Chub watched him in a neutral but not entirely innocuous way. He said: "You understand what coulda happened? That we wouldn't be partners no more if I blowed your brains all over this truck and took the Lotto stub for m'self."
Bode nodded tightly. Until now it hadn't occurred that Chub might rip him off. Obviously it was something to think about. He said, "It's gonna work out fine. You'll see."
"OK," said Chub. He opened a beer: warm and fizzy. He closed his eyes and sucked down half the can. He wanted to trust Bode Gazzer but it wasn't always easy. Negro,for God's sake. Why'd he keep on with that word? It troubled Chub, made him wonder if Bode wasn't all he claimed to be.
Then he had another thought. "They a whorehouse in Grange?"
"Who knows," Bode said, "and who cares."
"Just don't forget where you hid our ticket."
"Gimme a break, Chub."
'Be helluva way to lose out on fourteen million bucks, winds up in the sheets of some whorehouse."
Bode Gazzer stared straight ahead at the highway. He said, "Man, you got a wild imagination."
The brains of a goddamn squirrel, but a wild imagination.
Tom Krome didn't wait to unpack; tossed his carry bag on the bed and dashed out. The owner of the bed-and-breakfast was pleased to give directions to the home of Miss JoLayne Lucks, at the corner of Cocoa and Hubbard across from the park. Krome's plan was to drop in with sincere apologies, invite Miss Lucks to a proper dinner, then ease into the interview gradually.
His experience as a visiting journalist in small towns was that some folks would tell you their life story at the drop of a hat, and others wouldn't say boo if your hair was on fire. Waiting on the woman's porch, Krome didn't know what to expect. He had knocked: No reply. He knocked again. Lights shone in the living room, and Krome heard music from a radio.
He walked around to the backyard and rose on his toes, to peer in the kitchen window. There were signs of a finished meal on the table: a setting for one. Coffee cup, salad bowl, a bare plate with a half-nibbled biscuit.
When Krome returned to the porch, the door stood open. The radio was off, the house was still.
"Hello!" he called.
He took a half step inside. The first thing he noticed was the aquarium. The second thing was water on the hardwood floor; a trail of drips.
From down the hall, a woman's voice: "Shut the door, please. Are you the reporter?"
"Yes, that's right." Tom Krome wondered how she knew. "Are you JoLayne?"
"What is it you want? I'm really not up for this."
Krome said, "You all right?"
"Come see for yourself."
She was sitting in the bathtub, with soap bubbles up to her breasts. She had a towel on her hair and a shotgun in her hands. Krome raised his arms and said, "I'm not going to hurt you."
"No shit," said JoLayne Lucks. "I've got a twelve-gauge and all you've got is a tape recorder."
Krome nodded. The Pearlcorder he used for interviews was cupped in his right hand.
"Sure is tiny," JoLayne remarked. "Sit down." She motioned with the gun toward the commode. "What's your name?"
"Tom Krome. I'm with The Register."He sat where she told him to sit. She said, "I've had more company today than I can stand. Is this what it's like to be rich?"
Krome smiled inwardly. She was going to be one helluva story.
"Take out the cassette," JoLayne Lucks told him, "and drop it in the tub."
Krome played along. "Anything else?"
"Yeah. Quit staring."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't tell me you never saw a woman take a bath. Oh my, is it the bubbles? They sure don't last long."
Krome locked his eyes on the ceiling. "I can come back tomorrow."
JoLayne said, "Would you kindly stand up. Good. Now turn around. Get the robe off that hook and hand it to me without peeking, please."
He heard the slosh of her climbing out of the tub. Then the lights in the bathroom went out.
"That was me," she said. "Don't try anything."
It was so dark that Krome couldn't see his own nose. He felt something sharp at his back.
"Gun," JoLayne explained.
"Gotcha."
"I want you to take off your clothes."
"For Christ's sake."
"And get in the bathtub."
"No!" he said.
"You want your interview, Mr. Krome?"
Until that moment, everything that had happened in the house of JoLayne Lucks was splendid material for Krome's feature story. But not this part, the disrobing-at-gunpoint of the reporter. Sinclair would never be told.
Once Krome was in the water, JoLayne Lucks turned on the lights. She stood the shotgun against the toilet, and knelt next to the tub. "How you feeling?" she asked.
"Ridiculous."
"Well, you shouldn't. You're a good-enough-looking man." She peeled the towel off her head and shook her hair.
Tom Krome roiled the water to churn up more soap bubbles, in a futile effort to conceal his shriveled cock. JoLayne thought that was absolutely adorable. Krome fidgeted self-consciously. He reflected on the difficult and occasionally dangerous situations in which he'd found himself as a reporter urban riots, drug busts, hurricanes, police shootouts, even a foreign coup. Yet he'd never felt so stymied and helpless. The woman had thought it out very carefully. "Why are you doing this?" he asked.
"Because I was scared of you."
"There's nothing to be scared of."
"Oh, I can see that."
He laughed then. Couldn't help it. JoLayne Lucks laughed, too. "You gotta admit it breaks the ice."
Krome said, "You left the front door open."
"I sure did."
"And that's what you do when you're scared? Leave the door open and wait buck naked in the bath?"
"With a Remington," JoLayne reminded him, "full of nickel turkey load. Gift from Daddy." She ran some hot water into the tub. "You gettin' chilly?"
Krome kept his hands folded across his groin. There was no sense trying to act casual, but he did. JoLayne put her chin on the edge of the tub. "What do you want to know, Mr. Krome?"
"Did you win the lottery?"
"Yes, I won the lottery."
"Why aren't you happy about it?"
"Who says I'm not."
"Will you keep your job at Dr. Crawford's?" The lady at the bed-and-breakfast had told him JoLayne Lucks worked at the veterinary clinic.
She said, "Hey, your fingers are pruning up."
Krome was determined to overcome the distraction of his own nakedness. "Can I ask a favor? There's a notebook and a ballpoint pen in the pocket of my pants."
"Oh, no you don't."
"But you promised."
"I beg your pardon?" She picked up the gun again; gonged the barrel loudly against the tub's iron faucet, which protruded from the wall between Krome's feet.
OK, he thought. We'll do it her way.
"JoLayne, have you ever won anything before?"
"Bikini contest at Daytona. I was eighteen, for heaven's sake, but I know what you're thinking." She rolled her eyes.
Krome said, "What was the prize?"
"Two hundred bucks." She paused. Puffed her cheeks. Propped the shotgun against the sink. "Look, I can't lie. It was a wet T-shirt contest. I tell people it was bikinis because it doesn't sound so slutty."
"Heck, you were just a kid."
"But you'd put it in the newspaper anyway. It's too juicy notto."
She was right: It was an irresistible anecdote yet one that could be retold tastefully, even poignantly, as JoLayne Lucks would appreciate when she finally saw Tom Krome's feature article. In the meantime he could do little but gaze at the glassy bubbles that clung to the wet hair on his chest. He felt disarmed and preposterous.
"What are you afraid of?" he asked JoLayne.
"I've got just an awful feeling."
"Like a vision?" Krome was fishing to see if she was one of the local paranormals. He hoped not, even though it would've made for a more colorful story.
"Not a vision, just a feeling," she said. "The way you can sometimes feel a storm coming, even when there's not a cloud in the sky."
It was agony, hearing one good quote after another slip away untranscribed. Again he begged for his notebook.