Willow was the other secretary, Arthur’s reserve mistress.
“They’re still living together,” the judge reported, “but Oscar’s out of baseball. Torn rotator cuff, something like that.”
“Too bad,” said Katie.
“Maybe it was tendonitis. Anyway, he’s gone back to get his degree. Restaurant management is what Willow said.”
“Good for him,” said Katie, thinking: Enough already about Oscar.
The judge looked pleased when his scrod arrived—baked in a bed of pasta, topped with crabmeat and artichokes. Katie was having the garden quiche, which she picked at listlessly. She hadn’t seriously expected her husband to confess all his adulteries, but it wouldn’t have killed him to admit to one. Willow would’ve been an encouraging start—she was no prize.
Katie said, “You were tossing and turning last night.”
“You noticed.”
“Your stomach again?”
“I got up,” Arthur said, cheeks full, “and reread that remarkable list of yours.”
Uh-oh, thought Katie.
“You and your young man,” he said, swallowing emphatically, “every sordid, raunchy, sweaty detail. I can’t believe you kept count.”
“That’s what truthful confessions are. If I went a little overboard, I’m sorry,” Katie said.
“Thirteen sexual acts in fourteen days!” Her husband, twirling a pale-green noodle onto his fork. “Including three blow jobs—which, by the way, is two more than you’ve given me in the last fourteen months.”
Talk about keeping count, Katie thought. “Arthur, finish your fish before it gets cold.”
“I don’t understand you, Katherine. After everything I’ve done for you, I get a knife in my heart.”
She said, “Stop. You’re getting worked up over practically nothing.”
“Three blow jobs is not ‘practically nothing.’ ”
“You’ve missed the whole point. The whole darn point.” She reached under the table and flicked her husband’s hand off her thigh.
“Your young man,” he said, “where is he now? Lourdes? Jerusalem? Maybe Turin—getting fitted for the shroud!”
“Arthur, he’s not my ‘young man.’ I don’t know where he is. And you, you’re just a hypocritical ass.”
Neatly the judge buffed a napkin across his lips. “I apologize, Katherine. Tell you what, let’s get a room somewhere.”
“You go to hell,” she said.
“Please?”
“On one condition. You quit obsessing about Tommy.”
“It’s a deal,” said Arthur Battenkill Jr. Jovially he waved at the waiter and asked for the check.
A few hours later, Tom Krome’s house blew up.
On the way to breakfast, Bodean Gazzer and Chub stopped to hassle a couple of migrant workers hitchhiking along Highway One. Chub hovered with the.357 while Bode ran through the drill:
Name the fourteenth President of the United States.
Where was the Constitution signed?
Recite the Second Amendment.
Who starred in Red Dawn?
Personally, Chub was glad he didn’t have to take the same quiz. Evidently the two Mexicans didn’t do so hot, because Bode ordered them in butchered Spanish to show their green cards. Fearfully the men took out their wallets, which Bode emptied in the gravel along the side of the road.
“They legal?” Chub asked.
“They wish.”
With the sharp toe of a boot, Bode kicked through the migrants’ meager belongings—driver’s licenses, farmworker IDs, passport snapshots of children, prayer tabs, postage stamps, bus passes. Chub thought he spotted an immigration card, but Bode ground it to shreds under his heel. Then he removed the cash from the men’s wallets and ordered them to get a move on, muchachos!
Later, in the truck, Chub asked how much money they’d had.
“Eight bucks between ’em.”
“Oh, man.”
“Hey, it’s eight bucks that rightfully belongs to white ‘Mericans like us. Fucking illegals, Chub—guess who pays their doctor bills and food stamps? Me and you, that’s who. Billions a dollars every year on aliens.”
As usual, Chub saw no reason to doubt his friend’s knowledge of such matters.
“And I mean billions,” Bode Gazzer went on, “so don’t think of it as a robbery, my friend. That was a rebate.”
Chub nodded. “You put it that way, sure.”
When they returned from the 7-Eleven, they found an unfamiliar car parked crookedly near Chub’s trailer. It was a sanded-down Chevrolet Impala; an old one, too. One of Chub’s counterfeit handicapped permits hung from the rearview.
“Easy does it,” said Chub, pulling the gun from his belt.