like God and crazy people he thinks; there’s just no figuring.

  “Why don’t you leave her, then?” Suggests Shemp. They’ve had this talk, he knows the answer, but he holds out hope, non-the-less.

  “Can’t,” says Leroy. He doesn’t want to explain – again – how Adele reminds him of his own mother, how he can’t desert a wife and children, how he needs somebody in his life who gives a damn now that Kate’s gone. So instead he says, “I got a new one.”

  “Yeah?” Shemp sits upright, intent. “Something good, I hope. Something that gets us out of here, I hope. Something really far away.”

  “Shut up, Shemp, and let me tell you. There’s this white boy up in Memphis, you might have heard about him? Elvis Presley?”

  “Elvis: sure I heard about him. I thought he was colored though.” Race didn’t matter to Shemp or Leroy; either was just a mark, though the black man was less likely to have money to scam.

  “Nope, he isn’t colored. Sounds like it, but they say he’s a white boy. Thing is he’s a rich white buy. They say his records have sold a couple of million copies each, that he’s buying people new Cadillacs as presents, if he likes ’em.”

  “And you figure he’ll like us?” Shemp sounds skeptical.

  “Not for long.”

  Before they leave Leroy has another talk with his son, George, the eldest. The boy’s been making noises like he’s figured out his Daddy isn’t what he says and he’s been pushing for better answers than Adele or Leroy have to give. Traveling salesman isn’t making the cut any more.

  So Leroy, surprising even himself, tells the truth. “Son,” he says, “I am a grifter.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m like that Robin Hood fellow,” says Leroy, thinking about the Disney show he saw one night with the kids and Adele all scattered around the big new living room in the big new house watching the ten inch black and white Magnavox, all paid for with the proceeds of his last scam.

  Leroy recalls the part about the guy robbing from the rich—who else has money?—but misses the giving to the poor concept completely.

  Georgie says, “You steal money?”

  Leroy, again with unaccustomed honesty, “I do, son. That I do.”

  “Like with guns and a gang?”

  The gang word doesn’t sit well with Leroy, making him think of Kate. Whenever he does, which is too often, he feels a sort of burning in his chest. He figures it’s heartburn and takes a swig from a hip flask to ease it.

  “No; not with ‘gangs and guns.’ I don’t believe in guns.”

  “Why not?” George certainly does. His friends all have rifles and shoot up the woods any time they can raise enough money to buy bullets, but George has to use one of theirs, usually just the Daisy BB gun, and what fun is that? So his father’s aversion puzzles him.

  “Because they’re…” he searches for the right word, settles on, “wrong,” which isn’t right but he goes with it anyway. “See, son; what I do is take things without people knowing they’ve been taken. I don’t go busting into banks shouting and shooting up the place. I don’t scare folks or hurt anybody.”

  “You just take their money? And they let you?” Pops goes up a couple notches in George’s opinion. How is this possible?

  “They don’t let me. Mostly they give it to me.”

  “What?” Rapt attention from the boy, which Leroy enjoys. It’s like they’re bonding.

  “Like this, son. Say you have a dollar and I want it. I could use a gun and steal it or…I could tell you I’d give you a five dollar bicycle for your dollar.”

  “Why would you do that?” George is picturing a five dollar bicycle. He’s seen the pictures in the Monkey Wards and Sears catalogs and five dollars would get you their best. It would even have a bell and streamers on the handlebars…

  Leroy says, “I got you thinking about the bike, don’t I?” When George nods (it’d be red. With a baseball card in the spokes to make noise!) Leroy says, “So you’d trade your dollar for my say so that I’ll give you a five dollar bicycle.”

  “Uh-huh,” says George.

  “So I take your dollar and then I leave.”

  “What?”

  “I leave.”

  George, confused. “But when do I get my bicycle?”

  “You don’t,” says Leroy. I took your dollar and skedaddled. You get nothing.”

  “But that’s…that’s…” George is indignant, watching his new red bicycle ride away without him on it. “You’re just a flim-flam man!”

  “That’s right. But I’m a very good flim-flam man. What I do got us this house and all your Mama’s new appliances and the car, pays for our food, clothes…” He stops, seeing the look of appalled horror on his son’s face. “What?”

  George is on his feet, gaping at him. “You’re a damn thief,” he yells and runs off.

  Leroy watches him go with mixed feelings. He liked it when George thought the world of him and there’s a hollow place in is chest now. He takes a sip of his Budweiser and salutes the boy.

  “But when you’re a doctor, George, you’ll be glad you didn’t wind up like your daddy.”

  Leroy stares at the calendar, disliking its cheer and frowns at Adele making up more waffles in the kitchen of the new house. He says casually, no big deal, just thought to mention it – again, “How about we get a divorce, Adele?”

  She stops pouring batter in the waffle iron to smile sweetly, “No,” then closes the lid and the subject.

  “But,” he says, and “forget it,” she says,” and a herd of children – four of theirs and a couple of neighborhood strays – stampede into the room. Most of them are wearing Davy Crockett outfits, that being popular again, but there’s a Roy Rogers as well, and a Dale Evans on the only girl, his daughter Lily. She comes over and climbs into his lap, getting orange juice on his white shirt which causes Adele to efficiently whisk her away. She wets a towel and smears the stain, tsking at it and the girl.

  Leroy sighs, knowing he’s hit a wall. He’s never met a woman as pig-headed as Adele on the subject of marriage, especially of marriage to him. It was, in fact, the very thing that got him in this situation, way back in ’44 when it seemed like an all-right idea, what with him heading for the Pacific and her wearing that tight brown dress. So he suggested sex, meaning it as a proposition and she accepted, meaning it as a proposal and now here they are in a new two-story on the edge of New Orleans, one of them happy and the other perplexed.

  Fifteen years married to the woman and he still had no idea why. Sure, she believes in the Church, like his mother did, and doesn’t believe in divorce like his mother, and she loves filling a house with children, like his mother and she accepts sex as a duty like…better not to go there.

  Instead he goes to his office in search of a cigar and finds Lester Biggs, a pug boxer friend, dealing out cards on the poker table near the window. He sits down heavily, lights a fat Havana and says, “I don’t get it.”

