the delivery. It was not the company’s largest desk, more midrange. Lucas thought of it as a practice desk. He pictured the desk with training wheels and started laughing.
A chair accompanied the desk, ergonomic, with a handle like a turn signal under the seat. Lucas twiddled and adjusted until his legs fit perfectly beneath the desk and he was well supported from all angles. He had also purchased a pack of pens and some writing paper. He set the pad on the desk and centered the title atop his page in bold strokes.
C(S, T) = SN(d1)-Ke^-rT N(d2)
For the next hour he wrote beneath the title equation, adding subsets and refinements and a doodle of a dog puppet he found particularly amusing. At the bottom of the page, he wrote, Buck: Run this by someone who knows about money.
He made another trip to the phone outside the gas station, sitting in his little green Subaru and waiting for a heavy man with a greasy mustache to finish talking. Lucas was two miles from the KEI offices and knew Crandell would have people wandering within that perimeter, several photos of Lucas in their possession, both the hairy Lucas and the clean Lucas. The clean-shaven Lucas photos would be dated, and wouldn’t show him in a suit and tie, like he’d taken to wearing.
Practicing.
Lucas hunkered down in his seat. The fat man yelled something into the phone about a busted differential and waddled away. It took a minute to get through to Buck Kincannon’s duplicitous secretary. He assured her that he knew her boss. When she asked his name, he came up with “Mr. Lucas Runamok,” carefully spelling it for the woman.
“R-U-N-A-M-O-K. It’s an Icelandic name,” he offered. “Like Reykjavik.”
“Hello?” Kincannon said after the call had transferred, suspicion in his voice. “Who is this?”
“How’s it hanging, Buck? There’s a fax coming your way in precisely one hour. I suggest you be there to receive the transmission.”
Lucas dropped the phone to the cradle and revisited Staples. He paid to have a fax sent at a specified time, tipping the clerk twenty dollars. Lucas returned to his office and practiced tying and untying his tie.
At five minutes before the appointed hour he leaned into the Celestron scope. At thirty seconds after the hour, Buck Kincannon raced into his office, fax page in hand. He closed the door, then crossed the room and closed the blinds.
It didn’t matter, Lucas thought, snugging another four-in-hand knot to his throat. He knew what would be going through Buck Kincannon’s head. And that a record of his call would secretly move to Nelson Kincannon as soon as the lusty little assistant with the fat legs got the chance.
Lucas pulled his tie loose and thought a moment. He decided to try a Windsor knot.
CHAPTER 35
“The DuCaines?” Harry asked the old man. “That was Maylene’s family?”
“Family ain’t the word. Carnival? Sideshow? That works better, the DuCaine sideshow. They lived over in Fairhope, had lived there since, I don’t know, the whole place started up.”
“First a social experiment, then an artists’ colony,” Harry said.
“The whole DuCaine family was a social experiment. How we hooked up with them was me and Buck Senior was in our thirties, prime beef, thinking it was time to do some planting.”
“Start a family?”
“Man needs something behind him besides money. I was partial to this girl about twenny-five, Cora, lived down the street from the DuCaines. Nothing ever come of it, ’cept me, a few times. Payoff wasn’t worth time invested.”
“Daddy!” Ella said, coming out the door with two sweet teas she’d brewed for Harry and me, plus Aubusson’s refill. Ella set down the tray, shook her head, retreated to the house. Aubusson grinned, turned back to Harry and me.
“But a couple times Buck had gone over to Cora’s with me and he’d seen this sassy little piece of fluff out walking. Stuck-up type, nose way up like she’s sniffin’ air the rest of us ain’t allowed.”
“Maylene?”
“She let herself turn into a fat ol’ bulldog shape today. But back then that hoity-toity bitch had a butt like twin melons bobbin’ in a tub. Lord, that woman had a shape. So we started going over to the DuCaine spread: four acres a few blocks from the bay, big house in the middle. One of those places with rooms sticking out every whichaway, added as needed. Cora never went over to the DuCaines, called it a nuthouse. She wasn’t the only one thought that.”
“A strange place?” I asked.
“You’ve heard about the crazy aunt in the attic? The DuCaines had one. You’d be over there and hear her upstairs-howling, laughing, cussin’ like a sailor. One time when I was there, she came screeching through the house, naked as a jay, feet slapping, titties flopping, and ran through the door to the porch. And I mean through the door, leaving the screen flapping in the frame. A couple of the servant types wrestled her down, but not before she kicked two teeth outta one of ’em.”
“The aunt went off a lot?”
“That wasn’t nothing. Most of the family seemed tore up in some way. One of Maylene’s brothers didn’t do nothing but sit in a chair and look out the window, his eye blinking like he was sending Morse code. Had a sister, young, already taking after Auntie-running in circles, ripping at her hair, pulling fits in the middle of the room. Had another brother who’d built a house in one of the live oaks, pretty much lived up there. When he came down it was to make fires. I never saw much of him. There was a retarded sister who just kind of walked around town touching things.”
“The mother of the family. Where was she?”
“She was an ar-teest. Spent most of her time painting things, carrying around one of those painting racks-”
“Easels?”
“That’s it. All she did, paint. By the bay, mainly. One time she’d paid a bunch of folks to frolic nekkid in the water, sat there painting away, ‘figure studies,’ I remember she called them. The police come and suggested maybe she’d do better to study at home with the blinds shut.”
“The father?”
Aubusson tapped his temple. “Smart. The brittle kind of smart that comes to a point at one thing. He sat around all day figuring out hard problems that use letters instead of numbers…”
“Physics, maybe?”
Aubusson nodded. “He was too brittle to work with people, but places sent him things to figure out. Like the government…whichaway rockets will head, stuff like that. Got paid good money, which kept the whole circus afloat. He never seemed to notice anything but the stuff in his head.”
“And Maylene invited people into this place? Her home?”
A wicked grin. “Oh Lord, no. We’d just show up. It was cruel, I guess, but Buck and me’d come pecking at her door, say we was thirsty, could we have a lemonade please, Miss Maylene? Then we’d hang around and catch the show: Brother drooling in his lap while his eye ticked like a clock, Sissy fighting with the servants, Auntie racing around with her bush showing, Tree-house Boy shoutin’ down from the branches. It was better’n anything Hollywood ever invented.”
“I’ve seen situations similar to that, Mr. Aubusson. Where everything’s out of control. Sooner or later…” Harry let the words float in the air.
“Yep. Bad things catch up, don’t they? The retarded sister disappeared one day. Police found her laying in a bare lot in Bayou La Batre, all cut up, messed up inside, too. She lived, but you couldn’t tell by looking at her.”
Harry looked into Aubusson’s eyes. “Finish it out.”
Aubusson leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees, looked into the distance.
“Tree-house Boy…Jimmy? Jerry? I don’t know much but rumors that come to me years later. There were
