Lucky Stiff Read online

  "Huh," I said, "whaddaya mean he put it in the toilet? Just fucked it up? He kept saying—"

  "He never got a dime for that job. Shit! What a mess. All these promises is all I got." Her eyes clouded over, and I saw to my grim satisfaction that she was thinking about the innocent lives snuffed out that night. I waited.

  "Listen," Trix finally said, "how did you know to come looking for me?"

  Earnestly, I said, "I can't tell you that. I mean, I can't tell you because I myself don't know. I got a name and an address."

  She digested that. "Who's your boss, then?"

  "His name is Steve Goldberg."

  "A Jew?"

  I nodded. "Big Stevie. I doubt you know the name. Not many people do, and I shouldn'ta told you. But I feel like I can trust you, Trix. I dunno. Somehow I just feel that. Steve's a Miami guy, he's very low-key. He deals a lot with the Cubans."

  "Phew," she mused, "I wonder how somebody would've thought—"

  "How's business?" I asked suddenly.

  She looked at me. "I'd like to get out of it." She stubbed out her Newport and reached for another. She was thinking hard.

  "Like," I said with warm sympathy, "you had no choice, huh?"

  "Boy, you know it."

  "Well, I sure been there. Might find myself there again before long, who knows?" I laughed harshly. "How much do ya charge in this town for a blow job anyway?"

  Trix said, "You mean how much do I charge? Fifty bucks."

  "Well, that ain't too bad."

  "Well, I don't know where you used to work."

  I took a cigarette from her pack and toyed with it in my fingers.

  "Hey," she said, "I got somebody coming in soon. I've been thinking. I've got a deal for you." She sat upright, swinging her feet to the floor.

  I smiled hopefully.

  "I can deliver Bill Sechrist to you. But you're out of your mind if you think I'm gonna do it for chump change."

  My smile faltered.

  Loudly, she said, "What the fuck are you thinking? What the fuck kind of person do you think I am?"

  I looked at the floor, as ashamed as a dog that's just clawed the Rembrandt off the wall.

  Trix went on, "I'm not gonna sell out another human being for 2,000 fucking bucks!"

  I shifted uneasily in my seat and kept my gaze on the floor. "I don't know what to do," I whispered.

  She knew she had me. "Well, I'll tellya what you're gonna do! You're gonna get out, and you're gonna come back and give me half of that thirty-eight grand you're gonna get from Bill Sechrist!"

  My head snapped up in panic. "Whoa! Whoa, lady! Trix!"

  "You're gonna give me that money up front. Yeah, you are."

  "I can't! I don't have it!"

  "Well, you'll just have to get it, won't you?"

  "You want me to give you, what, nineteen grand?" I gripped my head with both hands.

  She said, "An even twenty would be better, but I guess I'll take nineteen."

  I gazed at her pleadingly. "What if I do get that much money and give it to you, but then Bill don't give up what he owes? Or what if I do, and he does pony up, and that's a pretty fuckin' big if! Then I'm still gonna be out half of that money."

  "You'll have to tell your guy…"

  "Big Stevie."

  "Big Stevie that you couldn't get it all. Or," she snickered, "maybe you can double your share right here in Las Vegas, like you said in the first place. Hey, don't cry, look—your boss, he's gonna be over the moon to get half of that money. Believe me."

  I snuffled, "But what if he wants to know where it went?"

  Trix stood up, and I did too. She stepped toward me and put her hand on my shoulder. "Listen to me," she said eagerly, and it was just like when she was helping me with my homework. I glanced at her from under my lashes and felt her whiskey breath on my cheek. "You have to tell him you could only get half. Or here's what you do—here it is—you tell Bill you need more, like you tell him you need, lessee, 60,000. Because it's the old debt plus interest. And that's cheap! Your boss told you to insist on that, see."

  "Ah, I see."

  "Then you're covered."

  With a shaky hand I drained my drink. "I gotta think about that. I gotta talk it over with Chino."

  "Well, you do that. Think you can come up with it? How 'bout that car out there?"

  "I dunno. I dunno."

