“What’s your best one?” I asked. “Give us a demonstration.”
“All right.” He leaned over the table and put a napkin in an ashtray. “Sometimes I can do it, but other times… not so much.”
He concentrated on the napkin, wiggled his fingers like a guitar player lightly fingering the strings. After about twenty, thirty seconds, smoke began to trickle up from the napkin, followed by a tiny flame. He snuffed it out with a spoon. Jo made a speech-like noise, but didn’t follow up.
“That’s my biggie,” he said, leaning back. “If we had another month, I might be able to do something more impressive. But…” He shrugged, then said to Jo, “If we come through this, I want you to tell me about Ogun Badagris. How that relates to me.”
She nodded.
“You know, that might have possibilities,” I said. “If you could start an electrical fire, we…”
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” he said. “After you get back from Ruddle’s, we’ll talk then.”
“I’ll tell you now if you want,” Jo said. “About Ogun. It won’t take too long.”
Pellerin suddenly appeared tired, pale and hollowcheeked, slumping in his chair, but he said, “Yeah, why don’t you?”
I was tired, too. Tired of talking, tired of the Seminole Paradise, tired of whatever game Jo was playing, tired of listening to my own thoughts. I told them I was off to Ruddle’s place and would return later that afternoon. On my way out, I heard a hissing from down the hallway. Tammy, wearing bra and panties, waved to me and retreated toward the bedroom, stopping near the door.
“Is your friend going to stay?” she asked in a stage whisper.
“For a while.”
She frowned. “Well, I don’t know.”
“You don’t know what?”
“We didn’t bargain on a four-way, especially with another woman.”
“You got something against women? It didn’t look like you did.”
Tammy didn’t catch my drift and I told her what I had witnessed.
“That’s different,” she said primly.
“Would more money help?”
She perked up. “Money always helps.”
“I’m going out now, but I’ll take care of you. I promise.”
“Okay!” She stood on tip-toe and kissed my cheek.
“One more thing,” I said. “Jo’s kind of shy, but once you start her up, she’s a tigress.”
“I bet.” Tammy shivered with delight. “Those long legs!”
“So in a few minutes why don’t you… maybe the both of you. Why don’t you go out there and warm her up? She really loves intimate touching. You know what I mean? She likes to be fondled. She may object at first, but stay with it and she’ll melt. I’ll get you your money. Deal?
“Deal! Don’t worry. We’ll get her going.”
“I’m sure you will,” I said.
The one salient thing I learned at Ruddle’s was that a pier extended out about a hundred feet into the water from a strip of beach, and at the end of the pier was moored a sleek white Chris Craft that had been set up for sports fishing—the keys to the boat, the Mystery Girl, were kept in a small room off the kitchen that also contained the controls to the security system. The house itself was a postcard. Big and white and ultramodern, it looked like the Chris Craft’s birth mother. An Olympic-sized pool fronted the beach, tennis courts were off to the side. The grounds were a small nation of landscaped palms and airbrushed lawn, its borders defined by a decorous electric fence topped with razor wire and guarded by a pink gatehouse with a uniform on duty. There was a plaque on the gate announcing that the whole shebang was called The Sea Ranch, but it would have been more apt if it had been named The Sea What I Got.
Ruddle’s son showed me around—a blond super-preppie with a cracker accent that had acquired a New Englander gloss. During our brief time together he said both “y’all” and “wicked haahd,” as if he hadn’t decided which act suited him best. He was impatient to get back to his tanned, perfect girlfriend, an aspiring young coke whore clearly high on more than life. She sat by the pool, listening to reggae, painting faces on her toenails, and flashed me an addled smile that gave me a contact high. I made sure to ask the kid a slew of inane questions (“Is that door sealed with a double grommet?” “What kind of infrared package does that sensor use?”), delaying and stalling in order to annoy him until, growing desperate, he gave me the run of the house and scurried back to her side.
The card room could be isolated from the remainder of the house. It had no windows and soundproofed walls, a bar, and, against the rear wall, three trophy cases celebrating Ruddle’s skill at poker. The place of honor was held by a ring won at a World Series of Poker circuit tournament in Tunica, Mississippi. It was flanked by several photographs of Ruddle with poker notables, Phil Ivey and Chris “Jesus” Ferguson and the like, who were apparently among those he had defeated. I was inspecting the table, an elegance of teak and emerald felt lit by an hanging lamp, when a lean, long-haired, thirtyish man in cut-offs walked in holding an apple, and asked in a Eurotrash accent what I was doing. I told him I was casing the joint.
“No, no!” He wagged a finger at me. “This is not good… the drugs.”
I explained that “casing the joint” meant I was looking the house over, seeing whether it would be possible to burglarize it.
He took a bite of his apple and, after chewing, said, “I am Torsten. And you are?”
I thought he had misunderstood me again, but when I had introduced myself, he said, “You have chosen a bad time. There will be many here this weekend. Many guards, many guests.”
“How many guards?” I asked.
“Perhaps five… six.” He fingered the edge of the table. “This is excellent work.”
“Are you a friend of the family?”
“Yes, of course. Torsten is everyone’s friend.”
He strolled around the table, trailing a hand across the felt, and said, “Now I must go. I wish you will have success with your crime.”
Later that afternoon as I was preparing to leave, sitting in my rental car and making some notes, I spotted him outside the house. He was carrying a Weed Whacker, yelling at an older man who was pruning bushes, speaking without a trace of an accent, cussing in purest American. There might be, I thought, a lesson to be drawn from this incident, but I decided that puzzling it out wasn’t worth the effort. While driving back to the hotel, I noticed that a motorcyclist in a helmet with a tinted faceplate was traveling at a sedate rate of speed and keeping behind me. Whenever I slowed, he dropped back or switched lanes, and when I parked in the hotel lot, he placed a call on his cell phone. Aggravated and wanting to convey that feeling, I walked toward him, but he kicked over the engine and sped off before I could get near.
A Do Not Disturb card was affixed to the doorknob of the Everglades Suite, so I went down to 1138. Jo, who had been napping, let me in and went into the bathroom to wash her face. I sat at her table and put my feet up. She came back out and lay down on the bed, turned to face me. After I’d briefed her on what I had learned, she said softly, “I’m glad you’re back.”
“I’m glad you’re glad,” I said glibly, wondering at the intimacy implied by her tone.
She shut her eyes and I thought for a moment she had drifted off. “I’m afraid,” she said.
“Yeah. Me, too.”
“You don’t act afraid.”
“If I let myself think about Saturday, I get to shaking in my boots.” I leaned toward her, resting my elbows on my knees. “We got to tough it out.”
“I’m not feeling very tough.”
I said something neutral and she reached out her hand, inviting me to take it. She caressed my wrist with her fingertip. Holding her hand while sitting on the edge of the chair grew awkward, and I moved to the bed. She curled up against me. I stroked her hair, murmured an assurance, but that seemed insufficient, so I kicked off my shoes and lay down, wrapping my arms around her from behind.