Suicide Squeeze

29

Conner drove back to Pensacola.

Jerry had said the thing was insured for a hundred thousand. Conner remembered something else Jerry had said.

Any collectible is really only worth what somebody is willing to pay.

There must be somebody else out there, a serious collector who didn’t mind throwing a lot of money around. If Conner could find another buyer, he wouldn’t have to deal with Becker. He was so close to doing something right. There was a stack of money right there in front of his face. All he had to do was reach out and grab it. If only he knew how.

Rocky Big. Rocky would know what to do. Rocky had known whom to call about the Dybek paintings.

But he couldn’t go to Rocky empty-handed. Conner needed to get his hands on the card. He had to show Rocky he could deliver the goods.

He started the Plymouth, pointed it toward the Electric Jenny. He’d need to search the sailboat one more time. Conner was certain the card was someplace simple, right under his nose.

Conner drove thirty seconds, stopped, turned around. What he really needed was to talk to Rocky first. No sense getting all involved with this scheme if Rocky knew a dozen reasons it was a bad idea. Maybe Conner wouldn’t be able to sell the card even if he found it somehow.

Conner changed his mind yet again, headed for the beach. It had been too long since he’d visited his favorite stool at Salty’s Saloon. And what he really needed was a drink.

Conner walked into the empty bar and said, “Sid, I want an Absolut martini straight up.”

Sid tore his eyes from the television behind the bar. A baseball game. When he saw Conner, he raised an eyebrow. “You know I can’t float you with the expensive stuff. How about a beer?”

Conner slapped a twenty-dollar bill on the bar. “My friend Andrew Jackson is buying.”

Sid put his hands together, bowed his head, and mumbled a prayer.

“What are you doing, Sid?”

“You’ve got cash,” Sid said. “That’s one of the signs of the apocalypse, ain’t it? I want to get right with God.”

“It’s too late for you. Fix the drink.”

“Uh-huh.” He threw ice and vodka into a shaker, splashed in some token vermouth. He shook it all up, poured it into a delicate glass with a long stem. Two olives. He shoved it in front of Conner, and said, “What’s that crazy outfit you’re wearing?”

“Kirk,” Conner said. “I’m a captain, so show a little respect.”

“Whatever. There was a woman in here looking for you.”

Conner’s hand froze halfway to the martini. “The hell you say.”

“Scout’s honor.”

“I thought you discouraged women from coming in here.” Conner’s hand found the glass, hoisted it to his lips. His mouth made a third of it disappear. His stomach received the gift, turned up the heat. All of his body parts working together in harmony. Togetherness made the world go round.

“Sure I discourage them,” Sid said. “This ain’t no hoochie pickup bar. It’s a guys’ bar. Sports on the tube and cheap beer.”

“Uh-huh. What did she look like?” Conner worried it was Becker. She didn’t seem like the kind of woman who would tolerate being jerked around. Conner didn’t want another kick in the teeth.

Sid described the woman. Tyranny.

Conner’s heart and stomach did a strange flop-and-flutter thing, the result of curiosity, worry, excitement, and desperate hope all mixed together. He threw down the rest of the martini, told Sid to build him another. “Not so much vermouth this time.”

Sid brought the drink. Conner drank.

“Hey, turn up the TV,” Conner said.

Sid glanced at the screen. “It’s a commercial.”

Conner leaned over the bar, grabbed the remote, and turned up the volume. It was a commercial telling people they could own their own business. Be your own boss. Internet access terminals about the size of ATM machines. Put them in hotel lobbies and malls. Conner liked the simple idea of making the rounds once a week, picking up the money, letting the machines do all the work. But the more he thought about it, the more he saw the problems. People would vandalize the machines. He’d need insurance. Maintenance. They’d turn out to be more work than a regular job.

Conner thought about Tyranny again. “What did she want?”

“She wanted to see you.”

“I know that,” Conner said. “What about? Did she say?”

“She didn’t say. Not exactly. I don’t think she’s happy with you.”

“What makes you say that?”

“You know that wooden cricket bat hanging next to the door?” Sid asked.

“Yeah.”

“Well, she just took it off the wall, and she’s coming at you fast.”

