Body Rides (64 page)

Neal watched the pickup truck continue on up the road.

Marta faced Sue.

‘Ya gonna kick me out?’ Sue asked.

‘No, of course not. Just don’t do anything like that again. It doesn’t matter
what
someone does, just ignore it from now on. Okay?’

‘Well . . .’

‘Marta’s right,’ Neal said. ‘The city’s full of nut-cases who are just
looking
for a reason to blast you.’

‘Me?’

‘Anyone.’

‘So the last thing you want to do,’ Marta said, ‘is antagonize a stranger.’

‘You know,’ Neal said, ‘it’d probably help the situation if you both put your shirts back on.’

‘We’re sitting on them,’ Marta told him.

‘Had to leave in a hurry,’ Sue added.

‘We’re stopped now,’ Neal pointed out.

Sue grinned at Marta. ‘He just don’t want all the other fellas getting a load of us.’

‘Selfish bastard,’ Marta said.

They both laughed.

‘Comedians,’ Neal said.

Still laughing, they unlatched their seatbelts, squirmed, shifted, scooted upward, and managed to tug their shirts out from under their rumps. Then they leaned forward and put them on.

‘Thank you, ladies.’

‘Yer welcome,’ they said in unison.

During the remainder of the drive, there were no more shouts or whistles, hoots or remarks or obscene gestures. But the guys in nearby cars still turned their heads and stared.

Neal placed the sack of money on top of the coffee table in Marta’s living room. Then they stared at it for a while, sometimes glancing at each other.

‘Should we look at it?’ Marta asked.

‘It’s ours,’ Neal said.

‘Can ya’ll hang on till I take a leak?’ Sue asked.

‘No hurry,’ Neal told her.

‘None at all,’ Marta said. ‘In fact, why don’t we call an official time-out for five or ten minutes? I want to get out of this wet suit, myself. Soon as I’m into some dry clothes, I’ll make a batch of margaritas. We can have a little party and count the take.’

‘My kind of gal,’ Neal said.

Sue glanced at him.

He wasn’t sure what to make of the look, but he said, ‘You, too.’

Sue and Marta looked at each other as if they shared an amusing secret.

‘What?’ Neal asked.

‘It’s just . . . ya don’t gotta do that.’

‘What?’

‘All that “you, too” stuff.’

‘And all that “both of you” stuff,’ Marta added.

‘It’s kinda silly.’

‘I’m just trying to . . . be nice.’

‘Ya don’t gotta be
that
nice.’

‘We aren’t going to flip out if we don’t receive equal treatment.’

‘Right,’ Sue said. ‘I ain’t . . . I’m not jealous of Marta, and she’s not jealous of me.’

‘We’ve got an understanding,’ Marta said.

They grinned at each other.

Then they headed off together.

Neal felt strange: relieved but curious, and a bit as if he were the odd man out. He realized that he’d been feeling that way, off and on, ever since Marta and Sue had first encountered each other.

No, not from the very first.

It had started after Sue’s confession that she’d gone into Marta with the bracelet; to prove the bracelet worked, she’d taken Marta out of the room and revealed a couple of things. Secrets that Marta had supposedly been keeping from Neal.

What the hell sort of secrets?

Can’t be anything really major, he told himself.

But the gals hadn’t been the same, since. They’d developed a bond of some kind.

Neal wished he could be in on it.

Just be thankful they haven’t turned into raving, jealous dogs
.

Lucky thing
.

It isn’t luck, it’s a miracle
.

Marta and Sue sat on the sofa. They had both changed out of their swimsuits: Marta into a white, oversized T-shirt and Sue into her white pleated miniskirt and yellow knit pullover. They were both barefoot. They sat close together, their knees at the edge of the coffee table. Each held a margarita, but hadn’t taken a drink yet. The salt was thick and white around the rims of their glasses.

Before sitting down, they had cleared off the table. Now there was nothing on it except Neal’s drink, down near the end in front of Marta.

