The managing editor said: “Suppose you tell me exactly what he was writing.”
“A quickie feature. Hit and run.”
“About what?”
“Just some woman who won the lottery,” Sinclair said. Impulsively he added: “A black woman.” Just so the boss would know Sinclair was on the lookout for feel-good stories about minorities. Maybe it would help his predicament, maybe not.
The managing editor squinted. “That’s it—a lottery feature?”
“That’s it,” Sinclair asserted.
He didn’t want it known that he’d rejected Tom Krome’s request to pursue the robbery angle. Sinclair believed the decision would make him appear gutless and shortsighted, particularly if Krome turned up murdered in some ditch.
“Where is this Lotto woman?” asked the managing editor.
“Little town called Grange.”
“Straight feature?”
“That’s all it was.”
The managing editor frowned. “Well, you’re lying again, Sinclair. But it’s my own damn fault for hiring you.” He stood up and removed his suit jacket from the back of his chair. “You’ll go to Grange and you won’t come back until you’ve found Tom.”
Sinclair nodded. He’d call his sister. She and Roddy would let him stay in the spare room. They could take him around town, hook him up with their sources.
“Next week they’re announcing the Amelias,” said the managing editor, slipping into his jacket. “I entered Krome.”
“You did?”
Again Sinclair was caught off guard. The “Amelias” were a national writing competition named after the late Amelia J. Lloyd, widely considered the mother superior of the modern newspaper feature. No event was too prosaic or inconsequential to escape Amelia Lloyd’s sappy attention. Bake sales, craft shows, charity walkathons, spelling bees, mall openings, blood drives, Easter egg hunts—Amelia’s miraculous prose breathed sweet life into them all. In her short but meteoric career, her byline had graced The New Orleans Times-Picayune, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Tampa Tribune, The Miami Herald and The Cleveland Plain Dealer. It was in Cleveland that Amelia J. Lloyd had been tragically killed in the line of duty, struck down by a runaway miniature Duesenberg at a Masonic parade. She was only thirty-one.
All but an elitist handful of newspapers entered their feature sections in the annual Amelias, because it was the only contest that pretended fluff was worthwhile journalism. At The Register, staff entries for such awards came, as policy, from the Assistant Deputy Managing Editor of Features and Style. Sinclair had chosen not to submit Tom Krome in the Amelias because his stories invariably showed, in Sinclair’s opinion, a hard or sarcastic edge that the judges might find off-putting. In addition, Sinclair feared that if by cruel fate Krome actually won the contest (or even placed), he would physically attack Sinclair in front of the staff. Krome had been heard to remark that, even with its $500 prize, an Amelia was a badge of shame.
So Sinclair was rattled to learn the managing editor had, without informing him, replaced Sinclair’s handpicked entry with Tom Krome.
“I meant to drop you a note,” the managing editor said, not apologetically.
Sinclair measured his response. “Tom’s turned out some super stuff this year. What category did you pick?”
“Body of work.”
“Ah. Good.” Sinclair, thinking: Body of work? The rules called for a minimum of eight stories, and it was generally assumed they should be upbeat and positive—just like the ones Amelia J. Lloyd used to write. Sinclair doubted whether Tom Krome had used eight upbeat adjectives in his whole career. And where had the boss found time to cull a year’s worth of clips?
“Do you know,” said the managing editor, packing his briefcase, “how long it’s been since The Register won a national award? Any national award?”
Sinclair shook his head.
“Eight years,” the managing editor said. “Third place, deadline reporting, American Society of Newspaper Editors. Eight fucking years.”
Sinclair, sensing it was expected of him, asked: “What was the story?”
“Tornado creamed an elementary school. Two dead, twenty-three injured. Guess who wrote it? Me.”
“No kidding?”
“Don’t look so shocked.” The managing editor snapped the briefcase shut. “Here’s another hot flash: We’re about to win a first-place Amelia for feature writing. As in ‘grand prize.’ I expect Tom to be in the newsroom next week when it moves on the wires.”
Sinclair’s head swam. “How do you know he won?”
