“If you ask me-”
“No one has,” I told him.
“…Nicky’s the one who should be jealous, not you. What’s the legal term, Jake? You have no standing, isn’t that it? You’re not a party to the transaction.”
I pushed through the door to the parking lot with Charlie on my heels. I stopped short, turned, and looked down at my old friend. “Charlie, do me a favor. Stick to the fingerprints and the bodily fluids, and the other stuff you know. You’re out of your field now, so please lay off the personal relationships. I’m a big boy, and I can handle myself.”
Charlie stared at his shoe tops. He looked like an old mutt that had just been kicked. Which only made me feel worse. I knew what I was doing. Angry at Gina, angry at me, angry at the big, wide fickle world, I was taking it out on my dearest friend.
Damn, I’m stupid sometimes.
I tossed an arm around his shoulder and rumpled his gray wiry hair. “I’m sorry, Charlie.”
“Instead of clamming up, why not talk about it?”
“It’s painful.”
“All the more reason to speak from your heart of hearts.”
Around us, more plaid and polyester folks were streaming into the bingo hall. Why does everyone over seventy seem so short? We moved a few paces from the front door and stood on the edge of the parking lot.
“It hurt when she left the first time,” I said. “And hurt more every time she came back, because she’d always leave again. I was a way station for her, a pit stop on the way to something better. It didn’t matter if she was married at the time. I’d always be there for her.”
“And now, Jake? What makes it painful to see her with another man? After all, she’s married. What’s another spoon in the soup?”
“It cheapens what we have. Or had. It reminds me what a fool I was. Or am.”
The squeal of brakes. I stepped back as an armored truck, a tin can on wheels, pulled up. A set of double doors opened from inside the bingo hall, and a uniformed security guard wheeled a golf cart out and headed toward the truck. Attached to the golf cart was a wagon filled with leather bags three feet high. Two other guards, their guns drawn and pointed at the ground, followed the cart to the truck.
“What makes you a fool, Jake?”
“For feeling the way I do about Gina.”
“How do you feel?”
“I don’t know.”
The rear door of the truck opened. Inside, a man with a shotgun scanned the parking lot. He looked at Charlie and seemed to decide he didn’t pose a threat. He looked longer at me.
“Jake, you’re blocking it out, sealing yourself off from your feelings.”
“Didn’t realize you did psychological counseling, too. You must have had some troubled corpses over at the county morgue.”
“C’mon, Jake. No wisecracks. How do you feel where Gina is concerned?”
Analyzing feelings isn’t my strong point. If I kept it up, I’d turn into a quiche-eating, wine-sipping semi- sensitive man of the nineties. “Weak. Wistful. Full of regrets.”
Now I was looking at one of the security guards. He wore gray pants with a black stripe, a blue uniform shirt with epaulets, and a gold badge. He was chunky, short, and round-faced with a squashed nose. His eyes were hidden under the bill of his cap. In a pudgy hand, he held a. 357 Magnum. It was pointed straight at the ground ever since the money came out of the bingo hall. He looked familiar, but in profile, and in that uniform, it just didn’t compute.
“Jake,” Charlie said, “are you telling me that you love the girl?”
“I don’t know, Charlie. Maybe it’s just always wanting what I can’t have. Maybe it’s not knowing what I want. There was a time when I could have had her, but I let her go. I didn’t tell her how I…”
The guard was staring at me. He had turned and now faced me straight on. Then he smiled. “Ay, Counselor, never expected to see you here. Testing your luck at the tables?”
No, it couldn’t be. But it was.
“Hello, Guillermo. I didn’t recognize you. How’d you get a permit to carry the piece?”
“I got no felony convictions that haven’t been overturned on appeal or pardoned. I always get the best lawyers, remember.”
“Whoever represented you upstate must have known his stuff, or you’d be doing twenty-five years minimum mandatory-at Raiford right now.” Charlie nudged me and cleared his throat. “Doc Riggs, say hello to Guillermo Diaz, a former client.”
Diaz ignored Charlie and laughed, though nothing seemed particularly funny. “From what I hear, Counselor,” Diaz cackled, “you may do more time in that case than me. I got off clean. Speedy-trial rule.”
“I didn’t think the dockets were that crowded in Ocala.”
Diaz laughed again, his belly bouncing. His colleague was tossing the moneybags into the back of the truck. “Didn’t say they were. But what does the state do when its star witness is missing?”
“Gets a continuance.”
“Four continuances. You gotta give those shitkickers credit, they kept trying. ‘Yo Honor, we can’t find Mr. Ra- fa-ale Ray-mose anywhere. Jes’ give us another thirty days.’”
“You do redneck real well,” I allowed.
“Yeah, well, those country boys continued their asses right into the speedy-trial rule. Case dismissed.” He turned toward Charlie. “Hey, Doc. Some shit-for-brains horse trainer doesn’t knowhow to use a power saw, they charge me with murder.”
“What happened to the missing witness?” Charlie asked, because I didn’t. But then I already knew.
Diaz raised the gun and pointed it directly at my head. “Bang, bang,” he said. “And bang.” This was so funny he rumbled up another laugh. “I don’t know. Maybe he committed suicide.”
The shotgun-toting guard pulled the doors of the truck shut from inside. Diaz lowered his gun and holstered it.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“What’s it look like? Working for Mr. Gondolier. I’m head of security. No more leg breaking. Just making sure there’s no smoking in restricted areas and no wise guys trying to pull a heist.”
“I don’t believe it,” I said, shaking my head.
“Ay, why not, Counselor? Don’t you think I can do the job?”
“Sure you can, Guillermo. A fox can always guard the henhouse.”
Chapter 6
“What price happiness?” Sheila Slutsky asked, “I introduce the schlemiel to a beautiful girl. All right, not so beautiful, but she’s got a decent job plus all her own teeth. Not that he’s so wonderful to look at, unless you like hairy ears. Anyway, I introduce them, she marries him, and now the gonif don’t want to pay me. From this, you could die.”
“Or sue,” I said.
“Exactly.” Sheila Slutsky smiled and fished a crumpled document out of a purse shaped like a hatbox. I had seen larger women, but none wearing a gold lame jumpsuit with shoulder pads an offensive lineman would envy. Her hair was dyed candy-apple red and swept into what used to be called a beehive. Eyeglasses dangled from her neck on a chain of imitation pearls. She slid the document toward me and tapped her index finger, thumpety-thump, on my desk. “Read the fine print, boychik. ”
Actually, it was bold print, in a box lined with red: “The undersigned contracting party agrees to pay a bonus of $2500.00 to the Matchmaker within twenty days of the marriage of said party to any person introduced, directly
