Kathy Hogan Trocheck - Truman Kicklighter 01 - Lickety-Split Read online

  “Wait now,” Wade said, panicking. “Man, I need my wheels. I can’t get to work or to the track without my wheels.”

  Butch let the toothpick droop in the corner of his mouth. His eyes were half closed, and the reptilian expression on his face reminded Wade of the alligator who slumbered the afternoons away on the grassy bank of the pond in back of the tourist court.

  “Better get a bus schedule, dude,” Butch drawled. “Your credit’s done run out with Sun Bay Auto Rental. My records show you owe us six hundred eighty-three dollars and seventy-two cents. Been owing it. You sure you ain’t got any of the money?”

  “Not that much,” Wade said. “Maybe a hundred, hundred twenty-five. Listen. If I can come up with a hundred, right now, how about letting me keep the car? This thing at the track, it’s a sure thing. By the end of tonight, I’ll have every dime I owe you. How about it?”

  Butch looked down at the clipboard with the rental agreement in his hand. “My boss is back at the shop right now. He’s a mean sumbitch. Told us to get the car and the money. Didn’t he, Curtis?”

  He shot his son an almost imperceptible nod, which meant that Curtis should not blurt out the fact that Butch was, in fact, the boss.

  Curtis got the message. “That’s right, Daddy.”

  “You remember what else the boss said?” Butch prompted.

  This was the signal. Curtis took the pistol out of his waistband and stroked Wade’s cheek with the gun barrel. Wade shrank away.

  “The boss said to do whatever we had to do, but don’t come back without the car and the money,” Curtis said.

  Without warning, Butch grabbed Wade, whirling him around and pinning his arms behind his back, twisting viciously.

  “Shit, man,” Wade cried, “you’re hurting me.”

  “That’s the plan,” Butch said. He gave Wade a shove.

  “Come on. Let’s go inside and see if your lady friend has any money. He’s got a cute little old spic girlfriend in there, Curtis.”

  Now Butch was giving Curtis the high sign again, so he attempted something close to a leer. “Yeah, Dad. Let’s get the chick.”

  Wade’s face was contorted with fear and pain. The big kid had taken over holding him now, and he clamped his mitts around Wade’s wrists like a vise. His hands and arms were throbbing.

  He wasn’t worried about Rosie’s safety. Nah. If one of these two came near her, she’d knee them quick in the balls and run like hell. But if she found out how much money he owed these goons, she’d never let him hear the end of it. It wouldn’t do to piss Rosie off. Not now. Not when they were so close.

  “No, man,” he gasped. “Leave her alone. Listen,” he said, lowering his voice. “I’ll give you the computer program. It’s worth a lot more than what I owe you. Lots more.”

  “Program?” Butch said. “Would that be the thing you been mouthin’ off about, the system to pick dogs?”

  “Yeah,” Wade said. He didn’t remember telling this guy about the program. He must have shot his mouth off while he was drunk.

  “Lemme go, okay? And I’ll tell you about it. Swear to God, this thing is guaranteed. Let me go and I’ll go in and get the printout for you. Fourteen races. Fourteen guaranteed winners.”

  Curtis held on tightly, like a bloodhound with a treed coon.

  Butch’s toothpick rolled over to the other side of his mouth. “It’s okay, boy,” he said finally. “Let’s go take a look at what Wade here has to offer.”

  Inside the cabin, Rosie watched through the dirt-caked window as the two thugs manhandled Wade.

  “Madre de Dios,” she muttered, locking the door and fastening the chain. She dragged a chair over to the door too, propping it under the doorknob. No telling what Wade was promising them.

  Five more minutes. That’s all she needed. She sat back down at the computer and tried to concentrate. Wade had designed a gridwork for predicting each race’s outcome. There were fourteen grids to fill out, one for each race. Running vertically down the side of the grid she’d numbered the dogs, one through eight. Across the top, there were spaces for weight, age, speed, experience, post position, track length, breeding—all the factors she used for handicapping.

  Then she’d filled in the blanks with numerical grades for each factor, all the material Wade had programmed into the computer.

