it?'
Now Lourdes had to stop and think for a moment.
'You have that much in the house?'
'My getaway money,' Mrs. Mahmood said, 'in case I ever have to leave in a hurry. What I socked away in tips getting guys to spot their pants and that's the deal, twenty grand. You want it or not? You don't, you might as well leave, I don't need you anymore.'
So far in the few weeks she was here, Lourdes had met Dr. Mahmood face-to-face with reason to speak to him only twice. The first time, when he came in the kitchen and asked her to prepare his breakfast, the smoked snook, a fish he ate cold with tea and whole wheat toast. He asked her to have some of the snook if she wished, saying it wasn't as good as kippers but would do. Lourdes tried a piece; it was full of bones but she told him yes, it was good. They spoke of different kinds of fish from the ocean they liked and he seemed to be a pleasant, reasonable man.
The second time Lourdes was with him face-to-face he startled her, coming out of the swimming pool naked as she was watering the plants on the patio. He called to her to bring him his towel from the chair. When she came with it he said, 'You were waiting for me?'
'No, sir, I didn't see you.'
As he dried his face and his head, the hair so short it appeared shaved, she stared at his skin, at his round belly and his strange black penis, Lourdes looking up then as he lowered the towel.
He said, 'You are a widow?' She nodded yes and he said, 'When you married, you were a virgin?'
She hesitated, but then answered because she was telling a doctor, 'No, sir.'
'It wasn't important to your husband.'
'I don't think so.'
'Would you see an advantage in again being a virgin?'
She had to think - it wasn't something ever in her mind before - but didn't want to make the doctor wait, so she said, 'No, not at my age.'
The doctor said, 'I can restore it if you wish.'
'Make me a virgin?'
'Surgically, a few sutures down there in the tender dark.
It's becoming popular in the Orient with girls entering marriage. Also for prostitutes. They can charge much more, often thousands of dollars for that one night.' He said, 'I'm thinking of offering the procedure. Should you change your mind, wish me to examine you, I could do it in your room.'
Dr. Mahmood's manner, and the way he looked at her that time, made Lourdes feel like taking her clothes off.
He didn't come home the night Lourdes and Mrs. Mahmood got down to business. Or the next night. The morning of the following day, two men from the Palm Beach County sheriff's office came to the house. They showed Lourdes their identification and asked to see Mrs. Mahmood.
She was upstairs in her bedroom trying on a black dress, looking at herself in the full-length mirror and then at Lourdes' reflection appearing behind her.
'The police are here,' Lourdes said.
Mrs. Mahmood nodded and said, 'What do you think?' turning to pose in the dress, the skirt quite short.
Lourdes read the story in the newspaper that said Dr. Wasim Mahmood, prominent etc., etc., had suffered gunshot wounds during an apparent carjacking on Flagler near Currie Park and was pronounced dead on arrival at Good Samaritan.
His Mercedes was found abandoned on the street in Delray Beach.
Mrs. Mahmood left the house in her black dress. Later, she phoned to tell Lourdes she had identified the body, spent time with the police, who had no clues, nothing at all to go on, then stopped by a funeral home and arranged to have Woz cremated without delay. She said, 'What do you think?'
'About what?' Lourdes said.
'Having the fucker burned.' She said she was stopping to see friends and wouldn't be home until late.
One A.M., following an informal evening of drinks with old friends, Mrs. Mahmood came into the kitchen from the garage and began to lose her glow.
What was going on here?
Rum and mixes on the counter, limes, a bowl of ice. A Latin beat coming from the patio. She followed the sound to a ring of burning candles, to Lourdes in a green swimsuit moving in one place to the beat, hands raised, Lourdes grinding her hips in a subtle way.
The two guys at the table smoking cigarettes saw Mrs. Mahmood, but made no move to get up.
Now Lourdes turned from them and saw her, Lourdes smiling a little as she said, 'How you doing? You look like you feeling no pain.'
'You have my suit on,' Mrs. Mahmood said.
'I put on my yellow one,' Lourdes said, still moving in that subtle way, 'and took it off. I don't wear yellow no more, so I borrow one of yours. Is okay, isn' it?'
Mrs. Mahmood said, 'What's going on?'
'This is cumbia, Colombian music for when you want to celebrate. For a wedding, a funeral, anything you want. The candles are part of it. Cumbia, you should always light candles.'
Mrs. Mahmood said, 'Yeah, but what is going on?'
'We having a party for you, Ginger. The Colombian guys come to see you dance.'
Fire in the Hole
I.
They had dug coal together as young men and then lost touch over the years. Now it looked like they'd be meeting again, this time as lawman and felon, Raylan Givens and Boyd Crowder.
Boyd did six years in a federal penitentiary for refusing to pay his income tax, came out and found religion. He received his ordination by mail order from a Bible college in South Carolina and formed a sect he called Christian Aggression. The next thing he did, Boyd formed the East Kentucky Militia with a cadre of neo-Nazi skinheads, a bunch of boys wearing Doc Martens and swastika tattoos. They were all natural-born racists and haters of authority, but still had to be taught what Boyd called 'the laws of White Supremacy as laid down by the Lord,' which he took from Christian Identity doctrines. Next thing, he trained these boys in the use of explosives and automatic weapons. He told them they were now members of Crowder's Commandos, sworn to take up the fight for freedom against the coming Mongrel World Order and the govermint's illegal tax laws.
Boyd said he would kill the next man tried to make him pay income tax.
The skinheads accepted Boyd as the real thing, his having seen combat. Boyd had caught the tail end of Vietnam, came back with three pairs of Charlie's ears on silver chains and an Air CAV insignia on his arm, the tat faded from having been there now some twenty-five years.
Raylan Givens, a few years younger than Boyd, was now a deputy United States marshal. Raylan was known as the one who'd shot it out with a Miami gangster named Tommy Bucks - also known as the Zip - both men seated at the same table in the dining area of the Cardozo Hotel, South Beach, when they drew their pistols. Raylan had told the Zip he had twenty-four hours to get out of Dade County or he would shoot him on sight. When the Zip failed to comply, Raylan kept his word, shot him through china and glassware from no more than six feet away.
The day the Marshals Service assigned Raylan to a Special Operations Group and transferred him from Florida to Harlan County, Kentucky, Boyd Crowder was on his way to Cincinnati to blow up the IRS office in the