Conner spun on the stool, saw Tyranny’s blazing eyes a split second before the bat came down hard, cracked Conner on the forehead with a sharp thok. Conner’s eyes crossed, his head swam. He fell back in Sam Peckinpah slow motion, scattered three other stools, and landed flat on his back among the cigarette butts. He tried to sit up, but it took a second, bells ringing in his ears.

He blinked the dancing colors from his eyes, climbed to his knees, reached for the bar, and pulled himself up. He looked side to side, thinking maybe another whack was coming.

“She left,” Sid said.

Dammit.

Conner found his legs, stumbled for the door. He ran out to Salty’s parking lot, jumped in front of Tyranny’s BMW. It was a calculated risk. She wouldn’t run over him. Probably not.

She screeched the brakes, bumped Conner’s leg, but he held his ground.

She rolled down the window, stuck her head out. “Dan has a black eye, you shit.”

“I can explain.”

“Explain in hell.” She revved the engine.

Conner yelped, leapt on the hood. “Tyranny, please! Let’s talk.”

She sat there a moment glaring at him. He looked back, projected puppy-dog sadness through the windshield. She stuck her head out again, still mad but not hysterical. “Get in.”

He slid off the hood, froze a moment watching her. Maybe it was a trick. Maybe she’d plow over him when his guard was down. No, she was cool. He got in the passenger side, and she peeled out of the lot. Conner death-gripped the door handles, fumbled for the seat belt.

She drove fast, pushing her luck with yellow stoplights. They didn’t talk.

Conner didn’t know how to start, didn’t know how they related to each other anymore. He thought, now suddenly in the speeding BMW, the streetlights and restaurant neon smearing the windshield, that she was a foreign thing to him, that there’d always been more to her, dark complex secrets he couldn’t know or wouldn’t understand if he did. The simple fantasy that they’d love each other and be together and cue the sunset seemed ridiculous now.

She’d been playing chess the entire time he’d been playing checkers.

“You’d better slow down,” he said. “Cops.”

She slowed down. Glowered and fumed.

“I’ve spent a long time trying to get my life to make sense,” she said at last. “I can’t be how you want me to be. Dan lets me be myself, and that might include something ugly or perverted or something you can’t understand, but that’s how it is. That’s how it’s going to stay. It’s how I stay sane. I never asked you to do anything or change or be anything but what you are. I need the same from you or we’ll never see each other again. And, man, I mean fucking never, because I can’t have Dan come home with a black eye every night. You get me? I don’t need this bullshit.”

“How did I rate such special attention from Dan?” Conner asked. “Or does he chase down all the other guys you fuck and threaten them too?”

Conner hoped that she’d deny it. If she denied it, he’d believe her. He was desperate to believe in her, to reinvest his faith in the portrait of her he’d painted in his head. And he also realized, had to admit, that what he mostly wanted was for her to hurt, to feel guilt, feel the same pinch in her gut that he felt whenever he thought about her with somebody else.

But she wasn’t hurt or shocked. She didn’t deny anything. “Do you know why I’m always so reluctant to see you? It’s because I do love you. I love you more than the rest, maybe more than I love Dan even.”

Conner almost said something, but he was learning. Shut up, man. Let her talk. Maybe this is going your way.

“I know you, Conner,” she said. “And I know me. You’d never be happy unless you possessed me totally. I just don’t have the capacity for what you need. I’d end up making you miserable. I’d make myself miserable. We’re doomed as a couple, baby. We don’t fit. Dan tried to warn you off because I like you. I’ve always had deep feelings for you. That’s why you’re dangerous. The others don’t mean anything. They just help me push funny little buttons in my brain. Dan knows you’re different.”

“Buttons?”

“This is pointless.”

Conner said, “Take this.” He snatched a scrap of paper from the car’s ashtray, an ATM receipt. He scribbled a phone number on the back. “I have a cell phone now. Call me, please. When you’re not so pissed. Let’s figure this-”

“I’m not going to call you.”

Conner couldn’t think of a damn thing to say. He folded the scrap of paper, slipped it into the ashtray where she could see it. She’d come to her senses. She’d call. Wouldn’t she? He shrank in the passenger seat, feeling small and lost and that maybe the universe was running him over. All Conner Samson could do was sit there in Tyranny’s Beemer and get taken for a ride.