Jack and the Beanstalk (Matthew Hope) (14 page)

I kept looking at her.

“Am I wrong?” she said.

“You’ve had too much to drink,” I said.

“In vino veritas,”
she said.

I looked at the clock. A mistake.

“The night is young,” she said.

“Sunny,” I said, “if I thought for a minute you were sober...”

“I am dead cold sober,” she said, and stood up and loosened the sash of the kimono, and opened the kimono, and then shrugged out of it and let it fall to the floor at her feet in a tangle of black-and-white Japanese squiggles. She put her hands on her hips. “Don’t you think I look dead cold sober?” she asked.

I thought a
lot
of things in those next several moments while she stood with her legs apart and her hands on her hips, her head tilted somewhat defiantly, her eyes challenging and wide as they moved from my face downward over my chest and my waist, and then lower, and held lingeringly to ascertain what she already
knew, a thin certain smile widening her mouth, the languid eyes coming up to meet my own again. I thought, oh, so
many
things. I thought first that she was old enough to know what she was doing, and I thought that if she said she was sober, then who was I to doubt her word? And I thought back to Chicago and the back seat of my father’s steamy Oldsmobile where a sixteen-year-old girl named Joy Patterson lay back with her eyes closed and her breath heavy, and her legs spread, either really drunk or feigning drunkenness while I explored the ribbed tops of her nylon stockings and the soft white thighs above them, and drew back my trembling hand when at last it touched the silken secret patch of those undefended panties. Pulled it back with the certain knowledge that if Joy was drunk, this was rape, and if she wasn’t drunk, this was not the way to go about making love on a starry summer night with a partner pretending to be lox spread upon a sacrificial bagel.

And then, oddly and suddenly, I thought of Dale O’Brien, and I remembered that I’d spoken to her not five hours ago (my eyes glancing at the clock again, Sunny’s eyes following them, “Oh, we have time,” she murmured) and I remembered what Dale had said about feeling like some kind of whore, and I thought this wasn’t the way to forget her,
however
much she loved someone else, the way to forget Dale was not through substitution but by choice, and Sunny McKinney was offering no choice; Sunny McKinney was about to throw me and brand me the way she might have a steer. And I realized that allowing her to claim me would only be the equivalent of that unconsummated Chicago rape all those years ago, Joy either drunk or joylessly submissive, a seven-dollar rape for sure because that was what I’d paid for the bottle of booze we’d consumed in the back seat of my father’s car while somewhere out on the lake somebody played a mandolin.

So I stood there looking at Sunny, both of us motionless, our eyes locked, brown against pale blue, both of us aware of my
visible masculine response, her eyes flicking downward again to ascertain and to verify, and I thought suddenly of Charlie and Jeff, and I thought of all the offers ever made by American gangsters who were certain they would not be refused. And I thought of the extravagant gift Sunny was offering, and it seemed to me that it was as much a
genuine
present as a chunk of meat in an iron-clawed trap would be to a bear searching for honey in the woods.

I did not think I wanted my head banged yet another time against a varnished hatch-cover tabletop. So I looked at Sunny one last time, and then I turned away and sighed heavily and said, “Please put on your clothes,” and I felt like what my daughter would call a nerd, but I also felt somehow better than I had since the night Charlie and Jeff had beaten me senseless, and I didn’t know why, and I didn’t
care
why, and I didn’t even watch while Sunny went out onto the terrace and dressed silently in the moonlight.

She searched in her purple leather shoulder bag for the car keys—she was wearing a denim wraparound skirt now, and a purple halter top to match the bag, and the pair of blue clogs—impatiently rummaging among Kleenex tissues and a crumpled package of cigarettes and several sticks of chewing gum and a purple leather wallet, and finally found the keys, and went to the door, and turned to me before going out and said, in all seriousness, “You’re not a fag or anything, are you?” And without waiting for my answer, she went up the walk to where she’d parked the red Porsche. The car started with what sounded like an angry roar, and then scratched away from the curb.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

4

I
DID
not talk to Bloom until Monday morning.

