Doom Fox (8 page)

Reba pulls over to stop at the curb. Zenobia kisses her cheek. She says, 'Thank you baby daughter, for the ride' as she exits the car.

'See you play Mama' Reba says as she pulls the Packard into traffic.

Zenobia stands and watches the Packard turn off Avalon Boulevard before she limps down the sidewalk to the used car lot. She threads her way through a maze of cars to a gleaming black '37 La Salle. She sweeps excited eyes over the tall prepossessing machine.

The florid fatso owner comes to her side. 'Good afternoon, Mrs Allen' he purrs. 'Have you come to get your La Salle today?'

She says, 'Today is the day my car is mine' as she digs in her bosom. She extracts a thin roll of bills. 'Mister Slater, my figuring tells me I owe you thirty-six more dollars on this deal. That's right, ain't it?'

'That's right, Mrs Allen. The battery's charged and you can drive off' he says as he hands her the key and scribbles a receipt for the bills she hands him. He then hands her the pink slip.

She takes it and says, 'Mister Slater, what you charge me to park my car on your lot?'

With a puzzled expression he says 'I really don't know ... anything you think is fair.'

'How about five dollars for 'bout three weeks. Ain't thinking I'll need to park longer'n that' she says as she tenders the five.

He shrugs. 'Fair enough.'

She touches his coat sleeve before he turns away. 'Mister Slater, I got a special reason that I don't want none of the peoples in the neighborhood knowing I done bought a car. Don't tell nobody and I'll 'preciate it.'

'Don't worry Mrs Allen. It's our secret.' He turns away.

She keys into the car, sits and turns on the ignition. She listens to the fairly smooth engine for a long moment and is reminded that the La Salle will be her first car since the Down Home Cafe days, three years before.

She smiles grimly as she whispers, 'Look out, Mister Midnight Creeper!' She gets out and locks the La Salle.

As she hobbles home on relapsed feet, Baptiste sits tensely in his den stud poker arena. The fact that his table stakes two grand bankroll has been under constant siege convinces him that his opponents are 'bust out' gladiators of considerable skill themselves. He suspects that their betting attacks and play against each other are simply ploy to camouflage their plan to bust him out, then divvy his bankroll among themselves. He is also intimidated by the butt of the holstered pistol that peeks from beneath Clarence's suit coat.

Baptiste peeps at a hole card king of clubs followed by a second face-up king of diamonds dealt by Lefty Hicks to his left. He sees through his 'reader' eyeglasses Hicks' hand: spade ace in hole with heart ten showing. Draw Back Davis' spade jack in hole with diamond deuce showing. Dudley's hand: spade deuce in hole with diamond eight showing. Directly across the table he sees that Dudley's nephew, Clarence Jones has a pair of red treys.

Baptiste has placed Clarence as one of the sidewalk gawkers in San Francisco when he was taken to the ambulance with his throat cut.

Baptiste folds on dealer Lefty Hicks' fifty dollar bet after the third car when Lefty Hicks deals himself the ace of hearts to pair with his ace in the hole. Draw Back Davis, dealt the diamond jack to pair with his spade jack in the hole, calls. Clarence's Uncle, Dudley folds. Baptiste's eyes slit in suspicion behind the tinted windows of his glasses to see Clarence call Lefty Hicks' fifty buck bet and raise it to a 'C' note with only the pair of treys and a third card, king of hearts. Draw Back and Lefty Hicks call Clarence's 'C' note raise.

At the conclusion of the hand, Draw Back and Lefty Hicks throw superior hands into the discard when they let Clarence raise them out with his ace of diamonds high, pair of treys hand. Baptiste tells himself his guests have not only been in cahoots to bust him out and drain him broke against the bandit percentages of their four hands against one, his, but now are throwing their bankrolls to Clarence for the buck power to muscle him broke. To counteract their conspiracy, Baptiste vows to himself not to bet past a 'C' note unless he has the deck in hand.

At nine p.m. Baptiste finds himself head to head with cigar chomping Clarence Jones. Baptiste, with close to twenty-two hundred dollars before him, glances at the eight grand bankroll stacked in front of Clarence. Draw Back, Dudley and Lefty Hicks smoke cigarettes and drink coffee as they sit around the table and hawkeye the see-saw action.

At eleven p.m. Baptiste has, on his deals stacked hands, jumped Clarence's cuts of the deck back to original mortal cinch arrangement. On Clarence's deals, he has only called cinch bets. He has dealt seconds with wizard expertise to amass a four grand pile of bills before him. Half of what he requires to save his house, furniture and Packard.

