“They don’t have much in the way of imagination,” she said. “They’d go where they could be close to the money they hoped to get from Earl.”
“Sarasota,” said Ames.
“Sarasota,” Denise Fair confirmed.
“Chet and Matt’s mother,” said Lew. “Is she in town?”
“Alma Manteen died last week,” she said. “May account for why they’re doing what they’re doing.”
“You have a photograph of Lilla we could borrow?” Lew asked. “A recent one.”
“Yes,” she said. “I’ll get it for you. You don’t have to return it. Give it to Earl. Yes, I know, he can’t see it, but he can hold it. Give it to him and tell him to pay them. He’s stubborn, but the Lord knows Earl loves Lilla. If he won’t pay, then I pray the Lord guide you to her.”
“We’ll find her,” said Ames.
“Lilla’s all I’ve got,” she said. “I lost my son in Iraq.”
“Fred,” said Lew.
She looked at him.
“I was there when Lilla named the hog,” Lew said.
Denise Fair, arms still folded, went back into her house to find a photograph of her daughter.
15
If the photograph of the girl was close to her reality, than Lilla Fair was not destined for beauty. She was thin, long dark hair over a smiling face, showing large teeth, round surprised eyes, and a night sky full of freckles. She looked more like Borg than she looked like her mother, but she really didn’t look that much like him either.
The bonus in the photograph was that a group of people in the background were standing with beer bottles in hand. Except for one, they weren’t paying attention to Lilla. The one looking at her was either Chet or Matt. The other twin was next to him in profile. He was hoisting a blur of a beer bottle toward his mouth.
The first thing Lew and Ames did when they got back to Sarasota was to make ten wallet-size machine copies of the photograph at Office Max on Bee Ridge. The second thing they did was walk to the end of the mall and have dinner at the nofrills home cooking restaurant that featured mini-burgers.
“Dinner’s on Borg,” Lew said when they were seated across from each other at a small booth.
Lew had three mini-burgers with cheese. Ames had a steak, salad and mushroom soup.
When they finished, Lew gave Ames five of the copies of the photo and made a list of places and the people they should give the photographs to. Ames looked at the list and then at Lew.
“Let’s do it,” he said.
The list consisted of people whose names Ames recognized.
“Let’s do it,” Lew agreed. “I’ll take you back to the Texas. Then we split up. Take the ones I marked.”
“Sure you want it that way?”
“I’m sure,” said Lew.
“Suit yourself,” said Ames.
“I’m glum.”
Matt Manteen made the pronouncement from the bed in Room Six of the Blue Gulf Motel on Tamiami Road. His cap was perched on his head, his hands folded over a pillow on his stomach. He had always slept or taken a nap with a pillow on his stomach. He didn’t know why, and no one had ever asked, so he didn’t have to think about it. Matt had heard someone say, in a movie or something, “I don’t think about what I don’t think about.” It was his protective motto when asked to give an opinion on almost anything.
Matt had lots of opinions, all of them donated willingly by his dead mother and his brother. He would have welcomed a few more from his father, but he had given up on that. His father, when he had seen him, mostly at the hog-dog, had given orders, not opinions. Now he and Chet were giving their father orders.
Couldn’t help it though. Matt was glum.
The shower was running behind the door about ten feet from the foot of the bed. A television on a table against the wall was on but mute. On the screen, an old man with big white teeth and toupee that didn’t match the color of what little hair he had left was holding up a white plastic thing like it was first-place prize in the county fair. He was looking right at Matt, talking, saying nothing.
“I’ll call him back in an hour,” said Chet, sitting in a chair, his feet propped up on the bed he would share with Matt again that night if they were still in Sarasota. Lilla, if she were still alive, would sleep on the couch again, which was fine with her. Matt kept looking at the old man on the television screen. To Chet, the old man seemed happy as shit.
Behind the closed door, Lilla wasn’t singing.
“What are we gonna do about Lilla’s medicine?” asked Matt.
“She’s got enough of the stuff for a couple of days.”
The pause was long.
“What if he won’t pay?” asked Matt.
Chet was the longer-term thinker of the Manteen brothers, which was not a fact that merited pride. Life for him was a checkers game he could handle only one move at a time. Matt couldn’t even play the game. It had nothing to do with intelligence. It was about concentration. When they were in grade school, every other day, as they had been ordered by their mother, they had taken the pills Dr. Winenholt had given her. Hadn’t helped. They were put in a “special” class. That didn’t help. They were as smart as some of the other kids who didn’t go special. The Manteen brothers just couldn’t think ahead. Same thing in high school. “Jumpy,” that’s what their mother had told the teachers and principals. “My boys are jumpy.”
“Remember, if he won’t pay, we kill her,” said Chet. “It’s what we said we’d do and we’ve got nothing much in the world but our word.”
Matt shook his head, clutched the pillow more tightly to his stomach and said, “Killing Lilla won’t get us the money to make it to Montana. What it’ll get us is we’re murderers with no money instead of being not murderers with no money.”
“What are you talking about?” Chet asked, sitting up.
“I don’t know,” said Matt.
The shower thundered on. Chet glanced at the bathroom. A thin fog of steam lazily wisped under door.
“We are murderers,” said Chet.
“No,” said Matt, sitting up and pointing a finger at his brother, pillow still on his lap. “We killed two people. We did not murder them. We did not.”
“You shot the guy from Williston,” Chet said with weary exasperation. “The guy who won the money at the hog-dog, remember?”
“That,” said Matt emphatically, “was not murder. That was a necessity. We were broke. When good old Papa Borg closed the show, we were broke. I’m telling you something you already know here.”
“And Miss Theodora in the toilet at the All-Naked Girls Live?” asked Chet. “You shot her.”
“I’m not saying I didn’t. I did it right there in front of you and I’m saying I killed her, but it was not murder. It was a survival necessity. The difference seems to be a little too subtle for you,” Matt said. “Checkmate. That’s what they say in chess when you know you’ve got the game won and I’ve got this argument won. We are not murderers.”
“You don’t know how to play chess,” said Chet. “You can’t even play checkers.”
“I can,” Matt insisted. “I just don’t play it very good.”
They had agreed on one thing this time. They hadn’t really kidnapped Lilla. They had known her all her life, liked her. Damn, they shared the same father. The problem, Chet thought, was that there hadn’t been a plan here. Matt counted on Chet and Chet counted on their mother and their mother was dead. They had left Kane for good, a few things in the car trunk. They had stopped at Lilla’s house, asked if she wanted to go for a ride and a frozen Snickers or boiled peanuts. Lilla had said “sure” and climbed in the backseat. Lilla’s mom hadn’t objected.
When they had stopped at the gas station at the edge of town to put in ten dollars of gas, Lilla, singing, had
