Knowing Tom was alive became a leaden weight upon Katie's overtaxed conscience. There was a second secret, too; equally troubling. She was reminded of it by another item in The Register,which reported that the human remains believed to be those of Tom Krome were being shipped to an FBI laboratory "for more sophisticated analysis." This meant DNA tests, which meant it wouldn't be long before the dead man was correctly identified as Champ Powell, law clerk to Circuit Judge Arthur Battenkill Jr.
The devious shitheel with whom Katie was about to flee the country forever.
"What do I do?" she whispered urgently. Head bowed, she knelt alone in the first pew. She prayed and waited, then prayed some more.
God's answer, when it eventually came, was typically strong on instruction but weak on details. Katie Battenkill didn't push it; she was grateful for anything.
As she walked out of church, she removed her diamond solitaire and deposited it in the slot of the oak collection box, where it landed with no more fanfare than a nickel. Lightning didn't flash, thunder didn't clap. No angels sang from the rafters.
Maybe that'll come later, Katie thought.
After the last of the pilgrims were gone, Shiner's mother approached the besheeted Sinclair, who was sloshing playfully with the cooters in the moat. She said, "Help me, turtle boy. I need a spiritual rudder." Sinclair's unshaven chin tilted toward the heavens: "kiiiikkkeeeeaayy kaa-koooo kaattttkin."
His visitor failed to decipher the outcry (kicking back with ultra-cool kathleen – from a feature profile of the actress Kathleen Turner).
"How 'bout giving that a shot in English?" Shiner's mother grumped.
Sinclair beckoned her into the moat. She kicked off her scuffed bridal heels and stepped in. Sinclair motioned her to sit. With cupped hands he gathered several baby turtles and placed them on the billowing white folds of her gown.
Shiner's mother picked one up to examine it. "You paint these suckers yourself?"
Sinclair laughed patiently. "They're not painted. That's the Lord's imprint."
"No joke? Is this little guy 'posed to be Luke or Matthew or who?"
"Lay back with me."
"They paved my Jesus this morning, did you hear? The road department did."
"Lay back," Sinclair told her.
He sloshed closer, taking her shoulders and lowering her baptismally. Shiner's mother closed her eyes and felt the coolness of the funky water on her neck, the tickle of tiny cooter claws across her skin.
"They won't bite?"
"Nope," said Sinclair, supporting her.
Soon Shiner's mother was enfolded by a preternatural sense of inner peace and trust, and possibly something more. The last man who'd touched her so sensitively was her periodontist, for whom she'd fallen head over heels.
"Oh, turtle boy, I lost my son and my shrine. I don't know what to do."
'''Kiiikkkeeeaay ka-kooo,"Sinclair murmured.
"OK," said Shiner's mother. "Kiki-kakeee-kooo.Is that the Bible in, like, Japanese?"
Unseen by the meditators in the moat was Demencio, who stood with knuckles on hips at a window. To Trish he said: "You believe this shit – she's in with the turtles!"
"Honey, she's had a rough day. The D.O.T. paved her road stain."
"I want her off my property."
"Oh, what's the harm? It's almost dark."
Trish was in the kitchen, roasting a chicken for supper. Demencio had been mixing a batch of perfumed water, refilling the tear well in the weeping Madonna.
"If that crazy broad's not gone after dinner," he said, "you go chase her off. And he sure and count them cooters, make sure she don't swipe any."
Trish said, "Have a heart."
"I don't trust that woman."
"You don't trust anybody."
"I can't help it. It's the nature of the business," said Demencio. "We got any red food coloring?"
"For what?"
"I was thinking ... what if she started crying blood? The Virgin Mary."
"Perfumed blood?" said his wife.
"Don't gimme that face. It's just an idea is all," Demencio said, "just an idea I'm playing with. For when we don't have the turtles no more."
"Let me check." Trish, bustling toward the spice cabinet.
Under less stressful circumstances Bernard Squires might have enjoyed the farmhouse quaintness of Mrs. Hendricks' bed-and-breakfast, but even the caress of a handmade quilt could not dissolve his anxiety. So he took an evening walk – alone, in his sleek pin-striped suit – through the little town of Grange.
Bernard Squires had spent a tense chunk of the afternoon on the telephone with associates of Richard "The Icepick" Tarbone and, briefly, with Mr. Tarbone himself. Squires considered himself a clear-spoken person, but he'd had great difficulty making The Icepick understand why Simmons Wood couldn't be purchased until the competing offer was submitted and rejected.
"And it willbe rejected," Bernard Squires had said, "because we're going to outbid the bastards."
But Mr. Tarbone had become angrier than Squires had ever heard him, and made it plain that closing the deal was requisite not only for Squires' future employment but for his continued good health. Squires had assured the old man that the delay was temporary and that by week's end Simmons Wood would be secured for the Central Midwest Brotherhood of Grouters, Spacklers and Drywallers International. Squires was instructed not to return to Chicago without a signed contract.
As he strolled in the cool breezy dusk, Bernard Squires tried to guess why the Tarbones were so hot to get the land. The likeliest explanation was a dire shortfall of untraceable cash, necessitating another elaborately disguised raid on the union pension fund. Perhaps the family intended to use the Simmons Wood property as collateral on a construction loan and wanted to lock in before interest rates shot up.
Or perhaps they really didmean to build a Mediterranean-style shopping mall in Grange, Florida. As laughable as that was, Bernard Squires couldn't eliminate the possibility. Maybe The Icepick had tired of the mob life. Maybe he was trying to go legit.
In any case, it truly didn't matter why Richard Tarbone was in such a hurry. What mattered was that Bernard Squires acquire the forty-four acres as soon as possible. In tight negotiations Squires was unaccustomed to losing and had at his disposal numerous extralegal methods of persuasion. If there were (as Clara Markham asserted) rival buyers for Simmons Wood, Squires felt certain he could outspend them, outflank them, or simply intimidate them into withdrawing.
Squires was so confident that he probably would've drifted contentedly into a long afternoon nap, had old man Tarbone not uttered what sounded over the phone like a serious threat:
"You get this done, goddammit! You don't wanna end up like Millstep, you'll fucking get this done."
At the mention of Jimmy Millstep, Bernard Squires had felt his silk undershirt dampen. Millstep had been a lawyer for the Tarbone family until the Friday he showed up twenty minutes late at a bond hearing for Richard Tarbone's homophobic nephew Gene, who consequently had to spend an entire weekend in a ten-by-ten cell with a well-behaved but flamboyant he-she. Attorney Millstep blamed a needful mistress and an inept cabbie for his tardiness to court, but he got no sympathy from Richard Tarbone, who not only fired him but ordered him murdered. A week later, Jimmy Millstep's bullet-riddled body was dumped at the office of the Illinois Bar Association. A note pinned to his lapel said: "Is this one of yours?"
So it was no wonder Bernard Squires was jumpy, a condition exacerbated by the abrupt appearance of a rumpled stranger with bloody punctures in the palms of his hands.
"Halt, sinner!" said the man, advancing with a limp. Bernard Squires warily sidestepped him.