“Me?” Delores said, standing by an aging Mercedes Coupe in a Bob Evans restaurant parking lot. “Me? Crazy? Sure, I’m the crazy one. Crazy for believing his bullshit all the time. Me who is crazy for buying this man clothes and dinner and the fancy cologne.”
Next door was some kind of sex shop, XTC Super Center, with a sign offering two-for-one on inflatables to Make the Bedroom Great Again. There were several cars parked outside but no one seemed to be coming or going from the front door.
“What kind?”
“I don’t know,” Delores said. “Some socks. Underwear. I can’t be so sure.”
“The cologne?”
“He call it sandalwood. He say he like it because it’s dry and manly. Like I think of him before he stole my money and my pride.”
“How did you know?” Debbie Lyn asked. “How did you know who he really was?”
Delores leaned against the trunk of her nifty little Mercedes, faded tan with a few rust blemishes. She pulled out a pack of cigarettes from her Chanel purse and lit one, blowing into the wind, nodding. “You sure you are ready?”
Debbie Lyn nodded.
“Come,” Delores said. “Get in the car with Delores and she show you where this old man come from. So much shame. It will only bring you shame. I’m so sorry for this. But you must know.”
The apartment was on the other side of the bay, in downtown Tampa, just off the Hillsborough River. A high-rise complex called Buena Vista Terrace, an institutional-looking building with small balconies overlooking the Crosstown Expressway and a parking lot. The place looked like it had been fancy-schmancy back in the day, with a dry fountain of a dolphin by the entrance and intricate terrazzo floor showing the settling of old Tampa.
“Third floor,” she said. “You will see. You will see who this man is all about. You meet his friend. The man he lived with. His name is Jack Russell, like the little dog. The man is older than dirt. But he remember things. His mind is sharp. He know. He know the kind of man we deal with here. This man. This man we think we love. Who we take to our beds. He stole this man’s microwave and the scrotum of a tiger.”
“Excuse me?”
“You will see,” Delores said, punching the button on the elevator. The elevator clanking and moving upward, Debbie Lyn having to hold onto its side. “Jack Russell collects such things. This man know it was valuable and he took them. The scrotum of the tiger was to keep tobacco. A pouch he got in the war. It was very special to him. It gave him strength, he say.”
Jack Russell was a chain-smoker in a wheelchair, oxygen tubes running up his nose, wearing a Vietnam veteran ball cap. He leaned sideways into his chair, scruffy and potbellied, as he looked Debbie Lyn up and down and said, “Yep, he’s a phony all right. Let me know if you find out what happened to my tobacco pouch. I carried that thing through the jungle. Brought me vigor and luck.”
“He lived here?” Debbie Lyn said. “With you?”
“We were roomies for two months,” Russell said, nodding over at Delores, who’d sunk into a La-Z-Boy, flipping through a Guns & Ammo. “Don’t be ashamed. He promised me all sorts of things too. Said that once that pirate ship, or whatever it is, paid out, he’d hire me to watch over all his vehicles. I could wax ’em from my chair. Said it would do him proud to put a disabled veteran to work. Saluted me and everything.”
“Could he be telling the truth?” Debbie Lyn said. “About some of it?”
“That man swore up and down he was a fighter pilot in the war. A goddamn Air Force colonel. But you ask him a few questions. About planes and such, and the son of a bitch didn’t know an F-4 from F Troop. Delores, you told her, right? About all those other women? The ones before you and after you? I don’t know how he does it. Is it the silver hair or is it the tan? If it’s the tan, someone please push me on out to the parking lot to get some sun.”
“It’s true,” Delores said, licking her thumb and flicking the page. Hand cannons, Smith & Wesson M19s, new Combat Magnums. “So many. He probably have that VD. He use his ding-dong like old men use metal detector on the beach. You know, beep-beep-beep. Sweep it left to right to look for silver?”
“Oh God,” Debbie Lyn said, laughing. “Oh God.”
“Say,” Russell looked her up and down again, “you got protection, right?”
She thought he was asking about prophylactics, but he wheeled over to his bed and pulled out a little black gun, so small it looked almost like a toy. He kept feeling under the bed until he got a magazine and slid it in place, grinning.
“You got to protect yourself, ma’am,” he said. “None of us know who this man is. What he does. One night, he said he was some kind of CIA assassin. Here, put this in your purse. Just promise me to get me that tiger pouch back. Bastard had no right.”
“I feel like a million bucks,” he said nearly a month later. A whole entire month of Debbie Lyn being quiet and polite, a good girl who didn’t ask questions and let the man do the deciding. She wanted to say something or do something, but she’d been having such a lovely time. They’d just gone to dinner, a nice little Vietnamese place off Treasure Island, and he’d spoken back and forth to the woman in French. Debbie Lyn was amazed, being reminded in some way of Miracle on 34th Street, Natalie Wood seeing that little Dutch girl singing “Sinterklaas,” feeling happy for the first time since losing her family in World War II. He’d been back to himself, clean shaven, non-Croc’d in knit shirt, khakis, and broken-in moccasins, smelling nice. He’d worn a Rolex. He’d opened the door for her. He’d even paid.
Holding her hand as they brought over the fried green-tea ice cream, he leaned in and kissed her cheek. She knew. She knew. But every night had been fun. Every night different. An adventure, as he had promised. She quit her job and moved into the old estate on Sunset Drive, sending her friend Judy more silly postcards from the beach. A bummy-looking man poking up from an ice hole near a sign that read, Thin Ice, beside a picture of a good-looking woman swimming at the beach, palm trees on shore. Her sign read: Pretty Nice... He still didn’t have a car. But she quit asking questions. He was on the phone constantly with the Keys. They had found something nearly a mile offshore. A candlestick. A gold bar. He said they had a big vacuum sucking up all that mucky sand until they hit pay dirt.
“How do you know French?”
“I lived in France some time ago,” he said. “Back then, I was in marketing. We handled business for Kellogg’s International. We did a lot of promotion for Frosted Flakes. I knew Tony the Tiger. The real Tony the Tiger. The original, Thurl Ravenscroft. Nobody could do a They’re great! like old Thurl. Wonderful, wonderful deep voice. He’s also the voice of Fritz at the Tiki Room at Disney. Did you know he was very religious? His lifelong dream was to record the entire Bible on tape. I’m talking the whole thing. Old and New Testament.”
They were back at the mansion on Sunset Drive, sitting in the Jacuzzi with the doors open. She’d bought some Korbel champagne at Walgreens and they drank it from a couple of plastic cups he kept in the empty cabinets.
“Who really owns this place?”
“Who do you think?” he said. “I know. I know. Delores filling your head with all that nonsense. I know it’s hard to believe, but I have had a pretty amazing life. I’ve worked in Hollywood and on Wall Street. I have been a millionaire but I also know what it’s like to be broke. I have traveled across this world and hope to again. And yes, Debbie Lyn, I am a risk-taker. A rascal. A rogue. A treasure hunter. Someone who looks tough and weathered on the outside, but inside I’m just a marshmallow. I’m not asking a thing from you but to trust me. Just like you see people do sometimes, those trust-fall thingies, where you close your eyes and fall backward. Why don’t we try and do that? Yes, let’s do that.”