Neal stood across the table from the women, holding the grocery sack. ‘Ready?’ he asked.

‘Let ’er rip,’ Sue said.

He leaned over and up-ended the sack.

The money spilled out. Bundles of bills, bound by rubber bands, dropped from the ragged mouth of the bag and tumbled toward the table. Thick stacks and thin stacks, they cascaded out and fell, flopped onto the table, whapped the wood surface like note pads tossed onto a desk, thumped it like paperback books.

After a few seconds, they no longer pounded wood; they landed
instead on stacks and bundles of money, hitting with softer sounds. The final few packs, after hitting, slid silently down the gray and green slopes.

When the sack was nearly weightless, forty or fifty loose bills floated out and drifted toward the heap. A broken rubber band fell out. And then a foot-long, curled strip of white paper with rows of blue ink.

As it slid down the slope of money, Neal caught it. He stretched it taut between his hands and looked at it.

‘A grocery receipt?’ Marta said.

He nodded. The receipt was dated July 6, 1995. Only a few days before Elise’s death. The purchases were itemized.

Neal didn’t want to know what she’d bought. Bad enough to be reminded of her, still alive, pushing a grocery cart down a supermarket aisle . . . Alka-Seltzer. She’d bought Alka-Seltzer.

Memories rushed into him.

Elise in her blue satin pajamas.

The feel of the foil packet in her shirt pocket.

The way he’d felt breathless while she was gulping down a glassful of the fizzing medication.

How she had been, that first time, when she’d let him come over from the sofa and enter her. How nervous she’d felt, and embarrassed, and excited. She had never allowed anyone to do that before. Neal had been the first. And the only.

‘Y’okay?’ Sue asked.

She and Marta were both staring at him.

He shook his head. Crunching the receipt in his hand, he said, ‘It made me think about Elise, that’s all.’

‘Well, don’t go and get sad on us. We’re trying to have a party, here.’

Marta, looking solemn, gestured with her glass and said, ‘We should drink to her.’

‘A toast,’ Sue said. ‘Neat idea.’

Neal stepped to the end of the table, picked up his margarita, and returned to the middle. Across the table from him, Marta and Sue got to their feet.

‘To Elise,’ he said. ‘I wish they hadn’t killed you. But since they did . . .’ He struggled to keep control. ‘Wherever you are – I hope to God you’re up in Heaven if there is such a place – may you
be looking down on us with a smile tonight.’ Voice trembling, he said, ‘I couldn’t save you. I let them kill you, but . . . we’re making them pay . . .’ He swallowed hard. ‘They’ll pay big for what they did to you.’

‘Big time,’ Sue muttered.

Marta nodded. ‘Big time.’

‘This is the first installment,’ Neal said. ‘This is where they paid in green. The next installment, it’ll be in red.’

‘Fuckin A,’ Sue said.

Neal stretched his arm out. As he held his margarita glass above the money pile, Marta and Sue both reached forward and clinked their glasses against his. Crumbs of salt, knocked off, sprinkled down on the cash.

‘That’s sure a heap of money,’ Sue said.

Nodding, Neal held his glass steady while Marta refilled it from the blender’s pitcher.

‘Five hundred thousand dollars,’ Marta said. Done pouring, she headed for the kitchen.

‘I wonder if it’s all there,’ Neal said.

‘Do we want to count it?’ Marta asked over her shoulder.

Sue frowned at the pile of cash. ‘It’d take us halfway till Christmas to count all that.’

Neal set his glass on the table and picked up one of the bundles. It was about an inch thick. He flipped through it with his thumb. ‘This one’s all twenties,’ he said. He tossed it onto the pile and picked up another. ‘Fifties.’

Sue, inspecting a bundle, said, ‘This one’s only tens.’

‘Glitt must’ve wanted some denominations that’d be easy to spend.’

Sue delved into the pile, spreading the stacks around as if she were looking for a dark sock in a load of laundry. After a while, she said, ‘Well, a lot of ’em’s hundreds.’