I had learned early on in my relationship with him that it was best to tell him everything I knew as soon as I knew it, because things left unsaid had a way of coming up later either to haunt or to embarrass me. But a call to his office on Saturday informed me that he had the weekend off, and I was reluctant to disturb him at home. I frankly didn’t know whether Sunny’s theory about a series of cattle thefts committed by her brother in cahoots with a Spanish-speaking stranger would hold up under police scrutiny, but it seemed to me that Bloom should know about it; whatever he did with the information later was
his
business. At the same time, I didn’t want to break in on his weekend; Monday morning would be time enough. Telling him, of course, would also mean telling him about Sunny’s moonlight visit, but I did not plan to mention her naked dip in my pool or her later modest proposal. There were some things even Bloom did not have to know.

The first question he asked was, “What was she doing there?”

“Well...she was swimming,” I said.

“In your pool?” he asked.

“Yes, in my pool, of
course
in my pool.”

“You mean she came there for a swim?”

“No, but she was swimming when I got there.”

“Did you know she was coming?”

“No, it was a surprise.”

“You mean she just came over with her bathing suit, and popped into your pool...”

“Well, no, she wasn’t wearing a bathing suit.”

“Oh, she was
nude
,” Bloom said.

So much for keeping secrets from Detective Morris Bloom.

I told him everything she’d told me.

“She was nude during all this?” Bloom asked.

“No, she was wearing a kimono,” I said.

“She’s a very beautiful girl,” Bloom said thoughtfully.

The telephone line went silent. Bloom did not ask, and I did not offer. Gentlemen both, I thought.

“And she thinks he stole
how
many cows?” Bloom said at last.

“Fifteen at a clip.”

“From five herds?”

“Right.”

“How much is five times fifteen?”

“Seventy-five.”

“So he could’ve stolen seventy-five cows each spring and fall, is that what she told you?”

“Something like that.”

“That’s a lot of cows, Matthew.”

“I wouldn’t want them in my bedroom, that’s for sure.”

“Did she have any idea who this Spanish guy might be?”

“None.”

“Well,” Bloom said, “if he really
was
stealing cows, that would let out dope, wouldn’t it? As a source of the money, I mean.”

“Sunny doesn’t think he was involved in dope,” I said, and then told him about Jack’s having spanked her when he’d caught her smoking a joint.

“Spanked his older sister, huh?” Bloom said.

“According to her, yes.”

“Kinky,” Bloom said. “Don’t you think?”

“Well,” I said.

“You spank a six-year-old, that’s discipline,” he said. “You spank a twenty-three-year-old who’s your sister, that’s kinky. Didn’t the girl think it was kinky?”

“She didn’t seem to.”

“Was this a regular thing between him and her? Spanking her, I mean?”

“I have no idea.”

It suddenly occurred to me that Bloom and I lived in two different worlds. On Bloom’s block, a murder had been committed, and he wanted to know why, and a twenty-year-old boy spanking his twenty-three-year-old sister was an unnatural act that warranted thought and discussion. The spanking had been mentioned only casually by Sunny, and I myself hadn’t given it a moment’s further thought. But now that Bloom had focused attention on it, it
did
seem somewhat peculiar, and I wondered—as he had a moment earlier—whether it had been a regular occurrence in the McKinney household. And then I wondered what
other
unnatural actions or deeds or possibly even thoughts confronted Bloom on a daily basis. Given the undisputed fact that he dealt day and night with the aftermath of violence, how far
beyond
that did his professional horizons extend? What undreamed-of horrors was he forced to contend with as a routine part of his working day? And what sort of man could hope to deal continuously with
murder, rape, sodomy, child abuse, burglary, robbery, assault—the list seemed endless—without having his entire perspective distorted by a world he accepted as “natural”? What did Bloom talk about when he was with his wife? I felt suddenly as if I did not know him at all.

“Take down her panties, or what?” he asked.

A matter-of-fact question.

Bloom’s world.

“She didn’t say.”

He was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Kinky. Twenty-three-year-old beauty shacking up with a pimply-faced kid who stacks oranges, and meanwhile getting her ass spanked by her younger brother. Very kinky. I think I’ll give the mother a ring, find out if her son was in the habit of taking down his sister’s pants. Thanks a lot, Matthew, this is all very helpful. Have you given any thought to when you want to go a few rounds with me? How about this afternoon, does that sound okay?”