  “Get what?”

  “Why I stay with that woman.”

  “Because,” says Lester, a dime-store philosopher prone to having an answer to everything, “In Louisiana you can’t get a contested divorce and Adele won’t give you an uncontested one and–”

  “I could move to Las Vegas, they got those quickie divorces, take about six weeks; the kids wouldn’t even notice us gone.”

  Lester gives him the look this idea deserves. He’s been in the ring a few times too many, running up the unimpressive stat of 44-63-1, with 52 of them knockouts—of him. So he’s a bit punchy most of the time, as well as out of shape, out of money and pretty much friendless, except for Leroy who keeps him around for the same reasons he stays married to Adele.

  He just doesn’t know what that reason is.

  Lester says, “She’s got a streak of the Bible right down her back, that woman,” which comes out garbled through his thick Cajun accent and puffy li
ps. His last fight, just two days ago, has given him a pair of shiners and a fat lip.

  “She does,” sighs Leroy. “That she does.”

  That night, fireflies flickering in the soupy air, frogs croaking in the ponds, cricket chirping and a pair of tom cats making an unearthly racket, he tells her, “I’ve got to go. We’re damn near out of money.”

  “Shhh,” she whispers. “Your language!” She juts her chin at the pile of children sprawled on the floor watching the television – a ten inch screen Motorola in a six foot mahogany cabinet. It’s the ritziest thing they own, even including the new Maytag washer-dryer and the Westinghouse refrigerator, bought at Wimpole’s Department store after seeing Betty Furnace hawking it on the black-and-white.

  She’s knitting something homey and smiles up at him. “Did your job call?

  Annoyed, he lowers his voice. “Adele, I don’t have a job.”

  Again the smile, vaguely suggesting a complete absence from reality. “Sure, you do,” she says.

  “Adele, what do you think I do?”

  “You’re a salesman, Maddy; a traveling one.” She calls him Maddy which may be the reason he keeps coming back here; it reminds him of a home he left a long time back.

  “I’m a grifter, Adele. A god-dam crook.”

  “Maddy,” she whispers. “Your language!”

  Resigned, he gathers hugs from several protesting children, possibly some not his own, it’s always hard to tell, and leaves through the wooden screened door. He meets Cooch in the garage and slips behind the wheel of the new Coupe Deville, a chrome covered beast with automatic everything and sharp fins that could impale a rhino. Lester’s got his arm draped over the seat as he hollers, “Where we going this time, boss?”

  Leroy says, “Memphis.” He’ll take Cootch along because he’s the one here when he’s leaving.

  “Why?”

  “’Cause I’ve been hearing about this Elvis Presley guy, supposed to be a phenomenon. Said he sold over a million copies of that Hound Dog song, even more of Jailhouse Rock.”

  “Hey; I like that one,” says Cooch.

  “Yeah, well; so do I. But you know what happens when you sell that many records don’t you?”

  “Uh, no; what?” They bump down the unpaved drive out onto the state road. Leroy turns the car north.

  “You make a lot of money.”

  Cooch, confused, “So?”

  “So somebody’s gonna come along and steal it.”

  Cooch gets this wide-eyed grin like he’s swallowed a lizard and it’s still wriggling around down there and he yells, loud enough to wake the neighbors if they had any, “We gone rob Elvis?!”

  And Leroy says, “Shh…your language!”

  Junior FBI agent Winslow Petrie sitting alone in a box of office in Washington, no window, no door, just a green metal desk, a file cabinet and an ashtray overflowing with Marlboros. He started smoking Marlboros when the ads started showing a cowboy, though he never thought to understand why. If he was studying a crook he’d figure it out, though. Winslow is tall and skinny, wears suits from Sears, drives a General Motors car (a Buick) when he isn’t piloting one of the Bureau heaps, brushes his teeth with Pepsodent and basically does everything the modern ad-man tells him to do—all without the slightest realization that he’s doing it.

  He picks up one of a dozen files on his desk. Paperclipped inside is a picture of a young man, damn near a boy, smoking a cigarette, leaning on the hood of a long, long Cadillac. The car is black, the man is white, wearing a fedora tilted back. He’s smiling in the picture.

  Winslow studies the photo, then looks at the name: Logan, Leroy Amadeus.

  He reads the file with growing interest. When he gets to the part about the battleship, he smiles too.

  Cadillac’s doing about a hundred and five when the cruiser appears from behind a billboard advertising new Westinghouse toasters. The posted limit is twenty-five, a hundred buck fine for sure, maybe jail.

  Leroy finishes the verse while he pulls over. “Maybelline,” he sings, loud, “Why cain’t you be true?” Cooch wisely stashes the Bud under the seat and paints on his best innocent look, unruffled by a Mississippi trouper. His faith in Leroy is absolute.

  In the rear-view, Leroy watches a fat cop squeeze out of a ’58 Galaxy and nods, impressed. Didn’t know those Fords could move that fast. He considers his options, decides to delay the bribe a bit.

  Cop says, “Where’s the fire, boy?” to the open window—ninety in the shade, of course it’s open—then does a double take as he sees Leroy isn’t colored.

  Leroy glances up, way too casual for a guy busted this hard and says pleasantly, “Officer.”

  The cop says, “Caught you doing over a hundred,” but tentative now, uncertain.

  “Cletus Meeks,” says Leroy, sounding like a Cletus Meeks. “Senior Aide to Governor Mitchum.” He does a quick character read: the slight limp as he approached, gut like a tight sausage in the military style blouse, the dark shades. He takes the name from the badge.

  “Officer Biggs,” he says, tight smile. “I’ve read your file.”

  “You have? My file?”

  “Part of my job,” lies Leroy. “Keep track of the patrol. I recall you on account of that shooting; got you in the leg, am I right?”

  The cop grins wide, happy as a pig that doesn’t know its Easter yet. “Liquor store stickup in Mount Olive; that’s exactly right!” His face says, “If that don’t beat all.”

  Leroy, “Still keepin’ the coloreds in line?”

  “Yes sir,” says Briggs proudly. “None of that integration shit around here, lemme tell you.”

