“And you fucked him outta what, another twenty?”
Chili didn’t answer. Bones turned a page, read down the entries and stopped.
“You got a miss. Guy’s six weeks over.”
“He died,” Chili said.
“How you know he died, he tell you?”
Ray Bones checked the colored guy to get some appreciation, but the guy was busy looking at hair rinses and shit on the counter. Chili didn’t give him anything either. He was thinking he could kick Mr. Bones in the nuts if he came any closer, then get up and nail him. If the big colored guy would leave.
“He got killed,” Chili said, “in that TransAm jet went down in the Everglades.”
“Who told you?”
Chili got out of the chair, went in the back office and returned with a stack of
“Help yourself. You find him on the list of victims, Leo Devoe. He’s Paris Cleaners on Federal Highway about 124th Street.”
Bones nudged the stack of newspapers with a toe of his cream-colored perforated shoes that matched his slacks and sport shirt. The front page on top said “TransAm Crash Kills 117.” Chili watched Bones toe his way through editions with headlines that said “Winds Probed in Crash” . . . “Windshear Warning Was Issued” . . . “Nightmare Descends Soon After Farewells” . . . getting down to a page of small photographs, head shots, and a line that read, “Special Report: The Tragic Toll.”
“His wife told me he was on the flight,” Chili said. “I kept checking till I saw, yeah, he was.”
“His picture in here?”
“Near the bottom. You have to turn the paper over.”
Bones still wasn’t going to bend down, strain himself. He looked up from the newspapers. “Maybe he took out flight insurance. Check with the wife.”
“It’s your book now,” Chili said. “You want to check it out, go ahead.”
The colored guy came over from the counter to stand next to the chair.
Ray Bones said, “Six weeks’ juice is twenty-seven hunnerd on top of the fifteen you gave him. Get it from the guy’s wife or out of your pocket, I don’t give a fuck. You don’t hand me a book with a miss in it.”
“Payback time,” Chili said. “You know that coat? I gave it to the Salvation Army two years ago.”
“What coat?” Bones said.
He knew.
The colored guy stood close, staring into Chili’s face, while Bones worked on the Michael Douglas hairdo, shearing off a handful at a time with a pair of scissors, telling Chili it was to remind him when he looked in the mirror he owed fifteen plus whatever the juice, right? The juice would keep running till he paid. Chili sat still, hearing the scissors snip-snipping away, knowing it had nothing to do with money. He was being paid back again, this time for reminding Ray Bones he had a scar that showed white where he was getting bald. It was all kid stuff with these guys, the way they acted tough. Like Momo had said, schoolyard bullshit. These guys never grew up. Still, if they were holding a pair of scissors in your face when they told you something, you agreed to it. At least for the time being.
Chili was still in the chair when the new-wave barbers came back and began to comment, telling him they could perm what was left or give him a moderate spike, shave the sides, laser stripes were popular. Chili told them to cut the shit and even it off. While they worked on him he sat there wondering if it was possible Leo Devoe had taken out flight insurance or if the wife had thought about suing the airline. It was something he could mention to her.
But what happened when he dropped by their house in North Miami—the idea, see what he could find out about any insurance—the wife, Fay, stopped him cold. She said, “I wish he really was dead, the son of a bitch.”
She didn’t say it right away, not till they were out on the patio with vodka and tonics, in the dark.
Chili knew Fay from having stopped by to pick up the weekly four-fifty and they’d sit here waiting for Leo to get home after a day at Gulfstream. Fay was a quiet type, from a small town upstate, Mt. Dora, not bad looking but worn thin in her sundress from working at the cleaner’s in that heat while Leo was out betting horses. They’d sit here trying to make conversation with nothing in common but Leo, Chili, every once in a while, catching her gaze during a silence, seeing her eyes and feeling it was there if he wanted it. Though he couldn’t imagine Fay getting excited, changing her expression much. What did a shy woman stuck with a loser think about? Leo would appear, strut out on the patio and count the four-fifty off a roll, nothing to it. Or he’d come shaking his head, beat, saying he’d have it tomorrow for sure. Chili never threatened him, not in front of the woman and embarrass her. Not till he left and Leo would know enough to walk him out to his car parked by the streetlight. He’d say, “Leo, look at me,” and tell him where to be the next day with the four-fifty. Leo was never to blame: it was the horses selling out or it was Fay always on his back, distracting him when he was trying to pick winners. And Chili would have to say it again, “Leo, look at me.”
He owed for two weeks the night he didn’t come home. Fay said she couldn’t think where Leo could be. The third week she told him Leo was dead and a couple weeks after that his picture was in the paper.
This visit sitting on the patio, knowing Leo was not going to appear, strutting or otherwise, the silences became longer. Chili asked what she planned to do now. Fay said she didn’t know; she hated the drycleaner business, being inside. Chili said it must be awful hot. She said you couldn’t believe how hot it was. He got around to asking about life insurance. Fay said she didn’t know of any. Chili said, well . . . But didn’t move. Fay didn’t either. It was dark, hard to see her face, neither one of them making a sound. This was when she said, out of nowhere, “You know what I been thinking?”
Chili said, “Tell me.”
“I wish he really was dead, the son of a bitch.”
Chili kept still. Don’t talk when you don’t have to.
“He’s called me up twice since going out to Las Vegas and since then I haven’t heard a goddamn word from him. I know he’s there, it’s all he ever talked about, going to Las Vegas. But I’m the one stuck my neck out, I’m the one they gave the money to, not him. I’m talking about the airline company, the three hundred thousand dollars they gave me for losing my husband.” Fay paused to shake her head.
Chili waited.
She said to him on that dark patio, “I trust you. I think you’re a decent type of man, even if you are a crook. You find Leo and get me my three hundred thousand dollars back if he ain’t spent it, I’ll give you half. If he’s hit big we split that, or whatever he has left. How’s that sound as a deal?”
Chili said, “That’s what you been thinking, huh? Tell me why the airline thinks Leo got killed if he wasn’t on the flight.”
“His suitcase was,” Fay said, and told Chili everything that happened.
It was a good story.
2 
Harry Zimm believed if he kept his eyes closed and quit listening that sound coming from somewhere in the house would stop and pretty soon they’d go back to sleep.
But Karen wouldn’t leave it alone. He heard her say, “Harry?” a couple of times, maybe not sure if she was hearing something or not. Then, “
They hadn’t slept in the same bed on a regular basis in over ten years, not since they had lived together, and Karen still knew when he was faking. The only other time, in this same bed, was right after she and Michael were divorced and Michael, a star by then, gave Karen the house. There was no way to hide from her. So he rolled over and there she was in her Lakers T-shirt, sitting up on her side of the king-size bed, a soft white shape in the dark, a little porcelain doll.
“What’s wrong?”
“Be quiet and listen.”
A tough little porcelain doll under that loose T-shirt.
“I don’t hear anything.” It was true, he didn’t at the moment.
