Stick (7 page)

Barry yelled at her, “Babe, how you doing!” Then ducked into the car again and glanced at Stick as he got his
Journal.
“The lady of the house. You'll have to drive her around too, but usually just over to the club. Leucadendra. It's in Coral Gables, if you don't
know where it is. I doubt if she knows how to get there. But I'm the one you have to impress. You're not an alcoholic, are you?”

“I never thought about it,” Stick said.

“That's a good answer. Cecil'd say he was going to an AA meeting and come back smashed. Well, you get a guy out of a rehab center you take your chances.”

Stick said, “Why do you want to hire me?”

Barry stood slightly bent over, looking in. “What do you mean, why do I want to hire you? I'm offering you a job. You're sitting in the car already, I don't have to go to the service.”

“What's the job pay?”

“Jesus Christ,” Barry said. He straightened and bent over again. “Two bills a week, room and board. All you can eat—got a great cook. But no fucking the maids, they're nice girls. The broad that comes in does the laundry, that's up to you. What else you want to know? . . .  Clothes, I buy the uniforms.”

“I have to wear a uniform?”

“Jesus Christ,” Barry said, “what is this? Yeah, you wear a uniform. A three-button, single-breasted suit. You wear a black one, a dark gray or a light tan, depending. That sound okay to you?”

“Where do I live? I have my own room?”

“I don't believe this,” Barry said. He half-turned, nodding toward the garage wing. “There's a two-bedroom
apartment in there you share with the houseman but, yes, you have your own room. Now, you want the job or not? Jesus . . .”

“Let me explain something so you understand,” Stick said. “See, I did seven years straight up day to day in a room six and a half feet wide by ten feet deep. I know I have to overcome stumbling blocks, bad luck of all kinds and a tendency now and then to take shortcuts, you might say, or I could go back there or a place like it. But while I'm out, and as long as I stay out, I can choose where I live. So why don't I look at the room and then I'll let you know. How'll that be?”

Barry said, after a moment, “Sure.” He didn't seem to know what else to say.

CHUCKY WAITED OUTSIDE
. Because when he mentioned Wolfgang's on the phone Kyle said she didn't do business in bars. Not snippy about it, fairly low key, in her natural style. Stating a fact. She said she was going to be down this way and wanted to drop something off. Or, if he liked the looks of the stock offering he could sign a letter of intent.

He told her lay it on him, he'd sign on the dotted line. Told her he had a pressing engagement and
had
to be at Wolfgang's and if she'd make an exception this time he'd never let it happen again.

What he wanted was for Kyle McLaren to meet Eddie Moke, and say something nice to him. A small favor to ask. Also he wanted to impress the boy. He wanted Eddie Moke in his pocket as an Anti-Cuban Protection Guarantee. A white-boy buffer between Chucky and the crazies. Somebody who thought American but worked for the chickenkillers. Chucky did not intend to make any more quarter-million-dollar offerings for honest mistakes.

He stood there in his size 44 red-white-and-blue striped-T-shirt, boat freak or patriot, talking to the parking attendant who'd come on for Happy Hour, talking about cars. The young-kid attendant, seeing the gray Porsche roll in, said, “Now there's my idea of wheels. Shit, a Nine-twenty-one.”

And Chucky
knew
it was going to be Kyle. Dove gray Porsche with a stylish faint orange pinstripe. She was her own girl, wasn't she? Palm Beach, stock portfolios and high-performance iron. Mom and dad'd trip over each other getting to her. He got his smile ready and there she was:

In pale yellow, plain dark sunglasses, a zip-up case in one hand, brushing at her bangs with the other. He liked her hair better this time, it was blonder in outside light, yes, had a nice outdoor look that was
her.
A good-looking broad with brains. He wondered if Pam and Aurora had finished their drinks yet . . .

Aware of everything at once moving around in his head, floating in and out of his mind's vision, pictures and now live action in the pale yellow dress. Ready?

“Kyle!”

She flipped up the sunglasses coming over, then removed them. She said, “Chucky,” almost matching the intensity of his greeting. But immediately her expression relaxed, again composed. She said,
“Well, are you ready to become a corporate shareholder?”

Chucky said, “If I don't have to read any small print. Hey, come on inside, I want you to meet some people.” Going up the steps, his hands lightly touching her back, he said, “Would you do something for me?”

She looked at him but didn't seem surprised.

“What?”

“Tell this boy I'm going to introduce you to that you like his hat.”

Chucky brought a chair over to the table, waving at people, asking how they were doing. Both of the girls, Pam and Aurora, made room; but the young guy drinking beer out of the bottle, introduced simply as Moke, didn't move.

Very serious, with that official American-cowboy funneled brim curving down on his eyes. Grim. While his body tried to appear casual—the indifferent stud.

Kyle said, “I like your hat. It has a lot of character.”