  “Good man, Briggs. Good man. Listen…” He lowers his voice and Briggs bends to hear. “I’m running late for a meeting with the Governor—why I was going too fast—and I’m wonderin’…?”

  “Yessir?”

  “Could we just let this little matter go? Look the other way? I’m in a terrible hurry to get back to Jackson.” A ten spot appears in his hand.

  The Hamilton vanishes in a meaty paw. “Thank you, sir,” but Leroy’s already spinning gravel.

  Up the road Cooch tips his beer in salute. “Now that,” he says, “was fun.”

  “What are we doin’ Hoss?” says Cootch Wilburn, Leroy’s oldest and possibly only true friend. Cootch is tall and thick, about as wide as a barn door and as good natured as a centipede at a shoe sale. He thinks the sun shines from Leroy’s halo, a fact that Leroy does little to discourage, feeling—rightly—that he needs all the approval he can get.

  He says, “There’s this kid…” and Cootch listens with his mouth slightly open and his head cocked, looking a bit like a confused parrot who’s just figuring out the whole cracker scam; almost there but not quite. “Name of Elvis…”

  “Presley?” shouts Cootch, excited. His eyes are wide as windshields on a Greyhound bus. He bangs a meaty hand on the dashboard, making the plastic Jesus wobble. “I remember! We’re gone scam Elvis Presley!”

  “Um, yeah,” says Leroy, suddenly unsure of himself. “He’s a rock and roll singer, bound to have a lot of money. I figure we’ll—”

  “He’s my favorite, Hoss! I listen to him all the time!” Cooch leans back in the seat and starts a loud version of “Hound Dawg” that’s big on volume, small on talent and way long on enthusiasm. “You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dawg, cryin’ all the time,” he whoops and Leroy glances aside at him, grinning.

  What the hell, Leroy joins in and they float along the highway getting damned near all the words wrong.

  Later Cootch says, “How we going to do it?” and Leroy, feeling fine for a change, answers by digging around behind him until his fingers wrap around a lumpy strand that feels like a snake that’s just eaten a sack of golf balls. He holds it up and it glitters in the pale sunlight of a Tennessee morning.

  Cootch says, “Oooh.”

  Leroy says, “Uh-huh,” and then swerves the big boat Cadillac to miss a fat mama ‘possum leading three
babies across the road.

  “Damn critters,” yells Leroy, a while Cootch throws a knowing look – yeah, but you missed ‘em—and laughs.

  Anyways,” snarls Leroy, mad at being seen as soft, “I’m going to sell him this necklace.”

  He hands over a long strand of shiny gems that glow like a string of lights; lavender, amethyst, periwinkle and a shade of blue that makes you want to curl into it and float there forever. Cootch holds it like a baby. “Is it real?” he whispers, barely audible over the wind.

  “’Course not,” says Leroy. “Remmy made it up in Cleveland. Remember when I was up there? Made it then.” Remmy Billingham is a jeweler and fence up north that makes the best fakes. “They even come with perfect histories,” says Leroy. “As authentic as you want to make up.”

  “So…what?” asks Cootch. “We’re just going to sell them to the guy?” Leroy nods. “But…how do we find him? How do we get him to buy them? What about…?” Cootch is big on the details.

  Leroy isn’t. “He’s on leave from the Army. Got a week long pass to see his mother.”

  Cootch smiles. “Aw, that’s sweet. Isn’t it Hoss? The boy loves his Mama.”

  “Sweet,” agrees Leroy, thinking, “For us.”

  The boy, Elvis Presley, says, “Yes sir,” a lot, and not just because he’s fresh out of Fort Hood. He’s just plain…nice. He’s won over Cootch in just the few minutes they’ve been talking with him, Elvis just off the train where they separated him from his buddies with a made up story. Leroy wonders, Was I ever that young and gullible? And decides, no; not ever. Not even at twelve when he had the chance to go back home and skipped it to run a small scam with his hero the Yellow Kid. He still remembers the Kid saying, “Kid, you’re not bad,” before tossing him a stack of twenties, ten of them, as a piece of the action. “Now get lost.”

  Elvis, even wearing Army drab and hair cut to the scalp, is as pretty as a statue come to life. You can feel the aura around him, the star quality. He says, “It sure is pretty,” his voice as soft as molasses in a stew pot, as smooth a Kentucky whiskey. “I guess my mama would love it.” He’s entranced by the gems, selling himself, and Leroy lets the moment linger until finally he says, “So it’s settled. Twenty thousand—cash.”

  Elvis says,” Sure,” without taking his eyes off the glittery trinket. “C’mon up to Graceland. We’ll make it a party.”

  “We love parties,” says Leroy thinking, candy from a baby. It doesn’t get any easier than this.

  But no, not this time. This time, the problem is getting into Graceland. Finding it, way out on Audubon drive, cruising through the open gates, walking up to the big front door past the Corinthian columns and crap that makes this pile look like Tara before the Civil war, that’s not the problem. It’s cracker heaven but Leroy’s loose and ready, got the necklace, got the tale, everything’s jake.

  But…He bangs the knockers—no doorbell he notes; if there was it’d probably play Hound Dawg—waits with his back to the double doors that eventually open and deliver a whole cartload of the heebie-jeebies.

  An old guy, overfilling a white suit, thin hair, neck scarf, eyes that see everything and don’t approve of any of it, takes in Leroy and spits him back out. He says, not friendly, “What?”

  Leroy holds out a hand. “I’m Jubal Hawkins,” he lies. “Here to see Elvis.”

  The guy scorns the paw, says “Why?” and Leroy pushes back at the lip. “Not your business, Pops. Lemme in.”

  “I’m not your Pop, sonny. Name’s Tom Parker. I’m Elvis’s manager. They call me the Colonel.”

  The Colonel. Leroy scans him up and down, knows it can’t be the same Colonel, just can’t be. This one’s vibrant and stocky, the other one—Leroy shudders at the memory and his missing toe does a phantom shiver—is bent and old and not here.

  But his ghost is and Leroy can’t shake it. His last meeting with the Colonel went so badly that Leroy’s got a permanent case of the whim-whams; no way is he scamming here.