  She’d gotten picks for ten races, in different combinations, including a perfecta, an exacta, and a quinella. The first three races the computer ran, the results were nearly identical to what she’d predicted using her old hand-done method. But the results for the fifth, seventh, and tenth races were different. That’s where they’d make their money, letting the computer figure in factors she couldn’t.

  She went into the bathroom and opened the Tampax box on the shelf in the bathroom, picking out the back row of tampons, the ones with the paper wrappers she’d carefully glued shut. She tore the wrappers off, took the rolled- up twenties out of the empty cardboard dispensers. Three hundred dollars.

  She took the money and tucked it in her bra. She wanted the money against her skin, where she could feel it, for good luck.

  Back to the program. She typed hurriedly, using the handwritten charts she’d worked on all week. She typed in the numbers for the twelfth race and tapped the enter button. The machine made a quiet noise, digesting, she thought of it. Rosie liked the computer. It was quiet. Competent. Like her, it ran on logic. Wade was a genius with numbers, but Rosie, she knew logic.

  Wade. She ran back to the window. Wade’s mouth was running a mile a minute. He was gesturing wildly, pointing toward the cabin, nodding confidently.

  “Oh, shit,” Rosie said, gritting her teeth. No fucking way. She hadn’t worked this hard, come this far, to hand the program over to a couple of goons to settle one of Wade’s bar bets.

  She darted back to the computer. Pushed the print button. No time to run the last race. She’d rely on her own picks for that. She ripped the printout out of the computer, folded it in quarters, and stuffed it in the pocket of her jeans. She popped a diskette into the computer’s hard drive and repeated the sequence of commands Wade had taught her.

  Seconds later, after the computer screen flashed the words “file copied,” she called up the file on the diskette. It was all there. Good. She took the diskette and put it in the zippered fanny pack she used as a pocketbook.

  Now there were voices at the door, and the knob was turning. Wade’s voice. “Rosie? Open up, babe. The door’s locked.”

  “Be right there,” she called. She called the program up again on the hard drive, punched some keys, and typed out onto the command line: k-i-1-1. The computer made its quiet chewing sounds and then the screen went blank. Swallowed whole, Rosie thought.

  She looked around the room regretfully. She didn’t mind the clothes so much. But her books, a hundred paperbacks probably, picked up at the book exchange, she hated to lose. But there was no time. She grabbed her rose-covered hat and jammed it on her head.

  “Rosie? Open up, dammit. This isn’t funny.”

  “I’m in the bathroom,” she called. “Be right there.”

  She went to the open window in the bedroom, and with one foot, kicked out the rotten screen. She had one leg out when the orange cat peeked out from under the bed.

  “Punkin!” she called softly. In one swift move she was back in the room, grabbing the kitten and tucking it under her arm. Then she was out the window and running, darting in between the tiny tourist cabins, the cat tucked under the crook of her arm like a football.

  Marguerite Streck was out in the front yard trying to get the Weedwacker to work when Michael pulled into the driveway.

  “What are you doing home?” she asked him. Saturdays were the busiest times at the lot, where Michael worked for his uncle Earl. And this was a busy month too, with snowbirds shopping for double-wides to get away from those brutal winters in Detroit and Des Moines.

  “You guys run out of mobile homes to sell?”

  “Don’t c
all it mobile homes,” Michael snarled. “It’s manufactured housing. Okay? Manufactured housing. And I’m home because I got somewhere to be tonight, if that’s all right with you.”

  “Whatever,” she said, turning her back on him and going back to the malfunctioning Weedwacker.

  Michael loosened his tie as he walked into the house, going straight to the refrigerator for a beer. Then he went into the living room. From here he could watch while Marguerite slashed the hell out of his hibiscus and oleanders.

  He took his cordless phone out of its stand and punched in a number. “Yeah,” he told the person who answered. “This is Mikey. Lemme talk to Nunz.”

  Marguerite was kneeling on the grass now, pulling handfuls of tangled nylon line out of the Weedwacker. Her face was beet red from the sun, her hair damp and plastered to her head.

  “Slob,” he said aloud.

  “Huh? Who the fuck is this?”

  “Oh no, Nunz,” Michael said hurriedly. “It’s me, Mikey. No, I was talking about Marguerite, my old lady. She’s out in the yard, sweating like a field hand. It’s disgusting, you know?”