Moke stirred. He looked at her, looked past her, came back to her, then stretched to look out at the room, showing her his pointy Adam's apple, vulnerable white throat. He might not have heard what she said, with the rock beat, a bell dinging outside, a
foghorn blaring inside among cheers and forced laughter—poor timing.

She leaned close to the table. “I said I like your hat.”

And got a reaction this time. Moke touched the brim, moved it up and then down on his eyes again. The strands of dark hair to his shoulders didn't move.

“It's an original Crested Beaut,” Chucky said.

“I like your shirt, too,” Kyle made herself say, though she wasn't sure why. The shirt was light blue with dark-red roses across the yoke, pearl buttons open almost all the way down the front, bony chest showing. “Are you a cowboy?”

“Moke's from Texas, the real article,” Chucky said. “Hey, Moke?”

Moke shrugged, like it wasn't anything.

“I believe it,” Kyle said. And that was enough of that. She wondered what Chucky was doing. If he was putting on a show. If he felt the need to have people around him.

The girl named Pam, Kyle assumed, was Chucky's. She had more hair than Kyle had ever seen before on a human head. Ash blond. More than all of Charlie's Angels put together, making her face seem tiny, hiding in there. Her hand, bearing a diamond solitaire, rested on Chucky's arm. She yawned but seemed content.

The other girl, Aurora, was dark-haired, cat-faced, with bedroom eyes, languid moves; she wore
rings on seven of her fingers, a diamond, an opal, intricate designs in gold. She didn't yawn, she wound the straw from her collins around her thumb, pulled it off and wound it again.

Chucky said, “We were out with Barry earlier today, cruised up from Dinner Key. Little boat party.”

“I know,” Kyle said. “He called me as I was leaving home.”

Pam said, “Every time we go out'n the boat”—she spoke slowly, dragging her words—”and then come in here after and go, you know, to the ladies' room? I wash my hands and all, comb my hair. And then, whenever I look at myself in the mirror after we've been out on the boat? My zits look bigger.”

“They are,” Aurora said.

Chucky said to Kyle, “You work out of your house, uh?”

“I have an office there.”

“These two work out of their house, too,” Chucky said.

Pam slapped his arm. “What's that suppose to mean?”

Aurora said to him, “I thought you were going to take me home.” The whine in her voice surprised Kyle; she had expected a purr. She heard Chucky say, “You want to leave, call a cab.” And the whine again: “You big shit, Barry said you're suppose to take me.” They weren't bedroom eyes, they were joyless, at best sleepy.

Chucky said, “Hey, when'd I start working for Barry? You want to go home, go home. You want to wait'll we're through here, I'll take you. Now you be a good girl.”

Aurora said, “Well, why can't Lionel take me?”

“ 'cause Lionel's busy.”

Moke said, “Doing what, eating? I ain't seen that sucker do nothing else.” Moke grinned, his eyes slipped over to Kyle to get her reaction.

She smiled, an act of courtesy, and regretted it.

Encouraged, Moke said, “Yeah, Lionel, he gets his snout in the trough he'll feed all day you let him. Won't he?”

Chucky said, “Well, he is a size, all right.”

Moke said, “He was mine I'd keep him out'n a feed lot.”

“Why don't I leave this with you,” Kyle said, setting her case upright on her lap. She zipped it open and brought out a printed binder and a few loose papers. “You can take your time, read over the prospectus and give me a call . . .  not this week, though. I'm going to be in New York.”

“I can't wait,” Chucky said. “Let's get ‘er done now.”

“He can't read, is what his trouble is,” Moke said. “Can you?”

Kyle kept her eyes on Chucky. “You want to do it
here
?”

“It'll be a first,” Chucky said. “The only legit deal ever made in this place.”

Kyle said, “Well . . .” and placed the bound prospectus in front of him. “It's a software company, been in business two years.”

“Software,” Moke drawled, “they make that toilet paper don't hurt none when you wipe yourself?”

Pam said, “God, you're sickening.”

Kyle didn't look up. “They've developed a series of programs for personal computers.” She glanced at Chucky. “You wanted to get into high-tech.”

“Love it,” Chucky said. “I got a computer myself. I show it to you?”

Kyle shook her head, surprised. “No, you didn't.”

“I don't know how to operate it,” Chucky said. “I got a fourteen-year-old kid comes in when I need him, name of Gary. Gary can key into Dade and Broward County, both their systems. I ask him to run a license number? Gary can tell me in about ten seconds if it's on a county or government vehicle or belongs to a pal. All the time popping his bubble gum.”

Moke said, “You shitting me?”

“Ask it the birth date of your favorite trooper,” Chucky said, “case you want to send him a card with a little something in it.”

