Sinclair reread the memorandum half a dozen times. It was an adroit piece of management sophistry—casting doubt on an employee’s mental stability while simultaneously portraying oneself as the loyal, yet deeply worried, supervisor.
Perhaps Sinclair wouldn’t need the fable to bail himself out. Perhaps Tom Krome simply would forget about the nutty Lotto woman and return to work at The Register, as if nothing had happened.
But Sinclair doubted it. What little he could read of his own wormlike scribbles made his stomach churn.
Bermuda?
Chub couldn’t decide where to stash the stolen lottery ticket—few hiding places were as ingenious as Bode Gazzer’s condom. At first Chub tucked the prize inside one of his shoes; by nightfall it was sodden with perspiration. Bode warned him that the lottery bureau wouldn’t cash the ticket if it was “defaced,” a legal term Bode broadly interpreted to include wet and stinky. Dutifully Chub relocated the ticket in the box of hollowpoints that he carried with him at all times. Again Bode Gazzer objected. He pointed out that if Chub got trapped in a fire, the ammunition would explode in his trousers and the Lotto numbers would be destroyed.
The only other idea that occurred to Chub was a trick he’d seen in some foreign prison movie, where the inmate hero kept a secret diary hidden up his butthole. The guy scribbled everything in ant-sized letters on chewing gum wrappers, which he folded into tiny squares and stuck in his ass, so the prison guards wouldn’t get wise. Given Bode’s low regard for Chub’s personal hygiene, Chub was fairly sure his partner would object to the butthole scheme. He was right.
“What if first I wrap it in foil?” Chub offered.
“I don’t care if you pack it in fucking kryptonite, that lottery ticket ain’t goin’ up your ass.”
Instead they attached it with a jumbo Band-Aid to Chub’s right outer thigh, a hairless quadrant that (Bode conceded) seemed relatively untainted by Chub’s potent sweat. Bode firmly counseled Chub to remove the Lotto-ticket bandage when, and if, he ever felt like bathing.
Chub didn’t appreciate the insult, and said so. “You don’t watch your mouth,” he warned Bode Gazzer, “I’m gone do somethin’ so awful to your precious truck, you’ll need one a them moonsuits to go anywheres near it.”
“Jesus, take it easy.”
Later they went to the 7-Eleven for their customary breakfast of Orange Crush and Dolly Madisons. Bode swiped a newspaper and searched it for a mention of the Lotto robbery in Grange. He was relieved to find nothing. Chub declared himself in a mood for shooting, so they stopped by Bode’s apartment to grab the AR-I5 and a case of beer, and headed south down the Eighteen-Mile Stretch. They turned off on a gravel road that led to a small rock-pit lake, not far from a prison camp where Bode had once spent four months. At the rock pit they came upon a group of clean-shaven men wearing holsters and ear protectors. From the type of vehicles at the scene—late-model Cherokees, Explorers, Land Cruisers—and the orderliness with which they’d been parked, Bode concluded the shooters were suburban husbands brushing up on home-defense skills.
The men stood side by side, firing pistols and semiautomatics at paper silhouettes just like the ones cops used. Bode was disquieted to observe among the group a Negro, one or two possible Cubans, and a wiry bald fellow who was almost certainly Jewish.
“We gotta go. This place ain’t secure.” Bode, speaking in his role as militia leader.
Chub said, “You jest watch.” He peeled off his eye patch and sauntered to the firing line. There he nonchalantly raised the AR-I5 and, in a few deafening seconds, reduced all the paper targets to confetti. Then, for good measure, he opened up on a stray buzzard that was flying no less than a thousand feet straight up in the sky. Without a word, the husbands put away their handguns and departed. A few drove off without removing their ear cups, a sight that gave Bodean Gazzer a good laugh.
Chub went through a half dozen clips before he got bored and offered the rifle to Bode, who declined to shoot. The blasts of gunfire had reignited the killer migraine from Bode’s morning hangover, and now all he craved was silence. He and Chub sat down at the edge of the lake and worked on the beer.