Double Whammy (A Davis Way Crime Caper) (3 page)

I dumped out the contents of the Marc Jacobs bag onto the king-sized bed. I found a cell phone and a wallet with Mr. Jacobs’ name all over it. It would seem that I was now Marci Dunlow from San Antonio, Texas—my Photoshopped likeness on the driver’s license was a dead ringer for my new look—and Marci had a thousand dollars in cash so fresh off the press I had trouble separating the bills to count them. Marci was tempted to shimmy into the blue dress, take her thousand dollars, and head for the hills.

I opened my own purse, a beat-up Louis Vuitton knockoff, and dug for the noisy bulky mass that hid the key to my black Volkswagen Beetle. First things first, I checked the room with my handy-dandy radio-frequency detector. As Seen On TV. I found two signals: one emitting from the smoke alarm in the dead center of the ceiling (clever – who’d look there?) and one from Marci’s cell phone on the bed.

What did they think they were going to hear in my hotel room?

Thankfully, there were no cameras—I’d have hit the road—and there were no bugs in the bathroom, which is always a good thing. It was spacious, decorated like the bedroom in a sort of antique French Riviera, with a recessed makeup table that would serve me well as a desk, so I deemed it headquarters. I sat on the wide edge of the bathtub with the two cell phones, my own and Marci’s. Marci had a nice phone: a 4G, with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS (immediately disabled), a quad-core processor, a 20MP camera, and a high-resolution backlit TFT display. I popped off the side panel, no larger than a splinter, and found 64GB of memory and a 2GB SD card. I popped off the back of my own phone, and sure enough, found a new memory chip that Natalie had slipped in. (“Leave your things. I need to plant a bug.”)

Time to go shopping.

And for the record, I didn’t particularly trust them either.

*    *    *

No doubt someone was busy installing a tracking device in my car that I’d parked in the seven-level garage adjacent to the main building. I didn’t want to interrupt, so I decided to grab a cab.

The glitzy street entrance of the Bellissimo was packed with people—working, coming, going—and even more cars. The lane closest to the six double doors was specified for drop-off traffic, the next two for valet parking, an unspecified lane in the middle, a lane lined with black limousines, and a lane of taxis. I could easily have gotten a ride there. But another more discreet entrance on the east side of the main building had caught my eye. Several times I’d seen the same dirty white taxi tucked a half a block away from the doors, almost hidden behind thick landscaping, and I took off in that direction, heading east through the lobby. I thought I’d reached a dead end when I noticed gold lettering on dark-glass double doors to my right: VIP.

I took a deep breath and pushed through. This would be where the rich people checked in and out. Several heads turned my way. I gave them a nervous smile, crossed the quiet room, and stepped outside, where I was met by a blast of winter. January only looks like June on the Mississippi coastline. The difference is the icy, wet wind whipping off the Gulf, and this entrance to the Bellissimo was two feet from it.

Three limo drivers perked up. Spotting the taxi I was looking for, I waved them off.

I woke the driver, a black man who was probably in his sixties, with a knuckle on the window. He seemed none too happy to see me.

“Unavailable,” an old man said without looking at me. “Off duty.”

“Really?” I wasn’t climbing the hill to the other thirty-five cabs. I’d turn into a block of ice before I could get there. I dug out one of the hundred-dollar bills and slapped it against the glass. That got me a huge sound of disgust from the old man, then the door locks clicked open. I hopped in the back.

“Could you turn on the heat, please?” It was ten degrees colder inside the cab than out. He pushed a button on the dash, then the cab filled with burning dirt.

“Do you want to go somewhere or not?”

I batted at the cloud of singed dust with both hands. Maybe not.

He drove me to a super sell-all store several miles down a busy road. Every time I looked up, I caught the old guy staring at me in the rear-view mirror instead of watching the road. I unearthed the seat belt and buckled up. I don’t think anyone had been in this cab in the past decade, and I certainly didn’t intend to get in it again if I managed to get out of it this time with life and limb. The only thing in the car that wasn’t retro, including the driver, was a custom-installed satellite radio/scanner, lighting up the dash like New Year’s Eve.

I knew we’d arrived because he slammed to a stop so fast I added neck brace to my shopping list.