“One of the judges told me. An ex-wife, if you’re wondering. The only one who still speaks to me. When are you leaving for Grange?”
“First thing tomorrow.”
“Try not to embarrass us, OK?”
The managing editor was three steps from the door when Sinclair said, “Do you want me to call you?”
“Every single day, amigo. And seriously, don’t fuck this up.”
Chub believed he was making progress with Amber. Each night she seemed friendlier and more talkative. Bodean Gazzer thought his friend was imagining things—the girl chatted up all her customers.
“Bull,” Chub said. “See how she looks at me?”
“Spooked is how she looks. It’s that damn patch.”
“Fuck yourself,” said Chub, though secretly he worried that Bode might be right. Amber might be one of those women who weren’t aroused by scars and eye patches and such.
Bode said, “Maybe you oughta take it off.”
“I tried.”
“Don’t tell me.”
“It’s the tire glue,” Chub explained. “It’s like goddamn see-ment.”
Bode Gazzer said he was glad it was Chub’s left eye that was sealed, because the right one was his lead eye for shooting. “But it’d still be better without the patch,” he added. “Patch like to give you a blind spot in a firefight.”
Chub bit into a chicken bone and noisily chewed it to a pulp, which he swallowed. “Don’t you worry about me when it come to guns. Even my blind spots is twenty-twenty.”
When Amber came to collect the empty beer bottles, Chub mischievously inquired about her boyfriend.
“He’s not here,” she said.
“I can see that, darling.”
Chub was tempted to say something about Tony the asshole’s sports car catching fire; drop a sly hint that he and Bode had done it, so Amber would know his intentions were serious. But he wasn’t sure if she was sharp enough to make the connection, or even if she was the sort of woman who was favorably impressed by arson.
“Another round?” she asked.
Chub said: “Time you get off work?”
“Late.”
“How late?”
“Real late.”
Bode Gazzer cut in: “Bring us four more.”
“Right away,” Amber said, gratefully, and dashed off.
“Shit,” Chub muttered. Maybe it was the patch. He suspected it wouldn’t bother her one bit, once she found out he was soon to be a millionaire.
Bode advised him to back off. “Remember what I told you about low profiles. Plus, you’re spookin’ the girl.”
With a thumb and forefinger, Chub deftly extracted a shard of chicken bone from the roof of his mouth. He said, “When’s the last time you fucked anything besides the palm a your hand?”
Bode Gazzer said that, being a white man, he had a duty to be extra scrupulous about spreading his seed.
“Your what?” Chub sneered.
“That’s what the Bible calls it. Seed.”
“Man can’t get enough guns and pussy. You said so yourself.”
So I did, Bode thought ruefully. The truth was, he didn’t want Chub distracted by a Hooters babe or any other woman until they collected the lottery money. Then there’d be plenty of time for wild poon.
Bode tried to improvise: “There’s good and bad of everything, Chub. Us white men’s got a responsibility—we’re an endanger
ed species. Like the unicorn.”
Chub didn’t fold. He recalled that he once owned a .45 semi, made in Yugoslavia or Romania or some godforsaken place, that misfired every fourth or fifth round. “Now that was a bad gun,” he said, “but I ain’t never had no bad pussy.”
They debated until closing time, with Bode holding to the position that militiamen should have carnal relations only with pure white Christian women of European descent, lest the union produce a child. Chub (not wishing to limit his already sparse opportunities) insisted white men were morally obliged to spread their superior genetics near and far, and therefore should have sex with any woman who wanted it, regardless of race, creed, or heritage.
“Besides, it’s plain to see,” he added, “Amber’s white as Ivory Snow.”
“Yeah, but her boyfriend’s Meskin. That makes her Meskin by injection,” said Bode.
“You can shut up now.”
“Point is, we gotta be careful.”
The manager flicked the lights twice and the restaurant began to empty. Bode asked for a box of chicken wings to go, but a Negro busboy told him the kitchen had closed. Bode paid the dinner bill with the stolen Visa, leaving another ludicrous tip. Afterwards Chub insisted on hanging around the parking lot, in the remote likelihood Amber needed a lift. After fifteen minutes she appeared, brushing her hair as she came out the door. To Chub she looked almost as beautiful in faded jeans as she did in her skimpy work shorts. He told Bode to honk the horn, so she’d see them waiting in the truck. Bode refused.
