Lucky Stiff Read online

  "We're gonna go in that bar," I told Trix, "and you're gonna clean up, and we're gonna sit down and talk. And we're gonna figure out what to do next."

  Trix said quietly, "OK."

  "It's happy hour," Minerva observed.

  "Huh?" I said.

  "Their happy hour starts at 2 P.M., the sign says."

  "Oh, goody," I said. "Well, nobody gets a drink until we do some talking."

  Minerva returned her weapon to its quick-draw pocket in her purse and we went into the Palace of Palms Bar.

  It was a cavelike, stale place: typical and crummy, and to me, comfortable. Yes, speaking for Trix and myself, we fit the demographic just fine. A pair of slutty, disheveled tavern rats. Minerva might pass for our accountant, I supposed.

  The few heads in the bar turned when we walked in, but soon enough went back to their afternoon draft beers. What I mean to say is, this was the kind of bar where a barefoot woman in a torn slip attracts men's gazes but doesn't necessarily raise their eyebrows. A couple of guys were playing pool, and we heard the clack of the balls.

  Minerva seated herself at a table in a corner while I accompanied Trix to the ladies' toilet. I washed up and combed water through my hair with my fingers while she used the toilet, then I peed fast while she cleaned up at the sink. We didn't speak.

  We joined Minerva, who was surrounded by six glasses of beer.

  Sweetly, she explained, "The bartender came over, and the vibe wasn't right for me to just order water or something."

  Patiently, I asked, "But why six beers?"

  "Happy hour!" I hadn't known of this naughty side of hers.

  Trix and I pulled up chairs. Our eyes adapted to the darkness. We all reached for a beer. I took a slug, and it sure tasted good down my hot throat. The wooden tabletop was sticky. Trix's hand trembled.

  I put down my glass and drilled my eyes into Trix's. I said, "You know me, Trix Hawley."

  Trix stared at me slow and hard. Her eyes filled and her lip trembled. "Oh. Dear Jesus gawd. Oh, dear Jesus gawd." She blotted her eyes on the sleeve of her sweater.

  "Lillian Byrd," she snuffled. Her breath came hard. "Dear Jesus gawd. Oh, you poor kid."

  Minerva watched us.

  I said, "I'm not a poor kid. Pull yourself together. I'm not with the mob. I met up with Bill Sechrist's boy about a week ago and we got to talking. Duane. Remember Duane?"

  "Oh gawd. I'm in it now, I'm in it all the way up to my orchid now."

  I'd never heard that expression. "Look. Trix. One night the Polka Dot burned down. I was there. My mom and dad died screaming. Duane's mom disappeared. A burned-up body wearing your wedding ring was found in the bar. That much I know. When Duane and I talked, I realized that body wasn't you."

  Trix opened her mouth.

  "Wait," I said. "Trix, I want you to understand something. I want to talk to you. I want you to talk to me. That's all I want here. I don't think I can make you go to jail, though I know you were involved. The police have other things to do." I spoke deliberately, so that through her mounting hysteria she could easily understand me. "I don't know how much involved you were. For my whole adult life I thought the fire was an accident. You might think I want vengeance on you. But I don't. All I want from you is the truth. All I want is to know why it happened, and how."

  Trix shook her head and gulped her beer. She said, "My nerves are shot."

  Minerva let out a startled laugh. "Your nerves."

  I said, "Trix, not that you have a whole fuckload of choice here, but you owe me an explanation. You owe it to me to willingly tell me what you know."

  She adjusted her butt in her chair, settling in. Weakly, she said, "All right."

  "Good."

  "How'd you know I was alive?"

  "Duane reminisced about his stepmother, the woman Bill Sechrist met in Florida after he uprooted Duane from the neighborhood in Detroit. He spoke of you rather fondly." She nodded, flattered.

  I went on, "All it took was for him to recall how you talked. What did it was I didn't know whether to shit green or go blind."

  "Are you shitting me? You're not shitting me."

  "Have you ever in your life heard anyone else say that?"

  Trix thought. "Well, my Aunt Flora said it."

  "Then when Duane said you told his dad You couldn't pour piss out of a boot, that more or less nailed it. When he told me you dyed your hair dull brown and had red roots—"

  "There ya go," she said thoughtfully. "Then how in the hellja find me?"