“I need you to wait on me.”

“Then you’d better hurry,” he said.

I purchased a pre-pumped cell phone, had someone at the customer-service desk break into it with a chainsaw and power it up, then made my way to the deserted automotive department, where I dialed my parents’ phone number as slowly as humanly possible.

My mother could answer a telephone in the most hostile manner imaginable. She’d say “hello” but it came out “WHAT?”

I steeled myself. And there it was.

“Mother, it’s me.”

A giant pause. “Well, Davis, so good of you to call. Make it quick; I’m in no mood to talk. In fact, talk to your sister.”

See?

“Hey, Sweetie,” my sister Meredith (note the non-talking-point name) said, and thankfully her voice wasn’t dripping hostility like Mother’s. But then she ruined it with her next cheery line. “We miss you!”

Meredith—my rock, my shield, my salvation from Mother, and my only sibling—had her own sugary way of sticking it to me. Her “we miss you” was Mer-Code for where the hell are you, Davis? And where have you been? And when will you be back?

“Davis?” Meredith asked. “What’s going on?”

I fingered the packages of windshield-wiper blades that hung on hooks in front of me, getting them all swinging and bouncing off one another.

“I’ve taken a job in Biloxi.”

I heard the back door squeak on Mer’s end. “Davis! You have not!”

“I have.”

“Why
there
?” Meredith demanded.

“You’re the one who told me to get out of town.”

“That’s
not
what I said. And even if, there are a million towns, Davis. Why that one? How can anything good come of following him down there? You
know
if it was
anyone
but Daddy, you’d have restraining orders on you that would put you on a different
planet
from Eddie. You can’t go sit in his lap! You’ll be in jail by the end of the week!”

Yes, Eddie. My rat ex-ex-husband, Eddie Crawford, formerly of Pine Apple, has been scratching his raging gambling itch in Biloxi for years. And, yes, I married him twice. And yes, it’ll be a nightmare if Eddie and I cross paths, because I had a $150,000 bone to pick with him, and he wanted me locked up in a loony bin.

I’d taken the second divorce pretty hard, if burning down his double-wide bachelor pad (he started it, I just didn’t put it out), taking cheap shots at him with my service revolver (grazing his girlfriend Danielle’s fat ass once), and giving him salmonella poisoning constituted taking it hard. And that was just in the months leading up to the divorce. As a result of the misbehaving, I lost my job, then got nailed in divorce court, which irritated me even more, often at three in the morning when it was just me and my laptop. Eddie found himself badly burned by identity theft, had a credit report that would prevent him from borrowing a wooden nickel for the rest of his miserable life, and one night I was so mad, I plastered him all over the National Sex Offender List. Eddie had the nerve to take me back to court, where Pine Apple’s one and only judge—a friend of  our families—said that what I’d done to him was no worse than what he’d done to me, and he told us to stay far, far away from each other. For as long as we both shall live. Taking a job in the city where I knew he was holed up wasn’t exactly staying far, far away. I was well aware, but it didn’t keep me from trying to talk my sister into it.

“This isn’t Pine Apple, Mer. Fifty thousand people live here and another blue gazillion pop in and out of the casinos every day. It’s not like I’m going to run into him on the street corner. Besides,” I scratched the itchy wig, “even if I do, he won’t know it’s me.”

“He’d know you a mile into a dark cave, Davis, because you’d be the one shooting at him.”

“You know Daddy took my gun, Meredith. I’m not going to shoot anyone.”

I could see my sister on the back porch, shivering in the January chill, a mirror of my mother thirty years ago, looking out over the seven acres that made up the family homestead.

“I’ve taken the job, Mer. And I’m not getting anywhere near Eddie because I don’t want to lose it before I even get paid. You’re the very one who insists I need to get my fresh start on.”

“You’re not going to get your fresh start on in the same city Eddie’s in, Davis, and you know it. Job or no job.”

Speaking of my new job, I needed to wind this up. A blue-vested boy who’d been hanging on my every word and peeking at me from between containers of transmission fluid and pine tree air fresheners had worked up the nerve to approach me directly. Not to mention I had a new purse full of my new employer’s new money, and should probably get back to my new job. “Just cross your fingers for me, smooth things over with Mother, and don’t tell Daddy anything. Let me handle that.”

