seem vague anymore. “The papers are no problem. I'm getting buses to take the babies to Las Vegas tomorrow, out of harm's way. The papers will arrive in a few days. They'll like Las Vegas, more, I'm afraid, than they should. I just hope they don't lose all their money.”
“They're not going to get all their money,” I said.
The big eyes widened when I opened the briefcase and began to count. “One hundred and eighty thousand dollars,” I said. “Forty each for the four you brought out and twenty for the advance payment on Doreen.” I tidied the piles I'd made and started counting again. It took a long time, and her eyes stayed on my face, which was impressive. I'd have been staring at the cash.
“This is one hundred and seventy-two thousand, a thousand each for the folks in the living room. They can use it to get started, if you can keep them from losing it in Las Vegas.”
“I'll do my best. What happens to the rest of it?”
“It's going in a good cause,” I said. I stood up, toting the briefcase. It felt a lot lighter. “May I use the phone?”
“Right there,” she said, pointing to a black four-pound behemoth with a dial. “Do you need privacy?”
“For your sake, maybe I do.”
“Well,” she said, going to the door, “come in when you've finished. We're making tea.”
“I will,” I replied, resisting the impulse to roll my eyes toward heaven and flipping through the pages of my phone book for the right number.
“Jeez, yeah?” Claude B. Tiffle grunted, and I found myself hoping I'd just contributed to coitus interruptus.
“This is Dr. Skinker,” I said through my nose.
“Froom,” Tiffle said, either cutting through the phlegm or operating under the assumption it was a word. “Little late, huh?”
“I told you we'd have to meet at unusual hours.”
He made a
“No. Tomorrow morning at eight.”
He breathed disgruntlement into the phone. “Is this important?”
“In God's scheme, no. In terms of your future, yes, indeed.”
“What's going to happen?”
“Earnest money,” I said. “For the purchase of the church.”
He cleared his throat. “How much?”
“Six figures.” It was the truth. “You'll be there?”
“Yeah, okay.” He was alert now. “Eight, right?”
“Eight.”
“Where?”
I swallowed. “Your office.”
“Glad to be of service,” he said.
“No happier than I,” I said, hanging up.
“One million twenty-four thousand dollars,” I said. “That's eight thousand and change per pilgrim, roughly, minus the money I gave to Mrs. Summerson.” Dexter's mutant coffee table was awash with cash, and four briefcases lay open and empty on the floor. “And about fifteen thousand in Taiwanese. Make it a million forty all together.”
“I in the wrong line,” Dexter said.
He'd traded in his robes for a pair of jeans and a lime-green shirt that identified him as a two-dollar-a-shirt man named Paul. Tran was asleep on the leather couch, and Horton was out cold in Dexter's bedroom. The doctor had come and gone, a frail, frizzy-haired white man with yellowish skin who smelled like a chemical dump. Two of the Doodys, after checking on the slumbering Horton and making clucking noises, had gone out to watch the prisoners in the car, and the other three had taken off to put the two bodies on ice, I didn't know-and didn't want to know-where. Everett still had possession of Dexter's bathtub.
“Fifty each,” I said to Horace, fanning myself with a wad of bills. “And another fifty for each of Horton's brothers. That'll leave about half a million.”
“Lot of salt,” Dexter said, eyeing the green.
“We're looking,” I reminded him, “to attract attention.”
“Quarter of a million gone to catch the eye, too.”
“Half has a nice ring to it.”
“You want a ring, go to Zale's. You can pick up a real flasher for three or four bills.”
“Dexter,” I said, glad that Horton was off marauding in the Land of Nod, “you're pocketing fifty thousand for one night's work.”
“What am I going to do with fifty thousand dollars?” Horace asked querulously.
“You could give me some,” Dexter said. “All donations gratefully received.”
“You make a down payment on a house for Pansy,” I said. “Give the kids a yard to play in.”
“I'd have to cut the grass,” Horace said.
“Astroturf,” Dexter suggested, giving up on further riches. “What time is it?”
“You're wearing a wristwatch,” I pointed out.
“Man with fifty thou in his jeans don't look at his own watch. Get some style.”
“I've got fifty, too,” I said, counting it out. “We all do. I guess we'll just have to keep checking for sunrise.”
“Ain't no good to be rich if everybody else rich, too,” Dexter said, checking his watch. “After two. Let's get some poor folk over here and lord it over them.”
“Here's yours,” I said, pushing money at Dexter. “Don't spend it all on implements of torture.”
“Peewee asleep,” Dexter observed. “Let's give him twenty and split the rest, act silently superior all night.”
“Ha,” Tran said without opening his eyes. “You silent. Ha.”
“Must of heard the money,” Dexter said.
“Here,” I said to Horace. He looked down at the banknotes like they were cabbage. “Your turn for trunk patrol,” I told him. “Take some coffee to the Doodys.”
Horace got stiffly to his feet, grumbling. He left the money on the table and went out to check on our human baggage.
“Pizza,” Dexter said, solving his snobbery problem. “Order up some pizza, sneer at the delivery boy.”
“Anchovies,” Tran said, rolling over to face the back of the couch.
“Man eat fish on everything,” Dexter said. “Fish cookies, fish ice cream.”
“Good for brain,” Tran said. “Try sometime.”
“You could always stiff Horton,” I said to Dexter.
“Not a wise career path,” Dexter said. “What you want on your pizza?”
“Sausage.” I yawned and stretched the joints of an aging man. “Three hours, more or less. We'd better give ourselves forty minutes to get there.”
Dexter, at the phone, said, “Thirty's plenty. We just gone sit there a couple of hours anyway.”
“We go in in the dark,” I said for what seemed like the hundredth time.
“We go in in the dark,” Dexter mimicked. “Hello, that Domino's?” He waited. “You can't be closed, man, we hungry.”
“Denny's open,” Tran said without turning his head. “Get breakfast.”
“A hundred bucks,” Dexter said to the phone. “And that's the tip.”
“You'll be broke in a week,” I said.
“Damn straight,” Dexter said to the phone. “Four big ones, one with sausage, one with everything, one with-”
“Anchovies,” Tran said stubbornly.
“-little fish all over it, and one with anything you want. Think that'll do for Horace?” he asked me.
“Horace won't eat.”
“He could go home,” Dexter said. “Extra little fish, hear? Pour the little fuckers all over it.”