  So he smiles—a weak curl of the lips that wouldn’t convince a dog to buy a flea collar—and skedaddles.

  What’s the saying? When the going gets tough, the tough start drinking. Leroy’s got a boiler maker on the bar and Cootch on the next stool at Buddy’s Bar on Lyceum, far enough from Graceland and the Colonel to gain some perspective. Smoke from his Chesterfields and Cootch’s Camels and everybody else’s everything else makes a dense fog appropriate to his mood. The Colonel, why’d he have to be called that? Leroy’s done some homework since hot-footing it out of Dodge and learned a few things. The “Colonel,” as phony a title as the other guys, is a real piece of work. Talk is he’s a hustler from The Netherlands or Holland, one of those places, came to America just to screw Leroy.

  Who says to Cootch, “They say he takes fifty percent of that boy Elvis. Fifty percent! I was only gonna take him for twenty gees. The Colonel! He should just be using a gun.”

  Cootch has been listening for the last couple of hours, doesn’t care. He’s seen setbacks before and has utter faith in Leroy’s ability to bounce back from them. He says, “Yeah, Hoss, he’s a bad ‘un.” He considers a moment. “You know, you ain’t been yourself since Kate…”

  “Don’t say it.”

  “Left.”

  “Argh. You said it.” Leroy drops his head to the bar, mad at the Colonel, mad at the world, forgiving of himself. What had he done to deserve all this crap? Nothing. Not a damn thing. Head back up, he takes the whiskey shot in a gulp, guzzles the beer and wipes his chin with his sleeve.

  Cootch, a voice somewhere in the dense fog says, “So what are we gone do?”

  “Do?” Leroy spins on his bar stool, overshoots and winds up facing a guy on the other side who says, “Wha?” in surprise. Leroy spins back, stopped in place by Cootch grabbing his skinny shoulders and holding on.

  “I’ll tell you what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna…” His words are drown out by a yahoo at the juke box slipping in a nickel and pushing B-17. A piano bangs a boogie riff and that new kid, not Elvis, the other one, sings, “C’mon over baby, Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ on,” and Leroy smiles.

  What are we gonna do?” He points vaguely toward the box. “We’re gonna do him.”

  Except, again, no.

  Finding Jerry Lee Lewis, isn’t hard; he’s pounding the keys at a local dive called the Paradise right here in downtown Memphis, half-empty shows of maybe a thirty-five people since his career took a nosedive last year in England when they found out he’d married his cousin, Myrna Gale. His thirteen year old cousin.

  Even Leroy, learning this little fact, said, “Damn.”

  So they go to the club, listen for an hour to the worst music Leroy’s ever heard, though Cootch has been bellowing along with every damn song. ‘Shakin’ goes into ‘Dizzy Miss Lizzy,’ goes into ‘What’d I Say?’ goes into ‘Money, that’s what I want,” and Leroy’s got one mother of a headache when Jerry Lee careens into him at the bar.

  Kid’s a looker, there’s no denying. His long hair is wet with sweat and Pomade, he holds his smokes in between long fingers around the shot glass as Leroy tells him the tale. Jerry Lee listens but doesn’t seem inclined to bite until Leroy says, “Elvis is gonna buy it,” and the kid goes bananas.

  “Could’a been me!” He insists, a lot, as Leroy and Cootch pour beer, a lot, down his throat. His beef with Elvis is bigger than a single cow—this guy’s got a whole herd of pissed off in him.

  “I sang with him, “ he tells Leroy. “Down at Sun Records? Sure. Him and me and Johny Cash and Carl Perkins—he wrote Blue Suede Shoes, you remember that one?—they called us ‘the Million Dollar Quartet.’ Not like they’d pay us that. Sam Philips and the bastard the Colonel—” Leroy winces— “Bastards took all the money. Me? I got nothin.’”

  But he does have twenty large for a necklace, as long as it’s not going to Elvis.

  “I’ll give it to Myrna,” he says.

  That’s where it hits the fan.

>   “Uh-uh,” says Cootch. “No way.”

  “The Hell?” says Leroy, agitated. What has gotten into the man? Cootch is always as gentle as a summer shower, as docile as a sheep. Until now.

  “I won’t let you do it, Hoss.”

  “Do what?” Leroy demands, getting hot. This is a new relationship and he doesn’t like it one little bit. “I decide what we do, dammit.”

  “Not his time. We can’t cheat him.”

  Leroy doesn’t get it. “Why not?”

  “He’s family, Hoss.”

  “What?” Leroy runs a quick recap of recent events. Meet Jerry Lee, scam him on the fake necklace, meet him to get the money. What can go wrong?

  Well, this, evidently. Cooch says, “I was talking to him—Jerry Lee—last night when you left and he said he’s married to Myra. Myra Gale Brown? You get it, Hoss? Myra Gale Brown?”

  No, Leroy does not get it but he is getting pretty hot under the collar. They’re standing in the alley behind the Paradise at seven PM waiting for the singer to come out with the money. The weather’s been topping ninety-five and the humidity is somewhere south of the tropics and Leroy’s got an itch between his shoulder blades about the drive him to drink. More.

  “So?” He says.

  “She’s Myra Gale Brown.”

  “What’s that got to do with the price of potatoes? We’re here to make a score and he’s as ripe as a peach. Now get outa my way.” Leroy tries to push Cootch aside, an act like toppling a redwood with a spoon, and, not surprisingly, fails.

  “Soooo,” says Cootch, “My Mama’s side is Brown. She’s my cousin. Second cousin.” Cootch looks into the distance, figuring things. “Third? She’s the daughter of my second cousin Lerlayne and Lerlayne’s married to…”

  “For Christ sake,” says Leroy, exasperated. “I don’t care if she’s the Queen of Sheba herself. She ain’t getting between me and that twenty gees.” Get outa my way!”

  Cootch sucks in air, expanding to nearly double his regular—very large—size and he says, “No.”

  Just that word, “No,” spoken like a man possessed, his voice starting off somewhere deep in his chest and rumbling out, like an explosion way down in the mine, just reached the surface. He’s shaking his head side to side and Leroy tries to go around him.