  "It's what I need, and it's only fair. Come to think of it, it's less than fair. Honey, you know what? I can tell your ass is in a deeper crack than you tried to make out. He worked you over but good, didn't he?"

  I hung my head.

  Triumphantly, she whispered into my ear, "And the next time he won't stop there, will he?"

  Softly, I said, "No."

  "Well, then. I'd say I'm your only hope."

  "Yeah," I admitted. "Yeah."

  Chapter 16

  In the car with Duane all I said was, "It's her."

  We needed to reconnoiter. The diner we stopped at was the kind that served club sandwiches and decent coffee. The sandwich revived me, and the coffee cleared my head after that awful highball.

  Duane was freaking again. Having taken off his cap in the restaurant, a courtesy all too rare these days, he pulled at his lank hair with his fist. "So my dad really—he was involved—he actually—he actually did arson?—I mean that's the way she made it sound—or conspired. At least." His other hand shook as he lifted his coffee mug to his lips.

  I said, "Your dad, wherever he is, is an arsonist and a murderer."

  Duane cried out, "Oh, God!" Other customers looked over.

  "Shhh, my friend." He put down his mug and I covered his hand with mine. "You know, whatever happened exactly, it's all over. The dead did all their suffering that night. It's over and done with. Nobody's suffering anymore."

  "Except you and me."

  "Eat your sandwich. We can get into the self-pity thing, I guess, if we want to. I'm not saying I'm not feeling this. But we've got to compartmentalize here. We've got to manage our feelings. Because we can either fall apart and be ineffective, or we can focus and execute. Eat. Man-size bite now."

  My friend bit into his sandwich. "That's it," I encouraged. They were good sandwiches. Decent food can ground you when things go freaky.

  He chewed, swallowed, and shook his head. "I can't handle this."

  "You can. You can, Duane, come on, stick with me here. We've got to go see her again."

  I watched him try to pull himself together. I gave him some quiet.

  The waitress came with the coffee pot. "Yes, please," I said.

  At length Duane said, "Do you want to talk to her again to ask—"

  "I really want to find your dad now. I want her to tell me more about that night, about her involvement, and then I want to find your dad. Cut to the chase."

  "You think she really knows where he is?"

  "No. I think she's scamming us. I mean, I think she thinks she's scamming us. My main purpose in coming here was to confirm her existence, which confirms that a crime took place that night. Finding your dad would be a pot of jam. And I want that jam pot. It's obvious there's a lot more she can tell us, but she doesn't know that's what we want to know. She's greedy. You should've seen her eyes light up, all excited and hard, when I said '$38,000.' If we go back there with a bag of money, she'll loosen up some more. I laid a C-note on the coffee table just before I walked out, and I could see her forcing herself not to snatch it up before I turned away."

  "A C-note."

  "That's what you're supposed to call them, haven't you watched any movies?"

  That got a smile out of him, the first in hours.

  "Do you think," he said, "that we could go back there with, like, a fake bag of cash, and get her to talk more? Maybe she'd do it for the 2,000 anyway. Maybe she knows we're bogus."

  "Oh, she doesn't think we're bogus. She knows we're for real, she just doesn't know for real in what way. She's nothing but a low-budget bangtail, and she knows we know it. I'
ll bet you anything that that hundred bucks is already converted to coke and up her nose. Did you see how scrawny and twitchy she is?"

  I took another slug of coffee and went on, "So she needs money, wants it bad. I can't tell yet how much sense she's got left. People coming around offering money for information, that doesn't happen every day. She sees a big opportunity here, a chance for a score, and she wants to make the most of it. We could try to get her to take the two grand, but I don't think she'll do it. I mean, what leverage do we have? A bag of fake money would be stupid. She'd insist on seeing it. What are we gonna do, photocopy a bunch of money?"

  "You mean we should just give her $19,000?"

  "Not necessarily. We need to have it. We need for it to be real. Then…maybe we do give it to her. How much is the truth worth to us, after all this time?"

  Slowly, Duane said, "I'm not sure I agree with you. Anyway, how're we going to come up with 19,000 bucks?"

  "Well, we only need 17,000 more on top of the 2,000 you brought. Seventeen thousand, two hundred to be exact. I sure as hell don't have it. I've got forty-three dollars and eleven cents in my checking account."

