Bode also knew that Chub, in his current frame of mind, was immune to such logic. All Bode could do was hold the Colt revolver and stand there, hoping it wouldn't take long, hoping they wouldn't make much noise. The shiver of arousal sparked by Amber's nudity had already died of distraction at the heaving, pink-butted spectacle of Chub; grimy and grunting and drool-flecked. The arresting sights and smells graphically reminded Bode Gazzer of his partner's many hygienic lapses and killed any spark of temptation to join in the fun.
"Hol' still! Hol' still!" Chub kept huffing.
But the agile Amber would not.
"Hurry up," Bode said, checking over his shoulder. The skinhead Shiner would go ballistic if he saw what was happening.
"I can't get it in! Goddamn, make her hoi' still!" Chub used his weight to constrain her. Ribbons of brown turtle grass clung to his thighs.
"Use the damn gun!" he hollered at his partner.
"Shit." Bode knelt and placed the barrel to Amber's head. She stopped squirming. Behind a tangle of yellow-blond hair, her eyes narrowed with acceptance; not coldness and wild anger, like that crazy Negro woman up in Grange.
This is the way it's supposed to be, Bode mused. You see the gun, you quit trying to fight. "Be still now," he said. "It'll be over soon."
"Listen to the man." Chub seized Amber's wrists, pulling them away from her chest. "And do your lips ... all pushed out and pouty ... you know, like how Kim Basinger does."
Amber said, "OK, on one condition. Tell me your name."
"What for!"
"I can't make love to a man," she said, "unless I know his name. I just can't do it, I'd rather die."
Bode Gazzer told Chub: "Don't be a idiot."
Chub, pinning Amber's arms over her head, catching his breath. "Gillespie," he said. "Onus Gillespie."
Bode was relieved – it was such a strange name, he thought his partner had made it up.
Coolly Amber said, "Pleased to meet you, Otis."
"Naw, it's Onus.O-n-u-s."
"Oh. Mine's Amber." She blinked innocently. "Amber Bernstein. That's B-e-r-n-s-t-e-i-n."
It was as if Bodean Gazzer had been mule-kicked in the gut.
"Get off!" he shrieked at Chub.
"No sir!"
"But didn't you hear? She's ... she's a Jew!"
"I don't care if she's Vietcong, I'm gone stick my weenie in."
"No! NO! Get off, and that's an order!"
Chub closed his eyes and tried to block out Bode's carping. Hilton Head,he told himself. You and Blondie are at Hilton Head, doin it on the beach. Naw, even better – you're doin' it on the balcony of your brand-new condo!
But Amber's obstinate wriggling was giving him fits; it was like trying to screw an eel. Plus, in his glue-dazed condition, Chub found himself wielding something less than a world-class, diamond-cutter erection.
"No white Christian man" – Bode, somber as a coroner, leaned over them – "no white Christian man shall give his seed to an infidel child of Satan!"
Amber interrupted her evasions to mention that her father was a rabbi. Bode Gazzer emitted a mournful groan. Chub glared up at him. "You worry about your own damn seed. Now back off so's I kin plant mine."
"Negative! As commanding officer of the White Clarion – "
Chub rose to his knees and, with his clawless hand, snatched the pistol from the colonel. He jammed it to Amber's throat and told her to spread her legs.
Bode remembered the Colombian's Beretta in his belt. He considered drawing the gun, not so much for Amber's sake but to reinforce his superior rank. Without a steep improvement in discipline, Bode felt, the fledgling militia would soon go to pieces.
His consternation was heightened by the unexpected arrival of Shiner, the young blackmailer himself, stumbling through the trees. His cheeks were puffy and his pants were soiled and his twisted-looking fists were extended oddly at his sides, like a scarecrow's. Upon seeing Major Chub naked atop Amber, Shiner roared into a headlong assault.
Bodean Gazzer was poised to tackle the hapless skinhead when something exploded from the shoreline behind him. Chub was lifted off Amber as if there were springs in his ass. Then Bode heard a frightfully heavy thump, which he later learned was the butt of a Remington shotgun impacting his own skull.
When he regained consciousness, Bode was aware of being constricted. A white man he didn't know was tying him with a length of anchor rope to a buttonwood stump. Still flat on the ground was Chub, gurgling curses and drenched in his own blood. Shiner sat downcast in the bow of the stolen boat; his melancholy gaze was fixed on the bruised scabby mess of a tattoo. Amber stood back, wrapped in the oilskin tarpaulin. Irritably she plucked leaves and turtle grass from her hair.
All the militia's weapons had been piled on the ground. The captured arsenal was being inspected by a muscular young Negro woman with neon-green nails and a Remington shotgun. Bode Gazzer recognized her immediately.
"Not you!" was all he could say.
"That's right, bubba. Say hi to the Black Tide."
The sky and earth and universe began to spin madly for Bode Gazzer, as his fate appeared to him with sickening lucidity. The white man finished with the knots and stepped away from the tree. The Negro woman came forward, carrying the gun so casually as to cause a spasm in Bode's fragile sphincter.
"What do you want?" he asked.
JoLayne Lucks slipped the shotgun between his lips.
"Let's start with your wallet," she said.
25
The case of LaGort v. Save King Enterprises, Allied-Eagle Casualty, et al.was settled in a courthouse hallway after a pretrial conference lasting less than two hours. The attorneys for the supermarket's insurance carrier, having detected in Judge Arthur Battenkill Jr. a frosty and inexplicable bias, chose to pay Emil LaGort the annoying but not unpalatable sum of $500,000. The purpose was to avoid a trial in which the defense clearly would get no help from the judge, who'd already vowed to prohibit any testimony attacking the past honesty of the plaintiff, including but not limited to his very long list of other negligence suits. Emil LaGort attended the conference in a noisy motorized wheelchair with maroon mica-fleck armrests, and wore around his neck a two-tone foam cervical brace. The brace was one of nine models available in Emil LaGort's walk-in closet, where he saved all medical aids acquired during the phony recoveries from his many staged accidents.
After the settlement papers were signed and the sourpuss insurance lawyers filed into the elevator and Emil LaGort rolled himself across James Street to a topless luncheonette, his lawyer discreetly obtained from Judge Arthur Battenkill Jr. the number of a newly opened Nassau bank account, into which $250,000 would be wired secretly within four weeks.
Not exactly a king's ransom, Arthur Battenkill knew, but enough for a fast start on a new life.
The judge's wife, however, wasn't packing for the tropics. While Arthur Battenkill was tidying up the details of the Save King payoff, Katie was on her knees in church. She was praying for divine guidance, or at least improved clarity of thought. That morning she'd read in The Registerthat Tom Krome's estranged wife had come to town to receive a journalism award on her "late" husband's behalf. Regardless of Tommy's ill feelings toward the elusive Mary Andrea Finley, it seemed possible to Katie Battenkill that the woman might be mourning an imagined loss; that she still might love Tom Krome in some significant way.
Shouldn't somebody tell her he's not really dead? If it were me, Katie thought, I'd sure want to know.
But Katie had assured Tommy she wouldn't say a word. Breaking her promise would be a lie, and lying was a sin, and Katie was trying to give up sinning. On the other hand, she couldn't bear the thought of Mrs. Krome (whatever her faults) needlessly suffering even a sliver of widow's pain.