  “You let your old lady do yardwork?” Nunz demanded. “What kind of man are you?”

  Nunzio Gianni was very formal and old-fashioned. Michael had never seen him in anything but a dark suit and a white dress shirt.

  “She likes to garden,” Michael said. “It’s like a hobby. Hey, Nunz,” he said, changing the subject. “You know that thing I was talking to you about? It’s all set for tonight.” “The thing?” Nunz had obviously forgotten. “The thing. With the puppies. Remember, I told you I got a line on a guy who can fix the puppies?”

  Nunz was still puzzled. “Puppies?” he repeated. “I got a parakeet. What the fuck do I need with puppies?” Michael shook his head and rolled his eyes. “Nunz. Remember? I got a guy who can fix those dogs over in St. Pete. The gray ones. Remember?”

  “Gray dogs? Oh yeah, yeah. The thing. I remember. Sure.”

  “Great,” Michael said, relieved. “So tonight’s the night. The guy is supposed to meet me there, you know, to give it to me.”

  “He’s gonna give it to you?” Nunz asked.

  Michael chuckled, thinking about that dipshit Wade. He’d run into him at the track in Tampa, impressed after watching Wade cash in a handful of winning tickets. He’d bought the kid a few drinks in the clubhouse, then they’d done a line of coke in the men’s room. He’d let it slip casually that he, Michael Streck, was close to Nunzio Gianni.

  “No shit. You work for the Giannis? ” Wade said, eyes widening.

  Everybody in the state knew the Giannis ran the rackets in Florida. Almost everybody assumed Nunzio Gianni worked for his cousin the capo, Salvatore “Sallie Gee” Gianni. What few realized was that Nunzio Gianni had never really met his second cousin Sallie.

  “With,” Michael had corrected Wade, “I work with the Giannis.”

  Nunz and Michael were “like this,” as Michael liked to put it, holding up two fingers pressed tightly together. Lately he’d been looking for something to solidify his relationship with the family and to get him the hell out of manufactured housing.

  This computer thing, he knew, was it. He’d suggested to Wade that he might be interested in investing some capital, an advance, the way Wade the banker’s son put it, against future earnings.

  “The kid’s got a system,” Michael told Nunz. “Something that’s a sure thing. What I need from you, Nunz, is some working capital for tonight, when I try the thing out.”

  There was silence at the other end of the line.

  “How much?”

  “I’m thinking ten.”

  Now there was button-punching, the sound of an adding machine on the other end of the phone.

  “What kind of terms we talkin’?”

  Michael was stunned. He’d been sure Nunz would give him the money just on a handshake. That was the way they’d done business before. Handshake. Man to man.

  “Nunz,” he said, “I thought we’d go partners. You know. I get the system, you provide the up-front money, we split fifty-fifty.”

  “You thought,” Nunz said. “We never discussed. Pick me up on the way to the track. I wanna meet this kid. See what the system is.”

  “Sure,” Michael said. “We’ll have dinner. Drinks. You’ll see.”

  He hung up the phone and swore loudly.

  “Shitfuckdamnhellpiss!” This was not how he’d planned the evening. The original plan went: Shake the kid down. Take the computer thing away from him. Lay down the bets. Then dinner, a nice rib-eye and caesar salad in the clubhouse. Maybe call Cookie from the track. He was sure he could find a way to get her to meet him. Winning made him horny as hell.

  All that was off now. He’d have to get the program away from Wade but at the same time keep him away from Nunz.

  “Shit,” he said, this time with feeling.

  Chapter FIVE

  She made herself small, nearly invisible, eyes cast down, arms held close to her body. It was a trick she’d learned in grade school so that the teachers wouldn’t call on her and the bigger kids would leave her alone.

  People got on and off the bus, laughed, talked, complained. If the driver noticed that she’d been riding for two hours, he said nothing. Finally, when the bus got to Williams Park, the central departure for every bus in the city system, she reluctantly got off. She had a plan now.

  There was a pay phone on the corner, across the street from the old Maas Brothers department store. Rosie dialed James’s number. It rang and rang.

  She hung up, dialed her girlfriend’s number. She had only a couple of real friends. But the answering machine picked up. Rosie looked at her watch. It was after four. Her friend Marion was probably on her way to work. Okay, she’d see her there.

