He Was Her Man Read online

  “One of His agents did. Nobody saw it, but from what I hear, it was a haint. Witch, warlock. But it all ends up the same thing, transmutation, reconfiguration.” Thwap thwap.

  “How come the Lord did it, you think?” asked June.

  “That horse betting. Lord don’t like betting. Don’t like anybody has anything to do with it. Gambling’s an abomination in the eyes of the Lord. That’s what I told Loydell Watson, right to her face, her daughter getting ready to marry that McKay man. What I heard, he was out at that track nearly every day betting money on them racehorses. He’ll come to no good. ’Course that Jinx Watson got the curse on her, too, taking that lottery money. It’s all the same thing.”

  “Whoowee,” said June. “Witches out killing everybody got anything to do with gambling? They got themselves a row to hoe.”

  “There’s no such thing as a witch,” mumbled Mozelle. “Even if there was, God ain’t got nothing to do with them. Woman’s crazy.”

  “I heard that, Mozelle Williams.” Ruby delivered one last thump to her victim, then stepped outside her cubicle. She was pinch-faced with inky black hair, tall, pencil-thin, pushing 60, wearing what looked like a pink nylon nurse’s uniform zipped up to her chin. “And I’m here to tell you you are wrong. Wrong as a person can be, and I get down on my knees every night and pray for your eternal soul.”

  Mozelle made a sour face. “I hope you don’t be setting no witches on me when you doing that.”

  “I’m setting the Lord on you, Mozelle, that’s what. Witches, I told you, sometimes they be the Lord’s agents.”

  “I thought witches worked for the devil,” Kitty piped up.

  Ruby narrowed her eyes. She knew an infidel when she heard one. Disbeliever. Fun-poker. Heathen. “Check your First Samuel, Twenty-eight, you want to see witches.”

  “In the Bible?” said Mozelle. “I never saw no witches in my Bible.”

  “Well, you didn’t know where to look.” Obviously Ruby did, as she marched smartly over to a desk of chipped green enamel, opened a drawer, reached in deep, and pulled out a white pebble-grain volume stamped in gold, flipped right to chapter and verse. Then she wet her thin lips, peered down her sharp nose, cleared her throat, and read the account of the witch of Endor summoning up the spirit of Samuel at the request of Saul.

  “Well, I don’t care what you say,” said June. “No witch killed that jockey boy. And furthermore, nobody I know ever saw a witch in their whole lives, and I know some grannies who speak regularly with folks done passed over.”

  “Well,” Ruby said. “You wouldn’t necessarily know one if you saw it. They take all forms.” Sam couldn’t wait to hear what they were.

  “Unh-huh,” said June.

  Ruby said, “I know you don’t believe me. But listen to this. There was this woman from over near Pine Bluff, her cat was a witch. And what the cat used to do, in the night it would swap spirits with the woman. So the woman would go out, walking in her sleep, and do all kinds of witchy things.”

  “My Aunt Odessie, she walks in her sleep,” said June. “Mozelle, I told you about her. Poor thing.”

  “Nobody wants to hear about your old auntie. Would you let me finish this story?” said Ruby with what Sam didn’t think was a very Christian attitude. “Anyway, one night this woman’s spirit is in the cat, and the cat’s spirit is in the woman, and lo and behold, the cat got out through a rip in the screen and got run over in the middle of the road. And that poor woman, to right this very day, is in a sanitorium over in Little Rock in an irreversible condition. Can’t speak a word. You ask her something, she just meows.”

  “Ummmmhuh. Ain’t that something?” said Mozelle.

  Then Kitty piped up. “What I want to know is, when she goes to the bathroom, does the woman use the toilet or the litter box?”

  Sam watched Ruby’s face turn to vinegar. No doubt about it. Right now the odds of her interviewing this Foot-washing Baptist for American Weird stood about a million to one. If she wanted to do some work, she’d poke around, find out about Mr. You Know Who, see if what he was up to might fit the bill.

  *

  Back at the Gas ’N Grub, Olive’s heart was pounding. “Wait! Wait!” She ran out after the tramp who’d found her ring.

  He wheeled with a wild look in his eye. “What do you want?” His voice sounded rusty, like a porch swing that had been out all winter.

  “That’s mine, what you’ve got in your pocket.”

