photograph of myself—that’s different. But who’s taking my picture?”
She said, “It’s different with guys. Women get older at an earlier age.”
He said, “I guess they worry about it more. Some women, all they have is their looks. They lose that . . . But you’ve got way more than looks.”
“I have? What?”
“You want to argue about getting old? What’s the point?”
“I feel like I’m always starting over,” Jackie said, “and before I know it I won’t have any options left. I’ll be stuck with whatever I can get.” She said, “I told you last night I’ve been married twice? Actually I’ve had three husbands, but two of them I think of as the same guy, at age twenty, and then a much older version. Their names were even the same. So I say I’ve been married twice. I was nineteen with the first one, going to school in Miami, U of M. He raced dirt bikes, did the hill climb?”
“That’s pretty young to get married.”
“I wouldn’t live with him otherwise. That’s how smart I was then.”
“Times change,” Max said, “but that’s generally the custom.”
“We were married five months . . . he was killed racing a drawbridge going up, trying to jump his bike across the opening. Like in the
movies. Only he was drunk and didn’t make it.”
Max kept his mouth shut.
“My second husband was hooked on drugs, started dealing to pay for his habit and went to prison. Before he got the airline job he was a fighter pilot in Vietnam. Are you getting the picture? The last one was fifteen years older than I am, about your age. I thought, Ah, here’s one with some maturity. Not knowing he was the dirt biker come back to life.”
Max said, “I’m only twelve years older than you are.”
She seemed to smile—for whatever reason, he wasn’t sure—and then was serious again.
“It bothered him being older, or getting old. So he’d run I don’t know how many miles every day. He’d swim out into the ocean alone, until you couldn’t see him. He drove too fast, got drunk every night. . . . He was funny, he was very bright, but, boy, did he drink. One evening we were sitting out on the balcony, he hopped up on the cement railing and started walking it, his arms out, one foot in front of the other. . . . We were on the sixth floor. I said, ‘You don’t have to prove anything to me.’ I remember I said, ‘I’m not watching, so you might as well get down.’ I turned my head, I could-n’t watch.” Jackie stopped for a moment. “When I looked up again he was gone. I don’t know if he
fell or stepped off. He didn’t make a sound.”
It was quiet in the kitchen.
She said, “That’s my history. I’ve logged seven million miles married to two drunks and a junkie.”
Max cleared his throat. “You know, you did-n’t refer to any of them by name.”
“Mike, Davey, and Michael,” Jackie said. “What difference does it make?” But then she said, “They were nice guys, really, most of the time, and yet I wasn’t surprised. . . . You know what I mean? My big mistake, I let myself get into situations I
“Tell me,” Max said.
“Smiling. Acting pleasant.”
“Now you’re talking about your job.”
“ ‘Have a wonderful time in the Bahamas and thank you for flying Islands Air.’ Or thank you for flying Delta, or TWA. ‘Sir, would you like another cup of TWA coffee?’ ”
Max grinned at her, seeing it coming. An old one.
“ ‘Or would you prefer TWAT?’ ”
“You like it though, don’t you? Flying?”
“Not anymore.”
“You get a lot of guys hitting on you?”
“Enough.”
“How about when you were a young girl,” Max said, “were the boys rough with you?”
She looked at him over the coffee mug with that gleam of fun in her eyes.
“How did you know?”
13
Ray Nicolet called at four in the afternoon. By this time she had already tried to get hold of Tyler. The FDLE office told her he was on the street, and when she dialed his beeper number and waited there was no response.
“I’d like you to drop whatever you’re doing and come to Good Samaritan,” Nicolet said, his voice quiet and, she felt, grim. Maybe putting it on. “If you want I’ll send a car for you. What do you say?”
“Why do you want me to come?”
“See what one of Ordell’s guys did to Faron. Then I want you to look at the guy and tell me if you know him.”
“Where are you?”
He told her the third floor, east wing.
And was standing by the nurse’s station when she walked up to him less than forty minutes later, wearing a man’s white shirt with her jeans now, tan bag hanging from her shoulder.
“Thanks for coming,” Nicolet said.
It surprised her.
He stared for a moment not saying a word, then walked off, and she trailed after him along the hallway to where two deputies in dark green stood by the open door to a room. The deputies stepped aside, looking her over as Nicolet gave them a nod and Jackie followed him in, past the first bed, empty, to a young black guy lying in the second bed, his eyes closed. There were tubes in his arms, one coming out of his nose, another from under the sheet to a catheter bag hooked to the side of the bed.
“What happened to him?”
“I shot him,” Nicolet said, “after he shot Faron.” Jackie turned from the young guy in the bed to the ATF agent. “How is he?”
“Which one?”
“Tyler. Is he all right?”
“I want you to look at this guy first. You know him?”
Jackie stepped closer. “No.”
“Have you ever seen him before?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Maybe one time with Ordell?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“I wonder,” Nicolet said, “if this is another one of those times you don’t know him but he knows you. Like with Beaumont.”
“Is he Jamaican?”
“No, this one’s a homey,” Nicolet said. “His street name, according to one of the deputies outside, is Cujo. And Cujo, I find out, is fairly well known in criminal court. His driver’s license says he’s Hulon Miller, Jr., but I doubt if there’s anyone outside of his mother calls him Hulon.” Nicolet put his hand on Cujo’s shoulder and gave it a shake. “Isn’t that right? Open your eyes, I want you to look at somebody here’s come to visit you.”
Jackie watched the young guy scowl as Nicolet shook him again and his eyes opened.
“The fuck you doing to me?”
“You in pain, Cujo? I hope to Christ you are,” Nicolet said. “I want you to look at this lady here, tell me who she is.”
She watched Cujo squint at her saying, “Man, how would I know? You the one brought her.”
Nicolet took a handful of Cujo’s hair and yanked his head back, Cujo saying, “Hey, shit, lemme go,” looking into Nicolet’s face.
