Because there was no bullet in that particular chamber; instead, a small piece of sand-gritted paper, bleached by sweat and saltwater, and folded tightly to fit the small round hole. If she’d been able to remove the paper and examine it, Amber would have seen that it bore six numerals and the likeness of a pink flamingo, official mascot of the Florida lottery.
“I tole you!” Chub crowed.
He was naked on the ground, and waving with his undamaged arm the recaptured Colt Python. Pinned in the sand and seaweed beneath him was Amber, struggling in silence.
“I tole you, yes I did.” Chub, broke into coarse, vicious laughter. “I tole you fuckers I was due for some decent luck!”
Bodean Gazzer hadn’t had sex in eleven months, his excuse for celibacy being that it was against the Bible to consort with nonwhite women, and all the white women he met demanded too much money. Still, his feverish pent-up desires regarding the fragrant and available Amber were clouded by misgivings.
Her unwillingness to service the White Clarion Aryans was evident from her vigorous resistance to Chub as he ungently disrobed her. And although Bode was intoxicated by the vision of Amber’s breasts spilling out of the Mossy Oak camo, he nonetheless was disturbed to be participing in the rape—and that’s where this was headed—of a white Christian woman of European descent. In fact, Bode would’ve been reluctant even if she were a Negro or a Cuban, not so much for the immorality of the crime but for the legal risks. Unlike Chub, Bode Gazzer had spent enough months behind bars to know it wasn’t worth knocking off a Burger King or boosting a Cadillac, or even two minutes of humping natural-blond pussy. Rape was felony time, and in Florida the rape of a white woman—even by a white man—could mean a long stretch in not-so-scenic Starke.
Bode also knew that Chub, in his current frame of mind, was immune to such logic. All Bode could do was hold the Colt revolver and stand there, hoping it wouldn’t take long, hoping they wouldn’t make much noise. The shiver of arousal sparked by Amber’s nudity had already died of distraction at the heaving, pink-butted spectacle of Chub; grimy and grunting and drool-flecked. The arresting sights and smells graphically reminded Bode Gazzer of his partner’s many hygienic lapses and killed any spark of temptation to join in the fun.
“Hol’ still! Hol’ still!” Chub kept huffing.
But the agile Amber would not.
“Hurry up,” Bode said, checking over his shoulder. The skinhead Shiner would go ballistic if he saw what was happening.
“I can’t get it in! Goddamn, make her hoi’ still!” Chub used his weight to constrain her. Ribbons of brown turtle grass clung to his thighs.
“Use the damn gun!” he hollered at his partner.
“Shit.” Bode knelt and placed the barrel to Amber’s head. She stopped squirming. Behind a tangle of yellow-blond hair, her eyes narrowed with acceptance; not coldness and wild anger, like that crazy Negro woman up in Grange.
This is the way it’s supposed to be, Bode mused. You see the gun, you quit trying to fight. “Be still now,” he said. “It’ll be over soon.”
“Listen to the man.” Chub seized Amber’s wrists, pulling them away from her chest. “And do your lips… all pushed out and pouty… you know, like how Kim Basinger does.”
Amber said, “OK, on one condition. Tell me your name.”
“What for!”
“I can’t make love to a man,” she said, “unless I know his name. I just can’t do it, I’d rather die.”
Bode Gazzer told Chub: “Don’t be a idiot.”
Chub, pinning Amber’s arms over her head, catching his breath. “Gillespie,” he said. “Onus Gillespie.”
Bode was relieved—it was such a strange name, he thought his partner had made it up.
Coolly Amber said, “Pleased to meet you, Otis.”
“Naw, it’s Onus. O-n-u-s.”
“Oh. Mine’s Amber.” She blinked innocently. “Amber Bernstein. That’s B-e-r-n-s-t-e-i-n.”
It was as if Bodean Gazzer had been mule-kicked in the gut.
“Get off!” he shrieked at Chub.
“No sir!”
“But didn’t you hear? She’s… she’s a Jew!”
“I don’t care if she’s Vietcong, I’m gone stick my weenie in.”