After a while, Chub asked, “So when can we cash out our tickets?”
“Pretty soon. But we gotta be careful.”
“That nigger girl, she ain’t gonna say a word.”
“Probably not,” Bode said. Yet, thinking back on the beating, he recalled that the Lucks woman never seemed as scared as she should’ve been. Mad as a hornet, for sure, and crying like a baby when Chub shot her turtle—but there was no quivering animal panic from the woman, despite all the pain. They’d worked extra hard to make her think they’d return to murder her if she didn’t keep quiet. Bode hoped she believed it. He hoped she cared.
Chub said, “Let’s tomorrow me and you go straight up to Tal’hassee and git our money.”
Bode laughed sourly. “You checked in the mirror lately?”
“Tell ’em we’s in a car accident.”
“With what—bobcats?”
“Anyways, they gotta pay us no matter how bad we look. We had leprosy, the motherfuckers still gotta pay us.”
Patiently Bode Gazzer explained how suspicious it would be for two best friends to claim equal shares of the same Lotto jackpot, with tickets purchased three hundred miles apart.
“It’s better,” Bode said, “if we don’t know each other. We ain’t never met, you and me, far as the lottery bureau is concerned.”
” ‘K.”
“Anybody asks, I bought my fourteen-million-dollar ticket in Florida City, you got yours in Grange. And we never once laid eyes on each other before.”
“No problem,” Chub said.
“And listen here, we can’t show up in Tallahassee together. One of us goes on a Tuesday, the other one maybe a week later. Just to play it safe.”
“Then afterwards,” said Chub, “we put the money all together.”
“You got it.”
Chub did the arithmetic aloud. “If those first checks is seven hundred grand, times two is like one million four hunnert thousand bucks.”
Bodean Gazzer said, “Before taxes, don’t forget.” It felt like his skull was cleaving down the middle, an agony made worse by his partner’s greasy persistence.
“But what I wanna ast,” Chub said, “is who goes first. Cashes out, I mean.”
“Difference does it make?”
“I guess none.”
They got in the truck and headed down the gravel road toward the Stretch. Chub stared out the window as Bode went on: “I don’t like the wait no better’n you. Sooner we get the cash, sooner we get the White Clarion Aryans together. Start serious recruitment. Build us a bomb shelter and whatnot.”
Chub lit a cigaret. “So meantime what do we do for money?”
“Good question,” Bode Gazzer said. “I wonder if the Negro girl’s canceled out her credit card yet.”
“Likely so.”
“One way to find out.”
Chub blew a smoke ring. “I s’pose.”
“We’re down to a quarter tank,” Bode said. “Tell you what. The Shell station up the highway, let’s try the self-serve pump. If it spits her Visa, we’ll take off.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. No harm done.”
Chub said, “And if it takes the card?”
“Then we’re golden for one more day.”
“Sounds good to me.” Chub dragged contentedly. Already he was daydreaming about barbecued chicken wings and a certain blond-haired beauty in satiny orange shorts.
The bank’s computer indicated JoLayne’s Visa card hadn’t been used since the previous afternoon at Hooters.
“Now what?” she asked, waving the receiver.
“Order a pizza,” said Tom Krome, “and wait for them to get stupid again.”
“What if they don’t?”
“They will,” he said. “They can’t resist.”
The pizza was vegetarian, delivered cold. They ate it anyway. Afterwards JoLayne stretched out on her back, locked her arms behind her neck and bent her knees.
“Sit-ups?” Tom Krome asked.
“Crunches,” she said. “Wanna help?”
He knelt on the floor and held her ankles. JoLayne winked and said, “You’ve done this before.”
He counted along in his head. After a hundred easy ones, she closed her eyes tight and did a hundred more. He gave her a minute to rest, then said: “That was a little scary.”
JoLayne winced as she sat up. She pressed her knuckles to her tummy and said, “Bastards really did a job on me. Normally I can do three-fifty or four.”
“I think you should take it easy.”