  “Hoss, I said, no.” Cootch pushes Leroy back. “You can’t do it to this guy. I won’t let you.”

  “”You godammed idiot! Who are you telling no to? You get out of my way. I’ll do what I please, you brainless piece of…”

  Cootch hits him, a roundhouse swing of the arm that catches Leroy across the mouth, sending him reeling back against a trash bin in the alley out back of the Paradise. Leroy’s sent ass over teakettle, clanging against the cans like a pinball in Hells’ own arcade.

  Cootch, looking both determined and sorry, reaches out to help him up but Leroy slaps his hand. “Get away from me, you bastard.” All the anger about Kate and Adele and, let’s face it; his whole damn life lately, wells up in one misdirected bolt and he comes up from the debris throwing punches that have all the effect of a paper airplane hitting the Empire State Building, forty-third floor—poink!

  Cootch shrugs them off. He says, “Listen, Leroy,” which pisses Leroy off even more. It’s like people call you one thing when they’re friendly, another when they’re cutting your heart out. He takes another swing, which misses and sends him sprawling face down in the mud.

  Laying there he listens to his breathing, his heartbeat and the sound of his friend saying with infinite sorrow. “I don’t want it to be like this. But you gotta listen to me. Jerry Lee ain’t never done you no wrong. He’s just a kid who happens to have money. That don’t mean it’s yours to take.”

  Leroy says to the dirt, “Shut up.”

  Cootch says, “I’ve been your friend since third grade. I look up to you and I cover for you. I even fought for you a couple of time when people were talking you down. But this ain’t right and I ain’t gonna let you do it.”

  Leroy knows he should swallow his pride and just get up and move on, but he doesn’t. He lets the silence build a wall that won’t ever be broken and finally, like he expects, he hears a long sigh and some heavy footsteps and a whole lot of quiet.

  After a while he gets up and brushes off the worst of the crud on his suit and slinks out of the alley with no scam, no Elvis, no Jerry Lee and no twenty gees.

  And one less friend, dammit.

  Leroy shuffles into the bar like a wrestler who’s lost three rounds to the ‘gator. He spends the rest of the night drinking and thinking, not coming up with one single way his life isn’t completely off the tracks. He doesn’t so much blame everybody else as much as he doesn’t blame himself. Scotch, in a series of doubles, no ice, does little to bring clarity and around two he shuffles back to the Hotel room he’s sharing with Cootch to find his friend gone. He kind of expected it but still, it’s a letdown to see the made bed, the missing grip. He glances out to the parking lot and sees the car is gone too.

  “Well, Hell,” he mutters to the shades. “Complicates things, don’t it?” A short stroll around the empty room finds no toiletries, no shoes, no friend, except maybe the reflection of a guy in a muddy wrinkled suit, two day stubble and a fedora blowing smoke. He looks at that fellow for a bit and repeats, “Well, Hell.”

  But that’s yesterday and, sometime around three in the afternoon, this is today and Leroy’s got some ideas about next moves. First, of course, is to get out of this hotel, preferably without paying, and catch a Greyhound to the Big Apple. He’s got plenty of friends there who’ll put him up for a night or a month, and he’s got enough money to live pretty well until the next idea decides to show up.

  He misses Kate, something about as regular as flossing—more really since he doesn’t floss all that often, or use mouthwash, unless you count Seagram’s. Kate’s absence in his life is like a his missing toe—the foot’s just not right without it.

  Kate developed into quite a roper before things fell apart, and Leroy missies that almost as much as he misses her. She’d be nose deep in the local paper looking for celebrity balls or real estate announcements—indicators of people with money.

  Leroy, personally, takes each day as it comes, more or less, and as a result he’s got no clue of what to do next except for eating breakfast, which isn’t much of a long range plan.

  Except…turns out today is Sunday, and he’s reading the fat Sunday Commercial Appeal newspaper. Because he’s hungry enough for seconds, he gets all the way to the travel section where he reads, “Take a Luxury Tour!” in a big font with a drawing of a very large boat. He stubs out his smoke in the remains of his eggs, drains his coffee mug and leans back, studying the ad.

  The Queen Mary, it says…Cunard Line…New York to Southampton…$412,50 for a basic luxury cabin…Leroy pauses to consider that. His wallet, seldom bulging in these past Kate years, doesn’t stretch past three bills, and none of them are hundreds. But getting in to places for free is a specialty and he knows people who can forge passports and—the waitress pauses to eye the ad as she pours old black tar into his mug, says, “Oh, are you going? My parents sailed the SS Normandie in ’35. I might have been conceived on it!”—which is information Leroy isn’t much interested in. But she’s nice and hasn’t hassled him about taking up the booth for two hours so he gives her a smile and a quarter tip.

  Basic luxury, he thinks; sounds like a good start. He’s also thinking that, by the time the ship docks in England after a five day run, he’ll be in a better place. Because if “basic” luxury starts at $412, he can only imagine what “real” luxury is like.

  Gonna find out, though.

  Memphis to New York by Greyhound is a trip not designed with speed in mind. The bus wheezes to an arthritic stop at every small town, every railroad crossing, point of interest and tourist trap as it snakes its way north. Leroy sleeps a lot and makes some of that $412 playing poker, and wishes he’d get there and when he does, firs
t thing he finds is Creighton Willowby III, a tall, distinguished aristocratic type who’s more bent than a coat hanger. Creighton hangs around art galleries and Wall street, spinning tales about his family (non-existent), wealth (even more so) and marital status (presently single but hoping for a bride with more money than sense.) He plays the marry-disappoint-settle con and keeps a small forging operation on the side.

  That’s the reason for Leroy’s visit, still stiff from traveling coach. He twists his back in a lot of ways that make noise but don’t help and explains to Creighton (real name Harley Kruettner) that he needs a passport and fake tickets to the Queen Mary. “Make it stateroom, will ’ya? Upper deck.” The long bus ride had pushed him from “basic” to “real” luxury in a hurry.

  “Sure,” says Creighton. He rubs two fingers together, either a tiny violin or—more likely—a pitch for cash. “Gonna cost. Not as much as the real ones, but a C-note for sure.”

