The biker stood up and casually kicked the tattoo stool into a corner. “I got a hint for you, too, jackoff: Gimme my money and move your cherry white ass down the road.”
Demencio was tinkering with the weeping Madonna when the doorbell rang. There stood JoLayne Lucks with a tall, clean-cut white man. JoLayne carried one end of the aquarium, the white man had the other.
“Evening,” she said to Demencio, who could do nothing but invite them in.
“Trish is at the grocery,” he said, pointlessly.
They set the aquarium on the floor, next to Demencio’s golf clubs. The journey up the steps had tilted all the little turtles to one end of the tank. JoLayne Lucks said: “Meet my friend Tom Krome. Tom, this is Demencio.”
The men shook hands; Krome scrutinizing the decapitated Madonna, Demencio eyeing the agitated cooters.
“Whatcha up to?” JoLayne asked.
“No big deal. One of her eyeholes got clogged.” Demencio knew lying would be a waste of energy. It was all there, spread out on the living room carpet for any fool to see—the disassembled statue, the tubes, the rubber pump.
JoLayne said, “So that’s how you make her cry.”
“That’s how we do it.”
The man named Tom was curious about the bottle of perfume.
“Korean knockoff,” Demencio said, “but a good one. See, I try to make the tears smell nice. Pilgrims go for that.”
“That’s a fine idea,” said JoLayne, though her friend Tom looked doubtful. She told Demencio she had a proposition.
“I need you and Trish to watch over the turtles until I get back. There’s a bag of fresh romaine in the car, and I’ll leave you money for more.”
Demencio said, “Where you goin’, JoLayne?”
“I’ve got some business in Miami.”
“Lottery business, I bet.”
Tom Krome spoke up: “What’ve you heard?”
“The ticket got lost, is what I heard,” said Demencio.
JoLayne Lucks promised to reveal the whole story when she returned to Grange. “And I sincerely apologize for being so mysterious, but you’ll understand when the time comes.”
“How long’ll you be gone?”
“Truly I don’t know,” JoLayne said, “but here’s what I propose: one thousand dollars to take care of my darlings. Whether it’s a day or a month.”
Tom Krome looked shocked. Demencio whistled at the number.
JoLayne said, “I’m quite serious.”
And quite nuts, thought Demencio. A grand to baby-sit a load of turtles?
“It’s more than fair,” he remarked, trying to avoid Krome’s eye.
“I think so, too,” JoLayne said. “Now… Trish mentioned you had a cat.”
“Screw the cat,” said Demencio. “Pardon my French.”
“Has it had its shots? I don’t remember seeing you folks at Doc Craw-ford’s.”
“Just some dumb stray. Trish leaves scraps on the porch.”
“All right,” JoLayne told him, “but the deal’s off if it kills even one of my babies.”
“Don’t you worry.”
“There’s forty-five even. I counted.”
“Forty-five,” Demencio repeated. “I’ll keep track.”
JoLayne handed him a hundred dollars as an advance, plus twenty for a lettuce fund. She said he’d receive the balance when she returned from the trip.
“What about Trish?” she asked. “How does she get on with reptiles?”
“Oh, she’s crazy for ’em. Turtles especially.” Demencio could barely keep a straight face.
Krome took out a camera, one of those cardboard disposables. Demencio asked what it was for.
“Your Virgin Mary—can I get a picture? It’s for a friend.”
Demencio said, “I guess. Just give me a second to put her back together.”
“That’ll be terrific. Put her back together and make her cry.”
“Christ, you want tears, too?”
“Please,” said Tom Krome, “if it’s not too much trouble.”
8
It was past midnight when Tom Krome and JoLayne Lucks stopped at a Comfort Inn in South Miami, near the university. Fearing her nasty cuts and bruises would draw stares, JoLayne remained in the car while Krome registered them at the motel. They got separate rooms, adjoining.
Krome fell asleep easily—a wonder, considering he had no job, thirteen hundred dollars in the bank, and an estranged wife who was pretending to be a drug addict while refusing to grant him a divorce. If that wasn’t enough to cause brain fever, he’d also been marked for grievous harm by a jealous judge whose wife he’d been screwing for not even a month. All these weighty problems Krome had put aside in order to recklessly endanger himself pursuing two armed psychopaths who’d robbed and assaulted a woman Krome barely knew.