“Sounds fine,” I said.

“Drop by here around five, five-thirty, okay?” Bloom said. “We’ll walk over together, the gym’s right next door. Wear an iron jock,” he said, and hung up.

At two o’clock that afternoon, I received a phone call from Harry Loomis. He told me he’d discussed the entire matter with his client, and they had a counteroffer for me, and he wanted me to come to his office to hear it. When I asked why he couldn’t simply give it to me on the phone, he said, “You want to hear it, you come on out here,” and hung up. I called Bloom to tell him we’d have to postpone the lesson, and we set a tentative date for the next day at five. It was two-fifteen when I left the office, and I did not get to Ananburg till three-thirty. I was in an extremely foul mood after the long trip, and the Iron Maiden in Loomis’s outer office did nothing to raise my spirits. Neither did Loomis himself.
His counteroffer, as it turned out, was something he
could
have given me on the phone, and I was mad as hell that he’d dragged me all the way out here to listen to it.

“As I understand this,” I said, “Mr. Burrill—”

“If you been listenin’, you got it,” he said.

“Mr. Burrill is willing to settle the matter if Mrs. McKinney pays him an
additional
five thousand dollars—out of her own pocket—for any damages he may have suffered.”

“Never mind ‘
may
have suffered,’” Loomis said. “Burrill lost all his potential buyers ’cause of that boy’s promises.”

“You know, of course, that Mrs. McKinney herself is not personally responsible for any debts her son may have incurred—”

“Yes, I know all that,” he said. “
A’course
, I know it. But I’m figuring somebody with Mrs. McKinney’s kind of money’d be willing to part with a mere five thousand of it just to get us out of her hair. You know how much she’s worth?”

“I have no idea.”

“She’s sittin’ on four thousand acres of land worth at
least
fourteen hundred an acre. That comes to five million six, where I come from. She’s got—what?—a thousand head of cattle on that ranch? Say a good brood cow’s worth seven hundred dollars, and a good bull somewhere between twelve and fifteen hundred. Well, that comes to
another
six, seven hundred thousand dollars in stock, Mr. Hope. Add the machinery and whatnot, the horses, I’d say she’s worth six, seven million dollars. Don’t know how much of that’s only on paper, but I don’t rightly care. Five thousand ain’t gonna hurt her. You tell her that’s what we want. Five thousand in damages, forfeit of the four in escrow, and all the kid’s personal belongings. The farm stays with us, of course. How does that sound to you?”

“Rotten,” I said.

Loomis chuckled.

“Thought you might say that,” he said. “But maybe your client’ll think different.”

“Not if
I’m
advising her,” I said. “Good day, Mr. Loomis.”

It began raining again the moment I started the long drive back to Calusa—a big surprise here during the summer months, our daily reminder that there was indeed a God. I drove slowly, hunched over the wheel, trying to see through whatever patches of clear windshield the faulty wipers provided. The rain came down as though it were spilling from a huge bloated sack that had ripped open from end to end, unleashing torrents of water that pelted the car and the land outside.

Great plops of water exploded on the asphalt ribbon, silvery plunks erupting everywhere ahead in the gloom. There was a sudden flash of lightning and then a boom of thunder. I winced, and then remembered that an automobile was supposed to be the safest place you could find in a thunderstorm. It had something to do with the rubber tires serving as conductors—or something. If a bolt of lightning hit your car, it was supposed to travel all around it and down to the tires, which would absorb it—or something. Physics had never been my strongest subject. The road ahead was steaming now, the baked-in heat of the day evaporating rapidly, rising, shifting, dissipating in the fiercely falling rain. I started thinking about that shyster Harry Loomis, and I got angry at him all over again, and then I got angry at the rain, and then at the windshield wipers, and then at God, and then I passed Burrill’s brown mailbox on the right and knew I had crossed over into Calusa County and began to feel a little better until another flash of lightning, very close by, caused my hair to stand on end and I
pulled my head into my shoulders like a turtle when the boom of thunder immediately exploded overhead.