Connie kissed him, hand resting lightly on his chest, then walked down the street and turned into the bar. Scott walked in the opposite direction. Connie was worried. Worried and protective. Worried and deferential. Connie with the parts of Lucinda he liked best.
He smiled. He walked three blocks up, then turned and walked back.
He didn’t look around until he had ordered a beer, and then he did most of his looking in the mirror behind the bartender.
It wasn’t hard to pick a fight in a bar. The trick was to pick the right kind of fight. What he needed was a pair of buddies who’d had a little too much, just enough to make them cocky and to slow their reactions, just enough to make them sensitive to insults and eager to gang up on one guy.
There was a likely pair at a table just off the far end of the bar, telling jokes, putting their heads together, laughing a little too long and a little too loud. A pair of happy jacks.
In the mirror Scott caught Connie’s eye and inclined his head a fraction towards the end of the bar. Connie followed his gaze, saw the pair, nodded. Scott drained his beer and ordered a new bottle. He stood and made his way toward them. He could look at their beefy faces and tell which whispered insult would start them swinging. He could even make it look as if they jumped him without provocation.
Connie was there to limit damage. When the fight started, she’d yell “Police!” to break it up. That way Scott could duck out the back and wouldn’t get beaten up too bad.
He needed to get beaten up some, though. It had to be real enough to scare Lucinda, to build on the terror he had seen at the deadline party. Getting beaten up in the bar would be proof that she had been right, and the letter that Connie would mail would say, “Dear Lovebirds: What happened last night is just the beginning. The price just doubled. You’re going to pay one way or another. Cash or flesh. Take your choice.” Then he’d see how Lucinda reacted. And Connie. He’d see the effect on Connie, too.
He leaned toward the happy jacks and smiled. This was going to be fun.
“We could have them arrested,” Lucinda said.
Scott shook his head, winced from real pain. “Wouldn’t do any good,” he said. “They’d claim I started it. They’d pay a fine. Then they’d kill me. Or worse, they’d hurt you. They want their money. They think we owe them.” His words came thick through his bruised lips. The right side of his face was swollen and purple. His right eye was shut. A split above his left eye was closed with eight tiny black x’s. He looked terrible. He looked a lot worse than he felt, but he didn’t feel good.
“I’m going to pay,” said Scott. “What else can I do?”
They were sitting at the kitchen table. Very domestic, he thought, except that across from him Lucinda sat silent and staring, tears filling her eyes and running down her cheeks and splashing onto the white ceramic tile of the table. She had started when she saw his face. She had continued through the story of the fight. She wasn’t sobbing, wasn’t breathing hard or funny; her voice, when she spoke, was almost normal. It was as if she didn’t know she was crying. It was more like overflowing than crying. The tears just poured out. They were making Scott nervous.
“It will never stop,” she said.
“I think they’re skipping town. I think that’s why they asked for so much. I think this will be the last time.”
She smiled at him as if at a child who had said something almost clever. She reached out and touched his cheek. “They hurt you. Poor face. Poor face.”
Scott pulled away as if her touch hurt. “I can have the money in a couple of days. But that’s going to wipe me out.”
She just stared, tears leaking from her unblinking eyes.
“Couple of days enough for you, Lucinda?” he asked.
“I’ll have to make some phone calls,” she said, as if talking to a third person.
Scott nodded and put his head down and hoped there was a way he could get out of there early that night.
Connie laid the money out in neat little stacks on the coffee table. A hundred thousand dollars. Twenty thousand of it theirs. Eighty thousand Bennie’s, at the same terms. Borrow eighty, pay back eighty-eight. Scott thought it was high, since they’d been such good customers lately. Connie said that it took money to make money. “You’re paying eight to get a hundred,” she’d said. “You clear ninety-two.” Looked at that way, it was a good deal.
Scott had a package of brown lunch bags with Mickey Mouse waving in sunglasses and flowery shirt. Miami.
Connie’s hands danced over the stacks, counting. There were a lot of stacks.
“Okay,” she said. “All here. Now remember, ten thousand a bag, ten bags in the grocery sack, grocery sack in the green leaf bag. Lucinda’s ten bags in another grocery sack, that sack in the same leaf bag. Be sure you bag hers like you’re really worried about following orders. Where’s the drop?”
Scott squinted into the distance and ran through the directions to the green dumpster out in the pastureland.
Connie was smiling, shaking her head. “Poor face,” she said. “No more of this. We’ve got to change the kind of operation we run. You’ve got to take better care of that poor face. I want it handsomed up again in Miami.”
He tried to smile. It hurt a little.
“Well,” she said. “That’s it. Don’t forget, Gate 7 at ten forty-three, Flight 398. Don’t push her too far this time.”
Scott smiled again. “Don’t worry.”
Connie touched his cheek. “Love you,” she said. She’d never said that before.
Lucinda was late.
If she didn’t hurry, they wouldn’t make the drop. Maybe she was having trouble getting the cash.
Scott stared down at the long fall from the condo window, hoping that she hadn’t done something stupid. God, she was so moody, she could do anything. The last thing he needed was to get linked up to a suicide.
It was scary, standing at the edge of the big payoff for all that work, for performing for Lucinda, for sometimes losing himself in the performance, for sneaking around to meet Connie. Final performance coming up. It would be worth it if it worked.
He sat down at the kitchen table and counted out ten Mickey Mouse lunch bags and waited. Traffic, he thought, or trouble getting the cash. She’ll be frantic. Be calm.
And then Lucinda came breezing in, not frantic, but happy, smiling. She gave him a hug. If she was carrying the money, he didn’t see it. She laughed.
“Oh, darling,” she said. “Oh, darling.”
Scott didn’t even try to smile. “We’ve got to hurry if we want to make the drop. We...”
“I have a surprise,” she said, fumbling through a drawer, pulling out a corkscrew. It was disorienting, like the other day being replayed. “Sit down.”
“Lucinda,” he began.
“Just sit down.” There was an edge there that he couldn’t ignore, an edge like Connie’s voice could get.
She opened a bottle of wine, humming. She poured two glasses. She gave him one. “To us,” she said. Scott raised his glass and sipped. She drained hers.
From her shoulder bag she removed a blank white envelope. “Surprise,” she said, handing it to Scott. “Happy birthday, Merry Christmas, and many happy returns.”
There were two pictures inside, pictures of two men. The happy jacks from the bar. They were quite obviously dead.
“Hurting you was where they made their mistake, of course,” Lucinda went on, refilling the glasses, spilling the red wine across the tablecloth, across Scott’s sleeve. “It wasn’t hard to find them after that.”
Scott looked from the pictures to Lucinda. “You...?”
She laughed. “Not me, silly. Friends. Well, people my husband knows. We can’t keep these pictures, so look while you can.” She looked at the pictures. She looked at him. “Well? Isn’t this wonderful?”