  “That’s with the passport?”

  “Sure.”

  Leroy doesn’t have close to that, just the necklace hidden safely in his grip. “Well. I’ll raise it.”

  “How soon?”

  “Boat leaves in two days.”

  Creighton does the snooty look that helps him pass for wealthy and eyes the ad Leroy’s holding. “Liner,” he says. “These prices, it ain’t a boat no more.”

  Raising a stake in New York in two days isn’t a problem. Leroy makes some preparations—changing his last twenty into ones, cutting up green paper to size and folding it into a fat leather wallet, engraved with somebody’s initials that he got on the cheap from a street vendor a couple blocks off Broadway.

  Not having the time to cultivate the local swells, he picks out bars on the lower East Side where a tough crowd hangs, sips a beer here, moves to there, listening for the right words, which turn out to be, “Watch your mouth,” from a bartender, walking back to serve a beefy guy in a bad suit.

  “Fuck off,” says the guy and Leroy perks up. The suit’s wrapped around a chubby ball of flesh resembling the main course at a luau. He’s got a round face under a brown rug, jowls that cause deep creases and a loud aggressive manner.

  “Watch your language, pal,” says the bartender again, a gutsy move considering the fifty plus weight difference. “There’s ladies present.”

  “Ain’t no ladies in this dump,” says the guy. Leroy takes an interest. He scopes the suit, notes two large gold rings on the fat fingers, figures this is a man could be the one.

  So he parks himself at the bar and dips into his pocket, feeling for the wallet. He brings it to his vest and peers into it carefully, sharp suspicious glances all around to see if anybody’s watching, like they’re his hole cards in a high-stakes game.

  Making sure the fat guy sees, he does a show of peeling off bills to pay for the drink.

  “Sorry, that’s a fifty” he says to the bartender, pulling back the single before the man can see it. “Uh, fifty…twenty…twenty…” his fingers are manipulating the singles so they appear to be bigger bills and Leroy sees the fat guy from the corner of his eye and knows he’s watching.

  Finally Leroy slips a single and slaps it on the bar. “There y’are. Gimme another.”

  He’s staring into the distance when the fat guy make his move.

  Four days later Leroy’s at the Captains table on the Queen Mary, somewhere over the Atlantic, sharing stories with George Burns and Gracie Allen. Their stories are often amusing, his are always lies, but told with such quiet self-depreciating humor that they believe completely. He is, to them, Horace Delvechio Carouthers, second son of the New York society column Carouthers, the black sheep they don’t often mention. And isn’t that convenient?

  They’re breaking fast this morning on the veranda on a beautiful sunny day, white clouds and squawking seagulls, pennants snapping in the breeze. Leroy wears a formal suit, George is in flannels and Gracie, always chic, is wearing a silk dress and a tiny hat with a discrete feather.

  Leroy’s enjoying their company while trying to figure out how to introduce the necklace. Once again he misses Kate. She’d come out wearing the thing, late night maybe, at a dance or the bar, flashing it, but discrete, not cheap display. She’d ignore any questions about it until the right moment, letting Leroy tell the tale, lure them in. Without her, he doesn’t have a clue how to make the play. He’ll figure it out of course, but with Kate…

  Gracie says, “I know your father, Harry,”—Harry being the shortened version of Horace. She touches his arm sympathetically. “I’m sorry to say he doesn’t talk about you all that much.”

  George says, around clouds of cigar smoke, “Now, Gracie—” which is pretty much all he ever gets in before Gracie takes the conversation and gallops off. George rolls his eyes and Horace—Harry—Leroy—smiles back, man-to-man.

  Gracie says, “Which I think is a shame. Parents shouldn’t just give up their children just because of a few misunderstandings and I just know that you and Horace senior, your father, could set things right if you only tied. Now my own father, rest his soul, would turn over in his grave if he heard of such a thing and I know that, somewhere, if he’s around, he’s thanking his lucky stars that nobody in our family ever had to deal with this and isn’t it odd, George, that we can imagine people who’ve passed on coming back as ghosts? My Aunt Nellie believed…”

  She says more—a lot more—but Leroy isn’t listening because he’s just seen one himself, a red-haired woman who couldn’t be her; just couldn’t be. She slips around a corner and Leroy leaps up out of the deck chair, spilling coffee and Carnation milk—their television sponsor—and making apologies at the startled George and oblivious Gracie, still talking, as she probably will be long after the Queen Mary reaches England.

  He rounds the corner thinking, It can’t be.

  But it is. He catches up, touches her shoulder and she spins around. He has a single moment of complete shock as Kate swings her right arm and slaps him across the face, a stinging blow that takes off a layer of skin.

  She says, “That makes up for you being married,” and he says, “What?” and a matronly woman in a deck chair mutters, “Well!” Because the times may be a ‘changing but not on this boat. Ship. Liner.

  Then she—Kate, not the fat woman—is in his arms, kissing him in a way that causes another comment, this time approval, from the skinny gent next to the matron who glares it right off his face. Leroy’s arms are wrapped around her—Kate, not the fat woman—and he’s seeing stars from lack of air due to kissing a woman he thought he’d never see again and he doesn’t have another coherent thought until a very long time later when she’s asleep on his shoulder in his first-class stateroom.

  And that thought is, pretty much, “What the Hell?”

  Afterwards, there’s a whole lot of catching up to do and it starts with, “What happened to your toe?” meaning, of course, the missing one and Leroy does the story about the Colonel and Snowy Deuce. Kate, sitting up with the sheets not wrapped around her at all says, “You killed Snowy?”

  Leroy hastily explains that he didn’t mean to—Kate shrugs, accepting that Leroy could barely kill a spider in the washbasin, no way he’d off a person—that it was a set up and tries to get some sympathy for the toe but Kate’s off again.

  “I sent flowers to his funeral, did you know that?”

  “I sent money,” says Leroy.

  “Yeah?” Kate says, impressed, because he’s never shown signs of that sort of behavior before.

  “I felt guilty, in a small way, you know, for him being dead…”

  “Since you killed him,” agrees Kate solemnly, earning a let-me-finish look.