  “I ain’t got nothing in my pocket.” He wiped at his nose.

  “You do, too. You do, and I know what it is. It’s a ring! Show me it ain’t!”

  He stepped back, his eyes slits. “So what if it is? What’s it to you?”

  “It’s mine. It was on my property, and if you don’t hand it over, I’m calling the police.”

  Olive stepped right up close to the bum expecting him to smell like a hog, but he didn’t. He was plenty shifty-eyed, though. Real pale gray eyes that didn’t give back any light, just like cold cement. She wished that Loydell was here to get a load of this sucker. Loydell had been the matron for almost 40 years for the women prisoners, when there was any, at the Garland County Jail. And Loydell knew a real criminal when she saw one. Olive was sure she’d say this fellow was the genuine article. She wasn’t going to spend another single solitary minute feeling sorry for him, especially since he was standing between her and a thousand bucks.

  “Are you deaf, old man? I said if you don’t give me that ring, I’m calling the cops.”

  He took the ring out of his pocket—it was the very one Madeline had dropped, big old emerald-cut diamond, bigger than any the tourists had ever picked up at the Crater of Diamonds over near Murfreesboro—and stared at it for a long minute. Then he said, “Can you prove it’s yours?”

  Well. That made her step back a bit, catch her breath. But she knew whose it was, and she knew who was going to get that thousand-dollar reward for it, and if she didn’t, it’d be over her dead body. “I most certainly can,” she said.

  He waggled a dirty finger in her face. “I don’t think so. I think if you could prove it, it wouldn’t have taken you so long to say. What I think is finders keepers, and I’m the finder.”

  Olive could see the thousand-dollar reward slipping away. If she called the cops and they came, there was that thing about possession being nine-tenths of the law, and this son of a bitch definitely had the ring in his mitt.

  Which probably meant he’d get the reward. The very idea made her chest hurt.

  “Okay. I’ll give you fifty dollars for it. For that you can buy yourself a whole lot of Thunderbird.”

  “Ha! You must think I’m a fool, I’d sell you a diamond like this for fifty bucks. It’s worth at least a thousand. Pawnshop’d give me a thousand, for sure. I’ll just walk on up the road, Hot Springs’s lousy with pawnshops.”

  He was bluffing. Olive turned away.

  “Okay, okay. Seven-fifty. I’ll take seven-fifty.”

  “I wasn’t born yesterday.” She said that over her shoulder, walking back toward the store. Pearl was standing right inside the door, her tail wagging, her nose up against the glass. Every time Olive saw that sweet face, her heart turned over. They were right, what they said about dogs. Nobody’d ever loved her as much as Pearl. She turned back to the tramp. “A hundred’s my best offer.”

  “Five.”

  At that, she’d still clear another five hundred on the deal. But if she’d just looked harder a little while ago, she could have had the whole enchilada. At five hundred, the suite at the Palace would shrink to a single room. Her long weekend of at-home luxury telescope to a couple of days. She shook her head. “Two, and that’s my best offer.”

  “Four.”

  It looked like 300 was going to be it. Olive tried 225. 250. But three it was. Three once, three twice, three thrice, she had herself a genuine emerald-cut diamond ring for 300 dollars on which she could clear 700, after she got the reward.…

  But wait a danged minute
. Who said she had to call Madeline at the Arlington? If the ring was worth a quarter of a million, she could sell it herself, rake in God knows how much. Now she saw herself back at the Palace registration desk, Pearl loping along beside her, herself saying, Thank you kindly, a penthouse suite will be just fine. She was calling room service, inviting Loydell to join her, winning a high stakes poker game, chucking the Gas ’N Grub altogether.…

  “Lady, you gonna give me the cash?” The tramp was waiting with his dirty hand on the counter, palm up.

  “Oh, sure. Just a minute.” She didn’t have but about a hundred in the register, and she didn’t want him to see her reach down under for the cash box. Of course, she still had the revolver in her pocket, could feel the weight of it, if he tried anything funny. He smiled. He had nice teeth for a bum. Then he held the ring out in his right hand for Olive to see again, speed her up. Pearl barked, and he leaned over like he was going to pat her. It was then Pearl lunged at him, snapped right in his face.

  “Oh, my God! I’m so sorry,” said Olive. Pearl, you bad dog, she was about to say, until she saw that Pearl had snatched the scraggly beard and mustache away. Underneath, the tramp was smooth and tan and clean and not nearly as old as she’d thought.

