His sister said: "Oh, there's all sorts of crazy theories. Bermuda is my personal favorite."
Sinclair solemnly jotted the word "Bermuda" on his notepad. He added a question mark, to denote his own doubts. He thanked Joan for the tip, and she gaily promised to call back if she heard anything new. After hanging up, Sinclair drew the blinds in his office a signal (although he didn't realize it) to his entire staff that an emergency was in progress.
In solitude, Sinclair grappled with his options. Tom Krome's fate concerned him deeply, if only in a political context. An editor was expected to maintain the illusion of control over his writers, or at least have a sketchy idea of their whereabouts. The situation with Krome was complicated by the fact that he was regarded as a valuable talent by The Register'smanaging editor, who in his lofty realm was spared the daily anxiety of working with the man. It was Sinclair's cynical theory that Krome had won the managing editor's admiration with a single feature story a profile of a controversial performance artist who abused herself and occasionally audience members with zucchini, yams and frozen squab. With great effort Krome had managed to scavenge minor symbolism from the young woman's histrionics, and his mildly sympathetic piece had inspired the National Endowment for the Arts to reinstate her annual grant of $14,000. The artist was so grateful she came to the newspaper to thank the reporter (who was, as always, out of town) and ended up chatting instead with the managing editor himself (who, of course, asked her out). A week later, Tom Krome was puzzled to find a seventy-five-dollar bonus in his paycheck.
Was life fair? Sinclair knew it didn't matter. He was left to presume his own career would suffer if Krome turned up unexpectedly in a hospital, jail, morgue or scandal. Yet Sinclair was helpless to influence events, because of two crucial mistakes. The first was allowing Krome to quit; the second was not informing anybody else at the newspaper. So as far as Sinclair's bosses were aware, Krome still worked for him.
Which meant Sinclair would be held accountable if Krome died or otherwise got in trouble. Because Sinclair had neither the resourcefulness nor the manpower to find his lost reporter, he energetically set about the task of covering his own ass. He spent two hours drafting a memorandum that recounted his last meeting with Tom Krome, describing at length the severe personal stress with which the man obviously had been burdened. Sinclair's written account culminated with Krome's shrieking that he was quitting, upending Sinclair's desk and stomping from the newsroom. Naturally Sinclair had refused to accept his troubled friend's resignation, and discreetly put him on excused medical leave, with pay. Out of deference to Krome's privacy, Sinclair had chosen to tell no one, not even the managing editor.
Sinclair reread the memorandum half a dozen times. It was an adroit piece of management sophistry casting doubt on an employee's mental stability while simultaneously portraying oneself as the loyal, yet deeply worried, supervisor.
Perhaps Sinclair wouldn't need the fable to bail himself out. Perhaps Tom Krome simply would forget about the nutty Lotto woman and return to work at The Register,as if nothing had happened.
But Sinclair doubted it. What little he could read of his own wormlike scribbles made his stomach churn.
Bermuda?
Chub couldn't decide where to stash the stolen lottery ticket few hiding places were as ingenious as Bode Gazzer's condom. At first Chub tucked the prize inside one of his shoes; by nightfall it was sodden with perspiration. Bode warned him that the lottery bureau wouldn't cash the ticket if it was "defaced," a legal term Bode broadly interpreted to include wet and stinky. Dutifully Chub relocated the ticket in the box of hollowpoints that he carried with him at all times. Again Bode Gazzer objected. He pointed out that if Chub got trapped in a fire, the ammunition would explode in his trousers and the Lotto numbers would be destroyed.
The only other idea that occurred to Chub was a trick he'd seen in some foreign prison movie, where the inmate hero kept a secret diary hidden up his butthole. The guy scribbled everything in ant-sized letters on chewing gum wrappers, which he folded into tiny squares and stuck in his ass, so the prison guards wouldn't get wise. Given Bode's low regard for Chub's personal hygiene, Chub was fairly sure his partner would object to the butthole scheme. He was right.
"What if first I wrap it in foil?" Chub offered.
"I don't care if you pack it in fucking kryptonite, that lottery ticket ain't goin' up your ass."
Instead they attached it with a jumbo Band-Aid to Chub's right outer thigh, a hairless quadrant that (Bode conceded) seemed relatively untainted by Chub's potent sweat. Bode firmly counseled Chub to remove the Lotto-ticket bandage when, and if, he ever felt like bathing.
Chub didn't appreciate the insult, and said so. "You don't watch your mouth," he warned Bode Gazzer, "I'm gone do somethin' so awful to your precious truck, you'll need one a them moonsuits to go anywheres near it."
"Jesus, take it easy."
Later they went to the 7-Eleven for their customary breakfast of Orange Crush and Dolly Madisons. Bode swiped a newspaper and searched it for a mention of the Lotto robbery in Grange. He was relieved to find nothing. Chub declared himself in a mood for shooting, so they stopped by Bode's apartment to grab the AR-I5 and a case of beer, and headed south down the Eighteen-Mile Stretch. They turned off on a gravel road that led to a small rock-pit lake, not far from a prison camp where Bode had once spent four months. At the rock pit they came upon a group of clean-shaven men wearing holsters and ear protectors. From the type of vehicles at the scene late-model Cherokees, Explorers, Land Cruisers and the orderliness with which they'd been parked, Bode concluded the shooters were suburban husbands brushing up on home-defense skills.
The men stood side by side, firing pistols and semiautomatics at paper silhouettes just like the ones cops used. Bode was disquieted to observe among the group a Negro, one or two possible Cubans, and a wiry bald fellow who was almost certainly Jewish.
"We gotta go. This place ain't secure." Bode, speaking in his role as militia leader.
Chub said, "You jest watch." He peeled off his eye patch and sauntered to the firing line. There he nonchalantly raised the AR-I5 and, in a few deafening seconds, reduced all the paper targets to confetti. Then, for good measure, he opened up on a stray buzzard that was flying no less than a thousand feet straight up in the sky. Without a word, the husbands put away their handguns and departed. A few drove off without removing their ear cups, a sight that gave Bodean Gazzer a good laugh.
Chub went through a half dozen clips before he got bored and offered the rifle to Bode, who declined to shoot. The blasts of gunfire had reignited the killer migraine from Bode's morning hangover, and now all he craved was silence. He and Chub sat down at the edge of the lake and worked on the beer.
After a while, Chub asked, "So when can we cash out our tickets?"
"Pretty soon. But we gotta be careful."
"That nigger girl, she ain't gonna say a word."
"Probably not," Bode said. Yet, thinking back on the beating, he recalled that the Lucks woman never seemed as scared as she should've been. Mad as a hornet, for sure, and crying like a baby when Chub shot her turtle but there was no quivering animal panic from the woman, despite all the pain. They'd worked extra hard to make her think they'd return to murder her if she didn't keep quiet. Bode hoped she believed it. He hoped she cared.
Chub said, "Let's tomorrow me and you go straight up to Tal'hassee and git our money."
Bode laughed sourly. "You checked in the mirror lately?"
"Tell 'em we's in a car accident."
"With what bobcats?"
"Anyways, they gotta pay us no matter how bad we look. We had leprosy, the motherfuckers still gotta pay us."