  “So I did a hot car deal in Clovis, netted a bit over twenty large and I gave that…most of that… to Snowy’s widow, Mollie, help take care of the kids.”

  “Logan,” Kate says, surprised, “That was so nice!”

  “It was,” Leroy agrees. He’s leaning against her bare right breast, comforted in a way he never e
xpected to be, ever again, and there are so many emotions running through him—heart, head, crotch, heart, mostly—that he actually changes subjects from himself.

  “What about you?” He asks, voice slightly muffled.

  “Me,” says Kate. The word carries a lot of weight, like it’s been dragging behind her for a long time, none of it good. “I got married,”

  “I knew that. You went straight.”

  “I went straight,” she agrees. “Turns out he didn’t.” She’s stroking his hair absently, reliving a life not worth living even the first time. “Billy’s a contractor, built a lot of tract housing in Oregon. I guess I got with him because he thought big…”

  She’s thinking, kind of like you, but doesn’t say it. Says instead, “He bought up some land outside of Portland, planned to do a west coast Levittown—you now, the one in New York? Single family cheap houses?—going to do four hundred, make a pile of money.

  “Well, he also bought a couple of county commissioners and a whole zoning department to give him some highway interchanges and exemptions from every damn building code ever written. He built houses that wouldn’t stand up to a Fuller Brush man tapping at the door.

  “So there’s lawsuits and Billie’s running out the back while expecting me to talk down the mobs—pitchforks and burning torches right outside the door—like that’s gonna happen and now he has other living arrangements and here I am.” She smiles down at him, sweetly.

  “So Billie’s…?”

  “Ten to Twenty at a white collar institution outside of Fresno. Country club prison they call it, for people who can buy off the system. We should be so lucky, we ever get caught.”

  Leroy says, “We?” like it’s the closest to church he’s ever likely to get.

  And Kate says, “Yeah. We. If Billie’s what you call going straight, I’ll stick with you.”

  Still later, on a pair of lounges on a rear deck, the moon full and as orange as a jack ‘o lantern, she’s holding his hand, sipping a drink with some fruit in it. She says, “I met Adelle,” which cause some very strong whiskey to go down very badly.

  When he recovers, teary-eyed and coughing, he manages, “What?”

  “I had to know. You told me about her, how you had to stay married cause that’s the right thing to do and I didn’t believe you cause, let’s face it, when do you ever do the right thing?”

  He shrugs, like, sure.

  “So I went down to New Orleans and got myself set up with some nuns in a church there…”

  Leroy’s gaping now, looking a bit like a bass that’s finally figured out what’s behind the hook. He says, “You? The church? A Nun?” That being the part that most excites/disturbs him. “And you met Adelle?” He’s remembering how she kept talking about this new sister, named Mary Catherine, and he’s wondering how he missed it and the image of Kate in a habit isn’t making thinking easy.

  “Me, a nun,” Kate agrees. “Go figure. I mean, not a nun—I didn’t join the church or anything—just convinced Adelle that I was one. Borrowed some robes…you should see me in a wimple!” Leroy’s trying hard not to—“And I got to know her pretty well.”

  Leroy’s torn. He wants to know, doesn’t want to know, wants to imagine Kate and Adelle together but that’s too odd to consider, knows they talked about him which can’t be good. So it’s okay when Kate changes the subject.

  “So,” she says, casual, “What’s the scam?”

  He says, “I have a necklace…”

  “A real one?” she asks, knowing better.

  “As real as you want to believe…”

  “Ooh; one of Remmy’s?”

  “Yep.”

  “He’s good,” Kate says. She’s remembering the feeling of being with him, the shared knowledge, the bent people they both know. She holds that up to the light and compares it to her four-year life as a straight and wonders how she let a little thing like him being married get in her way. Young, she figures, I was young and foolish.

  “Who’s the mark?”

  Leroy’s proud of this. “George Burns,” he says. “And his wife Gracie.”

  And Kate says, “No.”

  Back in his stateroom—he scammed a better one than she did, then upgraded after several passengers decided gambling with his was a good idea—they’re laying back, smoking, thinking about themselves. Leroy’s feeling a bit bothered, recalling his recent fight with Cootch telling him no. It’s different when Kate says it but he’s still having trouble adapting.

  Kate’s thinking that she loves him and will not, under any scenarios she can imagine, live with him.

  He talks first. “What do you mean, ‘no’?”

  “Gracie’s too sweet to be taken advantage of,” Kate says, but she’s thinking the same thing about Adelle, as close to a saint as she’s ever met. She found Leroy’s wife to be sweet and gentle to the point of utter disconnect with the world. She actually had good things to say about her husband, this man laying here beside her, contemplating theft.

  “So?” says that man, confirming Kate’s suspicions that if he has changed, it isn’t for the better.

  Change of tactics. “She’s famous. There’s gonna be publicity.” She turns to stare at him. “Lots of publicity.”

  He says, “Lots,” considering the taste and not liking it. Finally, “You got better?”

  Kate beams in the low lights of the cabin. “I do got better.”

  “Him?”

  “Him.”

  Leroy watches through dark glasses as the man she’s pointed out rows across the Atlantic on one of the new-fangled exercise machines. Guy’s a looker, mid-fifties, greased hair parted in the middle, pencil thin mustache, narrow face, high cheekbones. He’s athletically built, with bulging muscles and a flat stomach, like somewhere up the genetic tree was Tarzan.

  “Hardwicke,” Kate says, eyeing him like she’s sizing up a steak. “Larson Hardwicke. Going home to London after a business trip to Philadelphia. His company imports tractors.”

  “Lot of money in tractors?” asks Leroy.

  “Enough,” replies Kate.

  Hardwicke’s been going at the machine for an hour now and he’s barely puffing. A good looking mid-twenties woman in one of the new bikinis, scandalously brief for this place and time, scans the photos in Life magazine, Jackie Kennedy on the cover, all about Camelot.

  Leroy’s prone to agree: the man radiates possibility. He tells Kate, “Eyeball the broad; he’s not going for a raggle.”