They ante a sawbuck apiece. He watches Clarence riffle and stack the cards. He cuts. Clarence picks up the deck to deal. Baptiste enjoys an interior chuckle to hear an almost imperceptible whisper of the cards as Clarence jumps his cut. Baptiste peeps at his diamond jack hole card followed by a second face-up club jack. He knows Clarence has a pair of nines, suspects, is almost certain, the third nine is stacked to fall before or on the fifth card.

Baptiste bets a double sawbuck. Clarence calls, deals the third card, a diamond ten to Baptiste, a spade queen to himself, bets a 'C' note. Baptiste calls, is dealt a heart ten for two pair. Clarence deals himself a spade king. Baptiste bets a token 'C' note, is called and raised five bills. Baptiste folds with his two pair to escape the third nine he is convinced Clarence has stacked to fall to himself on the fifth card.

Clarence spills the deck to the tabletop face up as he reaches to pull in the pot. He lights a fresh cigar as they ante. His eyes are bright with cunning as he watches Baptiste pick up the exposed deck and shuffle it.

Baptiste feels his pulse sledge as he shuffles the deck and stacks a bandit hand. Clarence cuts the deck, gets red kings wired. Baptiste peeps at his diamond queen hole card pairing his face-up space queen.

Clarence bets a 'C' note, is called and raised two bills. He calls, gets a heart queen, Baptiste a spade king. Baptiste bets two bills, is called and raised five bills that he calls. He deals Clarence a spade tenspot, himself a diamond eightspot.

The deck wobbles in Baptiste's hand. His stacked hand has gone awry. His fifth card, the third queen of hearts, is on top! Oh well, what the hell. I'll just have to deal the thieving bastard a second, Baptiste tells himself with a dealing palm popping sweat.

Clarence bets five bills. Baptiste calls and shoves his nineteen hundred dollar tap-out raise into the pot. Clarence rises to his feet, leans his long frame across the table, takes a long draw from his cigar as he stares into Baptiste's eyes.

Clarence says, 'Bap, there ain't no help for you here' as he taps the top of the deck - Baptiste's winning third queen - with the fiery tip of the cigar.

Baptiste ashens as he stares at the pinpoint scorch on his money card. Clarence's trio of confederates exchange ecstatic glances.

Clarence says, 'Bap, I hope that accident with my cigar didn't jinx me' as he lets himself down into his chair.

He counts out nineteen hundred, shoves the bills into the pot with a fiendish grin on his foxy face. The gallery of victors smirk and stare at Baptiste as he sits trancelike looking at the deck in his trembling hand.

'Bap, I'll give you a grand on your jewelry upstairs or two grand on your house if you think you've got the better hand and want to raise me' Clarence taunts. Then, 'C'mon Bap, deal out the hand and pee your pants' as Baptiste slowly shakes his head.

Baptiste's hand shakes as he flips the queen of hearts to Clarence. He turns the heart tenspot intended for Clarence, hurls the deck to the tabletop and rises on trembly legs.

He manages a tortured smile, says hoarsely, 'Well gentlemen, looks like that tramp Lady Luck has crossed me.'

His guests rise. Clarence says, 'Here's a double saw Bap, for your lonesome pocket.'

Baptiste scowls, 'Thanks, but I don't need it. I've got walk around dough upstairs ... I'll get in touch with Draw Back to set up another session in a couple of days.'

He heads the quartet to the front door, opens it. He shakes their hands as they file out. He shuts the door, goes to a front window. Despair slumps his shoulders as he watches them drive away. Don't panic! Don't panic! he shouts to himself as he collapses onto the sofa.

He stares blankly into space, immobile, slumped like a graven image of defeat until Susie the terrier scratches and whines at the front door. He heaves a sigh, gets to his feet with laborious effort. He opens the front door, follows as Susie goes to her pottie spot in bushes at the edge of the sidewalk.

He glances at his watch and sees it is half past midnight, sees the lights of the corner drugstore extinguish. He idly watches elderly Havelik, the store owner, and his burly son exit and lock the front door in a wash of street lamp. He watches them go to their car with the usual brown paper sack containing store receipts clutched in the son's hand.

Excitement reels Baptiste as he remembers that Erica, in her shop prattle, mentioned that on the last day of the month, when customers pay up their credit accounts, the Haveliks carry nine, ten thousand dollars with them when they close. Baptiste tells himself the heist of that paper bag is his only out. He has to save the house.

