She Walks in Beauty (40 page)

Lavert looked down at Harry, gestured with a finger to one eye. “Breakfast’s what he is. About two bites.”

“Billy Carroll. Host of ‘The Big One’ and emcee of this year’s Miss America Pageant!” Carroll was bouncing up and down on his lifts so hard he looked like he was about to take flight. “And furthermore, I have played in this town for 25!”

“Casinos ain’t been open that long, fool,” Lavert said softly, stepping up to the cashier. It was his turn now.

“I earn more in one week than you do in a whole year, and you’re telling me my credit’s no good? So what if I’ve drawn twenty-five? I’m good for that and more. Do you speak English? Can we get somebody over here who can?”

Lavert was signing his receipt. “I fairly do hate people who say things like that. I tell you, Harry, the assumptions made by middle-class white people in this country are enough to give you heart failure.”

“I couldn’t agree more.”

“And I hope a whole bunch of them come and make those assumptions in our restaurant, don’t you? Labor under the delusion that the world’s their playpen and the toys don’t stop. Their pockets full of gold plastic.”

“I do, my man.”

“How are you boys doing today?” It was a little old black lady in a bright red polyester pantsuit and comfortable shoes who was in line behind them.

Her husband, who was carrying her bag, couldn’t help but brag. “We hit the dollar slot for $5000.”

“That’s great!” Lavert beamed at them. Then leaned down to take a closer look, glanced back at Harry with a question on his face.

The little old lady turned to her husband and whispered. “We can’t cash this in, Ange. You have to show ID.”

“You’re right. I forgot. Well, hell, let’s go upstairs. We’ll take a little lie-down.”

“Okay,” she said brightly. And off they trotted.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with you people,” Billy Carroll was screaming.

“What’s the matter, man?” Harry asked Lavert.

“Those people—they weren’t black.”

“They looked black to me.”

“I know. But did you listen to them?”

“They’re Yankee colored folks, Lavert. They talk different.”

“Shut up, fool. Those were your folks wearing makeup, I’m telling you.”

“Yeah, and I guess that ID business they were talking about doesn’t mean they left their drivers’ licenses upstairs, it means they’re gonna go up, get their guns, and rob the bank, right?”

Just then a white man in a navy blazer, almost as big as Lavert, pulled up under his own steam, though Harry wouldn’t have been surprised if there’d been a bulldozer behind him, he had that kind of momentum.

“Sir?” he said to Billy Carroll, cutting him out of the line with his body like Billy was a bad little calf. “Sir, could you come over here with me just a moment?”

Shift manager if not assistant casino manager, Harry thought. Hell, maybe it was the casino manager himself leaning on Billy Carroll, whose face was starting to pucker like he might have himself a good cry.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Carroll was right in the man’s face as Harry and Lavert strolled off.

*

Later, Billy Carroll would be ashamed of himself. Ashamed of losing control with a nobody like that. He should have insisted on seeing the vice president in charge of casino operations when the big lug hustled him out.

But, on the other hand, Billy thought—taking another shower, getting ready for his ride on the float with that bossy Phyllis George who’d probably try to tell him how to wave—maybe it was just as well.

He had already dropped another bundle, all in credit, since he’d gotten the call from Barbara Stein about doing the emcee number.

Only because he was nervous. Which was understandable, primetime exposure like that.

Plus, there was Angelo leaning on him.

He’d told the man he’d do what he asked. But, God almighty, it wasn’t going to be but half a second if he did that before the shit would hit the fan, and his career in broadcasting would be history.

Billy had been in some tights before, but never one like this.

The way he figured it, he’d just keep leading Angelo on, saying, Yes sir, boss to everything he asked. Then he’d do the right thing, and, once he paid Angelo the cash he owed him, plus a little bonus, hell, what difference would it make?

This wasn’t
GoodFellas,
for Christ’s sake. And the pageant was just a bunch of silly little twists. Who’d care day after tomorrow? It wasn’t important. It wasn’t the Super Bowl. It wasn’t like Angelo was going to fit him for a pair of concrete overshoes, size eight, hold the lifts ’cause the little man won’t be standing in them.

Was it?

46

There was nothing to clear a man’s head like a drive in the country.

About five o’clock, just as everybody else was settling into the Miss America Parade and all that silliness on the Boardwalk, Wayne headed out of town in his red 1968 Mustang, a car he dearly loved. He’d thought for a few minutes about taking a rental car, the Mustang being such a standout, but then, nobody in Atlantic City ever noticed anything anyway, and the people where he was headed, well, there weren’t many of them in the first place, and in the second place, they never talked.

Besides, he didn’t want to waste the money. Now that he was out of a job—well, it might not be long before Michelangelo Amato took him on, probably wouldn’t be, but you could never tell. All that talk Mr. F had done about bad times—who knew how far that might go? Maybe even the mob had more than it could handle, had fallen on lean days. Though he didn’t think so.

Anyway, Dean said Michelangelo wasn’t mob. Michelangelo was
connected,
he kept saying, like he thought he was hot stuff, talking the lingo.

And anyway, even if
everybody
had to suck it in, including connected dudes, whatever that meant, Wayne knew he had plenty of resources when it came to hard times. In fact, with this little trip, he was hoping to kill two birds with one stone.

First, he had the business in the trunk to take care of. Second, he was scouting for where he might set up a home site, push came to shove. Wayne was good at living off the land. Hadn’t that been exactly what he was doing when Mr. F found him?

Wayne looked out the window at a church sign.
Drive in and drop off all your suffering with us. We’ll wash it clean.
Well, that was a sign, all right. A sign he needed to stop thinking about Mr. F. That was over. Dead. Done and gone.