“Be careful, Davis.”

“Oh, Meredith,” I said, “you worry too much.”

“Wait! Don’t hang up! First of all, I want my shoes back.”

Shoot.

“And second of all, where is it you’re working? What is it you’ll be doing?”

“I’m not sure.”

“You’re not
sure
? Which part? Where or what?”

I heard the squeak of the back door. Meredith either went back into the kitchen or she was standing there with the door open to aggravate Mother by letting out all the heat. Wait. That would be me.

“When you figure it out,” my sister said, “let us know.”

“I will.”

“Love you.”

“You, too.” I made kissy noises.

*    *    *

On the ride back to the hotel, Bad Attitude at the wheel, I stared out at the gray afternoon, wondering how the highlights—some might say lowlights—of the past decade of my life had escaped an organization as seemingly shrewd as the Bellissimo. True, there was no hard documentation of my end-of-marriage misdeeds, but only because my father hadn’t arrested me for them, and I knew how to get on and off a computer without anyone knowing. But truer than that was that our divorce played itself out on the sidewalks of Pine Apple, in the produce section of the grocery store, at the Gas and Go on Banana Street, and everywhere else Eddie and I happened upon each other. Every resident of Wilcox County, Alabama, knew every detail. How had the Bellissimo missed it?

I had a leg out the door, ready to be away from the surly cab driver, when I glanced up and caught him watching me again in the rear-view mirror.

“Surely you don’t expect a tip.”

He continued to stare. I reached up to pat my head; maybe the wig was on fire.

“I’m going to give you some advice,” he said. “First time and last time.”

He pivoted slowly to face me directly. He had the eyes of a thousand-year-old and they gave me the willies. I pressed myself into the backseat.

He spoke slowly, enunciating every word. “Get in your car and go back where you came from.”

Probably shouldn’t have slammed the car door that hard, but I didn’t want any advice from a total stranger. I had enough to last a lifetime from people who knew me.

FOUR

Twenty minutes later, with one last look in the mirror, I agreed with Marci Dunlow’s reflection: my own mother wouldn’t recognize me.

I made my way from my Five Star hotel room to the casino floor (about four miles), which, let me tell you, is a noisy, bright, and busy destination. Seven of my five senses went on overload. Other than the perfume of it all—liquor, cigarettes, desperation—it reminded me of Chuck E. Cheese’s. Chuck E. Cheese’s for grownups. There were flashing machines as far as the eye could see. Row after row after row. I was going to need a treasure map to find the Whammy one I was supposed to play.

Shoulders back, wig held high, I made my way through the middle of the casino. I had three cell phones riding inside leather on my right hip; their weight and placement reminded me, as my sister had earlier on the phone, of my pistol-packing days. Meredith had grown up at Mother’s knee, learning how to sift stuff. I cut my teeth on my father’s lap, learning how to keep a gun oiled. And it was a good thing that the bag was full of AT&T and not Smith & Wesson, because one of them went off. I stopped short and dug through the collection for the alarming one. “Davis Way.”

“No, you’re not.”

Natalie Middleton.

“Take a right. The Double Whammys are on your right.”

I glanced up at the three thousand camera orbs dotting the ceiling.

“Good luck.” She hung up.

Sure enough, a rotating neon sign announced that my wandering days were over: Double Whammy Deuces Wild. Beneath that, a scrolling number was whizzing through the mid-seven thousands. That’s it? They had me in witness protection over seven thousand dollars? They’d spent that on the wardrobe and cell phone.

Nine gambling machines sat under the scrolling number. Four lined one side, four backed against them facing the opposite way, and one end was capped with a Double Whammy machine. Two elderly women were poking the display screens on my right.

I skipped the third seat, and parked myself in the fourth.

Now what?

The women cut their eyes my way. One half-smiled, then they both went back to their poking. I had the distinct feeling I’d invaded their territory.

Digging one of the crispy hundred dollar bills out from the cell-phone collection, I inserted it into a protruding slit that practically begged for it. It had a blinking backlit graphic depiction of George Washington, strategically placed so you couldn’t miss it. The machine gobbled up the money so quickly, I jerked my hand back.