  "I paid a call on Robert Hawley, your surviving spouse."

  "You mean he—"

  "No. His wife showed me your letters. With return addresses in case he decided to send you any money. She intercepted them, you know, after the first one."

  "I thought she might've done that." She studied me. "My gawd, you were just a kid. I didn't think I'd ever…" She stared off into the dim room.

  "Kids grow up," I said. "Listen, you want a cigarette?"

  Gratefully, she said, "Yeah."

  Minerva offered, "I'll get them."

  "Newports," said Trix. "The machine's down the hall."

  "And some Camel Filters while you're at it, please," I requested. This appeared to amuse Minerva, who moved off to ask the bartender for change.

  "Matches!" called Trix. "And how 'bout a few more beers?"

  I said, "It was her money that just got burned up in your car."

  Sadly, she said, "All that money."

  "Do you know who she is?"

  "No."

  "She's Minerva LeBlanc."

  "Really? Minerva LeBlanc that writes books? Butter my muffin! Really?"

  "Really."

  "She's my favorite! I love her books. I didn't recognize her."

  "You read?"

  "Yes, I read!"

  "Well, we'll have to get her to give you an autograph."

  "Yeah!"

  Minerva returned with the smokes and two books of matches.

  "My God, she is Minerva LeBlanc!"

  Unappreciatively, Minerva said, "Lillian."

  "Wow," said Trix. "Wow. Hey, I've got some stories to tell you. I could tell you these stories and then you could write them, and then—" she broke off. "Didn't, like, something happen to you?"

  Minerva said, "Have you realized yet that Lillian saved your life by pulling you out of that car?"

  Trix reached for her pack of Newports. "Yeah. For whatever it's worth." She looked at me, and a new clarity came over her. "You must hate my guts."

  Chapter 19

  "I don't hate your guts," I said, unwrapping the Camel Filters. "I want to talk." We lit up simultaneously. Minerva abstained. I said, "Let's keep talking about our particular story, OK?"

  Trix took in a deep mentholated lungful, savored it, exhaled, and began.

  "First of all, speaking of saving lives, did you know that Bill Sechrist saved your dad's life? In the Navy?"

  "Yeah, I knew that."

  "So Martin Byrd owed Bill Sechrist big time."

  "Yeah."

  "And that was Bill's way into the whole thing. See? He and I got friendly. That wife of his, unhhh…"

  "She was a piece of work," I agreed encouragingly.

  "Yeah. Well, eventually Bill and me got serious, real serious, and he figured out a way to make all of our troubles go away. He was crazy about me, he really was. No man was ever crazier about me." The combination of cigarettes and beer settled Trix's nerves satisfactorily. She stopped to take another gulp. She raised the cold-beaded glass to her forehead and nuzzled her temple into it. The gesture reminded me of the way Adele Hawley had rolled her beer bottle across her forehead. She said, "You know, for a long time…for forever…I've wanted to tell somebody about this. And I thought someday I would tell it all to somebody. But I never thought it'd be you."

  I nodded.

  She went on, "See, Bill and I wanted to elope. I'd never eloped before, and I thought it'd be fun. Plus, I was so sick of Robert. You said you met Robert
."

  "I did."

  "Well then."

  "Yeah. Why," I asked, "not just run away, then?"

  "That's what I said. Bill said, That's not my style. Bill Sechrist doesn't run away from trouble. He thought his wife would be better off dead. He felt, deep down, that he had, like, an obligation to…get rid of her. She was making his life a hell on earth, plus she was a miserable weird person in the first place. He didn't want her to be after him for the rest of his life. And so he had an obligation to end all that pain and everything. He had a hold on me, I tell you. I never met his wife. To me she wasn't real, really. It was like a TV show. Oh, I loved that man. He was a rock-hard military man. A fighting man. I used to play with his dog tags, that always got him excited. The thing was, Bill Sechrist was the only man who ever valued me for myself. For what was inside me."

  "Yeah?"

  "He gave me things."

  "Things that proved his love?" I suggested.

  "Yeah. To me they did. And he did things for me."

