Rather, he grinned and waved. “Hello, Lou.”
I parked and got out of the Chevy, not quite sure how to play it. “Hi, Frankie,” I said cautiously.
His grin held. “I’ve been expecting you,” he said. “Actually, I should say ‘we’.”
I blinked. “We?”
“The new owner and I,” Frankie said. “Come on in — I’ll introduce you.”
You’re probably well ahead of me now. That’s right — the new owner was my sister.
Sue smiled as I goggled at her across the counter. “Surprised, Lou? You shouldn’t be.”
Suddenly things began to fall into place. I eyed Sue intently, even managed to dredge up a small smile of my own. “Were you actually going on a vacation?” I asked.
She nodded. “I really was, until you showed up and I heard your story.” She exchanged a look with Frankie. “Then I had a better idea.”
That she had — an inspired, spur-of-the-moment brainstorm to get out of the rut she had been in so long. She’d laid the foundation with that “unsafe neighborhood” bit. After I’d dropped her at the bus station and was occupied getting breakfast and groceries, she’d nipped back to the apartment, let herself in with an extra key, set the stage for the break-in, and hightailed it to Madison Springs with the money and closed the smoke-shop deal.
I drew a breath. “Clever. Very clever,” I said.
Frankie said seriously, “I hit the ceiling at first, Lou. Really hit it.” Then he laughed. “But it all worked out for the best. Your own half of what we had is still here. No hard feelings.”
Wild, like I said. Sue and Frankie are doing great and plan to get married next month. Maybe Frankie had the right idea after all. I just may try his “reform” bit when I get out.
Of course, that won’t be for quite a few years. And while I’m still here there’s plenty of time for me to reconsider Frankie’s “No hard feelings.” Even with Sue being my sister, he still might’ve meant to pay me back for my caper, would’ve instinctively known I’d move to swell my twenty-five G’s by trying to heist that crackerjack-box bank before I left town, and alerted that aging guard.
I guess I’ll never know for sure.
The Last Trump
by Jeffry Scott
Bunting suspected he could buy and sell Trump before breakfast...
The devotion, love, and constant attention expended by Porter Bunting could never be described as selfless, because it was lavished upon himself. Of course, he was one of the Boston Buntings, but that had little to do with it; he simply knew of no other person more deserving and estimable.
Unlovely enough — obese, wattled, age-freckled, in his forties — Porter still suffered from terminal narcissism. Sometimes he woke in the night, amending Shakespeare slightly to marvel at what a piece of work was Porter Bunting. Even his hearing became oddly selective as the disease kindled and advanced. Accused by an exasperated hundred-dollar hooker in Miami of being “a first-class creep,” Bunting merely smirked and creased his belly in a bow that compounded the harlot’s fury. He had heard only the first three words.
Business took him to Liberville, that model Socialist Republic that simmers in brutal sunlight when it is not being soused by the rainy season. Porter Bunting stayed at the best hotel, the Tropique, and very bad it was. He just couldn’t understand how an entire nation could conspire to test and torment him to such a pitch.
At the Tropique, he encountered The Last Trump.
You may well have done the same. Ronnie Trump travels such a lot, selling things. A battered cherub, a knowing gnome, teasing flight attendants, forever bagging the last taxi at the terminal, the first sitting at the Captain’s table.
“Trump’s the name, and I am a bit of a card,” Ronnie always crows by way of introduction.
In a way, their foregathering on the veranda of the Tropique, a place of warped timbers and flaccid greenery more gloomy than shady, was a meeting of titans: first-class creep meets first-class pain.
To make it worse, Bunting had to acknowledge him. Trump’s parents had sent him overseas from England at the outbreak of World War II. He had spent a short, best forgotten time at Porter Bunting’s prep school and recognized Porter at once.
Porter Bunting, naturally, has trouble recollecting distant members of his own family. People who have been mere walk-on characters in the Bunting saga are forgotten not merely soon after but at the very moment of meeting. However, while he did not remember Ronnie Trump a shadow glided across the farthest horizon of his emotional landscape. Something about the fellow...
Trump was enthusiastic though. “Bit of luck for The Last Trump,” he chortled. “What’re you doing in dear old Liverville, old chap? Bad Liverville, you’ll soon discover. Trying to make your fortune, eh?”
Bunting suspected, as he did of everyone bar oil sheiks, that he could buy and sell Ronnie before breakfast. He snorted indignantly and huffed something about delicate negotiations. Trump whirled a card-index behind his knobbly forehead, winked, and said, “Aha — the new telephone system. You’ll have to grease a lot of palms, my lad. And you’ll hang around here until you’ve got whiskers past your knees. Boy! Two gin slings, chop chop!”
Bunting said shortly, “I never drink gin. Anyway, the waiters won’t come. I’ve been out here for hours” — it had been seven and a half minutes — “and they simply ignore one.”
Immediately a lithe servant materialized at Trump’s elbow, greeted him fawningly, and sped away. Trump, a moment later, was sipping at an ice-hazed tumbler while Bunting fumed.
“Damned country!” Bunting exploded. “Nothing but a living museum of graft and lethargy.” Rolling pettishly in his cane lounger, he gestured at the twilight street outside. “Nothing happens, nothing ever will happen.”
Trump put the drink aside, hugged his knees, and beamed. “Now there you’re wrong. If it’s action you’re after, old chap, you may get more than you like.” Head cocked on one side, he resembled a sponge-rubber gargoyle.
Something in his aura — that crass cheerfulness prevailing at funerals and among witnesses of traffic accidents — made Porter Bunting feel uneasy. He was not soothed when Ronnie Trump added, “My word, but I admire your spirit! Talk about true grit...”
Bunting grunted interrogatively. Trump clasped himself tighter. “Why, your little dispute with Lyfeldt over water rights this morning. Oh, I wasn’t eavesdropping, ’pon my soul! But everyone could hear you all over the second floor.”
Though he remained impassive, Porter Bunting bridled and smirked inwardly. That morning he had discovered that, like most of the Hotel Tropique’s fittings and staff, the shower would not work.
The bedroom next door had been vacant the previous night, so Bunting went in there. The thin, grey, whiny-voiced occupant — Lyfeldt, evidently — had come in from breakfast, while Bunting soaped and slopped and crooned, and demanded to know what was going on.
Bunting couldn’t repress a chuckle. He’d told Lyfeldt a thing or three! Sneaking in like that, little better than a peeping tom — some kind of degenerate! Feebly, Lyfeldt strove to point out that the room was his, slept in and paid for; that the towel covering the intruder’s paunch was Lyfeldt’s towel.
Progressively more choleric, Porter Bunting shouted him down before storming out, dripping water on Lyfeldt’s luggage. His anger had been genuine. He found it nigh impossible to accept that anyone could not understand that Bunting s comfort, convenience, and well being were matters of self-evident priority.
“Bit of a lark, eh?” Trump prompted, and Bunting, coming back to the present, compressed his chins in a grudging nod.