“There’s a visitation every morning,” Demencio added. “You oughta stop over.”
Sinclair made no response. He was still working frenetically on the first part of Demencio’s answer. He’d gotten as far as the word “Virgin” when Roddy’s interruption had thrown him off track, causing him to lose the rest of Demencio’s quote. Now Sinclair was forced to reconstruct.
“Did you say ‘It cries’ or ‘She cries’?”
“She cries,” said Demencio, “like a drunken priest.”
Neither Roddy nor Joan could imagine seeing such a coarse remark printed in a family newspaper, but Sinclair transcribed it anyway.
“And twelve of my turtles,” Demencio said, “got the apostles on their backs. It’s the damnedest thing you ever saw—check out the moat!”
“Slow down,” said the frazzled Sinclair. His fingers had begun to cramp. “The man who was with Miss Lucks—they left together?”
“Yeah. In his car.”
While Sinclair scribbled, Roddy, Joan and the mayor maintained silence. Any distraction would only slow him down more. Demencio, though, had grown restive. He began to shuck the head of lettuce, arranging the leaves in piles, according to size, on the ottoman. He was worried the newspaperman would ask about his financial arrangement with JoLayne Lucks regarding the turtle-sitting. Demencio had no illusion that one thousand dollars was a customary or reasonable fee, or that the newspaperman would believe it was JoLayne’s idea.
But when Sinclair finally looked up from his notes, all he said was: “Did they mention where they were headed?”
“Miami,” Demencio answered, in relief.
Joan, her track record as a tipster at stake, piped in: “We heard Bermuda. They say anything about Bermuda?”
“Miami’s what they told me. JoLayne said she had some business down that way.”
“Slower,” Sinclair protested, bent over the pad like a rheumatic jeweler. “Please.”
Demencio had run out of hospitality. “It’s M-i-a—”
“I know how to spell it,” Sinclair snapped.
The mayor wedged a knuckle in his mouth, to keep from laughing.
They rode for miles on the farm roads without finding the other car. Bodean Gazzer was too drunk and tired to continue. Chub offered to take the wheel but Bode wouldn’t hear of it; nobody else was allowed to drive his new Dodge Ram. He parked on the edge of a tomato field and passed out to the strains of Chub and Shiner bickering about the shooting fiasco at the trailer. At first Bode thought Chub was being too rough on the kid, but his opinion changed at daybreak when he noticed the two ragged bullet holes in the truck’s quarter panel.
Bode said to Chub: “Shoot his damn nuts off.”
“I didn’t know it was you guys!” Shiner protested.
Bode angrily grabbed for the gun in Chub’s belt. “Here, gimme that thing.”
Chub knocked his hand away. “Somebody’ll hear.”
“But I thought you was NATO!” Shiner cried. “I said I was sorry, dint I?”
“Look what you done to my truck.”
“I’ll pay for it, I swear.”
“Fucking A you will,” snarled Bodean Gazzer.
Shiner was a jittery wreck. “Gimme another chance,” he begged.
“Another chance? Shit,” Chub said. He’d already concluded the boy was a hopeless fuckup—they had to cut him loose. He and Bode could toss a coin to see who’d break the news.
Chub got out to take a leak, and immediately came upon a rusty aerosol can of spray paint—in the middle of a tomato field! It seemed too wonderful to be true. Because Bode disapproved of sniffing, Chub kept his back to the truck. He knelt in the loamy sand and excitedly shook the can. The rattle soothed him, the beat of an old familiar song. He cupped his hands around the nozzle and pressed down with his chin, but no paint shot out. He held the nozzle beneath his nostrils and sniffed fruitlessly for a trace of fumes; not a whiff. He swore, stood up and hurled the empty can as far as possible.
When he unzipped his pants to pee, a horsefly landed on the tip of his pecker. Chub couldn’t imagine feeling less like a millionaire. Despondently he shooed the fly away and finished his business. Then he removed the Colt Python from his belt and tucked it in his left armpit. He groped carefully down his right pants leg until he found the bandage: At least the lottery ticket was safe. He wondered what his parents would say if they knew he had 14 million bucks taped to his thigh!