Lucky Stiff Read online

  You'd have been better off never having met me, I thought. But here you are, helping me again.

  The man with the forehead took the paper and left, returning a few minutes later with a uniformed guard carrying a small metal cash box.

  The man opened the box, which contained four banded stacks of brand-new hundreds. He demonstrated by the serial numbers that there were fifty bills in each stack, for a total of $20,000.

  "Thank you, Don," said Minerva. She picked up the money and handed it to me. "Put it in your bag and let's go."

  Chapter 17

  On my first visit to Trix's crappy tube home I'd noticed a dusty black Mustang, five or seven years old, parked on her slab. The car was there now; a scraped-up Toyota pickup was parked in front.

  I rapped authoritatively and listened. I knocked again, this time adding a light bashing of the kick panel with the leather sole edge of my Weejun. Minerva waited at the foot of the steps, holding her sophisticated shoulder bag closely at her side.

  Trix pulled back the door a crack and squinted at me hostilely. She was loose-haired and wearing a black slip and bitsy mules with rhinestones.

  I said, "I've got the money."

  "Oh," she said with a look of sudden awe. She had to believe it, though. "Come on in," she said.

  "We can wait out here."

  "No, come on in. Who's that?"

  "Friend."

  "Money friend?"

  I gave her a cold stare. My jeans were so tight the key of the rented Mercedes barely fit into my front pocket. The bundles of money jammed my purse fat full.

  Trix retreated and held the door open. I ushered Minerva in. She climbed the three steps with a hitch in her gait and a firm grip on my arm.

  We were confronted by a shaggy pale fella wearing a towel around his waist.

  "What the hell's this?" he demanded.

  "Never mind, lover," said Trix. "You gals sit down. Have a drink. Gimme five minutes." Her eyes were hectic, and I guessed she'd recently coked up or, possibly, taken a hit of meth or some other upper.

  "Hey," said the customer.

  "Come on." Trix took his hand and pulled him into the bedroom. She kicked the door shut. There was a brief silence during which Minerva and I made ourselves more or less comfortable: she in the barrel chair, I at one end of the couch.

  Have you ever tried to ignore the hasty and turbulent sounds of sex for hire? It's an automatic reaction, I suppose, to try to award other humans a measure of dignity, but I'm afraid the gamut of sex acts is inherently undignified. Sex, I suppose, is the rawest form of self-expression, and of gratification.

  "Lordy," I muttered.

  Minerva cocked her head, listening intently. We heard several deep moans, which rose to little shrieky cries.

  "Is that him?" I wondered.

  "Yeah. That boy's got some coonhound blood in him, if I'm not mistaken."

  The shrieks became deeper again, then began to rhythmically rise and fall, like the dive signal in a submarine. Then to our ears came a stage giggle, a laugh so fake it would've even turned the stomach of the most narcissistic stand-up comic. Trix went on giggling for an excruciating length of time.

  "Oh, for God's sake," I said. "A razor blade. Give me a razor blade. Anything to put me out of my—"

  "They're done," Minerva interrupted.

  Trix reappeared, shrugging into a yellow wool cardigan sweater over the lacy slip. "Hurry up," she yelled over her shoulder.

  Her customer came out, clothed, but still jamming a foot into a cowboy boot.

  "Oh, baby," he began, "I—"

  "That's it, sweetie, see you later."

  Trix shut the flyweight trailer door behind him, poured a couple of fingers of Potter's Crown into a highball glass, and tossed it back. I shuddered to watch her, but she didn't flinch. "Want one?" she said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. In response to the liquor, she appeared to wind down a smidge.

  "No, thank you," Minerva and I said together.

  Trix kicked off one spangled mule and tucked her foot beneath her on the other end of the couch from me. She put the other foot up on the coffee table. Her pose looked grotesquely athletic.

  I frankly studied her face. There was something ulterior lurking there behind her put-on carelessness. I felt uneasy.

  Nevertheless, I said, "All right, let's talk, Trix. This here's Sheila. She knows Big Steve Goldberg from Miami. She'd like to have a conversation with Bill Sechrist too. Like I said, I got the money. You gonna show us where he is?"

  "Yeah, um. Yeah."

  "Well?"

