Two Time

almost disappearing into the floral cushion meant to soften the hard wicker surface.

“Look, uh,” he checked the letter again, “Mr. Aquo.”

“Acquillo.”

“Aquo. It’s the weekend. My time off. This here,” he waved his hands around, ”is my weekend house. Where I come to get away. I don’t see people here, and I sure don’t talk business here with people I don’t know who turn up on my doorstep. With letters.” He shook it at me.

I didn’t have a good response, mostly because I sympathized with his position. I didn’t like people turning up uninvited at my house either. Messes up my balance, which is what I had in mind for Ivor.

“So,” he said to me, getting up from his chair, “you want anything? Iced tea? Beer?”

“Iced tea’s okay” I said, caught by surprise. I thought about the beer for a second. Too early, even for me.

When he went inside he let out the Doberman. It was a black-and-tan mass of coiled springs and dead-eyed menace. Big, especially for a female, maybe eighty pounds. Her long claws tapped across the wood floor over to my chair, where she turned and sat down, pressing up against the armrest to make it easy for me to stroke her smooth, rock-hard shoulders.

“Wait’ll Eddie smells you. Will take some explaining.”

Didn’t faze the Doberman. She just sat there and soaked up the attention. I scratched up under her ears. She lifted her head and pushed it into my hand. Big old baby. Just looked scary.

“Perrito, que pasa contigo? Hay que chula eres!” mewed the Spanish lady at the Doberman when she came out on the porch with my iced tea. “Que tienes, Pobrecita? Quieres un beso?”

The Doberman stood partway up and shoved her long snout into the woman’s leg as she put down the tray.

“Scratch her ears. She digs that,” I suggested, but the Spanish lady ignored me. I searched around my long- dead memory for a translation, but she left before I could embarrass myself with an attempt.

“Portate bien y sientate alla con ese caballero,” she called back from inside the house.

The Doberman sat back down so I could continue ministrations.

“Perrito?” I said to her. “More like caballo grande.”

Ivor came out with a beer and handed me an iced tea. I immediately regretted my decision.

“So, you met Cleo.”

“Big girl. Likes her ears scratched.”

Ivor had put on a pair of oversized sunglasses, rendering the Marcos imitation nearly complete. He got back in his chair and took a long pull on his beer. He snapped his fingers at Cleo.

“Ven aca.”

She shot over to his chair and took up her usual spot next to the arm.

“Dogs’re smarter than people, sometimes I think,” said Ivor.

“I know one that won’t dispute that.”

“Course you were smart enough not to get out of your chair with Cleo wanting you to stay”

“Hadn’t indicated that.”

“Didn’t have to. You stayed put. I just wanted to get my beer before concluding our conversation.”

I toasted him with my iced tea.

“Gracias.”

“De nada. So you understand. I have nothing to say about Jonathan Eldridge or his business. The entire subject is as dead as he is. Though I’m puzzled about this valuation. I’m not an expert in the investment adviser business, as you could tell if you looked at my investments. But to my knowledge there’s nothing there to sell. And why you’d come here to talk to me about this on a Saturday, that’s puzzling, too. The whole thing is puzzling.”

He looked like he was grappling with the puzzle, then he snapped his fingers.

“Unless,” he said, “you were thinking I’d be interested in buying something from you. That this is some sort of a roundabout sales pitch. Is that what this is?” He directed the question to Cleo. She didn’t give it up.

“I guess that’s what I’m trying to figure out,” I told him. “If there’s anything of value here. For the estate. Mrs. Eldridge.”

Ivor was stroking Cleos side, but otherwise sitting very still in his chair. I assumed he was looking at me closely, but I couldn’t tell with his sunglasses on. Though I was more interested in Cleos stare, which was fixed steadily in my direction. I guessed at the distance between me and the Grand Prix. No way.

I had a little bit of iced tea left, so I took my time finishing it. I finally set it down on the wicker side table and was about to experiment with leaving when I heard a truck pull into the driveway. A black pickup, with a deep bed and a double rear axel. Diesel. It pulled up behind the Grand Prix and two guys got out. One really meaty guy in a blue nylon warm-up jacket and dirty bone-colored polyester pants. And a much skinnier guy, some kind of white and African-American mix, though with the same taste in couture. They both looked to be in their early forties, but were probably younger. Hair salon haircuts. Bad skin. Hard lives.

“What do you know, more company,” said Ivor, sitting back in his chair. “And I thought it’d just be another quiet Saturday morning.”

The two bounded up onto the porch. Cleo never looked away from me. I had the feeling she and the meatballs had already met.

“Hello, Mr. Fleming,” said the skinny guy. “How is everything?”

“It’s about to get better. Mr. Aquo here was just planning to leave.”

“If it’s cool with Cleo,” I said.

Ivor snapped his fingers and pointed to the floor. She dropped down on her belly, but her haunches were still bunched up, ready to launch.

“Thanks for stopping by” said Ivor, though the sentiment lacked sincerity.

On the way to the Grand Prix I realized I had an escort.

“Gonna be another hot one,” I said to the big guy, who fell in on my right. “What do you think?” I asked his partner, now on my left.

“Hotter’n shits my guess,” he said.

They walked me over to my car and watched me get in. Then went back to their truck. I snuck around the Mercedes and rounded the parking circle. The pickup had gone the other way on the circle and gotten ahead of me, so I followed them out to the road. There was a white gate at the entrance of the driveway made to look like the ones at the old estates over where my friend Burton lived. It had been open when I came in, but now it was closed. The pickup stopped and the two guys jumped out and came back to my car. The skinny guy leaned down to look in my window.

“Get out a minute, would ya?”

“Needed to stretch my legs, anyway,” I said. “Long driveway.”

I swung the Pontiac’s gigantic door wide enough to force him to move back a few paces. The big guy leaned against the pickup’s tailgate and started picking his teeth with a wooden match. All style, these guys.

“Mr. Fleming probably explained to you that he doesn’t appreciate being disturbed at his weekend house. During the weekend,” said the skinny guy.

“Probably okay during the week. When he’s not here.”

“That’s right. You can see that when shit like this happens it makes him feel,” he searched around for the right word, “concerned.”

The skinny guy didn’t look like he was carrying anything he could use to hit me over the head. Or shoot me. So I had to assume his job was to scare me to death with talk, and the other guy, who’d thus far remained eloquently silent, was there to provide a physical component if necessary. So I started looking him over.

Heavy arms, but mostly fat. Face clear, pockmarks aside. Hadn’t given or taken much in any actual fistfight. Probably specialized in baseball bats and kicks to the gut. Snubby gun barrels crammed up under the chin. Though at the moment the biggest challenge these guys presented was their black pickup truck.

“So, you’re going to kill me,” I said to the skinny guy.