  “You’re not a bum! You’re some kind of…fake. Some kind of phony.” And then as she said the words, Olive got it. No indeed, she wasn’t born yesterday. In fact, she was so old that she’d forgotten some of what she once knew, what she’d learned living the life. But now she remembered. Bait and switch. A con game, old as the hills. As old as human greed. And she’d been greedy. That’s how con games worked. You had to be greedy to get took. She reached for the phone. Now she really was calling the police.

  “Put the phone down, lady.” His voice wasn’t creaky anymore. It wasn’t young, either, but it was strong. And mean.

  Pearl growled, showing her teeth. She was a big powerful dog.

  *

  Shit, Doc Miller said to himself. Mickey’d warned they ought not to take this one last mark before they rolled into Hot Springs. So he’d gone ahead anyway, just to show her. He couldn’t stand it when she told him what to do. The lost ring was one he’d pulled a million times. And they’d done it together, the two of them, before. It always played like a charm. Mickey working outside, setting up the mark, pretending she’d dropped the ring, waiting up the road while he made the sting, pocketed the cash, left the 25-dollar paste imitation with the pigeon, the blowoff being “Madeline” wouldn’t be at the hotel, the mark would keep calling for the reward, then realizing the pretty lady never was going to be there, probably trying to sell the paste ring for a profit. By then, he and Mickey would be far away. Except, this time they wouldn’t. They’d just be up the road, in Hot Springs.

  No way, Mickey’d said that. That’s how cons screw themselves, not being able to see that some chances weren’t worth it. Like stealing two newspapers out of the vending machine. The cops pick you up, some little crap like that, the next time you know, they’ve run your priors, you’re looking at a year in the county jail. For what? A 35-cent paper?

  Awh, come on, he’d said after they’d driven by the little convenience store. You turning weird? It’s an old lady—and we’ll bag enough to help pay the rent. This setup could be expensive, Mick. We don’t know what all it’s going to take.

  What he did know was that this was the one he was going out on. Doc’s retirement. His last job, not that he’d told Mickey that. He knew she’d be pissed, it’d queer the deal.

  But if it went the way they’d planned, the boys’d talk about it for years. Of course, that wasn’t the important part. What was important was getting out, buying himself that new Cadillac, silver to match that new Airstream. Jesus. He’d be in gypsy heaven. His ma would be proud. Of course, she’d been dead these 20 years.

  Even more important was doing Jack Graham. That was the icing on the cake. They could pull this deal off, Doc’d have this loot on top of his nest egg—and the place was here, Hot Springs, Arkansas. Adopted home of Jack Graham, who’d never been very far away from Doc’s mind since that afternoon Jack had called him out in New Orleans. Beat him up. Broke his nose. Whole bunch of Jack’s friends standing around, laughing their asses off. Big Jack, Smilin’ Jack, he was the one who queered the deal with that horse in the first place, if you asked Doc. Blamed it on him. Made him look small.

  Well, Doc had gone to Jack’s house and left his calling card, hadn’t he? But it wasn’t enough. Whatever he’d done, it would never be enough until Jack couldn’t smile anymore. That’s why Doc wanted to do this now. Pull this job off and put an end to Jack all in one fell swoop.

  It was like it was meant to be. That’s what Doc’s mama would say if she were here. She’d close her eyes, run her fingers through her gold coin necklaces. Not that gypsies believed in the phony magic they sold to the gaji, but they believed in signs. And this kind of symmetry was a sign. It was meant to be, marching right into the Jack’s territory to pull off this scam, grabbing the boodle while pissing in Jack’s yard. If he went ahead and took Jack out, Doc could begin his retirement relaxed.

  But none of that was going to happen if he had to do a little sleepover in the county jail right now.

  He grabbed Olive’s wrist.

  “Owh!” she hollered. “Let go, you’re hurting me!”

  At that, the dog locked onto his calf, just above his boot, her sharp teeth sinking deep. He reached over to a shelf and jerked up a quart bottle of apple juice, knocked the dog in the head with it, hard. The dog’s jaw released, and she tumbled to the floor.

