Tom Krome said, "Dick, I can't take much more."
"The competency hearing is set two weeks from tomorrow."
"How long can she drag this out?"
"You mean, what's the record?"
Krome sat up in bed. He caught the phone before it hit his lap. He put the receiver flush to his lips and said loudly: "Does she even have a goddamn lawyer yet?"
"I doubt it," said Dick Turnquist. "Get some rest, Tom."
"Where is she?"
"Mary Andrea?"
"Where's this rehab center?" Krome asked.
"You don't want to know."
"Oh, let me guess. Switzerland?"
"Maui."
"Fuck."
Dick Turnquist said things could be worse. Tom Krome said he didn't think so. He gave the lawyer permission to round up a couple of expert witnesses on Prozac for the upcoming hearing.
"Shouldn't be hard," Krome added. "Who wouldn't love a free trip to Hawaii?"
Two hours later, he was startled awake by the light graze of fingernails on his cheek.
Katie.Krome realized he'd fallen asleep without locking his door. Moron! He sprung upright.
The room was black. He smelled perfumed soap.
"Katherine?" Christ, she must've run out on her husband!
"No, it's me. Please don't turn on the light."
He felt the mattress shift as JoLayne Lucks sat beside him. In the darkness she found one of his hands and brought it to her face.
"Oh no," said Krome.
"There were two of them." Her voice was thick.
"Let me see."
"Keep it dark. Please, Tom."
He traced along her forehead, down her cheeks. One of her eyes was swollen shut a raw knot, hot to the touch. Her top lip was split open, bloody and crusting.
"Jesus," Krome sighed. He made her lie down. "I'm calling a doctor."
"No," JoLayne said.
"And the cops."
"Don't!"
Krome felt like his chest would explode. Gently JoLayne pulled him down, so they were lying side by side.
"They got the ticket," she whispered.
It took a moment for him to understand: The lottery ticket, of course.
"They made me give it to them," she said.
"Who?"
"I never saw them before. There were two of them."
Krome heard her swallow, fighting the tears. His head was thundering he had to do something. Get the woman to a hospital. Notify the police. Interview the neighbors in case somebody saw something, heard something ...
But Tom Krome couldn't move. JoLayne Lucks hung on to his arm as if she were drowning. He turned on his side and carefully embraced her.
She shivered and said, "They mademe give it to them."
"It's OK."
"No "
"You're going to be all right. That's the important thing."
"No," she cried, "you don't understand."
A few minutes later, after her breathing settled, Krome reached over to the bedstand and turned on the lamp. JoLayne closed her eyes while he studied the cuts and bruises.
"What else did they do?" he asked.
"Punched me in the stomach. And other places."
JoLayne saw his eyes flash, his jaw tighten. He told her: "It's time to get up. We've got to do something about this."
"Damn right," she said. "That's why I came to you."
5
They took turns examining themselves in the rearview mirror, Chub swearing extravagantly: "Goddamn nigger bitch, goddamn we shoulda kilt her."
"Yeah, yeah," said Bodean Gazzer. They both hurt like hell and looked worse. Chub had deep scratches down his cheeks, and his left eyelid was sliced in half one ragged flap blinked, the other didn't. He was soiled with blood, mostly his own.
He said, "I never seen such fuckin' fingernails. You?"
Bode muttered in assent. His face and throat bore numerous purple-welted bite marks. The crazy cunt had also chewed off a substantial segment of one eyebrow, and Bode was having a time plugging the hole.
In a worn voice, he said: "Important thing is we got the ticket."
"Which I'll hang on to," Chub said, "just to be safe." And to make things even, he thought. No way was he about to let Bode Gazzer hold bothLotto tickets.
"Fine with me," Bode said, though it wasn't. He was in too much pain to argue. He'd never seen a woman fight so ferociously. Christ, she'd left them looking like gator puke!
Chub said, "They's animals. Total goddamn animals."
Bode agreed. "White girl'd never fuss like that. Not even for fourteen million bucks."
"I'm serious, we shoulda kilt her."
"Right. Wasn't you the one had no interest in jail time?"
"Bode, go fuck yourself."
Chub pressed a sodden bandanna to his tattered eyelid. He remembered how relieved he'd been to learn that the woman who'd hit the lottery numbers was black. What a weight off his shoulders! If she'd been white especially a white Christian woman, elderly, like his granny Chub knew he wouldn't have had the guts to go through with the robbery. Much less slug her in the face and the privates, as was necessary with that wild JoLayne bitch.
And a white girl, you shove a pistol in her lips and she'll do whatever she's told. Not this one.
Where's the ticket?
Not a word.
Where's the goddamn ticket?
And Bode Gazzer saying, "Hey, genius, she can't talk with a gun in her mouth."
And Chub removing it, only to have the woman spit all over the barrel. Then she'd spit on him, too.
Leaving Chub and Bode to conclude there wasn't a damn thing they could do to this person, in the way of rape or torture, to make her give up that ticket.
It had been Bode's idea to shoot one of the turtles.
Give him credit, Chub thought, for figuring out the woman's weakness.
Grabbing a baby turtle from the tank, setting it at JoLayne's feet, chuckling in anticipation as it started marching toward her bare toes.
And Chub, firing a round into the center of the turtle's shell, sending it skidding like a tiny green hockey puck across the floor, bouncing off walls and corners.
That's when the woman broke down and told them where she'd hidden the Lotto stub. Inside the piano, of all places! What a racket they'd made, getting it out of there.
But they'd done it. Now here they were, parked in the amber glow of a streetlight; taking turns with the rearview, checking how badly the nigger girl had messed them up.
Chub's multiple lacerations gave a striped effect to his long sunken face. The softest breeze stung like hot acid. He said, "I reckon I need stitches."
Bode Gazzer, shaking his head: "No doctors till we git home." Then he got a good look at Chub's seeping cuts and, recognizing a threat to his new truck's gorgeous upholstery, announced, "Band-Aids. That's what we'll get."
He made a U-turn on the highway and drove back to town at high speed. His destination was the Grab N'Go, where they would purchase first-aid supplies and also settle a piece of militia business.
Shiner's teenage years had been tolerable until his mother had gotten religion. Before then, she'd allowed him to play football without a helmet, shoot his .22 inside the city limits, go bass fishing with cherry bombs, smoke cigarets, bother the girls and skip school at least twice a week.
One night Shiner had returned home late from a Whitesnake concert in Tampa to find his mother waiting in the kitchen. She was wearing plastic thong sandals, a shortie nightgown and her ex-husband's mustard blazer, left over from his days at Century 21 for Shiner, a jarring apparition. Wordlessly his mother had taken his hand and led him out the front door. In the moonlight they'd traipsed half a mile to the intersection where Sebring Street meets the highway. There Shiner's mother had dropped to her knees and begun to pray. Not polite praying, either; moans and wails that fractured the peacefulness of the night.