Chub was rolling down the window to call her name when none other than Tony himself drove up in a new jet-black Mustang convertible. Amber got in, and the car sped away.
“What the fuck?” said Chub, despairingly.
“Forget about it.”
“Asshole must be loaded to ’ford two cars.”
Bode Gazzer said, “For Christ’s sake, it’s probably a rental. Now forget about it.”
Half drunk, Bode struggled to back the pickup out of the handicapped slot. He paid no attention to the blue Honda on the other side of the lot, and failed to notice when the same car swung into traffic behind them, southbound on Highway One.
Before the two rednecks broke into her home and attacked her, JoLayne Lucks had in her entire adult life been struck by only two men. One was black, one was white. Both were boyfriends at the time.
The black man was Robert, the police officer. He’d slapped JoLayne across the face when, with ample evidence, she accused him of extorting sex from female motorists. The very next morning Robert found a live pygmy rattlesnake curled up in his underwear drawer, a discovery that impelled him to hop and screech about the bedroom. JoLayne Lucks gingerly collected the snake and released it in a nearby pasture. Later she teased Robert about his girlish reaction, noting that the bite of a pygmy rattler was seldom fatal to humans. That night he slept with his service revolver cocked on the bedstand, a practice he diligently maintained until he and JoLayne parted company.
The white man who hit her was, of all people, Neal the codependent chiropractor. It had happened one night when JoLayne was an hour late getting home from Jackson Memorial Hospital, a delay caused by a short-tempered cocaine importer with personnel problems. Four multiple-gunshot victims had arrived simultaneously in the emergency room, where JoLayne was on duty. Although the shooting spree was the lead story on the eleven o’clock news, Neal the chiropractor remained unconvinced. He preferred to believe JoLayne was late because she’d been dallying with a handsome thoracic surgeon, or possibly one of the new anesthesiologists. In a jealous tantrum, Neal threw a wild punch that glanced harmlessly off JoLayne’s handbag. She was upon him instantly, breaking his nose with two stiff jabs. Soon Neal the chiropractor was sniveling for forgiveness. He rushed out and bought JoLayne a diamond tennis bracelet, which she returned to him in mint condition on the night they broke up.
So she was not accustomed to being struck by men of any color; did not invite it, would not tolerate it, and believed with every fiber in swift, unmitigated retribution. Which is why she couldn’t get her mind off the shotgun in the trunk of Tom Krome’s Honda.
“You got a plan yet?” she said. “Because I’ve got one if you don’t.”
Krome said, “I’m sure you do.”
He’d dropped back to put some distance between them and the red pickup truck, which was weaving slightly and accelerating in unpredictable bursts. The driver was bombed—even a rookie patrolman could have spotted it. Krome didn’t want the rednecks to crash into anybody, but he also didn’t want them to get pulled over on a DUI. Who knew what they might do to a cop? And if they allowed themselves to be tossed in jail, it might be weeks before they got out, depending on how many felony warrants were outstanding. JoLayne Lucks didn’t have that much time.
Krome’s plan was to follow the two men to where they lived, and to case the place.
“In other words, we’re stalking,” JoLayne said.
Krome hoped her tone was one of impatience and not derision. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought the goal was to retrieve your Lotto ticket. If you’d rather just shoot these morons and go home, let me know so I can bail out.”
She raised her hands. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
“You’re angry. I’d be angry, too.”
“Furious,” she said.
“Stay cool. We’re close.”
“You memorized the license tag?”
“I told you before. Yes,” Krome said.
“Hey, they’re speeding up again.”
“So I noticed.”
“Don’t lose ’em.”
“JoLayne!”
“Sorry. I’ll shut up now.”
They tailed the truck all the way to Homestead. On the way, it stopped three times along the side of the highway, where one or both of the rednecks nonchalantly got out to urinate. Whenever that happened, Krome kept driving. Once he got ahead, he’d quickly pull over in an unlit spot and wait for the pickup to pass by again. Eventually the rednecks turned east off Highway One, then south on a dirt road that bisected a tomato farm. Here there was no other traffic—only a rolling dust cloud kicked up by the truck. The dust smelled faintly of pesticide.