  “You son of a bitch!” the old woman screamed. His head snapped. She had his full attention now. Her face was bright red, her mouth trembling. He watched her hand slide down the front of her big purple-and-green muumuu, reach into her pocket and find what he was afraid she was going to find. It was a powerful gun, the Bulldog. It’d blow a man’s stomach out, splatter his brains all over the wall. He could see what would happen if he didn’t reach his hand out, grab her arm, she was holding it way out, too far from her body, asking for it practically, it wouldn’t be hard to twist the gun loose, that part was easy, she was an old woman. The part that he’d forgotten (for a similar scenario had happened before and would probably happen again, obstacles like this having a way of cluttering up the crooked streets of Doc’s life) was the sweet shock of release when he knocked her face down with one punch, grasped her fat neck from behind and squeezed. After that, it didn’t take long at all.

  4

  A WHILE LATER Mickey and Doc were standing in the big yellow kitchen of the rambling two-story house set back in the woods five miles west of Hot Springs. Built of stone sometime in the twenties, the house backed onto Lake Ouachita, a large blue lake with many fingers. Mickey and Doc had been going at it for some time now, but she hadn’t heard anything that made sense.

  She said, “Explain it to me one more time, please, Doc. Now, I know I’m stupid.…”

  “You can cut the sarcasm, okay? I told you, the old lady wasn’t going for it.” He was rolling up the sleeves of the white shirt he’d changed into, that and some khakis, shucking the tramp duds. “She was giving me a hassle, I decided to blow, and she came after me. I jumped in her car and hit it. Got here five minutes ahead of you, washed up.” He peered into the refrigerator. “There’s not a damned thing in here except some ketchup.”

  “Furnished doesn’t mean they stock it with Doritos and all that other junk you eat. You wanted that, you should have sent the landlord a shopping list. Though I see you managed some beer. You nab that off the old lady?”

  “You can get down off your high horse, okay? What’s your damn beef?” He was staring into the knotty pine cabinets now. “Ah ha!” Holding his beer in one hand he pulled out a fresh jar of Miracle Whip and a box of graham crackers with the other. Then he started opening one drawer after another, searching for a knife.

  Mickey couldn’t stand drawers being left open. Doors. Tops off jars. She went
behind Doc now, closing things. “I can’t believe you’re really going to eat that—and with beer.” She wrinkled her nose.

  “Look!” Doc wheeled, a cracker thick with salad dressing poking out of his face. “Are you going to ride me all the way through this job? Is that the way it’s going to be? ’Cause if it is, I can find another partner like that.” He snapped his fingers. “I don’t need you, Mick.”

  “Oh, yeah?” That was a crock. Who’d been in town working the races a couple weeks back, spotted the chance of a big score?

  He knew that. “Big deal. Take a finder’s fee, you can blow.” He crammed another cracker in his mouth, washed it down with the Bud. “I’m telling you, I don’t need the grief.”

  “All I’m asking you is, why’d you take the old lady’s Sunliner? It doesn’t make any sense. We’ve run the lost ring how many times, you’ve probably done it a thousand, did you ever take a car before this? Did you ever nab something big like that you’d have to dump, something that’d tie you to the mark that easy? Besides, Jesus, Doc, we’re not thieves.”

  “Ho ho ho.” The Old St. Nick laugh didn’t work with a mouth full of crackers and salad dressing. “Nope, we’re not thieves. We’re hustlers.”

  Mickey sniffed and started turning side to side, her arms up, elbows bent, still wearing the yellow suit. “Con artists, Doc. Artistes.”

  “Yeah, we’re that all right. Fancy schmanzy crooks. All the partners in the world, I got to hook up with a princess—Jesus, could you stop with the Jane Fonda? I’m talking to you.”

  “And I’m listening. I’m still listening for the explanation to why it was—even if for some insane reason, some bolt of inspiration came down and struck you from the blue—you felt absolutely compelled to take that car, and I’ll admit it’s something special. I’d love it myself.” Mickey was doing toe touches now in the middle of the green-and-yellow tiled floor, still in her alligator high heels. She was proud of keeping her flexibility considering how much time she spent traveling. “What were you doing back there that took so long, anyway? Usually, you’re in, you’re out, quick as a bunny on the yak. And why it was then you passed me, had to be doing eighty? You didn’t toot the horn. I’d have pulled over, you’d have dumped the car, left it on the side of the road. What was all that?”