  "Let's see the money."

  "Fair enough." I opened my purse and drew out the packs of hundreds. Trix's eyes sharpened, as they had the day before when I talked about money. She licked her lips at the sight of the bills, and for an instant I thought she was about to try to devour them.

  I said, "There's 20,000 bucks here." I kept up my vaguely Brooklyn way of talking, not overdoing it. There's twunny thousand bucks heeur. Back of the throat.

  I laid the banded packets on the coffee table, flicking aside Trix's pack of Newports. "An even twunny."

  Trix looked from the money to me. "Half now?"

  "No, five now. Five grand now." I tossed one packet into her lap. She gazed down at it as I stuffed the other three packets back into my bag.

  She picked up the money and thumbed it. "Yeah," she said. "All right. You get in your car and follow me in my car."

  I hesitated.

  Minerva spoke up. "No."

  Trix leaned forward and picked up the Newports and plastic lighter. She flipped a cigarette into her mouth, then sat staring at the money, flicking the lighter on and off.

  I felt my blood pressure rise, simply out of uncertainty.

  Minerva said, "We'll do this one of two ways. One, we ride together, either us driving or you driving. Or two, you tell us where to find Sechrist, and I wait here while Lillian goes and—"

  She heard me catch my breath, and so did Trix.

  "Ah, oh, fuck it," Minerva went on coolly. "What the fuck's your name again?"

  I snarled, "I'm Steffi."

  "H'h," her tone was equally contemptuous, "Did Big Stevie give you that name? Stevie?-Steffi?"

  "Shut up," I said.

  Trix kept flicking her lighter on and off.

  In a strange voice, Minerva said, "I want to…" She stopped.

  "Hmm?" I said, realizing I needed to keep taking cues from her.

  She didn't respond.

  I turned to focus on her, looking for a silent signal.

  She was staring weirdly into space, her eyes suddenly glassy. Motionless.

  "Sheila?"

  Not an eyelid moved.

  "Oh, Jesus," I said. "Oh, shit. Sheila! Minerva!" I moved to her, took her hand, and passed my other hand in front of her face. No response. Her skin was as smooth and cool as if she'd turned to stone.

  Trix yelled, "She's having a heart attack!"

  "No, she's having some kind of—she's gone into some kind of thing. Trix, help me. Call 911, OK? 'Cause if she goes into a major—"

  I turned to find Trix in the process of thrusting down her bosom the packet of hundreds I'd tossed to her while stepping into the mule she'd kicked off. She reached down and, with the quickness of a lizard, seized my bag off the couch. She scurried around the coffee table and headed for the door, pausing to plunge her hand into a plastic plant, from which she recovered a small wallet.

  As I watched in disbelief, she clattered out the door. This all happened in about five seconds.

  "Goddamn you!" I shouted, and turned back to my beloved.

  Minerva blinked once, and her eyes snapped into focus. She was back. Her eyes found me, then they scanned the room. "I did it again," she murmured. "What happened?"

  We heard the roar of Trix's Mustang backing out.

  Minerva said, "What the hell?"

  "You blanked out," I said, "and she took off with my purse and the money. Are you—"

&
nbsp; "I'm OK!"

  "Come on, then!" I hauled her to her feet and propelled her outside. The Mustang shot off in a spray of gravel and dust. Thank God I'd put the Mercedes key in my pocket.

  "Good!" cried Minerva when she saw it. She was smiling widely, but that detail barely registered on me right then.

  We jumped in and I found myself gripping the leather-clad wheel of the Mercedes, standing on the accelerator, rocketing down the trailer court's rutted lane, adrenaline and rage surging in equal amounts through my veins.

  Trix's Mustang fishtailed out of the gravel and onto the main road, where the tires got a grip and then that car was moving. I took the corner a little faster; the Mercedes slid sideways on the gravel toward a thicket of mailboxes until the rear wheel caught the pavement. We flew along the godforsaken road away from the Strip, out toward the desert floor to the west. The road was narrow, flat, and straight.

  But there was traffic. Trix had to hit the brakes behind a bread truck; oncoming cars prevented her passing. She wasn't hopped-up enough to ram the truck, which would probably have spun them both out. We safely passed a handful of side streets, subdivision entrances—Trix's place was on the wrong side of the tracks and a fair distance out from town already. The road was opening up. The bread truck remained an obstacle to Trix.