JoLayne poked her head from the car and pretended to drink the air. “Green acres! Men of the soil!” she exclaimed.
Krome slowed and turned off the headlights, so the rednecks wouldn’t spot them in the rearview. After a few miles the tomato fields gave way to palmetto scrub and Dade County pines. Gradually the road turned and ran parallel to a wide drainage canal. Across the rippled water, JoLayne was able to make out the shapes of rough shacks, small house trailers and abandoned cars.
A half mile ahead on the dirt road, the pickup’s brake lights flashed brightly through the whorls of dust. Krome immediately stopped the Honda and killed the engine. The silence announced that the driver of the truck had done the same.
Krome said, “Nice neighborhood.”
“It’s not exactly Star Island.” JoLayne touched his arm. “Can we please open the trunk now?”
“In a second.”
They couldn’t see the red truck, but they heard the doors slam. Then came a man’s voice, booming down the canal through the darkness.
JoLayne whispered: “What’s that all about?”
Before Tom Krome could answer, the night was split open by gunfire.
Alone in the middle of nowhere, Shiner had wigged out. The noises were the same as those in the woods outside Grange—frogs, crickets, raccoons—but here every peep and rustle seemed louder and more ominous. Shiner couldn’t stop thinking about all those NATO troops bivouacked in the Bahamas.
Just eighty miles thataway, Bodean Gazzer had said, pointing, acrost the Gulf Stream.
Stunted as it was, Shiner’s imagination had no difficulty conjuring a specter of blue-helmeted enemy soldiers poised on an advancing flotilla. He became consumed with the idea that the United States of America might be invaded at any minute, while Bode and C
hub were off drinking beer.
Acting against orders, Shiner got the AR-15 out of Chub’s mobile home and climbed a trellis to the flimsy roof. There, in his moldy bush hat and new camouflage parka, he waited. And while he couldn’t see as far as the Bahama Islands, he had an excellent view of the dirt road and the farm canal.
By land or by sea, Shiner thought, let the fuckers try.
The rifle felt grand in his hands; it took the edge off his nerves. He wondered what types of guns the NATO communists were carrying. Russian, Bode Gazzer had speculated, or North Korean. Shiner decided to swipe one off the first soldier he shot, for a souvenir. Maybe he’d chop off an ear, too—he’d heard of such grisly customs during his three weeks in the army, from a drill sergeant who’d been to Nam. Shiner didn’t know what he would do with a severed NATO ear, but he’d surely put it someplace where his Ma wouldn’t find it. Same with the guns. Ever since she’d found the Road-Stain Jesus, his mother had been down on guns.
After an hour on the roof, Shiner was overcome by a stabbing hunger. Stealthily he climbed down and foraged in Chub’s refrigerator, where he located two leathery slices of pepperoni pizza and a tin of boneless sardines. These Shiner carried back to his sentry post. He forced himself to eat slowly and savor each bite—once the invasion began there’d be no more pizza for a long, long time.
On two occasions Shiner fired the AR-15 at suspicious noises. The first turned out to be a clumsy opossum (not an enemy sapper) that knocked over Chub’s garbage can, just as the second turned out to be a mud hen (not a scuba-diving commando) splashing in the lily pads.
Better safe than sorry, Shiner thought.
After a while he drifted off, one cheek pressed against the cool stock of the rifle. He dreamed he was back in boot camp, trying to do push-ups while a brawny black sergeant stood over him, calling him a faggot, a pussy, a dickless wonder. In the dream, Shiner wasn’t much better at push-ups than he was in real life, so the sergeant’s yelling grew louder and louder. Suddenly he drew his sidearm and told Shiner he’d shoot him in the ass if his knees touched the ground once more, which of course happened on the very next push-up. In a rage, the sergeant simultaneously placed a heavy boot on Shiner’s back and the gun barrel against Shiner’s tremulous buttocks, and fired—