  He looked at me. "Why did you have to say 38,000 in the first place?"

  "It seemed like a believable figure. Big enough to be impressive, not a round number, and yet not too big. Not small-time, not big-time."

  "Well, I don't have 17,000 more dollars handy."

  "How quick could you get it?"

  "Lillian, I'm stretched pretty thin financially."

  "Yeah, but you've got equity in your house, right?"

  "Look, I only put five percent down on it. No, I don't have that much equity in my house. Even if I did, it'd take time to get it."

  "Well—your T-bird?"

  "Leased."

  "Oh."

  "I told you you were naive to assume the trappings of glamour are always paid for."

  "Man, Duane, you've been making good money for years, right?" He nodded.

  I said, "And yet your net worth, I mean, is only like—"

  "Lillian. Come off it. You know how it is. You get it and you spend it. You do the same thing."

  "Yeah, but—" I stopped. He was right. I had to admit that. He looked me full in the eye. "I don't know about this, Lillian. Be honest now. You don't really know what the hell you're doing, do you?"

  "I hate it when people ask me that."

  "Well, I'm scared."

  "I'm scared too. We're supposed to be scared."

  "I just don't like it."

  "We're not supposed to—"

  "I want to go back to Detroit!"

  "Duane!"

  He looked at me helplessly. "What do you want me to do?"

  "Lend me your cell phone."

  .

  I stepped outside the restaurant into the toxic afternoon heat, consulted my notebook, took a deep breath, and punched in Minerva LeBlanc's number. The sun dropped lower to meet the tips of the mountains to the west.

  I was braced for Tillie's voice, but Minerva answered. I started talking. She listened. I talked on. She asked a question here and there, in her deliberate way, but mostly she just listened.

  At length I wrapped it up. "So, essentially, all I need right now to keep this thing rolling is $19,000 cash." I tried to sound energetic and unpleading. It was a struggle not to grovel, but I managed it. "What do you say?"

  There was a very long pause. I heard her breathing.

  At last she spoke. Her voice, in spite of its deliberate pace, was electric with excitement. "Tell Duane to go home if he wants to. Go to the Las Vegas Hilton. Not the Flamingo Hilton on the Strip, the Las Vegas Hilton on Paradise. Wait for me there." Her voice was absolutely alive, dancing in my ear.

  Oh, boy.

  .

  By the time I got there she'd arranged for a room and left a message giving me her arrival time the next day. I was escorted up to something like the 300th floor by a guy in a suit, not a bellman. He insisted on carrying my gym bag. This was an executive type dude. White, fiftyish, moderate paunch, gold wristwatch, manicure. He opened a set of double doors onto a suite of rooms that thank God weren't ridiculously opulent. Windows on the mountains. Fruit bowl.

  "I hope you and Ms LeBlanc enjoy your stay," said CEO dude. "We look forward to serving her again." He handed me his card. "Is there anything you need right now?"

  "Uh, no. No, thank you." As he turned to go I said, "Oh, wait a second," and began to dig in my purse.

  "Oh, no no no," he said with a wide smile. He looked utterly sincere. "It's my pleasure. Really."

  I hung up my change of clothes, put my toilet kit in the bathroom, pulled off the wig, and removed my falsies. I scrubbed my face, fiddled with the thermostat, and flopped down on a comfy couch in a state of relief.

  Duane had in fact decided to bail, to my dismay but not to my surprise. He dropped me off at the hotel. Before I got out I handed him back the wad of bills we hadn't used.

  "I'm sorry, Lillian. I just can't deal with this now. I'm glad Minerva's coming. But I feel like I'm letting you down."

  "No, Duane. Don't waste a minute feeling bad, for God's sake. We got a lot done today, you know?"

  "This isn't getting me any closer to finding my mom."

  I looked at him. "You really don't think any of this has to do with your mom?"

  He didn't answer.

  I saw him suffering, struggling, fighting against coming to terms with the facts we'd learned from Trix that day.

