Matt had lots of opinions, all of them donated willingly by his dead mother and his brother. He would have welcomed a few more from his father, but he had given up on that. His father, when he had seen him, mostly at the hog-dog, had given orders, not opinions. Now he and Chet were giving their father orders.
Couldn’t help it though. Matt was glum.
The shower was running behind the door about ten feet from the foot of the bed. A television on a table against the wall was on but mute. On the screen, an old man with big white teeth and toupee that didn’t match the color of what little hair he had left was holding up a white plastic thing like it was first-place prize in the county fair. He was looking right at Matt, talking, saying nothing.
“I’ll call him back in an hour,” said Chet, sitting in a chair, his feet propped up on the bed he would share with Matt again that night if they were still in Sarasota. Lilla, if she were still alive, would sleep on the couch again, which was fine with her. Matt kept looking at the old man on the television screen. To Chet, the old man seemed happy as shit.
Behind the closed door, Lilla wasn’t singing.
“What are we gonna do about Lilla’s medicine?” asked Matt.
“She’s got enough of the stuff for a couple of days.”
The pause was long.
“What if he won’t pay?” asked Matt.
Chet was the longer-term thinker of the Manteen brothers, which was not a fact that merited pride. Life for him was a checkers game he could handle only one move at a time. Matt couldn’t even play the game. It had nothing to do with intelligence. It was about concentration. When they were in grade school, every other day, as they had been ordered by their mother, they had taken the pills Dr. Winenholt had given her. Hadn’t helped. They were put in a “special” class. That didn’t help. They were as smart as some of the other kids who didn’t go special. The Manteen brothers just couldn’t think ahead. Same thing in high school. “Jumpy,” that’s what their mother had told the teachers and principals. “My boys are jumpy.”
“Remember, if he won’t pay, we kill her,” said Chet. “It’s what we said we’d do and we’ve got nothing much in the world but our word.”
Matt shook his head, clutched the pillow more tightly to his stomach and said, “Killing Lilla won’t get us the money to make it to Montana. What it’ll get us is we’re murderers with no money instead of being not murderers with no money.”
“What are you talking about?” Chet asked, sitting up.
“I don’t know,” said Matt.
The shower thundered on. Chet glanced at the bathroom. A thin fog of steam lazily wisped under door.
“We are murderers,” said Chet.
“No,” said Matt, sitting up and pointing a finger at his brother, pillow still on his lap. “We killed two people. We did not murder them. We did not.”
“You shot the guy from Williston,” Chet said with weary exasperation. “The guy who won the money at the hog-dog, remember?”
“That,” said Matt emphatically, “was not murder. That was a necessity. We were broke. When good old Papa Borg closed the show, we were broke. I’m telling you something you already know here.”
“And Miss Theodora in the toilet at the All-Naked Girls Live?” asked Chet. “You shot her.”
“I’m not saying I didn’t. I did it right there in front of you and I’m saying I killed her, but it was not murder. It was a survival necessity. The difference seems to be a little too subtle for you,” Matt said. “Checkmate. That’s what they say in chess when you know you’ve got the game won and I’ve got this argument won. We are not murderers.”
“You don’t know how to play chess,” said Chet. “You can’t even play checkers.”
“I can,” Matt insisted. “I just don’t play it very good.”
They had agreed on one thing this time. They hadn’t really kidnapped Lilla. They had known her all her life, liked her. Damn, they shared the same father. The problem, Chet thought, was that there hadn’t been a plan here. Matt counted on Chet and Chet counted on their mother and their mother was dead. They had left Kane for good, a few things in the car trunk. They had stopped at Lilla’s house, asked if she wanted to go for a ride and a frozen Snickers or boiled peanuts. Lilla had said “sure” and climbed in the backseat. Lilla’s mom hadn’t objected.
When they had stopped at the gas station at the edge of town to put in ten dollars of gas, Lilla, singing, had gone into the bathroom. That was when Chet told him that they were going to hold Lilla for ransom. It was only right. Two years ago, Papa Earl Borg had just padlocked the hog-dog show and walked away, didn’t give them a three-dollar thank you.
Where Earl Borg had always made money on the dogs and looked like he was having fun, Chet and Matt had lost what little they had, including the three dogs and two hogs. They didn’t even have enough to pay what they owed Ralph Derby for patching up the animals.
Chet figured Earl Borg owed them severance pay or an inheritance or something.
“So,” Matt said with resignation. “He doesn’t pay and we kill her.”
“That’s the way of it, brother,” answered Chet. “That’s what I said. We’ve got nothing left but each other and our good word. We said we would kill her and that we full intend to do.”
The old man on the TV was suddenly replaced by a blond woman who had her own smile and her own plastic thing to sell. The shower stopped.
“That’s the way of it, brother,” Chet repeated, reaching for the almost empty bag of Doritos on the bed.
The door of Flo Zink’s house on the bay was opened by Adele. She smiled at Ames. In her arms was her baby, Catherine, who squiggled and made bubbles with her mouth. Catherine had been given the name of Lew’s wife for two reasons. Lew Fonesca had twice saved Adele’s life, and Adele really liked the name Catherine. Now she loved it.
Adele stepped back to let Ames in. The open living-room area had a playpen near the window and the familiar, clean, unstylish Wild West wood and leather furniture. The stereo, which was wired to speakers all through the house, was on low. Slim Whitman was singing “Since You’re Gone.”
“Flo here?” Ames asked.
“Shopping,” said Adele, putting the baby gently on her stomach on the white rug.
Catherine began making the arm and leg movements that would soon lead to crawling.
To Ames, Adele didn’t look much different from the way she had cleaned up after she came to live with Flo almost two years ago. Adele was blond, had a full woman’s body, and was, Ames knew from experience, one damn smart young lady. She had gone from a life of physical abuse and teenage prostitution to being a mother, albeit unwed. She was also now a high school student applying to colleges, particularly to New College and the Ringling School of Art, where she could go and still be in this house with Catherine and Flo.
Ames handed her the photographs and said, “You see any of these people, call me or Lewis.”
Adele looked at the photograph and then at Ames, a question in her eyes.
“The twins in the picture kidnapped the girl.”
“She reminds me of someone,” Adele said, still holding the photograph. “Me. Can I get you a coffee, Pepsi?”
There was no alcohol in Flo Zink’s house. Temptation had been cast out for almost two years.
“No, thank you. Got to deliver more pictures.”
“Did he find out who killed his wife?”
“He did.”
“And?” she asked, looking at Catherine who looked as if she were about to lurch forward.
“Best he tell you when he’s ready.”
In the next hour and a half, Ames gave copies of the photograph to several of the neighborhood’s bartenders and also to the clerks at 7-11, Circle K, Burger King, McDonald’s, Wendy’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken, and asked them to call him if they saw the twins or the girl. He told each of the people he talked to simply, “They may mean the girl harm. Her mother and father are worried for her.” Everyone he talked to had listened. On the back of each picture, Ames had printed his name, Texas Bar amp; Grille, and the phone number of the Texas.