  "Like what?"

  "Like he'd burn himself with cigarettes. He'd hold a cigarette to his arm or he'd pull up his pants leg and hold the cigarette to his leg and he'd say, This is for you. He'd pull bits of skin off himself with a pliers, saying the same thing." Trix gave a short laugh. "Isn't that unusual?"

  Minerva and I exchanged glances.

  Trix was warming up. "But it showed me something," she said, "you know? Anyhow, I went along with him. He told me every step of it. He went to your dad and said he was in trouble and needed money. He said he'd done a bad thing and gambled away some money he didn't have. Some union boss's money—you know—that he'd offered to deliver somewhere. He took it to the track, thinking he'd make something for himself on the sly, but he lost it. That was his story, and your dad believed it. Bill was big in the union over at Dodge Main.

  "A pile of money, fifty thousand. Your dad didn't have it to give him, he knew that. He went to work on your dad. He reminded him how he'd saved his life. He said, They're gonna come after my wife and the boy. They told me that, Marty. And he brought up the idea of burning down the Polka Dot for the insurance money. Your dad was careful, he had insurance. Bill told your dad, 'Look, me and my family's gonna be dead if I don't come up with that money. I'll pay you back, honest Injun! I'll take care of everything, I'll do it right, the bar goes, you all go to live with…' uh, Marty's brother."

  "Uncle Guff."

  "Yeah. And he says, 'You give me the insurance money when you get it, and then in a few months I pay you the money back. I swear I will. You find a nicer bar, nicer home for your family—you happy about your little girl growing up in a place like that? Maybe you wanta get out of the tavern business anyway. Open a garage. Or a grocery store.'"

  Trix lit another cigarette off the butt of the first. "Your dad, he wanted to help his friend. I think he tried to think of another way to do it, but finally he agreed."

  "He agreed," I said.

  The three of us sat thinking about that.

  Bill Sechrist had floundered through the ship's flooding galley, reached underwater, and grabbed my dad by the belt and hauled him out. My dad was struggling there in the water, thinking, This is it. This is it. And then Sechrist's determination and brute strength changed the world. Sechrist gave my dad a gift beyond price.

  In wartime men do hideous things and they do saintly things. That was about as much as I knew about war.

  You might not think that the life of a tavern keeper is inherently honorable. My dad served beverages that gave comfort, but they also unleashed demons. He liked it when people drank. But I must insist on this point: Martin Byrd was an honorable man. I never knew him to show fear of anything, and he had never given me occasion to be ashamed of him. This is why I say he was honorable.

  I wondered, "Why didn't he sell the bar and give the money to Sechrist? Why scheme to defraud the insurance company?"

  "Kid," said Trix, "he did try to sell it. I remember that. Your mom thought it was a good idea. I guess no one wanted to buy it right now, though. Bill put the pressure on him. I need that money, buddy. What could he do?"

  Minerva suggested, "He probably decided to let Sechrist do the arson, then somehow he'd pay the insurance company back."

  I shook my head. "That'd be a stretch." But something was starting to resonate.

  "Lillian," said Minerva, "your father—"

  "My father was an honorable man." It mattered to me to tell Trix and Minerva that, here in this cruddy tavern. "As an adult, I look back and feel that maybe his sense of honor had a…utilitarian side. I think he understood that things—principles—aren't always crystal clear. Morally speaking." Trix and Minerva listened. "I guess I'm realizing that sometimes in order to fulfill an obligation…you have to take on a new one."

  "You said it," said Trix.

  Minerva said nothing but looked at me with softness in her eyes.

  "Go on," I said to Trix.

  "Well, then I went and talked to Robert. I said, I've got an interesting opportunity for us. Bob was working like a dog for dogshit pay, driving a dump truck. We had a dream. Get rich, go to live someplace nice like Las Vegas. I thought Las Vegas was the cat's ass."

  "I remember."

  "Yeah. And I thought I was lucky, I thought I could work my luck so that I'd have it good someday, have it easy. So I told Robert…" She lowered her eyes.

  I waited.

