“You bullshitter.”
“You adorable, perfect, glorious Hepburn, you.”
“You only say it ’cause it’s true,” Tiffany said.
They had taken ten thousand dollars cash and went back to the cheap hotel in Henderson that first night and slept upon it, despite the entreaties of the staff at Terribles to stay in one of the premier suites. Mark and Tiffany promised they’d come back later, although he didn’t really know in which splendid hut they would install themselves. Now Mark got up from the bed, went to the closet, and brought out a white teddy bear the size a grandma might be. He said, “Happy Millions, baby. It’s only a start.”
He couldn’t believe it. He told the new guy not to bother beyond the yellow tape. Now there he was, zipping up after takinga leak by the mesquite. “Fred! What the hell you doin’ back there?”
Fred was a rugged old ex-trucker, maybe sixty, sixty-five. He walked like he had stickers in his shoes. When he came up to Jimmy D, he said, “Got you a stinker back there,” and held his pale blue eyes on him a while before he spit to the side. “I’d cover that up with a load of dirt, I was you, before you lay down more tin.”
“Come on back to the office,” Jim D said.
There he peeled off a hundred and gave it to Fred and said, “Thanks for your work. I’ll give you a ring if I need you some more.”
“A pleasure workin’ for you, Mr. Daniels.”
The air conditioner louvers were aimed right down on Jimmy when he called Aram. “Get Bo to call me, pronto.”
“He ain’t on my dance card, Jimmy. I don’t know where to-”
“Raghead, get Bo to call me to-fuckin’-day, or you’ll be eatin’ your own balls for breakfast, dig? Dig?”
Noon, Ron Bodella called. “I know I owe ya,” he told Jim.
“Listen and listen to me carefully,” Jim said. “Your product is stinking. You did a piss-poor job in covering it up, Shit-for-brains.”
“I put lye on it. That shouldn’ta-”
“Did I tell you to listen? Did I?”
The line was silent.
“Your assignment, asshole, is to get you two skunks. I don’t care how, I don’t care where, I don’t want questions, I don’t want explanations, I don’t want delays. I want two skunks. Dead or alive. You put them out on that heap… no. Back up. I’m going to dump a load of scrap there, but I want them skunks out by the trees like they been pests and I had to kill ’em. I want them there by tonight. That’s it. Over and out.”
He hung up the phone, loosened his shirt, rose from his desk and stood right in front of the blowing airstream and said, “Shit for brains. All of ’em. Shit for brains.” But then his eyes took on the smile his lips barely formed.
Tiffany cruised the penthouse suite. “How can people live like this?” she asked Mark.
“They do, all over the world. Not just for a day, not just for a night.”
“Where does all the money come from?”
“Only the Shadow knows.”
She lay down on the king-sized bed and said, “I mean really.”
“I don’t know, doll. It’s there, right under us poor slobs’ faces, but it’s invisible to us. You don’t really see what’s so far above your station you can’t imagine.”
“I keep seeing all the poor people in the newscasts. Flood victims. Starving Africans. Neglected kids.” She lay on the bed in her white sundress with the lavender swirls. Spread around her were sheaves of green, like brittle leaves from an exotic tree. The teddy bear sat in a white wicker chair on a cushion of deep-green velvet and gazed out at the horizon thick with yellow smog.
Mark said, “It’s time for me to go, hon. I can get in maybe five hours on the water, then I’m done.”
“Go. Go,” she said. “Bring back a mermaid, if you like. I’m napping, and if this is only a dream I’ll soon find out.”
He walked over and kissed her warmly on the lips, and said, “What good’s a mermaid to me when I’ve got the whole enchilada?”
“Animal,” she murmured, and shut her eyes. Then she opened them as he was going out the door, and added, “Mark? You’re not going out there by yourself, are you? You said Tommy would go along?”
“Sure. Then he can take his boat back when we’re done, drop me off here, or, shoot, guess what? I got a rich girlfriend. I bet she’d pay for a cab.”
Jimmy couldn’t fuckin’ believe it. Again. There they were! That actor shit. That twat shit! On the friggin’ front page!
The headline again. He stared at it. The caption. The photo itself. It was them, that pair from the lake. She, in a white dress with leetle-bitty strings holding it up. Snip, snip, take it down,but there’d be nothin’ under it. The guy, MarkMouth, holding up one corner of a giant check that had 1.83 Million written on it. What the holy fuck was this? Somebody playin’ tricks on him? He tasted something in his mouth like after the dry heaves, like years ago when he was still a drinker and he puked a dozen times with nothing finally coming up but the taste. He felt the inside of his nose prickle. He thought, for a moment, he would cry.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a frumpy woman in a cop uniform and a man he recognized as the Moapa County Sheriff sitting at a table two away from his in the restaurant. What the hell? The sheriff raised a finger at him, as in greeting, and nodded. Then he rose and came over to Jimmy’s table.
“Howdy.”
“Howdy back.”
“I’m Sheriff Thompson.”
“I seen you around the Lake.”
“You wouldn’t happen to know anything about a fella named Dean Aspey, would you? Fella got killed over there around Red Rock? You probably read about it in the papers.” He put a finger on the newspaper laying on the table.
“What are you talkin’ about, Sheriff? I wouldn’t know anything about that. Why would you come and talk to me about it?” He met the eyes of the frumpy cop with a name tag that read just JONES.
“Well,” the sheriff said, “this fella mighta been the same fella you and your friends mighta helped out on the roadside, according to someone who seemed to know.”
“I don’t mean to sound rude, sir, but why don’t you go back out to that someone and ask some more questions, because I surely do not know to which you refer, and I am just taking me a break here. I run a busy business, and I don’t have a lot of time for chit-chat.”
“Thank you, Mr. Daniels. I may just be calling on you again sometime.” The sheriff turned, but then he eased back and said, “I b’lieve I read in the papuhs your bidness was sufferin’ some, didn’t I? You file for bankruptcy protection, sumpin’ like that?”
“Sheriff,” Jim Daniels said, “I’m sure you don’t discuss your personal finances in public. Why would you think that I would be so inclined? Have a nice day.” He gave Jones a look, dumberthan a stump she appeared to be, probably Polish or Russian by the look of her, who took a common name. He rummaged in his pocket for his roll of bills while setting his eyes back on that blasted photo with the two grinning punkin-heads and the fat casino cats beside. Dolts, them two, who never earned an honest buck in their lives.
It wasn’t the blood on the walls that set investigators back on their heels. Red-patterned walls they’d seen before. It wasn’t even the blood on the money. The money, well, you have to admit it, the money was more eye-catching than the mayhem, given the circumstance. Guessing, one could say there might have been a couple hundred grand on the bed. Piles of it. Pillows of it. In the center there was about a yard of blood-soaked bills, but so what? Throw the notes in the washer: Good as new.
No, it was something else that sent chills down the spine. A teddy bear. A big, happy-faced, cuddly, white, blood-soaked teddy bear, lying off to the side, dead as can be.