Ricca said, "What'd you think the cops are gonna do with a guy who tries to rape a cripple?"
Chaz hastily wedged the handgun into his waistband and let her in. She glared as she clomped past him. The door was scuffed and dented where she had bludgeoned it with her cast.
"How's the leg?" Chaz inquired tepidly.
"Fuck you."
"How'd you know I was home?"
"I tried calling all night long, and then it's six in the morning and your line's busy." Ricca skidding the plaster heel along the tile floor.
"I was on the computer. Have a seat," Chaz said.
With an impatient sigh she lowered herself onto the couch. "I've been thinking about my new car-forget the Mustang, I want a Thun-derbird convertible instead."
"Sweet," said Chaz. The timing of her visit could not have been worse.
"P.S., where's my money?"
"I'm working on it. Are you thirsty?"
"I don't suppose you've got whole milk," she said.
Chaz retreated to the kitchen and pretended to search the refrigerator, stalling while he improvised a new plan. When he stood up, Ricca was there-how she'd crept up so stealthily with a bum leg, Chaz couldn't imagine, but her expression was one of toxic contempt. While he had been rooting leisurely through the beer and Mountain Dew, she'd been perusing his suicide note.
"Clever boy," she said. "You're making a run for it."
"What if I told you I was actually going to kill myself. I'm serious, honey, I've been super-depressed."
"And you're packing a suitcase for the hereafter?" She pointed at the gray Samsonite, which sat upright in the hallway.
"Oh, that," Chaz said. "I can explain."
She'd left him no choice but to kill her, really kill her this time. He pulled out Tool's second gun.
"Not this again," Ricca sighed.
"Have you got a car?"
Chaz had taken a taxi home from Miami, since the Hummer was at the marina and the keys to the Hummer were in Tool's pocket and Tool was at the bottom of Biscayne Bay.
"Where we going this time?" Ricca asked.
Chaz herded her to the living room. He peeked through the shades and saw that she'd arrived in a generic white compact, an Alamo plate on the front bumper. The trunk appeared adequate for the Samsonite and possibly a carry-on, but not in addition to a corpse with one leg in a bulky cast.
No problem, Chaz told himself. I'll do it in the sticks somewhere, dump her body, then take her car to the airport. There was plenty of time-American had a 5:00 p.m. nonstop to San Jose.
"Your fish are starved." Ricca peered with maternal concern at the aquarium.
"Fuck 'em," Chaz said. Why was she reaching into the damn tank?
"Lookie here." She held up a small platinum wedding band. "It was hanging from the mast of that little pirate ship."
Struggling to remain calm, Chaz ordered her to put the ring back in the water. She recited the inscription aloud: " 'To Joey, the girl of my dreams. Love, CRP.' Aw, that's so romantic."
He indulged Ricca her sarcasm. Perhaps she already knew that his missing wife was alive and well and determined to ruin his life; that the wedding band obviously had been placed in the aquarium to infuriate him. Perhaps they were even co-conspirators in the plot, Ricca and Joey. Why not? Chaz thought. Nothing could shock him anymore.
Ricca was unable to fit the ring on the proper finger, so she slipped it on her pinkie. "What d'ya think?" she cooed theatrically.
Chaz resisted the urge to shoot her on the spot.
"Don't you move," he said, and for good measure swiped away the crutches and tossed them into the foyer.
"Why was your wife's wedding ring in with the fishes?" she asked, wiggling the platinum-adorned pinkie. "There must be a story."
Back in the kitchen, Chaz fitted the revolver into his battered left hand and hoped that Ricca wouldn't try anything nutty this time. He winced at the memory of her ballsy dash for freedom at Loxahatchee.
With his good hand Chaz rolled the Samsonite toward the door, marveling at the cumbersome weight of wet cash. He shoved the crutches at Ricca and snapped, "Come on, get your butt in gear."
"I dyed my pubes green for you, and this is the thanks I get?"