Marta came into the living room, a platter of tortilla chips in one hand, a bowl of salsa in the other. ‘So, have you got it all counted yet?’

‘Has Hell froze over yet?’ Sue asked her.

Marta set down the snacks at the far end of the table. ‘I don’t see any big reason to count it. If it’s actually the payoff money . . .’
She looked at Neal and raised her eyebrows.

‘It almost
has
to be,’ he said.

‘How do you know for sure?’

Neal set down his drink. ‘First off, I saw Glitt’s face in his mind.’ He crossed the room and grabbed a straight-backed chair. As he carried it toward the table, he said, ‘That was right at the start of things, when you two were at the bar and Vince was making the drinks. He’d just told about Elise being murdered.’ Neal placed his chair near the chips and salsa, and sat down. ‘One of you . . . Sue . . . asked who’d killed her. When he said he didn’t know, his mind flashed a picture of Glitt.’

‘Fantastic,’ Marta said. She dipped a chip, poked it into her mouth, then passed the chips to Sue.

Sue pulled out a handful.

‘Salsa?’ Marta asked.

Sue shook her head and asked Neal, ‘How’d ya find out about the money?’

‘That movie you asked him about.’

‘Haw! Thought so!’

‘The million dollar payoff in a parking lot. Chuck Norris.’

Sue beamed.

‘It was
inspired
,’ Marta told her. ‘And so subtle!’

Narrowing her eyes, Sue nodded. ‘Did ya catch on how I changed it to a
whole
million. Tricky, huh? Didn’t wanta make him suspicious.’

Neal and Marta burst out laughing. Sue watched them laugh. She looked quite pleased with herself. She took a sip of her margarita, then raised the handful of tortilla chips to her mouth and grabbed a chip with her teeth. She chewed, watching them laugh. After swallowing, she said, ‘Just call me a genius.’

A little while later, Marta asked, ‘What movie
was
that, anyway?’

‘Made it up.’

‘Thought so.’

‘It sure worked,’ Neal said. ‘It made him start thinking about the payoff.’ To Marta, he said, ‘You know how people imagine things? It’s like a mental movie?’

‘Sure,’ she nodded. ‘Daydreams and things.’

‘Right. Well, I got to see
his
. I saw him park his car at Video
City and take out a grocery sack. He was planning to leave it there for Glitt.’ Neal nodded at the pile on the table. ‘So I went hunting through his house for a bag of money.’

‘Did ya find it in his safe?’ Sue asked.

‘He doesn’t have a safe.’

‘Huh.’ She looked as if she’d been cheated. ‘Yer kiddin.’

‘No safe.’

‘Crippled Judas! After I got him to think all about his combination?’

‘You
might’ve
, if he’d had one. It was an admirable attempt.’

‘
I’m
so safe,’ Marta said, ‘she’d like to hide her jewelry in me.’

Sue smirked at her. ‘Up yer kazoo.’

‘A hell of a show,’ Neal said.

Grinning and shaking her head, Marta told Sue, ‘That was a terrific story about breaking into your father’s liquor cabinet. Nine years old?’

‘Brilliant,’ Neal said. ‘Vince might’ve pondered every turn and number of his combination lock – I could’ve run straight to his safe and opened it up slick as a whistle. No doubt about it.’

‘That’s how I had it figured,’ Sue said. She shrugged. ‘Ain’t my fault if he didn’t have a safe.’

‘You’re amazing,’ Marta told her.

‘Well . . . thanks. Sometimes I’m more amazing than at other times. You ain’t a slouch, yerself.’

‘Thank you.’

Sue nodded and took a drink. Then she frowned. ‘The tricky part was how I worked the combination lock into the story. That’s what took the genius. ’Cause there weren’t no combination lock on that cabinet where he kept his booze. It took a key Daddy wore on a chain. He wore it around his neck, there with his little gold cross that he always wore on account of he worried about vampires. So I had to sneak the necklace off him that night while he was snoozing.’