“Alvin Cromwell’s got a banana boat lined up. He thinks he’s going with ’em, tomorrow.”
“Well, you did good, didn’t you?”
“So they’ll stay put tonight… Roy, you drinking?”
“I had a couple. How’d you tell?”
“You aren’t bitching about anything.”
“Hey, well, listen. You don’t like my first idea, I got another one. Little One goes in to bring ’em something or clear their mess, we go in with him. Shit, all four of us could hide behind Little One.”
“Roy, I went into the presidential suite of a hotel one time-I’d been trailing this couple around for five nights and they were loaded, the woman with a different set of jewelry every time I saw her. She was advertising herself. Look at me, you all, how rich I am. I went in their suite and you know what I found?”
“You’re making some point,” Roy said, “but I don’t see it yet.”
“I found nothing. She kept her jewelry in a hotel safe deposit box. The guy even put his cash in there. The moral is, when you see one that’s too good to be true, it ain’t.”
“Jack, you can’t get five bank sacks in a deposit box or even the hotel safe.”
“Did you look in the sacks, Roy?”
“All right, where would they hide it?”
“I don’t know, but when they advertise it, come parading in with the sacks, you know it isn’t in the room. We march in behind Little One and we don’t find anything, then what? It’s over with. We walk away, the cops pick up Little One, look at his printout, make him a deal, and we’re back at the farm. Be there in time to plant soybeans.”
Roy said, “I want to know where they could hide it.”
“We wait till the morning,” Jack said, “we’ll find out. Don’t use Little One for anything, okay? The man’s clean and wants to stay that way.”
Roy said, “You’re no fun. Shit. Listen, send Cully to spell me and then you and Lucy come sometime after midnight, with both your cars. So we’ll be ready at peep of day. Tell the guy at the desk we’re having a party up here, 509. Shit, we may as well.”
As soon as Jack hung up the phone Lucy said, “Who did you mean, ‘She’s not in this?’ Me?”
“He was talking about Helene, using her again as bait.”
“And you didn’t like the idea?”
Cullen said, from across the room, “I wanted to talk to him.”
Jack glanced over. “I’m gonna drive you down there, right now.”
Lucy said, “If you’ve told her everything and you did use her, isn’t she in it?”
“She did it as a favor, that’s all. I’m gonna take Cully and then stop off at Mullen’s and change my clothes. How ’bout I’ll meet you at the hotel in a couple hours? Park in the underground garage, right across the street.”
“Will she do anything you ask?”
He looked at her face raised to his, waiting, and said, “What do you want to know, Lucy? What she would do for me or what I might ask her to?”
The body Leo had prepared that morning occupied a moderately priced Batesville in one of the smaller visitation rooms. Jack studied the man’s face in lamplight, surprised at his ruddy complexion and the way the man’s sparse gray hair was combed down on his forehead like a Roman senator and fixed there. This was not Leo’s work.
But Leo should be here. Or someone from the security service. Jack looked in the other visitation rooms. Raejeanne had said Leo must’ve received another body; otherwise why was he going to be late for dinner? It seemed, though, the man in the visitation room was the only customer. Unless the second arrival was up in the prep room and Leo was in his office. Jack had come in the side entrance. He could check, see if Leo’s car was in back. Or he could run upstairs and look. He was going up anyway. Somebody was here. Jack knew that. There had to be. What he didn’t understand was why, after having lived in this funeral home the past three years, he felt an urge to look over his shoulder. To turn around, quick.
The security man would be right here in the hall or in the small reception office, his thermos of coffee on the desk. But since he wasn’t…
Jack went up the stairs, reached the dark hallway, and stopped when he heard the sound. Like a door closing quietly, with a faint click. The double doors to the prep room were closed. So were the doors to the casket selection room. He thought of the Beretta he’d lifted from Crispin Reyna, beneath the front seat of his car, and the colonel’s Beretta, Jesus, that he’d had in his hand and put back in the drawer with the Indian in the bathroom, vowing never to go into somebody else’s room again, ever. He was home now, but it was the same kind of feeling, that he shouldn’t be here. Or somebody shouldn’t. He turned on the hall light. It didn’t help much.
He’d check the prep room first because that casket selection room-shit, it was too easy to hide in there. He never liked that room. All those crepe-lined empty caskets waiting for people.
He opened the prep room door and jumped and made a sucking-in strangled kind of sound and then said, “Oh, shit,” looking at Helene standing there with a put-on surprised expression on her face. Helene in jeans and a UNO sweatshirt, Helene’s hair catching the fluorescent light as she stepped out of the dark.
She said, “Hi, Jack. What’s wrong?”
“What’re you doing here?”
“I’m on this weekend, till Monday.”
“You’re on something, I know that. Jesus.”
“I don’t do drugs anymore, Jack. My body is clean.”
“Come on-what’re you doing here?”
“What do you think I’m doing here, you jerk? I work here. Monday you’ll have to have all your stuff out, ’cause I’m moving in.”
“Leo hired you?”
“You know he’s been looking, since you ran out on him. I did that man downstairs’s makeup and he loved it. I mean Leo. He drove me home to get a few things, we came back, he asked me if I’d consider working here, and I said sure, I’ll start right this minute.”
“Last night you didn’t even want to come in here.”
“Yeah, well, I got over it. You know, maybe I just thought I was afraid. But once you get used to it… I saw you drive up, I thought, let’s see if old Jack still has it together. You want a drink? Step down to my apartment. It isn’t much, but I’m gonna fix it up. Do something with Leo’s office, too. Upstairs, this place looks like it’s been condemned. Leo said in a year maybe we could start on the downstairs, trade in that crappy furniture. He’s nice, isn’t he? Jovial.”
“He’s a peach of a guy. How much is he paying you?”
“I’m afraid that’s none of your business. Actually he asked me how much I’d need.”
“Leo?”
“I told him I’d let him know. I’ll be doing the cosmetics and the hair, too, not just driving.”
“Helene, this is no place for a girl like you.”
“What kind of girl am I, Jack?”
“Wait’ll a bad one comes in, person that was in a horrible wreck. Or you have to go to the morgue, pick up a floater they pulled out of the river, all bloated, eaten by fish…”
She said, “Jack, you’re gonna make yourself sick. You want a drink or not?”
“I want to take a shower and change my clothes.”
“I hope it helps your disposition. God.”
Helene followed him to the apartment.
When she came into the bedroom she placed his drink on the dresser and leaned against it and watched him as he got out of his clothes.
“You have two and a half bottles of vodka on ice, but no beer.”
“That can happen.”
“You still have a nice body, Jack.”
“What do you mean, still?”
“You aren’t getting any younger, kid.”
“I’m sure glad I came.”
She said, “After you take your shower, you want to be friends?”
Asking him with a tone that was soft, familiar, the same mood in her eyes, watching him. He dropped his shirt on the bed and walked over to her.
“We’re friends now.”
“Are we good friends?”
“I think we’re better than good friends.”
“Do you know how long it’s been since we made love?”
“A long time.”