His head vibrates as he mulls heist angles, disguises and choreography. He and Susie go down the walk into the house.

5

Two weeks later at noon, Delphine, Young Joe's goddess, is awakened by the belly claw of her embryo monkey. Her great grey eyes anxiously sweep the drawn drape purple murk for the presence of the gibbering sex fiend demons who have tortured her in her sleep. Her apricot mane is a tousled frame of flame about her wickedly pretty face as she slides her naked arsenal of golden curves to her pre-prepared speedball mix of 'C' and 'H' in a syringe on the nightstand.

She pillow props herself, bends her knees, opens her thighs wide. She turns on and places the nightstand lamp at an angle on the bed to illuminate her vulva. She props a hand mirror against the bed covers to reflect her sex nest. With the syringe spike at ready, she locates a vivid blue vein, stabs in the needle and shoots in the dope. She extracts the spike, moans rapturously as she relaxes with hooded eyes in heroin's poisonous womb bliss.

She enjoys her favorite fantasy: She sees Big Louise, her mother, attacked by a nude mob of giggling johns. One of the mob loops his belt around Louise's throat to cut off her piteous screaming. Louise's naked whale-like blubber arches, quivers and leaps when the mob wrench her legs agape and gang-rape her with gigantic organs swathed in barbed wire studded condoms. Delphine sees herself mercifully smother Louise with a giant pillow.

Fantasy steeped, Delphine finally picks up the phone receiver on the fifth jangle to Young Joe's basso profundo voice. 'Baby Lady, you all right?' he asks.

'Fine and thinking of you, heartbreaker' she coos.

'You gonna pick me up at three?' he says.

'That's right, handsome sugar, at the usual place at three sharp. So don't be late a second or I'll beat your sweet butt, you hear?'

He laughs, 'I don't want you doing that Miss Sugar Ray, so I won't be late. Bye.'

An hour later she has showered, made up and dressed in clingy rust silk with tan ankle strapped baby doll shoes and matching bag. She dials Whispering Slim at home, makes her third deal in the past two weeks to pick up two bills worth of 'H' within the hour.

She leaves the building, goes to a black battered '41 Ford parked down the block. She guns it away. She purchased it to carry out her plan to rip off Slim's dope cache she believes is in an upper Avalon Boulevard one bedroom house she's tailed him to on several late evening occasions from the Blue Pit Bar. Then, she had tailed him back to the bar to fill dope orders. She is certain.

She drives to park a block from Slim's lavish six bedroom residence on Hoover. She tails Slim to the Avalon house. Ten minutes later, she parks a block away from the blistered frame house. She watches Slim drive his puce Caddie into the driveway of the house and key into it. Within five minutes, he comes out and drives away.

She decides to rip off Slim's dope and Joe Junior's bank nest egg on the same day in the near future and split to the Big Apple. She U-turns, goes home to exchange cars. She drives to the Blue Pit Bar, enters to slide in across from Slim in a front window booth. The bar is deserted except for a barmaid and the three-way dwarfish whore with the epic behind seated with her Popeye lookalike trick at the bar.

Delphine slaps the side of Slim's thigh with the back of a hand palming two 'C' notes. He takes it off beneath the table, takes a flash look at it before he sticks it into a trouser pocket. He drains his glass of Coke, starts to move out.

She presses a palm against his canary yellow suit sleeve.

'How about my merchandise, Slim?'

He whispers, 'Easy girl, I was gonna tell ya, your package is taped under that stool at the far end of the bar' as he leaves the booth.

She sits for a moment, watches him go across the sidewalk to his Caddie and pull away. She goes to sit on the stash stool, orders a planter's punch. She gets the stash, stuffs it into her bosom. She pays the barmaid and leaves the bar preceded by Epic Bottom and her trick.

Ten minutes later she pulls to a stop to pick up Joe Junior, fresh and neat in a pearl grey slax suit. He is surrounded by a mob of idolizing teenagers on a corner across the street from Slater's used car lot. Zenobia's La Salle is absent! Delphine slides across the seat to the passenger side, push-buttons the top down as Joe gets beneath the wheel. They kiss.

As Joe pulls the Continental away, she exclaims 'Candy Daddy, I've found it!'

He says, 'What?'

'The location for Delphine's Beauty Box. Go to Vernon Avenue just off Central and I'll show you the frame of my dream.'

He drives to park in front of the 'for rent' storefront. They get out and peer through plate glass into spacious rectangular, freshly painted purple emptiness.