  The warm bundle around her middle shifted, and she heard a plaintive mewing. She looked down, saw the kitten’s tiny pink nose poking out of the opening. She unzipped the zipper a little and stroked the kitten’s head. “Poor Punkin.” No way she could take the kitten to the track. Wade and those men would be looking for her, for sure. She sat down on one of the green benches. The fading afternoon sunlight still felt good and warm.

  She got out the schedule she’d picked up and scanned it, looking for the bus that would take her to the track. There was a soft flapping noise and she looked up, startled.

  Dozens and dozens of pigeons fluttered to the walkway in front of her. Parked in their midst was one of those adult tricycles, ridden by an old woman wearing a white sunbonnet, pedal-pusher slacks, and sunglasses with a white noseguard. The tricycle had a pair of wire baskets mounted behind the seat. In one basket sat a bored-looking dachshund, in the other there was a large bag of breadcrumbs, which the woman was dipping her hand into, throwing the crumbs to the flock of pigeons circling the bike.

  Rosie sat up and watched. The old woman clucked and cooed to the birds. The kitten stirred again. She looked down at it, then got up and walked over to the woman.

  The woman cringed and stopped throwing the crumbs as Rosie drew near. “I’m not hurtin’ nobody,” she said in a frail, high-pitched voice.

  “I like the birds too,” Rosie said. “And cats. You like cats?”

  The woman nodded. “Buster and me love all God’s animals.”

  Rosie dipped into the waistpack and brought out the kitten, who squirmed happily in her hands. “This is Punkin,” she said. “I’ve got to leave town, but I don’t have anybody to keep her.”

  “How much?” the woman asked.

  “No, I want to give her to you,” Rosie said. “Will you take her?”

  The woman smiled softly, taking the kitten in her arms, turning to the dachshund. “Look, Buster, a kitty.”

  Rosie saw that the dog’s eyes were filmed over with cataracts, the fur on its ears turning white at the tips. It turned its face toward the woman’s voice and barked twice. “See, Buster’s excited. She’ll be fine,” the old woman said.

  She put Punkin in the b
asket. Then she got back on the bike and slowly pedaled away.

  Rosie walked in the other direction, her fists clenched tighdy. “Don’t cry,” she told herself. “Don’t cry, dammit.” She saw the number 8 bus, the bus to the racetrack, pull up to the curb and she quickened her step to meet it.

  “Listen,” Pearl said. “It’s nothing. Really. Sometimes when I take the blood pressure medicine, I get dizzy and bump into things. I feel so stupid, running into my own bathroom door.”

  Truman lightly touched her cheek. A shiny, greenish-black welt was rising and her right eye was swollen almost shut. “We’ll sit the track out tonight,” he said.

  Mel stood there silently, his hands jammed in his baggy pants pockets, jingling his change and car keys.

  “Absolutely not,” Pearl said. She gave Mel a little push. “You boys go on. I’ve got unpacking to do, and then Dotty Milas wants me to come down and play canasta. Go on now,” she repeated. “I’m fine. I feel stupid, is all.”

  She handed Mel his hat, a beat-up straw fedora. Then she edged both men toward the door. She gave Mel a quick peck on the cheek, then turned to Truman. “Keep an eye on him, TK,” she whispered. “He’s not himself tonight.”

  “You sure this is all right?” Truman asked, alarmed. Mel had spoken only a couple of times since Truman had gone up to the Wisnewskis’ room to see if they were ready to go. He wasn’t even sure Mel recognized him.

  “He’s better if he gets out and doesn’t sit around and stew,” Pearl said. “He likes to be around people. But he forgets where he is sometimes, just sort of fades-like. You stay with him and he’ll be fine.”

  So Truman stayed right at Mel’s elbow when they got down to the street. They stood out in front of the Fountain of Youth, waiting with the good-sized throng for the Snowbird Special to pick them up.

  It was twilight, and the sky was streaked pink, orange, blue, and purple. There was a hint of a breeze coming off Tampa Bay a couple of blocks away, but it was nice and dry tonight, not like in the summer, when you wanted to pick a handful of that wet, suffocating air and wring it out like a washrag.