  I said, "Everything's all right. Tell you what: You go back to Detroit and see what else you can dig up, while I work this end. OK?" I didn't think he'd do a damn thing—he was so spooked—but I wanted to give him a dignified out.

  .

  Minerva arrived when she said she would, just after noon the next day. The same CEO dude showed her up, plus a bellman with her stuff on a cart. I'd spent the morning having breakfast, reading the newspapers, and thinking about Trix. And about Minerva. The casino downstairs looked interesting, but too loud and busy for the state of my nerves.

  I was holding my breath over the possibility that Tillie might be in attendance, but she wasn't.

  Minerva looked fabulous. That serious, intelligent face that meets you with confidence from all those book covers—that beautiful face—the face looked good. It was a face that showed the willingness to be amused. A face that showed, too, the capacity for passion and fury. It's a face that stays with you, believe me.

  I jumped up, embraced her briefly, then helped her to a seat on the comfy couch. She was moving lots and lots better than when I'd last seen her. Like her speech, her movements were just a bit hesitant. She appeared to drag her right leg, as if she had to sort of haul it along from her hip. However, the leg appeared to support her well.

  Her shape was good, although significantly plumper than when I'd last seen her. I liked her that way. Her breasts were larger, her stomach and hips nice and curvy. Yes, she'd been enjoying the pleasures of the table and had become curvaceous.

  Her face revealed only very faint evidence of her ordeal that began with the attack five years ago. It was as if the pain, fear, and elapsed time had melded into a seriousness that added depth to her natural expression but did not weigh it down.

  As befits a millionaire literary celebrity, her traveling clothes were expensive and perfectly tailored: sleek little linen blouse, pert jacket and slacks in slubby silk, calfskin slip-ons, and a really good haircut. I hit a bump there, much as I had with Duane: Her rich coffee-brown hair, which she was wearing longer now, was streaked with gray. Not heavily, but it was there. I had to admit, the gray actually looked good. Minerva LeBlanc was an experienced and sexy woman, and she smiled at me in the exact way that had made my heart wobble the first time I saw her.

  To answer your question, yes, it was wobbling now. Did I let on, though? Huh, no way. All I had to do was picture Tillie the live-in sex queen. That would sober up anybody.

  After bringing Minerva a glass of ice water I seated mys
elf on a chair nearby, at which she smiled. "Oh, come here," she said, patting the couch. I unhurriedly moved over to her.

  She curled her fingers and stroked my cheek. I began to long for a kiss sooner than later, but "Oh," she said, startled, "this looks like it hurt." Her fingers moved from my bruised cheek to my lip, which was much less fat than the day before.

  I said, "I'm all right."

  She appeared to make an internal decision of some kind, a sort of redirection.

  She parted her lips and said, "Let's get to work."

  Perhaps my face fell.

  With a slight but ever so meaningful inflection, she said, "Work first."

  "Yes! Absolutely!" I agreed.

  We talked out a plan in half an hour. Minerva used the phone to call CEO dude and order a car for us as I began to change into my mob-slut disguise of wig, falsies, infrared lipstick, and tight jeans.

  "What would you like?" she said, holding the receiver.

  "Didn't you rent a car at the airport?"

  "I'm not very steady driving yet."

  "Oh. Well, how 'bout a Mercedes?"

  She asked for one to be brought to the hotel immediately. She turned from the phone to see me stalk across the room in my Steffi Cordova persona.

  "Oh, my," was all she could manage. I took pride in having stunned her into near muteness.

  "Pretty good, huh?" I pivoted in front of a mirror.

  She paused for rather a long moment, and I realized she was trying not to scream with laughter. She managed to say, "As long as you yourself believe, that's all that matters."

  "Is that a line from Desiderata or something?"

  "Come on."

  .

  We went down in the elevator to a special money office. It was a luxury lounge for high rollers to handle their accounts in style. A deferential man with a mile-high forehead and a diamond tie tack gave Minerva a paper to sign.

  I noticed at this point that she appeared to have a speck of trouble with her right hand. She signed with her left, but her right failed to hold the paper as steady as she wanted it on the tabletop. It seemed she didn't have as much volition over the hand as she wanted, or perhaps it was just some kind of neurological weakness.