  I stuck on her bumper. She saw me in her mirrors.

  "Faster!" said Minerva.

  "I'm not going to ram her, for God's sake. Help me watch the road, watch the sides, holler if something's coming from the side."

  "Ram her!"

  "Goddamn it, I don't want to kill anybody!" I hollered back. "Maybe I should let her go."

  The bread truck slowed and signaled a left turn in front of a party store. Trix hauled the Mustang around it on the left, just as it was beginning its turn. She made it, but I had to jam the brakes or broadside it. I dropped back and went around the other side.

  "Go!" shouted Minerva. "Get her! Get her! Where the hell is she going?" Man, there was blood in her voice.

  "She just wants to lose us." I panted. "She didn't expect us to follow, she thought you were falling out."

  "Faster!"

  "Do you have a death wish?" We must have been going about 90 miles an hour at that point.

  The road took us across the open desert now, dry rocks, brush, dust devils, empty sky. The Mustang overtook a camper van and whizzed on. I followed. A reckless convoy of two, we zoomed around a few more cars and small trucks.

  "Stay on her!" Minerva fumbled in her purse and I had a sudden horrible thought.

  "You didn't bring your gun, did you?"

  She didn't answer.

  "Oh, shit, Minerva, let's stay calm here. Let's stay calm now."

  "Lillian, for God's sake, ram her!"

  "What's the matter with you? I ram her, our airbags explode, how'm I gonna keep driving?"

  "Shit," Minerva complained. "This was not the plan!"

  Somehow in the middle of all this I realized she was talking fast and well.

  The Mustang's engine is a powerful one, very fast off the blocks compared to the Mercedes. But the Mercedes, and this one was a large sedan, not the sport model, it kept up very nicely on the open road. I glanced at the instruments and saw the speedometer at 115.

  Shit me.

  Without warning the Mustang lurched to the right, a cloud spewing from its rear. Something kicked up and bounced off our windshield. I swerved and braked hard, but the Mustang had slowed so suddenly that we were now ahead of it.

  Minerva looked back. "She's had a blowout! She's off the road!"

  I checked my mirrors, stayed on the brakes until I got the car down to 15 or so, then let up on them and spun the wheel. I headed back for her, half the car on the right shoulder, half on the road. An SUV blasted headlong past me, swerving and honking.

  The Mustang was still moving, picking up speed in spite of the blown tire, and coming straight on.

  "Don't ram her!" yelled Minerva.

  "Make up your fucking mind! This is chicken now!" Something had snapped inside me. Now I didn't give a flying shit if I slammed into Trix headfirst and took us all to hell.

  In spite of the glare of the sun on the Mustang's windshield I saw Trix's eyes, her face crazy and scared behind the wheel, pure terror. The hood of the Mustang loomed bigger. I foresaw in my immediate future a spectacular collision featuring two V-8 engine blocks, two irresistible forces coming together in a deafening festival of destruction. I aimed straight for the goddamned Mustang.

  At the last instant Trix swung her steering wheel to her right, and the car blew past us on a trajectory into the rock-strewn desert. A roostertail rose behind the Mustang as Trix forced it to go faster over the dusty earth.

  "OK, hold on," I said with calm grimness, and committed my vehicle to the same path, bringing it around to eat up Trix's dust. As soon as I got her in my sights again, I swung out to her flank. Both cars jounced wildly over the jagged ground. Minerva braced herself against the dashboard with both hands. The Mustang dodged a clump of brush that I chose to crash through. The dry bushes gave way easily, blowing into a million fragments.

  "Well, she's not going far," commented Minerva over the revving of our engine. "She's knocked out her oil pan."

  Sure enough, I perceived a thick trail of black goo drizzling behind the Mustang.

  I let up on the gas. "She's not going anywhere now," I agreed. "Might as well just keep her in sight. Then we'll have the advantage of a running car."

  "Won't be long. She's likely to shred more tires too, the way she's going."

  I steered carefully now around brush and rocks. Trix was punishing the Mustang, forcing the engine to keep going or blow completely.