Kyle said, “Well, you only plug into Dow-Jones with this one. They're specializing in programs for
mailing lists, forecasts, cost analyses, budgets, word processing. They've somehow organized an eighty-eight-thousand-word dictionary inside ninety-three K bytes of disk space, if that excites you . . .”

“Dig it,” Chucky said. “What else?”

“Well, the market,” Kyle said, “is definitely there. It's been increasing by a third each year, while this particular company has tripled its revenue over the past two years and they're now reasonably sure of a three-hundred-percent annual growth rate through at least ‘Eighty-five.”

Aurora said, “How do you know all that?”

Kyle looked up to see the dark-haired girl frowning at her. “I'm sorry. What?”

“How do you know about all that kind of stuff?”

“I read,” Kyle said. She placed a typewritten letter before Chucky that was addressed to an investment banking company in New York, then went into her case again for a pen. “That's the subscription form. Sign where you see your name at the bottom and you'll be a one-and-a-half percent shareholder in Stor-Tech, Inc.”

Aurora said, “I mean but how did you
learn
all that?”

“She's smart, what she is,” Moke said. If anybody wanted the answer.

“I've got an idea,” Kyle said to poor puzzled Aurora frowning at her. “I'll give you a lift home and
tell you all about it on the way. How's that?”

Chucky said, “Hey, come on, you're not leaving us, are you?”

“Have to,” Kyle said. “Isn't that the way it is, just when you're having fun . . .”

Bobbi raised her arm straight up, called to Chucky going out to the terrace and waved the check at him. She watched him come back through the customers standing around by the opening, Moke right behind him in that stupid cowboy hat.

“You want to sign or pay for it?”

“I'm a signer,” Chucky said. “Gimme your pen.”

Bobbi had to go over to the cash register to get it. Lying there on the back counter was the drink check her boss wanted verified, so she brought that with her and held it out to Chucky with the ballpoint.

“Gabe says I have to show you this one I signed your name to. From last week.”

Chucky took the check, looked at it. “You write just like I do.”

“I try to save you the bother, but Gabe can tell the difference.”

“Just come straight out from the loop and put a little tail on it. This one here you can almost read,” Chucky said. “You didn't give yourself a tip.”

“ ‘Course not. You think I'm trying to rip you off?”

“Not my sweet girl,” Chucky said, still looking at the check. “Who was I with? I don't remember.”

“Well, actually,” Bobbi said—she was afraid he was going to ask that—”you weren't here but Rainy said put it on your tab”—Chucky looking up at her now—” 'cause he and this guy he was with were supposed to meet you, but you didn't show up.”

“Last Thursday?” Chucky said, his big pupils staring right at her now.

Moke was in close to him, leaning on the bar and looking at the check past Chucky's shoulder. Bobbi raised her hand to smooth her hair in back, fooling with it for something to do and saw Moke, the creep, staring at her armpit. Moke was weird. He'd sit at the bar sometimes and just stare, hold his beer bottle by the neck in his fist, never taking it away from his mouth, and giving it a little flip with his wrist when he wanted a sip. When he was being funny he'd ask for a straw with the beer and wait for her to laugh. He was going to wait a long time, the stupid shit. What a ‘tard.

“He say I was coming in?” Chucky asked.

“Who, Rainy? Yeah, you were supposed to meet 'em here,” Bobbi said. “Rainy and this friend of his. He was here about an hour ago, I just saw him.”

“Rainy was?” Chucky seemed confused.

“No, not Rainy. His friend.”

“While I've been here?”

“I don't know. Maybe. I didn't notice.”

Chucky had straightened. “Not while I been here.” He turned to Moke. “You see him?”

“See who?” Moke said.

“The guy, the one that was with Rainy last week. You know, went with him . . .”

Now Moke straightened up from the bar. “He was in here? When?”

“She says just a while ago.”

“I don't know,” Bobbi said, instinct telling her to back off, “maybe it was a couple of hours ago.” She didn't like the look on Moke's face. Or Chucky's, for that matter.

“Musta just missed him,” Chucky said. “What'd you say his name was?”

“I don't know his name. Only he's a friend of Rainy's.”

“Slim fella, with brownish hair,” Chucky said.

She had never seen Chucky so intent, serious. A moment ago she was going to say something about how much Rainy's friend had changed, his appearance, like he'd been sick and now was all better, but changed her mind and said, “Just ordinary looking, I guess.”

“Where's he staying?” Chucky asked her.

“I don't know.” With irritation now, to show she was getting tired of this. “Ask Rainy.”

Neither of them said anything.

Moke seemed about to, then raised his eyebrows and grinned. Then rubbed his hand over his mouth and looked away, like TV actors did, acting innocent. Immature or stupid—Bobbi believed you could go either way with Moke and be right. Even stoned he was a simple study.

Chucky said, “Well, it doesn't matter.” He bent over to sign the check.