The man named Tom sat next to Shiner on the divan. He wasn't dressed like a cop, but Shiner resolved to be careful anyway.
JoLayne said, "I've got a big problem. You remember the Lotto ticket I bought Saturday afternoon at the store? Well, I've lost it. Don't ask me how, Lord, it's a long story. The point is, you're the only one besides me who knows I bought it. You're my only witness."
Shiner was a mumbler when he got nervous. "Saturday?"
He didn't look at JoLayne Lucks but instead kept his eyes on the folds of his belly, which still bore wrinkle marks from the bedsheets.
Finally he said: "I don't remember seein' you Saturday."
JoLayne couldn't hear the words, Shiner was speaking so low. "What? "she said.
"I don't remember seein' you in the store Saturday. Sure it wasn't last week?" Shiner began fiddling with the curly black hairs around his navel.
JoLayne came over and lifted his chin. "Look at me."
He flinched at the prospect of her blue fingernails in his throat.
She said, "Every Saturday I play the same numbers. Every Saturday I come to the Grab N'Go and buy my ticket. You know what happened this time, don't you? You know I won."
Shiner pushed her hand away. "Maybe you come in Saturday, maybe you didn't. Anyhow, I don't look at the numbers."
JoLayne Lucks stepped back. She seemed quite angry. The man named Tom spoke up: "Son, surely you know that one of the two winning Lotto tickets came from your store."
"Yeah, I do. Tallahassee phoned up about it."
"Well, if Miss Lucks didn't have the numbers, who did?"
Shiner licked his lips and thought: Damn. This high-stakes lying was harder than he figured it would be. But a blood oath was a blood oath.
He said, "There was a fella came in late off the highway. Got a Quick Pick and a six-pack of Bud Lights."
"Wait, wait you're telling me," JoLayne protested, her voice rising, "you're telling me some ... strangerbought the winning ticket."
"Ma'am, I don't honestly know who's got what. I just run the machine, I don't pay no 'tention to the damn numbers."
"Shiner, you know it was my ticket. Why are you lying? Why?"
"I ain't." It came out as mush.
The man named Tom asked: "This mystery man who came in late and bought the Quick Pick who was he?"
Shiner slid his hands under his butt, to conceal the tremor. He said, "I never seen him before. Just some tall skinny guy with a ponytail."
"Oh no." JoLayne turned to her friend. "What do you say now, Mister No Fucking Way." Then she ran out of the house.
The man named Tom didn't leave right away, which made Shiner jittery. Later he watched from the window as the man put an arm around JoLayne Lucks when they walked off, down Sebring Street.
Shiner sucked on a cigaret and recalled what Bode and Chub had told him: Your word against hers, son.
So it was done. And no fuckups!
Presto, Shiner thought. I'm in the brotherhood.
But for the rest of the morning he couldn't stop thinking about what JoLayne's friend had told him before walking out.
We'll be talking again, you and I.
Like hell, Shiner thought. He'll have to find me first.
6
Mary Andrea Finley Krome wasn't addicted to Prozac or anything else. Nor was she chronically depressed, psychologically unstable, schizoid or suicidal.
She was, however, stubborn. And it was her very strong desire to not be a divorced woman.
Her marriage to Tom Krome wasn't ideal; in fact, it had become more or less an empty sketch. Yet that was a tradition among Finley women, hooking up with handsome, self-absorbed men who quickly lost interest in them.
They'd met in Manhattan, in a coffee shop near Radio City. Mary Andrea had initiated contact after noticing that the intent, good-looking man at the end of the counter was reading a biography of Ibsen. What Mary Andrea hadn't known was that the book had been forced upon Tom Krome by a young woman he was dating (a drama major at NYU), and that he would've much rather been delving into the complete life story of Moose Skowron. Nonetheless, Krome was pleased when the auburn-haired stranger moved three stools closer and said she'd once read for a small part in A Doll's House.
The attraction was instant, though more physical than either of them cared to admit. At the time, Tom Krome was working on a newspaper investigation of Medicaid mills. He was on the trail of a crooked radiologist who spent his Tuesday mornings playing squash at the Downtown Athletic Club instead of reading myelograms, as he'd claimed while billing the government thousands of dollars. Mary Andrea Finley was auditioning for the role of the restless farm wife in a Sam Shepard play.
She and Tom dated for five weeks and then got married at a Catholic church in Park Slope. After that they didn't see each other much, which meant it took longer to discover they had nothing in common. Tom's reporting job kept him busy all day, while Mary Andrea's stage work took care of the nights and weekends. When they managed to arrange time together, they had sex as often as possible. It was one activity in which they were synchronized in all aspects. Overdoing it spared them from having to listen to each other chatter on about their respective careers, in which neither partner honestly held much interest.
Mary Andrea had barely noticed things coming apart. The way she remembered it, one day Tom just walked in with a sad face and asked for a divorce.
Her reply: "Don't be ridiculous. In five hundred years there's never been a divorce in the Finley family."
"That," Tom had said, "explains all the psychos."
Mary Andrea related this conversation to her counselor at the Mona Pacifica Mineral Spa and Residential Treatment Center in Maui, a facility highly recommended by several of her bicoastal actor friends. When the counselor asked Mary Andrea if she and her husband had ever been wildly happy, she said yes, for about six months.
"Maybe seven," she added. "Then we reached a plateau. That's normal, isn't it, for young couples? The problem is, Tom's not a 'plateau' type of personality. He's got to be either going up, or going down. Climbing, or falling."
The counselor said, "I get the picture."
"Now he has lawyers and process servers chasing me. It's very inconsiderate." Mary Andrea was a proud person.
"Do you have reason to believe he'd change his mind about the marriage?"
"Who's trying to change his mind? I just want him to forget this absurd idea of a divorce."
The counselor looked bemused. Mary Andrea went on to offer the view that divorce as an institution was becoming obsolete. "Superfluous. Unnecessary," she added.
"It's getting late," said the counselor. "Would you like something to help you sleep?"
"Look at Shirley MacLaine. She didn't live with her husband for, what, thirty years? Most people didn't even know she was married. That's the way to handle it."
Mary Andrea's theory was that divorce left a person exposed and vulnerable, while remaining married even if you didn't stay with your spouse provided a cone of protection.
"Nobody else can get their meat hooks in you," she elaborated. "Legally speaking."
The counselor said, "I'd never thought of it that way."
"OK, it's just a silly piece of paper. But don't think of it as a trap, think of it as a bulletproof shield," said Mary Andrea Finley Krome. "Shirley's got the right idea. Could you ask them to bring me a cup of Earl Grey?"
"You're feeling better?"
"Much. I'll be out of your hair in a day or two."
"No hurry. You're here to rest."
"With a wedge of lemon," Mary Andrea said. "Please."
Sinclair scalded his tongue on the coffee, a gulp being his reflex to the sight of Tom Krome crossing the newsroom. Pressing a creased handkerchief to his mouth, Sinclair rose to greet his star reporter with a spurious heartiness that was transparent to all who witnessed it.
"Long time no see!" Sinclair gushed. "You're lookin' good, big guy."