  And in fact, the chase ended in about two more minutes. The Mustang veered sharply to avoid a tall boulder but then caromed hard off another one, the driver's door taking the brunt of the hit. The car lost power and rolled to a stop. Gray smoke poured from beneath the hood.

  "That engine's burned out," I noted.

  "Yeah, it's on fire," said Minerva. "She's got flames now."

  I pulled the Mercedes to a stop a hundred yards away. We were perhaps a mile off the main road. I jumped out.

  "Careful now," said Minerva.

  I moved quickly around to her door and helped her out. Even in my haste I tried to hold her arm carefully; she seemed so delicate after all. And right now she wasn't quite steady on her feet.

  We watched the burning car. Even in the bright daylight I saw orange flames licking out from the grille. The smoke changed from gray to black. Big wide heat shimmers rose from the car and blended into the little quick ones hovering everywhere in the desert that afternoon. Flames engulfed the hood, the very metal now catching fire.

  "Why isn't she getting out?" With my hand clasped around her arm, Minerva took a step forward, dragging her leg. "Why isn't she getting out?" she repeated. "Oh, God."

  "She needs to get out of that car. The gas tank."

  "Oh, God."

  "Lillian!"

  I dropped her arm and dashed forward.

  Chapter 18

  Trix was sitting upright in the driver's seat, clawing at the door latch with both hands. The instant I reached the car, a jet of fire shot up from the hood and blew back toward the passenger compartment. Trix continued to tear at the latch. I saw that the door had been dented inward at the latch point—evidently when the car glanced off the last boulder. The outside door handle was smashed. The side airbag had deployed and deflated, apparently confusing Trix, whose eyes were locked on me in total panic. She opened her mouth and screamed; her scream barely pierced the roar of the fire. The heat was cataclysmic. Sour smoke stung my nose.

  I ran around to the passenger side, pulling off my wig and wrapping it around my hand. Using it as a potholder, I threw open the door, lunged inside, grabbed Trix by the sweater, and pulled her out. She clattered to the ground like a sack of sticks. The synthetic fibers of the wig bonded to the hot metal door and hung there
like a dead thing.

  Digging the heels of my Weejuns into the barren desert dirt, I pulled and dragged her by the shoulders, yelling, "Come on! Hurry up!"

  She couldn't get up while I was dragging her, but she kicked her feet to help. When I got us away from the huge horrible heat, I dropped her.

  Minerva met us. "It's not safe yet!" she yelled. "Come on!"

  Somehow we all tottered to the Mercedes.

  I looked back at the Mustang, now engulfed in fire from front bumper to rear.

  "The gas tank's not blowing," Minerva said.

  "Not enough gas in it," Trix coughed, sinking into the dirt. "I've been driving around on empty for a week."

  She was shoeless, sweater torn, black slip ripped, her legs bleeding from scratches and scrapes. "Oh, Lord, the money," she moaned.

  "You worthless bitch," I said. "Get in the car."

  .

  We heard sirens coming from the city, so I drove carefully to the road and continued west into the desert. Minerva produced her pocket revolver and covered Trix as I drove. "You don't need that," Trix told her. "I'm not going anywhere, believe me."

  After a few minutes she began to whimper, desperately, in the backseat. "Oh, gawd, you guys are gonna kill me. Just kill me now, OK? Just shoot me once, real good in the head, because I can't stand pain, I really can't. Oh gawd, I lost the mob's money. I lost your money."

  "What about the bundle you stuffed down your bra?" I asked.

  Trix slapped her chest. "It's gone! It's gone!" she wailed. "It must have fallen out!"

  Minerva said, "To hell with the money. Keep driving."

  "Trix," I said, "you're gonna talk to us."

  "But I don't know where Bill Sechrist is! Oh, gawd, I don't know where the son of a cocksucker is! I haven't seen him in twenty years! Thirty years! Oh, gawd."

  "I knew it," I said. "Shut up. Calm down. Trix, we're all in the same boat now. Don't be afraid."

  We came to the piedmont, such as it is, of the Spring Mountains, and there I pulled over in the shade of a weird little oasis. There was a gas station and a mini-mart, a shitass motel, and a bar.