Back to his plan, that
was
what he’d been doing when Mr. You Know Who found him. Living in that tree house. Living off the fat of the land and what he could lift from the FrankFair, Grand Union, and Radio Shack. Depending on his innate skills and his innate worth. He had learned even more skills since then. And he had a lot more cash. Yeah, Wayne figured, looking to be careful he didn’t miss the turnoff in Egg Harbor City from White Horse Pike onto the Egg Harbor-Green Bank Road, he’d be just fine, thank you very much, Mr. You Know Who.

He knew his way around. Especially this area. One of the things Wayne loved about it was how, 30 minutes from Atlantic City, headed inland like you were going to Philly, you could hang a right and be in wilderness in no time flat.

The Pine Barrens were one of the last true wildernesses in this country. The size of Grand Canyon National Park, 650,000 acres, with a population density of fifteen people per square mile. In one area of the Barrens, over 100,000 acres, there were only 21 people. Wayne had not only visited, he’d read up.

He could tell you that the eastern part of the Barrens—where he was driving his Mustang now, along a dirt road that was two tracks in the sand with brush growing up between them—was covered with dwarf forests as far as a man could see. Over to the west and north stood oaks and pines and tall white cedars. It was tannins and other organic waste from the cedars that gave the dark color to the water that flowed so freely here. In summer, the water, while uncontaminated as pure rainwater or melted glacial ice, was so cedar-dark with those tannins you couldn’t see the bottom of the riverbeds.

Wayne was driving toward one of them, Bass River, right now.

The car was bouncing against scrub-oak boughs and blueberry bushes. Running over rattlesnakes. There were lots of rattlers in the Pines. Probably lots more snakes than people, but they all made out.

In the old days, it used to be that Pineys, that’s what the folks who lived here called themselves, lived completely off the land—the way Wayne liked to do. They didn’t have FrankFairs, Grand Unions, and Radio Shacks, but they had the sphagnum moss to sell to florists, wild blueberries, cranberries, cordwood, and they made charcoal. They sold holly, mistletoe, pine, and greenbrier for Christmas decorations. They gathered wildflowers in the spring, made birdhouses out of cedar slabs, sent box turtles to Philadelphia to keep the snails out of the cellars.

Some of those things remain. Pine Barrens cranberries, commercially grown, furnish a third of the country’s supply. Charcoal’s gone. Wild game has declined. Many Pineys now have jobs outside.

But they come back and stay home, given the choice. They love their wild land. And they love to be left alone. Like Wayne.

In fact, Wayne thought, maybe he wouldn’t even call on Michelangelo Amato with his Grand Plan.

Maybe he’d just tuck in here and become a Piney with the rest of them. Build him a shack. Or reclaim one that was falling down. There were plenty. Nobody would care.

He’d met some Pineys. They were good people. Quiet. Shy. Though once he’d sat with some old men and shared their food, and boy, could they tell some tales.

There were those who said Pineys were all touched in the head because of inbreeding, but those people didn’t know what they were talking about. Pineys just liked to mind their own business.

There was a lot to be said for that.

Now if Dougie had learned to do that, instead of telling tales on him to Mr. F all the time, he wouldn’t be in the pickle he was in now.

Wayne kept bumping along until he reached Bass River, then pulled the Mustang right up to the edge of it. Dark as ink, the water was. You couldn’t see a thing through it.

He turned off the ignition, opened the door, stepped outside. Wayne lifted his arms to the sky. Christ, the air smelled so sweet. It was great to be away from that stinking city. You wouldn’t think that a town that was right up on the Atlantic Ocean could smell bad, but AC did. It smelled of rot, sweat from the gamblers, the stink of unwashed kids.

Dougie was going to start to smell, too. He’d smell up the Mustang if Wayne didn’t get him out of there.

Wayne whirled in a circle, took a look around. Miles and miles of deep forest. Nobody in sight but just us critters. He opened the trunk, and, holding his breath, dragged Dougie’s blanket-wrapped body out. Then it didn’t take but a minute to roll him over and over.
Kerplop.
Dougie dropped beneath the surface of the dark water.

Just like Kurt Roberts, somewhere around here. Up a few miles, maybe. Wayne had taken a different road that time.

He felt bad about contaminating the water, but, hell. There was
lots
of water. It wouldn’t take long before it ran clean again.

Wayne dug in his shirt pocket, lit a cigarette, and took a deep drag. He’d stopped smoking a long time ago, but every once in a while, times like this, a job well done, an unfiltered smoke was just the ticket.

It had been simpler this time. With Kurt, well, he’d wanted to
show
Mr. F the job well done. So there’d been the video camera he’d had to set up. It was hard to find the right height to get everything he wanted in the picture. He’d wasted a lot of time fooling with the tripod. And, somehow, the camera, all that high tech stuff, well, it just didn’t feel right, here in the Barrens.

But this time, this time Wayne had done good. He’d done perfect.

47

Sam woke up laughing.

“What?” Harry croaked.

“Wasn’t it one of the ten best things you’ve ever seen?”

Harry sat up, reached for the phone, and ordered a carafe of coffee. At the end of the bed, Harpo stretched and glared at him, then rolled over.

“You think the little dog would have loved the parade?” He called to Sam who was in the bathroom brushing her teeth.

“Oh yeah. He’d have braved the crowds and noise to have seen the Reverend. Harpo’s crazy about folks walking on water.”

*

Sam had always loved a parade. Ever since she was a little girl, she’d delighted in parking herself curbside, hip to hip with other strangers who couldn’t wait for the first wail of the motorcycle escort.

Atlantic City’s Finest had done the honors for Miss America. They wore shiny black leather boots and knife-pleated gabardine and made lots of noise revving up their bikes.

Sam had a prime spot at a press table right outside Convention Hall. The
Inquirer
had saved her a seat. On her other side was
USA Today.
The parade rolled right past them down the Boardwalk.