Lesley said, “Are you going to bed or you gonna read?”
It was strange, in that moment he did feel a little sorry for her, standing there in her see-through nighty and her curlers. He said, “It’s late. Might as well go to bed.”
“You want me to get in with you?”
“You bet,” Maguire said, getting undressed as she turned off the light and pulled back the green and yellow spread.
“There,” Lesley said. “God, isn’t it good?”
“It sure is.”
“Shit, I forgot my curlers.”
She sat up, took out the ones in back and got down there again.
“Ouuuu, that hurts. But it’s okay. Now it’s okay. Ouuuuu, is it ever.” After awhile she said, “Cal?”
“What?”
“If my aunt knew we did this? She’d shit. You know it?”
“I guess,” Maguire said.
“We’re watching TV? She goes on and on about in Cincinnati she’s at a picnic with this guy named Herman or Henry or something and how he grabbed her and kissed her. God, it was like it freaked her out, and she was my age. In the guy’s car. I want to say to her, ‘Aunt Leona, you ever go down on him?’ She’d actually shit, you know it?”
“I bet,” Maguire said.
“No, she was twenty-three. It was just before she got married. But not to Herman. My uncle’s name was Thomas. That’s what they called him all the time, Thomas. I can’t imagine them doing it. Can you imagine Aunt Leona doing it?”
“No,” Maguire said.
“She’s in there snoring away, all this beauty cream on. You should see her.”
He didn’t say anything.
“Well, I better get my ass beddy-by. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Night,” Maguire said.
“Don’t play with it too much,” Lesley said.
“I won’t.”
The door closed.
He could see Karen DiCilia in shadow and firelight, the clean-shining dark hair, features composed. Karen DiCilia, Karen something else, Karen Hill originally. He’d found out a few things. If she could ask questions he could, too. And then she had asked a few more. Calvin, is it? Yeah. Calvin doesn’t go with Maguire. It should be Al instead of Cal, Aloysius Maguire, a good mick name. Well, Karen doesn’t go too well with DiCilia, does it? And the good-looking woman saying, No, it should never have gone with DiCilia.
Sometimes we’re bored, willing to try something new and different. Change for the sake of change.
Maguire saying, Right.
Sometimes, then, we’re too impulsive, we make up our minds too quickly.
True.
Sometimes we talk too much, say things we don’t mean.
Very true. (Talking, but what was she saying?)
And we get into a bind, a situation that offers few if any options and then we’re stuck and we don’t know what to do.
Maguire saying, Uh-huh.
Maguire almost saying, If you want to tell me what you’re stuck in, what the problem is, why don’t you, instead of beating around?
Almost, but not saying it. Because what if she told him? And expected him to help her out in some way; man, with the kind of people who’d been associated with her husband and were probably still hanging around-Then what, chickenfat, sit there and grin at her or get involved in something that’s none of your business?
This was a very good-looking woman. The kind, ordinarily, it would be a pleasure to help out and have her feel grateful. This one, he was pretty sure, could be warm and giving.
But right now she was in some kind of no-option bind and had a keen interest in firearms… while Maguire had a vivid memory of the six by eight cells in the Wayne County Jail and what it was like to go to trial facing 20 to life.
So he had said, when it was his turn again, “Well listen, Karen, it’s been very nice talking to you,” and thanked her again and got out of there.
Lying in bed he began to think, But maybe she just needs somebody to talk to. Somebody she feels would understand her situation. Or keep the local con artists away. It didn’t necessarily have to be anything heavy. What was the risk in talking to her, finding out a little more?
She was a good-looking woman.
He wondered how old she was.
He wondered how many more new one hundred dollar bills there were in her house.
ARNOLD CAME FROM THE BEDROOOM carrying a yellow canvas bag that had a zippered flap on the side for a tennis racket. Roland was on the balcony looking over the rail, holding onto his cowboy hat due to the wind off the ocean. Arnold stared at Roland’s back, at the bright-blue material pulled tight across the shoulders.
Roland turned. As he saw Arnold watching him, he said, “How’s Barry?”
Arnold walked over to the coffee table and dropped the bag. “Fifty-four thousand,” Arnold said.
Roland came in from the balcony. “I asked you how’s Barry.”
“He’s in traction. He’ll be in traction six months. Also his kidney and his spleen’s fucked up.”
“Tell him if he’s gonna dive, he should do it in the deep end,” Roland said. He moved past Arnold to the canvas bag and picked it up. “Wouldn’t think paper’d be this heavy, would you?”
“You gonna look at it?”
“I know what it looks like,” Roland said. “You’re doing good, Arnie. Keep it up.”
“You know I’m gonna pay you, right?”
“Sure, I do.”
“Well, how about-you know, since this isn’t strictly speaking a shylock deal-we make a different kind of arrangement.”
“Like what, Arnie?”
“See, the way it is, I keep paying the vig, how’m I ever gonna get to the principle?”
“Beats the shit out of me,” Roland said.
“You know what I mean? I didn’t borrow the money. I’m only paying the man back his investment.”
“Yeah? What’s the difference?”
“It’s different. You got guys borrow money from you, they know going in what the vig is. But this was a business deal.”
“They’re all business deals,” Roland said, “but vig’s vig and the amount owed’s something else. Didn’t they teach you that at school, Arnie?”
“I tried to explain it to Ed-”
“I know you did. And he told you to talk to me,” Roland said. “It’s the same way, a man, a guy owns one of the biggest hotels on the strip, he borrows money, he pays the vig. Every week. He’s got a problem, he comes to me with it. Man with a restaurant right here in Hallandale, shit, half a dozen appliance stores over on federal highway, picture show, bunch of motels-they all pay the vig, Arnie. They understand it’s the way you do business.”
“Right, shylock business, I understand that.” Arnold moving around, bit his lip. “But this is different.”
“And I ask you how-so?”
“I didn’t borrow the money, Ed invested it.”
“But you lost it, so you have to pay it back.”
“I didn’t lose it-”
Roland had his palm up, facing Arnold. “We ought to agree on something here.”
“Okay, I lost it.”
“Now then,” Roland said, “when you come to paying back, what’s the difference? Paying back is paying back, whether it’s money you lost or money you borrowed. See, your losing it-we give you money, we don’t ask you what you’re gonna do with it, like the bank. You can flush it down the toilet if you want. Long as you pay it back.”
“Okay,” Arnold said, “I owe you five hundred and forty grand. I can pay you back in time, you know that. But I can’t if I keep paying the fucking vig. Look, ten weeks from now, fifty-four thousand a week, man, where the fuck am I? I will’ve paid out five hundred forty grand, right? And I’m still not into the fucking principle. I’m never into it. You know what I got to do? I mean to get what I’m paying you.”
“I don’t know,” Roland said, “ask your mommy for it?”
“I got to deal in hard shit, man, and that’s a totally different business. Get into that Mexican brown, nobody even likes it, I got to keep a line coming through here and beg, implore, dealers to take the shit. That’s what I’m into now, myself, that’s all.”