Whatever true sum was lost in the Simmons Wood venture would be doubled when it appeared as red ink on the books of the Central Midwest Brotherhood of Grouters, Spacklers and Drywallers International. That is how Bernard Squires hid the Tarbone family’s skimming. If other union officials suspected skulduggery, they were wise enough not to make a peep. Besides, the pension fund made a profit, overall; Squires saw to that. Even the IRS auditors didn’t challenge his numbers. Investing in real estate was a crapshoot, as everybody knew. Sometimes you won, sometimes you lost.
Once the write-off had outlived its usefulness, Bernard Squires would contrive to unload Simmons Wood on an insurance conglomerate or maybe the Japanese—somebody with enough capital to finish the stupid mall, or raze it and start over. For now, though, Bernard Squires was eager to lock up the deal.
It was Richard “The Icepick” Tarbone’s desire to close on the Grange property as soon as possible. “And don’t call me,” he had told Squires, “until you got some good fucking news. Do whatever it takes, you understand?”
Bernard understood.
The visitation got off to a rocky start. Once again, Demencio’s fiberglass Madonna wasn’t weeping properly—this time due to a crimp in the plastic feeder lines between the reservoir bottle and the eyes. One tear duct was barren while the other gushed like an artery. A pilgrim from Guatemala, having been spritzed in the forehead, loudly challenged the legitimacy of the miracle. Luckily the tirade was in Spanish and therefore incomprehensible to the other visitors. Trish, who was manning the Madonna, relayed the details of the plumbing problem to Demencio at the breakfast table. He told her to lay off the pump, pronto; no more crying.
“But we got a bus coming,” Trish reminded him. “The mission bus from West Virginia.”
“Aw, shit.”
Every week Demencio changed the Madonna’s weeping schedule. It was important to have “dry” days as well as “wet” days; otherwise there was no sense of heavenly mystery. Moreover, Demencio had observed that some pilgrims actually were glad when the Virgin Mary didn’t cry on their first visit. It gave them a reason to come back to Grange on a future vacation, just as tourists return to Yellowstone year after year in the hopes of spotting a moose.
So Demencio hadn’t been alarmed when his wife told him the Madonna was malfunctioning. Usually midweek was slow for business, a good time for an unscheduled dry day. But he’d forgotten about the damn mission bus: sixty-odd Christian pilgrims from Wheeling. The preacher’s name was Mooney or Moody, something like that, and every other year he roared through Florida with new recruits. Trish would bake a lime pie and Demencio would throw in a bottle of scotch, and in return the preacher would entreat his faithful followers to donate generously at Demencio’s shrine. For such a dependable throng, Demencio felt obliged to provide tears.
Thus the Madonna’s hydraulic failure was potentially a crisis. Demencio didn’t want to interrupt the morning visitation to haul the statue indoors for repairs—to do so would arouse suspicion, even among the most devout. Peering through the curtains, Demencio counted nine victims in the front yard, hovering attentively around the icon.
“Got any ideas?” Trish asked.
“Quiet,” said her husband. “Lemme think.”
But it wasn’t quiet. The sounds of crunching filled the room: JoLayne’s cooters, enjoying breakfast.
Demencio’s somber gaze settled on the aquarium. Instead of breaking the romaine into bite-sized pieces, he’d dropped the whole head of lettuce into the tank. The sight of it had pitched the baby turtles into a frenzy, and they were now chewing their way up the leafy slopes.
It was, Demencio had to admit, weirdly impressive. Forty-five marauding turtles. He got an idea. “You still got that Bible?” he asked his wife. “The illustrated one?”
“Somewhere, yeah.”
“And I’ll need some paint,” he said, “like they sell for model airplanes at the hobby store.”
“We only got two hours before the bus.”
“Don’t worry, this won’t take long.” Demencio walked over to the aquarium. He bent down and said: “OK, who wants to be a star?”
10
On the morning of November 28, with rain misting the mountains, Mary Andrea Finley Krome checked out of the Mona Pacifica Mineral Spa and Residential Treatment Center, on the island of Maui. She flew directly to Los Angeles, where the next day she auditioned for a network television commercial for a new home-pregnancy test. Later she flew on to Scottsdale to rejoin the road company for the Silence of the Lambs musical, in which she starred as Clarice, the intrepid young FBI agent. Mary Andrea’s itinerary was relayed by certain sources to Tom Krome’s divorce lawyer, Dick Turnquist, who arranged for a process server to be waiting backstage at the dinner theater in Arizona.