  She frowns, I know that, says, “Sex with me isn’t the play here, Logan. Giving her a gift is. He’ll want to make up to her.”

  “For what?”

  “I don’t know. He hasn’t done it yet.”

  Three days left to Southampton, they don’t have a lot of time. Over very good dinners and fine wine —Leroy’s thinking there’s a lot to be said about this luxury thing; Kate already knows it— they discuss the situation. It’s Leroy, the planner who offers the play.

  “George and Gracie,” he says “Television stars. The girl’s gonna have stars in her eyes, chance to meet them, no way she says no. She’s in, he’s in.”

  “Could be. Did you see the bruises on her?”

  “ I did. And the dark glasses. I think he’s a beater.”

  “Are we going to use that in the play?”

  “You bet we are. Nothing I like better than taking down a beater.”

  Kate considers options. “How about bridge?”

  “The card game? They play?” Leroy asks. He doesn’t know much about the bridge since money is seldom involved. Like, what’s the point?

  “Of course they do. Most popular game in this ship, except swapping partners.”

  “You play?” She nods and he asks, “But does he?” meaning the mark.

  “If he doesn’t, we’ll find another handle.”

  But he does play bridge and when Kate manages an accident meeting—her name is Heidi, like the old movie with Shirley Temple Kate likes so much—and drops George
and Gracie’s name in conversation (“Gracie said—” “You know Gracie?—” “Of course!”) and the game is on.

  Literally, the game is on. Introductions are made, partners selected, tables staked out on the promenade deck, port side in the morning, move to starboard after lunch to avoid the harsh Atlantic sun. George plays with Gracie who chatters like a typewriter in a busy steno pool, a hundred, hundred-twenty wpm as George smokes endless cigars and squeezes in a genial observation now and again. They bid with more zeal than sense but both play the hands fiercely, rarely losing a trick.

  Hardwicke pairs with Kate, calling herself Adelle Carver after Leroy’s wife and her former husband, a name that amuses her greatly, and she tells Hardwicke, “Call me Dilly,” as she offers her hand formally.

  Her bidding, near as Leroy can tell about this goofy game, is excellent and her card play superb which, given her training from him as a card counter and mechanic, it should be. When she deals the deck becomes her playground and she sprays out cards around the table while listening to Gracie and the cards always go her way in some subtle fashion.

  At least Hardwicke must think so since he grins a lot. They play for points, not cash and again Leroy’s thinking what’s the damn point?, except in this case he knows the point is the necklace Kate hasn’t shown yet.

  Until the second day of play, late in the afternoon session, when the sun is beating down on the port side and the players are fanning themselves against the heat. Seems the starboard side tables are all full, caused by Leroy arranging it.

  He’s also arranged for a couple of very attractive young men, college age and wealthy or they wouldn’t be on this liner, to strut around Hardwicke’s girl. Hand-picked they catch her eye and that in turn catches Hardwicke’s because he’s missing the point counts something fierce as the day goes on.

  Around four PM as the sun is touching the horizon, Kate asks if she can remove her wrap, “What with the heat and all,” and Gracie launches into an improbable story that lasts half an hour. Kate’s necklace, all fiery gems in this light, as if they’re under the spots at Tiffany’s or van Cleve’s, sparkle enough to attract magpies and Hardwicke’s torn between two sites—one on Kate’s chest, the other on the lounge chair, giggling with the boys.

  Anger and avarice, a potent combination. Kate lets it linger for a long rubber (Leroy wondering why they call a game a rubber, makes no sense) before she mentions the necklace.

  “It’s a family heirloom,” she lies, answering George’s mild interest. She makes a point of caressing the stones, and they glow like rainbow fireflies. “Papa picked it up in France during the war—the first war—and he gave it to Mama when they married. It’s probably not worth much but I love it anyway.”

  “Well, I thinks it’s lovely dear,” says Gracie, adding, “Three no trump,” before galloping away with the conversation.

  George looks at her fondly and says to Kate, “Know how I succeeded so long in show business? I once said, ‘Gracie? How’s your uncle?’ and she’s talked for seventeen years now.” He puffs a thick cloud out of a Cuban cigar. “Doesn’t show signs of stopping, does she?”

  If the necklace is the bait then Heidi is the hook. Leroy, watching from a distant chair, gets up and sits next her. He talks a bit, she laughs, then turns to face him, her bikini showing a lot of thigh. Pretty soon she’s touching his arm as they talk and Hardwicke is seething. His bidding has become incoherent and his face is red.

  Kate says innocently, “I can’t believe a young lady would wear such a scandalous article of clothing. I never could. It shows so much,” emphasizing soooo.

  The result is galvanic. Hardwicke slams down his cards, twists in his chair and begins a long yelling tirade at the girl, the kindest being, “And get your damned naked behind back to the room!”

  Heidi jumps up crying, the card table—even Gracie—is stunned to silence and Leroy stands up to face Hardwicke. Given the fifty pound weight difference this seems a foolish move and Hardwicke is clenching fist as he approaches Leroy.

  “Sir!” Leroy protest as the larger man approaches. His voice is upper crust British, his movements feminine. “I protest, sir. In the strongest terms. Your treatment of this lady…” he sputters to a stop, words failing him.

  Hardwicke, enraged, approaches like a locomotive. He brushes Heidi roughly aside, kicks the lounge and grabs Leroy by the neck.

  Leroy says, “Erk,” and swats ineffectually at Hardwicke’s arm, then, surprising everyone, grabs Hardwicke’s thumb and twists it like the throttle of that locomotive, full speed ahead.

  Hardwicke snarls in pain and releases him, Leroy dances lightly away and the liner crew comes to break up the brawl before any more guests are scandalized.

  Hardwicke jerks his arms free of the crew, grabs Heidi’s arm instead and drags her away as she squawks in protest.

  People turn back to their own affairs, George produces a cigar and smiles, saluting Leroy as he lights it.

  Through the smoke Gracie says, “I had an uncle who…”

  Kate catches Leroy’s eye and beams at him. Part one complete.

  Intermission as Kate and Leroy spend the rest of the evening and most of the next morning in bed getting room service, getting to know each other, getting well.