By the firelight I saw his smiling eyes taking in the mystery and wonder of it all, like a kid looking at a Buck Rogers comic book.
“Leonardo da Vinci,” he uttered slowly, the tequila making each word glisten. “Mona have the slightest inkling the kind of hellacious pandemonium’s following you around?”
“Haven’t told her a thing. Just that I was coming.”
“I didn’t figure, because she would have said more than ‘oh baby’ when we were in the sack night before yesterday.” He wiggled his eyebrows at me. “Yup,” he said.“Me and Mona. Right over Viagra Falls. No barrel.”
The old guy pulled out some roasted turkey sandwiches. “Have one of these,” he offered. “Fresh bird.”
I refused; the nagging worry over Ginny wrung out my stomach like a wet mop. I slugged another tequila.
“Some people are diamonds and some are glass,” Pop said, taking a bite. “The average Joe wants to tell them apart, he just hits ’em both with a hammer. Me, I’m a specialist. I can feel a fine-cut facet through an oven mitt, see the real thing shining through the blackest night. It’s a gift, I guess.”
He turned his gaze from the fire to me. “After hearing your story, seeing these pages, and watching you in action, I figure you weigh in at about forty-six carats. That’s a half-carat more’n the Hope Diamond.
“Now, Watson, I can’t say how many she is, but I figure a lot, by the way she’s shimmering in your eyes. I’m telling you she’s out there somewhere right this minute, safe and sparkling. I’d bet my eyeteeth on it—if I still had them.”
Pop took another bite, his cheek stretching out over it as he chewed. “Now here’s the thing, Reb,” he mumbled. “You don’t have to turn off Ginny’s shimmer to eat.”
He shoved my sandwich at me.
I took it and munched it down, grateful for his words. He was right about Ginny. She was precious. And I was going to find her, and keep her.
We sat in our respective seats and ate by the fire, wading further into the Cuervo.
After a while I said, “I apologize for bringing this on you, Pop. About your place getting ruined, and you getting hurt.”
“Aw hell, kid,” Pop snorted, “I liked it. You think I’d be here if I didn’t? And about the money, I don’t want a goddamn nickel. As far as I’m concerned, that sumbitch Krell owes it to you for what happened to your folks.”
I poured him another shot. He sipped it like nectar. “You know, I’m an orphan, too.”
A lump rose in my throat.
“Yup,” he said, “my old man was in the bootlegging business. You know what that was, bootlegging?”
“Transporting black-market booze when it was outlawed.”
“Uh-huh. Made a nice dollar doing it. Lot of bad seeds, though, in that line of work. My dad was one of ’em. He had some wheat in him, I suppose, but he was mostly chaff. That’s what my mother said. Her name was Beatrice. She had a bakeshop in town—doughnuts, pastry, cinnamon buns that smelled so good they’d make you pant. Everybodywanted those buns. Bing Crosby even came through one time when he was getting to be real popular. Said he’d heard about ’em from somebody down in Hollywood. Bought eight boxes.”
Pop sipped some more tequila. “Mm, I like this stuff,” he said. “Anyway, where was I?”
“Bing,” I reminded him.
“Oh . . . you see, my old man was using the back of the bakeshop for stashing booze. He had a guy named Drymouth Dan Hollister helping him, would keep things sorted out when my dad was making deliveries. Dan always sounded like he’d been sucking on a Sugar Daddy for two weeks. Made a clicking sound like he was out of saliva, ya see? That’s where he got his moniker. But he was a handsome bastard, maybe as good-looking as you, without all the muscles. How’s your back, anyway? You sore?”
“No,” I lied, and prodded him on. Pop’s voice and the rhythm of the rocking chair had a soothing effect.
He continued. “Old Drymouth, he got a taste for my mom’s buns, too, only not the ones came out of the oven, you understand. And I guess she liked the way he combed his hair. He had wavy hair slicked back with lots of Vitalis, like Victor Mature, remember him?”
“Yeah,” I said, sipping, “wavy hair, lots of Vitalis.”
“That’s the one. So, my dad walks in on them while they’re docking,so to speak, near the deep-fat fryer, and surprises the living piss out of them. In a fury he lunges at them and knocks over the hot oil and it splashes right in my mother’s face. She screams and grabs the nearest thing she can find, which is a kitchen knife, and stabs my old man. He stumbles out of the room and into the front of the store where everybody’s lined up for the sweets, and croaks right on the floor next to the cruller case. My old lady realizes what she’s done and that her face is ruined so she grabs Drymouth’s Saturday-night special and blasts herself right in the ticker. And that was that. Put a dent in the bakery business, I’ll tell you.”
Neither of us laughed.
“So, anyway, Drymouth felt sorry for me and ended up taking me in. I saw my share of shot-up guys—that’s how I knew how to stitch you up. Like a bicycle, you never forget. Or is that an elephant? Anyhow, Dan went legit in the liquor business when prohibition was repealed. Over the years, he stashed away a bundle, which he passed on to me and I used to buy the inn when I got out of the service. Named it after him.”
“What’d you do in the service?” I asked.
“Engineer. Army Corps of Engineers. Bridge builder.”
He picked up a log, poked the burnt ones with it, and tossed it on top. The crackle of the revived fire and the distant pounding surf made me long for Ginny.
Pop eyeballed me for a second, reading my face.“So,” he said, picking up the notes, “you’re back on Watson. I mean Ginny. Damn! Antonia.”