It was unnerving that she could crack jokes; that she wasn't shaking in fear and begging for her life. "Let's go for a ride," he said.
"How dumb do you think I am?"
"We can debate that later."
"I'm not going anyplace with you, thimbledick."
All that prevented him from shooting her was knowing that a woman's bloodstains on his wall would vastly complicate the suicidal-widower scenario that he had so artfully crafted. He'd invested too much effort in his farewell note to discard it.
"Get up, Ricca. Now."
"Nope. You'll have to carry me."
Wouldn't it be a treat, Chaz thought, to have just one goddamn day when nobody fucked with my head?
Outside, a car horn honked three times. Ricca smiled.
"What now?" Chaz groused to himself.
"Listen, I wasn't serious about the Thunderbird," she confessed, "or the two hundred and fifty grand."
"Then I don't understand…"
"Of course you don't," she said.
The door burst open and there loomed Earl Edward O'Toole, his broad chest crosshatched with white tape.
In a voice as dry as ashes, Charles Perrone said, "You have got to be shitting me."
First Joey, then Ricca, now the goon. How can it be so hard to kill somebody? Chaz wondered.
With an incensed squawk he leveled the gun, his bruised and misshapen index finger picking impotently at the trigger. Tool casually clocked him with a left hook to the jaw.
Twelve hours later, the Humvee rumbled down the L-39 levee, Faith Hill singing sweetly on the radio, Red Hammernut mouthing an ivory toothpick while meticulously unspooling the videocassette he had removed from Chaz's VCR.
"Here's what I don't get," Red was saying to Tool. "How come that Ricca girl knew to call met I'm damn glad she did and all, but it's strange how she come to have my name and phone number."
Tool, who was driving, said he had no earthly idea. "You ask her?"
"She said some fella wrote it on a prayer card and gave it to her at Joey Perrone's church service. Whether that's true or not, I guess it don't matter now." Red Hammernut pocketed the toothpick and hawked out the window. "This whole deal has been a royal goat fuck from start to finish. I damn near lost track of which way's up and which way's down."
Tool could have enlightened Red about the doctor's botched attempt to murder not only Ricca Spillman but Mrs. Perrone, but he didn't feel much like chatting. Every rut in the levee reminded him of the fresh slug in his armpit. The discomfort was amplified by his sobriety, Tool having given his last fentanyl patch to Maureen.
From the corner of his eye he saw the tangled remains of the Sun Duchess videotape fly out of the Hummer, Red saying he couldn't afford to have that nosy damn detective get hold of it. Earlier, at the office, Red had destroyed his own copy.
He said, "I still can't believe that yuppie cocksucker shot you point-blank. We had such a good plan, too."
Not entirely, thought Tool.
Red had ordered him to kill Chaz Perrone before they got to Stiltsville, but Tool had privately scotched the idea. He'd been doing a lot of heavy thinking over what Maureen had said about making changes-that you were never too old to pick a positive new direction for your life. Tool knew that if he whacked the doctor he'd end up blabbing to Maureen, and he couldn't bear the thought of upsetting her when she was feeling so poorly. So he'd decided that instead of murdering Perrone he would simply heave him off the boat and make him swim to shore. Warn him to never again show his skeeter-bitten puss in Florida.
But the fucker shot him first.
As for the blackmail meeting, it had been Tool's intention-and Red's firm instruction-to deliver the money peaceably. When Tool had expressed surprise that Red was willing to kiss off five hundred grand, Red laughed so hard that a string of snot had shot out of his nose. He told Tool about a James Bond-type gizmo that he'd found at "a Cuban spy shop" in Miami; a transmitter, Red had explained, no bigger'n a pack of Winstons. Tool had tucked it into the Samsonite when he was loading the cash. Meantime, Red was lining up some heavyweight shitkickers to track the suitcase back on the mainland, and to take care of the blackmailer, the mystery girlfriend, whoever else was in on the scam.