  "I told him to take out a life insurance policy on me. Then I die, but I don't die, and we get the money, we blow this donkey-butt town, we have a ball in Vegas. Double that bankroll! That's what I thought. I actually thought we could walk into a casino and double that money in an hour. Break the bank if we stayed all night." She laughed nastily at herself. "Somebody told me it takes money to make money. I thought that's all there was to it. You know, I wasn't that much older than you, Lillian."

  "I know it."

  "You were a smart kid. You've prob'ly done well in life. Haven't you? Prob'ly a good job, or a good husband. A husband who isn't a drunk, or a fucked-up gorilla. Nice house, I bet. Kids? You got kids?"

  "No, Trix."

  "Hmp. Well anyhow, I sell Robert on going along with it. I mean, he never knew Bill. He never knew anybody in this…Not your dad, nobody. All he knew was, the bar where I was working was gonna be burned for insurance, and I was gonna pretend to be burned up in it, and we'd take our insurance money and take off. All's I'd have to do'd be hide out awhile until the insurance company paid off."

  "I see," I said. "Bill didn't know Robert, and Robert didn't know Bill."

  "Bill knew I was married. But I was fed up with Robert."

  "So…I'm not following."

  "So my plan was, as soon as Robert got the insurance money on my life, I'd get my hands on it, and beat it to Florida with Bill. What could Robert do at that point? Tell the police? He was in on it too, right with me. Bill helped me with that part too.

  "So Robert took out a policy on me. Fifty thou. Same as your dad had on the Dot. I was surprised the Dot was worth that much, actually."

  I put in, "Well, it was the whole building."

  "Yeah, that's right. So Bill—boy, he planned it. He got rid of the kid, took him to camp."

  "Why didn't he murder Duane too?" I asked grimly.

  "That's a good question. I think Bill had hopes for the kid. I dunno. Then, that night, he drove back home with the wife. He got her plastered—fed her her medicine, you know, only more of it. And booze. He knew how to do it. He'd practiced on her. She never knew it. He was a good thinker, Bill was. He could hold so many different facts in his mind at one time, it would amaze you. He thought it all through, how she'd need to breathe smoke in order to die right, how she'd need to be burned almost totally up in order to be me. He thought of all that in advance. 'N' then the fryer was my idea. I said I'll break the thing so it catches on fire. I knew how it worked. When the guy came to install it he told me what would happen if this or that broke. Those things are dangerous, you k
now, they're really dangerous. You know that? I told Bill, 'Then you help things along, you give it a boost with some lighter fluid maybe, then flash your Zippo at it, and you get the hell outta there.' I gave him my wedding ring."

  "Were you at all afraid?" I asked.

  She paused. "Can't say that I was. It was—it was like a prank or something. It was exciting. So that night I busted the fryer, all I did was take a fork and jimmy a little pipe on it, and that made it heat too high. And I made sure to leave it on while me and Marty were cleaning up. You go on up, I'll let myself out,' I told him. So I let myself out, then an hour later I sneak back in. I seen a light in the upstairs—I thought, Marty thought of everything. I assumed everybody was gone. I leave the door unlocked and I beat it again. As soon as I'm gone Bill brings in the wife—holding her up like she's drunk, see, which she basically was—"

  "Juanita."

  "Huh?"

  "Her name was Juanita."

  "Oh."

  "Where did you go?"

  "To a motel in Sterling Heights. I just picked one. Robert gave me some cash. And Bill did it. He pulled it off." Trix gazed at her second glass of beer, then at me. "It went just fine. Except for one thing."

  I said, "He did it on the wrong night."

  "It was the wrong night, oh gawd, it was the wrong night! Gawd help me. Gawd have mercy. I don't know what happened. Bill told me which night to be ready. I told Robert which night to be ready…ready for the police to come and tell him.

  "Marty—your dad—he was supposed to take the family out for the night, you and your mom were supposed to be gone. Gone, gone somewhere, over to you uncle's or someplace. I had no idea you and your mom were upstairs the whole time."

  "We were playing cribbage and drinking pop." I heard my voice tremble.

  Trix wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "Oh Lord, oh gawd. I don't know, I never knew what went wrong. Bill carried out the plan like he thought they'd agreed to. He positioned the body. He did it all just so, and he lit the hot fat, and he left. He had no idea until the next day that…that—"